When it was officially opened on Easter Monday, 5th April 1847, Birkenhead park became the first municipally funded park in Britain. It was a pioneer in the development of urban public parks, designed for use by everyone, irrespective of social class, ethnicity or age. In terms of town planning, it demonstrated the importance of including green infrastructure in urban development as a vital contribution to public health and wellbeing. Paxton’s design for the park was heralded as ‘a masterpiece of human creative genius’ : it served as a vehicle for the global transmission of the English landscape school and led to the creation of numerous public parks everywhere, most famously Central Park, New York, incorporating of many of Paxton’s design features. This book addresses a long-standing gap in the Park’s historiography. Regarded as ‘one of the greatest wonders of the age’, it is an important contribution to nineteenth-century landscape history with a local focus, but of international significance. But it seeks to interpret the Park’s development until 1914 within a political and cultural context, drawing on economic and social history, as a means of explaining why it was not until the late-nineteenth century that it finally became a focal point for recreation and public health.

Great City Parks is a celebration of some of the finest achievements of landscape architecture in the public realm. It is a comparative study of twenty significant public parks in fourteen major cities across Western Europe and North America. Collectively, they give a clear picture of why parks have been created, how they have been designed, how they are managed, and what plans are being made for them at the beginning of the twenty-first century. Based on unique research including extensive site visits and interviews with the managing organisations, this book is illustrated throughout with clear plans and professional photographs for each park. This book reflects a belief that well-planned, well-designed and well-managed parks remain invaluable components of liveable and hospitable cities.

Explore the Wirral peninsula in this fully illustrated A-Z guide to its local history, people and places.

This textbook on the Green City examines urban nature as an ideal, provider of services and conceptual urban design approach. It answers important contemporary questions that arise about the ecological and cultural interactions, development and structure, and ecological performance of urban nature worldwide. The book explains what urban nature is, how it came to be, and how it evolved in the context of the natural and cultural conditions of its sites. It also describes what constitutes urban biodiversity and the role of differentiated urban nature in the Green City concept. Theories of urban development and ecology are linked to practical applications of urban planning and illustrated with many case studies and examples. The great potentials of urban nature are shown in detail. In order to cope with or mitigate problems in the city, a targeted urban nature management adapted to the specific conditions of the different types of urban nature is needed, which includes nature conservation as well as nature design, always keeping in mind the relation to the urban dwellers. The textbook is especially addressed to students and teachers of urban planning, ecology, geography, social sciences as well as practitioners of urban design and nature conservation. This book is a translation of the original German 1st edition Die Grüne Stadt by Jürgen Breuste, published by Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature in 2019. The translation was done with the help of artificial intelligence (machine translation by the service DeepL.com). A subsequent human revision was done by the author primarily in terms of content and scientific terms, so that the book will read stylistically differently from a conventional translation but without loss of messages. Springer Nature works continuously to further the development of tools for the production of books and on the related technologies to support the authors.

This fascinating selection of photographs traces some of the many ways in which Birkenhead has changed and developed over the last century

In 1892, entrepreneur Joel Hurt invited Frederick Law Olmsted Sr. to Atlanta to design "an ideal suburb." Olmsted and his firm began designs and were in regular communication with Hurt. Members of the firm came to Atlanta during design and construction. Even with changing ownership, Olmsted's vision and plans were followed. The design became the last residential suburb designed by Olmsted--the only one in the Deep South. The centerpiece of the neighborhood is its segmented park. After reaching a peak of beauty in the 1930s, the park and neighborhood declined, and the park was threatened by an ill-conceived expressway. Olmsted and Hurt's dream of the linear park prevailed, and the park has been renovated to how it looked in its heyday. This is the story of how a handful of people preserved, protected, and enhanced the linear park so that it can be enjoyed for generations to come.

During the nineteenth century Liverpool became the heart of an international maritime network. As the 'second city' of Empire, its merchants and shipowners operated within a transnational commercial and financial system, while its trading connections stimulated the development of new markets and their integration within an increasingly global economy. This ground-breaking volume brings together ten original contributions that reflect upon the development of the city's business community from the early-nineteenth century to the outbreak of the First World War with an emphasis on the period from 1851 to 1912. It offers the first detailed analysis of Liverpool's merchant community within a conceptual and historiographical framework which focuses on the economic, social and cultural role of business elites in the nineteenth century. It explores the extent to which business success was predicated on the maintenance of networks of trust; analyses the importance of business culture in structuring commercial operations; and discusses the role of ethics, trust and reputation within the changing framework of the business environment. Particular attention is paid to the role of women and the important contribution of the family to commercial success and the maintenance of social networks. Changes in business practice and social networks are also examined within a spatial context in order to assess the impact of the development of a distinct commercial centre and the clustering of commercial activity on interaction, reputation and trust, while particular attention is paid to the effect of suburbanization on existing associational networks, the social cohesiveness of business culture, and the cultural identity of the merchant community as a whole.