Parks for Profit: Selling Nature in the City

Kevin Loughran

Published by Columbia University Press 2021

Parks for Profit

Selling Nature in the City

Kevin Loughran

https://doi.org/10.7312/loug19404

Overview
Contents

About this book

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.

Author / Editor information

Kevin Loughran is an assistant professor of sociology at Temple University.

Reviews

Frederick F. Wherry, Princeton University:
How do you turn a weeded rail and disused viaduct into a celebrated garden, and then turn the garden into a growth machine, and why does it matter? From New York, to Chicago, to Houston, private corporations have turned spaces that were unused by the right kind of people into restoration projects, sprouting high end businesses and economic growth. While city boosters call these public-private partnerships win-win solutions, Parks for Profits shows us just who the losers are. Not just those who get left, or pushed, out, but also anyone who cares about the things we should all share. Parks for Profit points to what’s gone wrong and how the wrongs can be made right. An important intervention.

Gregory Smithsimon, author of Cause: ... And How It Doesn't Always Equal Effect:
Parks for Profit asks how a generation of refurbished parks change and re-valorize the picturesque framing of nature by imagining a union of wild nature and the postindustrial landscape, and, in doing so, gives a sense of the whole park, not merely its use or its financing or construction. The manuscript’s insightful and thoughtful analysis of the parks is valuable and even lyrical. Rarely is a book of urban sociology so well written, and rarely does it stand on the merits of the author’s insights.

Japonica Brown-Saracino, author of A Neighborhood That Never Changes: Gentrification, Social Preservation, and the Search for Authenticity:
Kevin Loughran's Parks for Profit is a beautifully written, carefully researched study of the role of green spaces in contemporary urban economic redevelopment. Loughran's richly textured and engaging book takes the reader to New York, Chicago, and Houston, demonstrating how cities reinvent their industrial pasts to serve tourists' and affluent urbanites' desire for green amenities. Parks for Profit powerfully reveals how planners and landscape architects rely on the urban industrial past to create postindustrial spaces that appeal to a new class of urban dwellers and visitors. Deeply attentive to the past, present, and future, Loughran reveals how histories of urban disinvestment, deindustrialization, White flight, and, more recently, gentrification, drive the emergence of new parks. Parks for Profit will productively challenge preconceived notions about the High Line and other new urban green spaces, and will sharpen understandings of how and why cities alter the material and cultural landscape. Loughran's book is a must-read for students of culture, urbanism, nature, and urban economies, providing a powerful example of the utility of multi-sited research and of the value of historically informed analyses of contemporary dynamics.

Eric Klinenberg, author of Palaces for the People: How Social Infrastructure Can Help Fight Inequality, Polarization, and the Decline of Civic Life:
Parks for Profit offers a fresh take on the problem of environmental equity. Loughran deftly shows how the economic value of urban green space for capital can shrink the pool of public funds for parks and play areas in the places that need them most. He asks tough but necessary questions, and his answers are sure to spark debate.

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
CONTENTS Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Publicly Available Download PDF	ix
I INTRODUCTION
1 SOMETIME IN 2009 Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	3
2 VARIETIES OF URBAN CRISIS New York, Chicago, Houston Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	7
II GROWTH MACHINES IN THE GARDEN
3 “THE YUPPIE EXPRESS” Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	31
4 “NO MORE BAKE SALES, MAN” Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	50
5 “A PIECE OF CRUD” Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	72
6 PARKS FOR PROFIT OR FOR PEOPLE? Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	92
III GARDENS IN THE MACHINE
7 DEFECTIVE LANDSCAPES Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	99
8 IMBRICATED SPACES Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	104
9 CONSTRUCTING ENVIRONMENTAL AUTHENTICITY Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	115
10 SPATIAL PRACTICES AND SOCIAL CONTROL Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	147
IV CONCLUSION
11 AFTER THE HIGH LINE Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	171
12 ABOLISH, DECOLONIZE, ROT Three Proposals for Parks Equity Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	178
NOTES Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	185
REFERENCES Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	237
INDEX Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	267