Culture, Participation and Policy in the Municipal Public Park (Palgrave Studies in Cultural Participation)

This book concerns the values and practices of participation in municipal public parks, and the connections they have with cultural policy, urbanism, and social life. Adopting a critical cultural policy lens, it identifies the park as a mundane but extraordinarily treasured place for the production and exchange of cultural values, regulation, resistance, and the practising of citizenship. Drawing on extensive mixed-methods research on everyday participation in diverse local cultural ecosystems in England and Scotland, the book examines the social lives of parks and their users, and the important public values that are generated through their common stewardship and usership. It presents case studies of parks and co-located museums as cultural public spheres, which promote both commoning and commodification. These are contextualized by histories of municipal parkmaking from the nineteenth century to the present and related to the making of local government and to other civic and cultural institutions. The book highlights contemporary issues of austerity, marketisation and de-municipalisation within local government in the context of urban development. It positions the public park as fundamental to democratic cultural governance and makes the case for the primacy of public trust, ownership, and park equity in safeguarding the right to the city. Acknowledgements Praise for Culture, Participation and Policy in the Municipal Public Park Contents List of Figures List of Tables Chapter 1: Everyday Spaces for Participation and Policy Introduction Parks and Value Practising Public Space Sharing Management Through Participation The Cultural Policy-Ness of Public Parks The Cultural-Ness of Everyday Participation in Parks References Chapter 2: Parkmaking, Municipalisation and Cultural Policy Introduction The Origins of the Public Park Performance and Ritual in Public Space Parks as Policy Spaces The Political Capital of Parkmaking Public Display by Design The Decline of the Public Park Conclusion References Chapter 3: Pleasure Grounds and People’s Palaces: The Museum in the Park Introduction Municipalisation, Museums and Parks The Cottage on the Hill The Gallery in the Park Provincial Park Museum-Making Between the Park and Its Museum Taking the Knee in Platt Fields Can Museums Be More Like Parks? Conclusion References Chapter 4: The Social Lives of Public Parks Introduction Cultural Ecosystems and Everyday Participation Manchester-Salford Gateshead Dartmoor Peterborough Peterculter The Western Isles: Eilean Siar-Stornoway on Lewis and Harris and South Uist Organised Logics of Participation What Is a City but Its Parks? Walking and Boundary-Making Waymarkers and Landmarks Conclusion References Chapter 5: Municipal Care: Public Parks and the Governance of Place Introduction Business Models for Parks and the Park Value Paradox Re-inflating the Lungs of the City: Natural Capital and Evidence of Value A Statutory Duty of Care Everyday Management of Parks and Greenspaces Heading Back to the Original Modern City Conclusion References Chapter 6: The Political Economy of Contemporary Public Parks Introduction De-Municipalisation and the Entrepreneurial Park Marketisation, Arboricide and Social Justice City Centre Parks for All Piccadilly Gardens—A Too-Public Realm? Conclusion References Index