In The Greening of the City, Carole O'Reilly analyses the contested past of public parks in seven British cities: Manchester, Salford, Liverpool, Leeds, Preston, Hull and Cardiff. The book is a welcome contribution to the cultural and social history of public parks in Britain, exploring and explaining how various actors have defined their uses and how the provision of new leisure activities in particular has shaped them. O'Reilly challenges the narrative of a ‘golden Victorian age’ followed by a gradual decline of parks during the twentieth century by depicting constantly evolving perceptions of parks in British society. The book is at its best in exposing these often contradictory discourses.
The Greening of the City is divided into seven thematic chapters that concentrate on four key themes: ‘public health, citizenship, normative behaviour and public leisure’ (p. 19). The discussion is rich in detail and well contextualized, although it concentrates mostly on the years between the 1870s and the 1920s. Despite the fact that surviving records on park users are scarce, O'Reilly has done excellent work in looking beyond the middle-class, mostly male, characters to include the working classes and women, both of whom constantly challenged the norms and appropriate uses of parks dictated from above. In addition, O'Reilly underlines the importance of funding required for creating new parks and for their management and the provision of leisure.
The first two chapters analyse different reasons that cities acquired new parks and the changing challenges encountered, underlining the importance of opportunistic ad hoc acquisitions. O'Reilly stresses also the role that wealthy elites played in establishing new parks. These chapters show, however, how the range of actors prominent in making and influencing decisions about creating new public parks expanded gradually as the powers of municipal government grew. The following chapters analyse the political and social role of parks in cities. The discussion on the use of parks for political meetings is particularly interesting, but the subsequent analysis of fear, and how it influenced policies tackling sometimes real, sometimes exaggerated, social problems and crime in public parks, is fascinating. The fact that criminal activities taking place in parks ranged from walking on the grass and littering, to serious crimes such as rape and occasionally murder, sheds new light on the darker shades of parks. While explaining in detail how women and children were more exposed to dangers when visiting a park, the discussion would have benefited from presenting the overall crime rate in each city and questioning the role of newspapers in evoking the sense of fear of a park.
The following chapters focus on management of parks and changes in leisure. The discussion about the employees of public parks and the motives for managing parks, not to mention the daily routines of maintaining them, is a valuable piece of scholarship. Similarly, O'Reilly skilfully analyses how the growing demand for leisure gradually challenged the prevailing Victorian concept of recreation, as well as the underlying concepts of a public park as a site of citizenship during the advent of the twentieth century. However, there is surprisingly little discussion about the regional variations of leisure, suggesting a kind of uniform entertainment culture in parks, apart from a few specific sports.
Finally, while recognizing the imprint of horticulture and animal species displayed in parks for environmental history, the analysis of environmental (in)justice as the spatial segregation of parks in cities is a welcome addition to the social history of public parks. This spatial segregation resulted from the policy of locating new parks on the outskirts of cities, at some distance from the (over)crowded inner area. It built on the availability of affordable land and continued well into the late nineteenth century when municipal authorities also began to create ‘pocket parks’ in the inner city.
There are, however, a few problematic issues. Above all, there are only a few statistics; the overall argument for comparing parks, their employees, expenditure and leisure activities would have benefited from tables presenting this data. Likewise, there are no maps, which would have helped those unfamiliar with the local geography of the selected cities to understand the location of these parks. While the 11 photographs illustrate parts of the discussion satisfactorily, there are virtually none presenting leisure activities like playing sports or watching a play, not to mention everyday activities, leaving readers to look for the ‘many photographs’ often referred to. Finally, the fluent discussion has occasional repetition disrupting its flow.
These minor critical points notwithstanding, the book provides a valuable insight into the enduring controversies that have shaped Britain's public parks. It is recommended reading for all those interested in the history of public parks, given that it points out numerous topics for further research – especially during the turbulent decades of the twentieth century.
