Why am I passionate about this?
I was fortunate to grow up in a typical 1960s neighborhood where the good life was an option. This was the storyline in The Wonder Years, and it was not just saccharine reminiscence. The physical environment defined sustainability: suburbs marked the distinction between country and city, obesity was not an epidemic, Nature-Deficit Disorder was unknown, most children walked to school, and vehicle miles traveled were 50 percent lower. If home sizes were smaller, face-to-face interaction was more prevalent and despair less common. I’ve worked to extend this privilege of place on sustainable lines because it is essential to solving the existential crises of our time—structural racism and climate change.
R's book list on urban design for human health and happiness
Why did R love this book?
A richly illustrated presentation of a foundational figure, Olmsted believed that parks were integral to physical and mental health and he designed the park to give citizens immediate and visceral contact with nature. His genius was to meld art and psychology on functional lines to produce settings of extraordinary beauty. After his initial masterpiece, Central Park, his vision broadened as he planned his projects in a more comprehensive manner. Riverside, Illinois was an exemplary suburb that harmonized with nature, while Boston’s Emerald Necklace’s array of parks linked by greenways and pedestrian paths was a prototype park system and cultural statement. Its interconnected network of transcendental oases allowed escape from the strident, accelerated movement of a profit-propelled society. Like Henry David Thoreau sauntering through the Concord countryside, urban dwellers could move through the city to their own tune. A timeless vision, it is why Olmsted still inspires the good life of…
1 author picked Frederick Law Olmsted as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.
A man of passionate vision and drive, Frederick Law Olmsted defined and named the profession of landscape architecture and designed America's most beloved parks and landscapes of the past century--New York's Central Park, Brooklyn's Prospect Park, the U.S. Capitol grounds, the Biltmore Estate, and many others. During a remarkable forty-year career that began in the mid-1800s, Olmsted created the first park systems, urban greenways, and planned surburban residential communities in this country. He was a pivotal figure in the movement to create and preserve natural parks such as Yosemite, Yellowstone, and Niagra Falls. He also contrbuted to the design of…