Parks For Profit

A new kind of city park has emerged in the early twenty-first century. Postindustrial parks transform the derelict remnants of an urban past into distinctive public spaces that meld repurposed infrastructure, wild-looking green space, and landscape architecture. For their proponents, they present an opportunity to turn disused areas into neighborhood anchors, with a host of environmental and community benefits. Yet there are clear economic motives as well—successful parks have helped generate billions of dollars of city tax revenues and real estate development. Kevin Loughran explores the High Line in New York, the Bloomingdale Trail/606 in Chicago, and Buffalo Bayou Park in Houston to offer a critical perspective on the rise of the postindustrial park. He reveals how elites deploy the popularity and seemingly benign nature of parks to achieve their cultural, political, and economic goals. As urban economies have become restructured around finance, real estate, tourism, and cultural consumption, parks serve as civic shields for elite-oriented investment. Tracing changing ideas about cities and nature and underscoring the centrality of race and class, Loughran argues that postindustrial parks aestheticize past disinvestment while serving as green engines of gentrification. A wide-ranging investigation of the political, cultural, and economic forces shaping park development, Parks for Profit reveals the social inequalities at the heart of today’s new urban landscape.

Kevin Loughran explores the High Line in New York, the Bloomingdale Trail/606 in Chicago, and Buffalo Bayou Park in Houston to offer a critical perspective on the rise of the postindustrial park. He reveals how elites deploy the popularity and seemingly benign nature of parks to achieve their cultural, political, and economic goals.

**This title was originally published in 2007. The version published in 2012 is a PB reprint of the original HB** The protection of natural resources and biodiversity through protected areas is increasingly based on ecological principles. Simultaneously the concept of ecosystem-based management has become broadly accepted and implemented over the last two decades. However, this period has also seen unprecedented rapid global social and ecological change, which has weakened many protection efforts. These changes have created an awareness of opportunities for innovative approaches to managing protected areas and of the need to integrate social and economic concerns with ecological elements in protected areas and parks management. A rare collection of articles that fuses academic theory, critique of practice and practical knowledge, Transforming Parks and Protected Areas analyzes and critiques these theories, practices, and philosophies, looking in-detail at the emerging issues in the design and operation of parks and protected areas. Addressing critical dynamics and current practices in parks and protected areas management, the excellent volume goes well beyond simple managerial solutions and descriptions of standard practice. With contributions from leading academics and practitioners, this book will be of value to all those working within ecology, natural resources, conservation and parks management as well as students and academics across the environmental sciences and land use management.

Placing theme parks from the United States, Europe and Asia in a comparative, multidisciplinary framework, this fascinating book argues that these fantasy environments are an extreme example of the totalization of public space. By illuminating the relationship between theme parks and public space, this book offers critical insights into the ethos of total landscape. Illuminating the relationship between theme parks and public space, the book offers an insight into the ethos, design and expectations of public space in the twenty-first century.

Committee Serial No. 41. Considers legislation to authorize Federal acquisition of Mt. Rainier National Park Co. assets. Includes discussion of policies on private ownership of service facilities in national parks.