Constructing Gardens, Cultivating the City: Paris's New Parks, 1977-1995

Constructing Gardens,Cultivating the City explores the first cultural history of major new parks developed in Paris in the late twentieth century as part of the city's program of adaptive reuse of industrial spaces. The parks represent postmodern debates about urban planning, the historic city, public space, and nature's presence in an urban setting, and were designed to represent contemporary twists on traditional designs and serve local residents as well as contribute to Paris's role as a world city. The development process often included conflicts, highlighting differing views on what Parisian space should represent and fundamental contradictions between the characteristics of public space and the garden as it is traditionally defined. The parks demonstrate the ongoing cultivation of the city over time, engaging with history and their surroundings to create new meaning.

Format: Hardback
Length: 304 pages
Publication date: 16 May 2023
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press

Constructing Gardens, Cultivating the City is the first cultural history of major new parks developed in Paris in the late twentieth century, as part of the city's program of adaptive reuse of industrial spaces. Thanks to laws that gave the city more political autonomy, Paris's local government launched a campaign of park creation in the late 1970s that continued to the turn of the millennium. The parks in this book represent this campaign and illustrate different facets of their cultural and historical context. Archival research, interviews, and analyses of the parks reveal how postmodern debates about urban planning, the historic city, public space, and nature's presence in an urban setting influenced their designs. In sum, the city adopted the garden as a model for public parks, investing in complex, richly symbolic, and representational spaces. These parks were intended to represent contemporary twists on traditional designs and serve local residents as much as they would contribute to Paris's role as a world city. The parks development process often included points of conflict, pointing to differing views on what Parisian space should represent and fundamental contradictions between the characteristics of public space and the garden as it is traditionally defined. These parks demonstrate the ongoing cultivation of the city over time, in which transformed sites not only fulfil new functions but also engage with history and their surroundings to create new meaning. They stand for landscape as a form of signifying cultural production that directly engages with other art forms and ways of knowing. Just as the Luxembourg Gardens, the Tuileries, and the Buttes-Chaumont parks exemplify their eras' cultural dynamics, such parks as the Jardin Atlantique, Parc André-Citroën, and the.

Dimension: 254 x 178 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781512823851