Ecology and Aesthetics

Michael Laurie E C O L O G Y AND A E S T H E T I C S T h e healthy city is a concept addressed by all Utopian futurists from Thomas More to Anne Spirn. Every notion of ideal city form has included gardens and public open spaces of one type or another. The symbolism of nature and the environmental benefits of shade trees, fountains, and sports fields have been the basic motives for including open space. The value of urban open space has always been recognized by society; however, the quality, form, and function of urban open space has varied with time and place, embracing such diverse types as the sacred groves of Athens, the fora of Ancient Rome, church places and markets of medieval squares, plazas of the American Southwest, pastoral parks of the nineteenth century industrial city, and sports fields, playgrounds, and civic spaces of the twentieth century. These open spaces, not always green, are a reflection of a society's vision of how life in a city should be at a particular time. As cities grow and change these open spaces are not always where we would like them to be. For example, we know how random the orig­ inal location of large pastoral parks was in the nineteenth century; they often were sited where no other land use was profitable, such as places with rocky terrain, marshy ground, or sand dunes, and typically at the edge of the then built-up area. We know, too, that the justification of expenditures for public open space in the nineteenth and much of the twen­ tieth century was based on theories, philosophies, and needs that are no longer self evident or realistic. The two chief measures of the effectiveness of a city's open space have been tradi­ tionally the ratio of total acres to total population, e.g. 10 acres per 1,000 people, and the distribution of those acres according to population density and service area distance. Few cities have achieved the quantitative standards they adopted or set themselves and where they have, equitable distribution is not achieved. As we approach die next century, enough has changed in our cities and in our way of life and in the globe and universe for us to reconsider the form and content of urban open space as part of an evolving urban environment whose population is constantly changing in numbers, ethnic origins, attitude, work routines, and recreation preferences.