Ask Lemmy

Didn't Los Angeles have central green space (not on the scale of central park in NYC, but large) that was gradually eaten away and paved over with time?

Chicago has a huge lakefront park as well as large parks throughout neighborhoods connected by grassy and tree-lined avenues. Not quite Central Park but a lot of great park space throughout for residents.

I don't know about other cities, but the ones I've lived near were simply too irregularly shaped. NYC was able to be built like a grid, but a city like, say, Buffalo (go Bills!) is both too wibbly wobbly as well as too cold to envision a park being used as a centerpiece.

Detroit has Belle Isle which was designed by the same guy who did Central Park.

Louisville has Cherokee park that was designed by Olmsted, same dude as Central Park.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_Law_Olmsted

When I lived there I loved to go dirt trail running in the middle of the city.

Some cities did, like Vancouver. But others thought it too expensive to the taxpayers and are now kicking themselves decades later. Or the taxpayers didn't want to support it back then.

Paris in France has a few parks and gardens. It’s weird to thing that the US invented the concept: https://www.evous.fr/Guide-des-plus-beaux-parcs-et-jardins-de-Paris,1176706.html

Hyde Park in Sydney

Forest Park, St Louis MO

New Orleans has City Park. Go check it out!

Because its really hard to do it retroactively. Not too many people cared about its aesthetic/health or public value when compared to the commercial real estate value

The English Garden in Munich comes close: A long park reaching almost into the very center of the city.

@someguy3 Portland, Oregon has the largest urban park in the country, Forest Park, but it is forested an not a garden park. Also it is on the edge of the city instead of Central.

Vancouver - Stanley Park (downtown), Queen Elizabeth Park (geographic center), Central Park (Metrotown)... The lack of parks in US cities is a matter of poor planning.

What about cities that dont have a lot of high rises?

Toronto - High Park and Downsview Park, depending how central you're looking for. Both massive and in busy parts of the city.

Possible answers include: Because this concept is not suitable for every city. Because there are other ways to introduce greenery into the city center, like many bigger or smaller parks.

Of the top of my head (because I lived there) - Berlin has Tiergarten and London has Hyde Park. The latter is so so in size but the former is quite large.

Thinking further, I remembered that Paris has the Champ de Mars (surrounding the Eiffel Tower), which is about Hyde Park size.

Also plenty of cities have large forested areas that merge with the city proper and are not too far from the center, such as for example Grouse Mountain on the north side of Vancouver and Monsanto on the west side of Lisbon.

Notice how even the cities in Europe were space has been at a premium for a lot longer than in the Americas do at times have a big centrally located park.