Talk:Linear park

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Definition?
A trail is defined as an unpaved lane or road, while a linear park could be categorized as a more formal establishment perhaps? Myw22 (talk) 02:56, 6 December 2021 (UTC)

I'm trying to understand how a linear park differs from a trail. How is "a former roadways or country lanes, even historic trackways or droveways" a linear park? This usage suggests, as do images seen on a Google search, that linear park is a synonym for a trail. It sounds suspiciously like a bureaucratic neologism, as does foreshoreway. Rwood128 (talk) 17:14, 16 November 2014 (UTC)

Also, when is something a linear park, rather than simply a park, or country park? Rwood128 (talk) 17:38, 16 November 2014 (UTC)


 * I can, however, accept the idea of the Berlin Mauerpark as a linear park (simply because of its extreme length and narrowness), but the Lee Valley Park in East London is better described as a country park. Rail trails are simply that (though they are green corridors). Rwood128 (talk) 17:52, 16 November 2014 (UTC)

Examples of drovers roads, country lanes, etc, that have been incorporated into a linear park are needed. Rwood128 (talk) 22:14, 16 November 2014 (UTC)
 * I wonder if we have a conflict of usage between enen, usen and auen? In the UK, a 'park' is a formal green space for leisure or decorative use whereas a 'greenway' is a landscape feature. A 'linear park' is definitely not the same as a trail, though it may well contain one - see picture right. Among the more noted greenways in the UK are the lines of former roman roads (e.g., Ermine Street), where the modern roadway has deviated from the historic route, or Anglo-Saxon trackways that that are now long distance footpaths, like the Ridgeway. In trying to guess at usage of 'greenway' elsewhere, I may have confused the issue so I'll downgrade the reference to a 'see also' . --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 23:15, 16 November 2014 (UTC)
 * The reference to greenways adds nothing to the article or to the discussion. I've removed the reference to it and delrted my comment above as irrelevant to this article.
 * The Lea Valley Park is definitely a linear park (as indeed the article says). It may also be a 'country park' but its key characteristic is that it is much longer than it is wide. IMO, there is nothing that says an LP should be skinny - rail-trails and green corridors are at the very edge of the spectrum and IMO it is even questionable whether they deserve to be included.
 * I also removed a lot of generic material about the landscape design of MK because it doesn't belong in this article. Looking at the article now, the section on Milton Keynes sticks out like a sore thumb and frankly I think the whole section should be deleted. If we wanted a case study, the Lea Valley Park would be more appropriate. MK is only significant because it has half a dozen of them. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 23:55, 16 November 2014 (UTC)

Yes there are two kinds of greenway and one sounds very much like a linear park. I presume that The Lea Valley Park is a linear park, rather than just a park, because it is (1) narrower than conventional parks, and (2) much longer. I don't follow why the linear parks in Milton Keynes aren't important.

Re the similarities between greenways and linear parks:
 * A greenway is described as "incorporat[ing] a footpath or bikeway within a linear park". But don't linear parks have a central pathway?-- hence they too are greenways (not a subset)? Is the difference between a linear park and greenway that in a linear park the emphasis is on it being formal, landscaped parkland with a trail, while with a greenway the emphasis is on it being a path surrounded by more informal greenery? The terms appear often to be used as synonyms, and in some cases there is no park or greenery (to make for further confusion). BUT--" Some greenways include community gardens as well as typical park-style landscaping of trees and shrubs". So is there really any difference?


 * Rail trails don't belong here -- though there may be a few exceptions. Rwood128 (talk) 00:18, 17 November 2014 (UTC)

Is this an image of what you would call a linear park? It is called a linear green walkway, but it for me is just a path or rail trail, maybe It also fits the definition for a greenway, as far as I can see.Rwood128 (talk) 00:35, 17 November 2014 (UTC).


