The new park in the park: musings on Maggie Daley Park
“Yet, as public realm design becomes more sophisticated, in turn dictating consumer expectations, the landscapes of my memory are in danger of disappearing. Maybe that’s OK — even through the haze of nostalgia, the iron-fenced city parks were no paradisiacal gardens. Maggie Daley Park, and others like it, teach the vogue curriculum of creativity and innovation. But the older parks had their own pedagogical approach. They were a Cliff’s Notes of the urban experience, a compressed and variegated lesson in history, social class, real estate economics, race and anatomy.”
MVVA’s renderings show a space filled with constant activity and stimulation; my Newcity review compared this design strategy to an older generation of parks.
On the occasion of the opening of Maggie Daley Park — a showpiece playground in Chicago — I wrote a review for Newcity magazine that reflected on the changing paradigm of park design. Something about the new park, good though it was, made me nostalgic for an era before landscape architects deployed phrases like “relentless heterogeneity” to characterize public spaces.
I mused on the pedagogical differences between contemporary designs that self-consciously indoctrinate children into sociability and innovation, and their predecessors, where one’s education unfolded organically by way of encountering stray dogs and old ladies, getting into fights, making out, and stepping on an occasional rusty nail.