ancient cities

Regents Park in London
Source: Karen Wiley.
develop public parks as necessary green social
spaces in towns and cities. As towns and cities
expanded demographically and spatially to meet
the needs of a burgeoning industrial sector, the
cumulative result of inadequate sanitation, pollution,
poor housing, and lack of medical services
was documented by various studies, the most famous
of which was by Edwin Chadwick (1800–1890),
published in 1842.
In 1833, however, the Select Committee on
Public Walks recognized the need for green spaces
of nature as “lungs of the city” and as places for
rational recreation and healthy exercise in contact
with nature and in places where the air was relatively
clean. The enclosure of common lands, the
building over of green space, and the increasing
spread of towns and cities made access to and the
possibility for recreation in and enjoyment of
nature difficult for the majority of the urban population.
From the early decades of the nineteenth
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century, these problems led to the development of
the public parks movement, an umbrella group of
garden designers, social and religious campaigners,
politicians, and philanthropists who advocated for
urban parks to benefit the physical and moral
health as well as the quality of life of an increasingly
urban population.
The landscape gardener and architect J. C.
Loudon (1783–1843) is credited as the first to call
for the creation of public parks at public expense.
Loudon was also responsible for laying out the first
park designed specifically for the public to use. In
1839, Derby Arboretum was given to the city by a
wealthy benefactor but maintained at public
expense by the local council. It represents the first
truly public park as well as a trend toward private
philanthropic benevolence that was eventually
matched by a municipal commitment to the purchase
and laying out of a large number and variety
of public parks in cities and towns across Britain.