Parks for Profit : : Selling Nature in the City / / Kevin Loughran.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter Columbia University Press Complete eBook-Package 2021
• VerfasserIn: Loughran, Kevin,
• Place / Publishing House: New York, NY : : Columbia University Press, , [2022]; ©2021
• Year of Publication: 2022
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource :; 20 b&w illustrations

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.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- CONTENTS -- ACKNOWLEDGMENTS -- I INTRODUCTION -- 1 SOMETIME IN 2009 -- 2 VARIETIES OF URBAN CRISIS -- II GROWTH MACHINES IN THE GARDEN -- 3 “THE YUPPIE EXPRESS” -- 4 “NO MORE BAKE SALES, MAN” -- 5 “A PIECE OF CRUD” -- 6 PARKS FOR PROFIT OR FOR PEOPLE? -- III GARDENS IN THE MACHINE -- 7 DEFECTIVE LANDSCAPES -- 8 IMBRICATED SPACES -- 9 CONSTRUCTING ENVIRONMENTAL AUTHENTICITY -- 10 SPATIAL PRACTICES AND SOCIAL CONTROL -- IV CONCLUSION -- 11 AFTER THE HIGH LINE -- 12 ABOLISH, DECOLONIZE, ROT -- NOTES -- REFERENCES -- INDEX