USAnone of us know it, but we are truly living in the second golden age of urban parks. That, at least, is the takeaway from Rizzoli’s fascinating new book, Parks of the 21st Century: Landscapes Reinvented, Territories Reclaimed by Victoria Newhouse. The fascinating survey is the latest pick to our series of new travel-related coffee table books–Just booked.
Inside, the book is a very sobering examination of the past decade’s boom in innovative and breathtaking urban parks – places that have been reborn from the ruins of the second industrial era. . Highways, airports, riverside industrial parks and railways have been transformed into playful and peaceful spaces.
But given how beautiful so many of these parks are and how global the survey is, the book has become an essential trip planner. It showcases parks as far away as Shanghai’s Xuhui Runway Park and Chattanooga’s Renaissance Park. Our favorite place after perusing, however, is definitely Shanghai’s Quarry Garden, a 10-acre composition of the city’s botanical garden that features floating walkways in a submerged quarry!
