ABSTRACT
Public Parks and the Enlargement of Towns was originally presented as an address to the American Social Science Association meeting at the Lowell Institute, Boston, in 1870. This chapter provides some guidelines for parks and parkways and suggests ways to overcome political resistance to public funding for parks and planned urban growth. It lays out the political and philosophical case for public parks in terms of three great moral imperatives: first, the need to improve public health by sanitation measures and the use of trees to combat air and water pollution. Secondly, the need to combat urban vice and social degeneration. Thirdly, the need to advance the cause of civilization by the provision of urban amenities. A park fairly well managed near a large town, will surely become a new center of that town. Towns which of late have been increasing rapidly on account of their commercial advantages, are likely to be still more attractive to population in future.
