Customer Reviews

Great City Parks

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An invaluable reference book for those interested in urban park design. Tate has surveyed 20 city parks in Western Europe and North America ranging from tiny Paley Park New York to the whole of the Minneaplois Park system. He has described each systematically under the heads of History, Development, Planning and Design, Management and Usage, and Plans for the future, and then drawn conclusions.

He knows his stuff; he sent out questionnaires to the parks managers in 1987 and 1998 and the book is generously illustated in colour with photographs by the late Martin Jones, again taken over two decades. This is a bit of a labour of love, Tate's magnus opus is a must for any academic landscape or planning library. It is not a light read, nor is it a historical account of park design (though the the page 1 thumbnail ouline of two centuires of park design on page 1 is a model of its kind). But it does give a fair and impartial landscape architect's critique.

Each park is accompanied by a line plan. It's a bit pricey and very Anglo-Saxon in world view, but if this is really your subject then do buy it or order a copy for your library. Pity to mix metric and imperial, and Richard Haag's Gasworks Park in Seattle (see p.114) was not the source of the Latzs' design for Duisburg Nord Landschaftspark (Latz's Hafeninsel Burgerpark, Saarbrucken from the 1980's was the source).

First of all let me state catagorically that this book is hella overpriced..it's a VERY thorough book on the parks the author decided to cover..quite an eclectic selection. Where was the Bois de Bologne, Hyde Park, Fairmont Park, Hermann Park, Golden Gate Park...???..For this amount of money, I would expect every major urban park in the world to be included..certainly more of the great American Parks...and frankly Hyde Park and the Bois are arguably the most famous in the world, the great Central Park, Prospect Park, and the Teirgarten are included thankfully, but this is hardly comprehensive, the parks he does cover, he goes very indepth and the images are adequate..but get real, the price of this book is in a word: outrageous