Page:John Nolen--New ideals in the planning of cities.djvu/80

NEW IDEALS IN THE PLANNING OF those for older boys and men, or for girls and women. In no other department of public recreation has there recently been such a great development.

Parkways and boulevards are agreeable promenades in themselves, and serve usually as pleasant means of access to parks from the various parts of the city or as connections from one park to another. A parkway is apt to include more breadth of turf or ground planted with trees and shrubbery than a boulevard, giving it a more park-like character and inducing a less formal treatment of the roads, paths, and accessory features. Boulevards are usually arranged more formally, with straight rows of shade trees, and parallel ways for pedestrians and vehicles.

One of the chief features of a city park system is the large park, comprising from 200 to 1,000 acres or even more. Its main purpose is to place within the reach of the people of a city the enjoyment of such a measure as is practicable of pleasant, rural scenery. The justification of its size, interfering as it does with streets and other city development, is the necessity for spaciousness in the production of scenery that is broad and natural and beautiful. One of the chief problems of the landscape architect or park planner is to make these parks available and useful to great numbers of people without destroying the natural appearance of their scenery, the main purpose for which they have been created.

he conviction is steadily spreading in the United States hat a city needs not only to provide itself with each class or type of recreation grounds, but that these grounds in their main or general features should be outlined, acquired, and developed as a system, each part having relation to every other part. Just as a city needs a street system, a school system, a water system, a drainage system, and systems to provide for its other municipal activities, so it