olmstead
Every common working citizen in our nation has a set routine they go through every day, Monday through Friday. Usually in involves getting up around 5:00-8:00 a.m. every morning, fighting the same traffic every morning on the way to work, working for eight hours on basically the same job over and over again, gaingin more and more stress as the day goes on, inturn building our stress levels. Then we clock out, go home and try not to let the misurable day we had at work get us down. We need a balance, or harmony in our lives to keep us going back to work every day and putting up with the life of the city. I beleive we need a down time, or just a time to relax and think. We have places in our communities such as museums, cinemas, health clubs, libraries, etc. to help us achieve that balance. Unfortunately, these places are themselves in and amung the big buildings and busy city. We need a place for us to be able to just step out of character, so to speak, and look at where our life is going. I believe the places that provide us with the essential balance in our lives is city parks.Ever since the Industrial Revolution, our cities have become a huge collection of large buildings, even bigger factories, and of course the mi
Separation and subordination were applied by Olmsted more clearly than any other landscape architect of his era. Subordination was achieved in his parks where carefully constructed walks and paths would flow through landscape with gentle grades and easy curves, thus requiring the viewer's minimal attention to the process of movement. Also, many of the structures that Olmsted incorporated into his parks would merge with their surroundings forming a views that were complete and spacious. Olmsted accomplished separation in his park systems by designing smaller recreational areas for other activities and where "park ways" handle the movement of pedestrians and vehicular traffic offset these large parks. And on the other hand he designed larger parks for the enjoyment of scenery. Olmsted saw his profession as a way to bring a community together, a feeling of communitiveness. By designing parks for a wide range of recreational needs, he inturn helped to shape our cities. Olmsted created a sense of shared togetherness through his dedication to our community This strong critque of city parks stems from my extreme love of the wilderness. I wish our early European-American forfathers had more of a love and respect for nature, much like the Native American 's poetical love for the land. Native Americans saw nature as more of a life provider instead of the exploitive and controlled view that the Europeans had. But I am a strong supporter of our city parks for reasons already discussed. I believe they are a crucial part of our everyday lives. Even if you are just driving through the parks on your way home, you still get a chance to relax alittle, drive a bit slower and look at all of the people who are out enjoying all of the parks assets. This middle state between the primitive and the urban was used as many 19th. century author's utopia. Such utopists writers such as Daniel Bond, Leo Marx, and Albert Merrill's described their utopia as a landscaped, garden-like America. They wrote about lusous pastoral landscapes, beautiful farms, and even two hundred foot wide roads with fountains and gardens in the middle. This idea of a cultivated nature was the popular idea of a modern utopia. On the other hand authors such as Thoreau, Emerson , and William Wordsworth loved the natural wilderness. It was an escape from the menacing cruelty and greed found in the city. I believe the modern day inner city park's purpose is somewhere between thses two view points.
Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 2963
Approximate Pages = 12 (250 words per page double spaced)
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