(Re)Greening the City: Urban Park Restoration as a Spatial Fix

Abstract

Urban sustainability has emerged as a priority field of research for urban geographers. This article offers a critical review of the park restoration and green city movements. I will begin by using an urban political ecology lens to engage in the geographical history of urban parks in America. I will explore the prior treatment of park making in America, paying particular attention to the historiographic issues raised and the large gap in the literature: that parks were engineered urban ecosystems in a political-economic setting and set into the historical–geographical crises of capitalism. I will examine the ways that parks, as engineered urban ecosystems, acted as a spatial fix to the crises of capitalism under dialectical policy regimes. I will argue that parks have never truly been democratic spaces and have suffered under egalitarian policy regimes, while prospering under elitist policy regimes. This article is illustrated with case study material from research on park restoration in Boston, Massachusetts, and concludes with an examination of the future of urban parks.