 * The linear parks in MK are certainly important: what I meant was that it looked really odd to make MK the feature of the article. Your updates have resolved that issue and it looks fine now.
 * No, a linear park need not contain a trail - but if it does, then it need not be the key feature. For the ones in MK, the river/brook is the key feature; that they also contain paved paths for the convenience of strollers is incidental.
 * I think that you may still be locked into the mindset that LPs must be very narrow. They don't. Yes, some are (especially rail trails) but many aren't (especially flood plains).
 * Re your last question, then IMO no - because although it is a linear feature I don't think anyone would call it a park.
 * --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 01:23, 18 November 2014 (UTC)


 * Many thanks for taking the time to answer my questions.


 * I realized later that I live very close to what is probably a linear park, though it isn't called that but the Rennies River Trail. It is part of the Grand Concourse (St. John's). There are other similar trails/linear parks, including a section of the Newfoundland T'Railway, within St John's, Newfoundland and Labrador and the neighbouring city of Mount Pearl. Interestingly the full trail - part of the Trans Canada Trail -- is described as a Provincial Park, that is equivalent to a British Country Park


 * Yes I was locked into the idea of narrowness and still wonder what is the difference is between a linear park, a park, and a country park? I don't fully understand why The Lea Valley Park should not just be described as a park, though on the other hand it does differ from most urban parks, because it is very long (and narrow), and has a basic linear structure, that is based on the river, reservoirs, and canal.


 * Re the Parkland Walk (the image) -- to be argumentative -- a park don't have to be formal (as I now remember) and can also be extremely narrow. The High Line Park linear park in New York City is no wider and in fact makes use of the types of 'wild' plants that grew on the rail track, though planted. So what is the difference? Should the word formal be added re a linear park?


 * I have also been thinking more about greenways, which I have also been editing, and I will be will add something there re the usage of the term in southern England for ancient trackways, or green lanes, on the chalk downlands (see Quantock Greenway for what looks like a recent example of this usage). Hope that I haven't been too tedious here! Rwood128 (talk) 14:05, 18 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Not at all, these debates from different national perspectives really help to tease out the essentials of the topic.
 * IMO, per Duck test, we don't need to get too concerned by precise nomenclature. If a geographic feature looks like a linear park even if called something else, we can claim it.
 * Country parks must be even harder to define! Here is one near where I live: Stockgrove Country Park. The only distinctive thing you can say about it is that it is not particularly rectangular! A 'park' here tends to be quite formal, like Hyde Park in London - many are much smaller local open spaces where one may take the baby in the perambulator :-)  But I agree that they don't have to be [formal]. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 13:36, 19 November 2014 (UTC)

Epping Forest is an interesting example of "an area of open space provided for recreational use" that is not called a park, and it has some formal park features, such as Connaught Waters. It is also looks like both a country park and a linear one (though it seems to me that both these are new creations, by government, within a specific history that involves recent ideas about urban planning and environmentalism).

Epping Forest resembles Pippy Park here, though this includes public buildings -- a university, provincial parliament buildings, and a botanical garden -- as well as golf courses and constructed trails. However Pippy Park isn't linear. London, of course, has several other more informal parks. including, most obviously, Hampstead Heath, Richmond Park and Wimbledon Common.
 * I would certainly go along with the thesis that LPs owe their origin to urban planning. So modern ones are given that designation in planning documents and policies. They are creations or designations, unlike Epping Forest which is a surviving remnant of pre-urban woodland.
 * IMO, a key characteristic of an LP is that it serves multiple communities, joining them at no faster than cycling pace. But that's wp:OR so it can't go in the article.
 * BTW, I didn't intend to suggest that parks are all (or even many) of the 1950's formal municipal gardens 'keep off the grass' type. Today they are public open spaces of greater or lesser formality. If large, they can be both but in different areas. In the UK, other than our national parks (questionably), we don't have any parks that could claim to contain 'wilderness areas' like Pippy Park. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 00:43, 21 November 2014 (UTC)

Many thanks for the interesting comments. This dialogue has helped me much better understand the differences between greenways and linear parks. Thanks.

I'm interested to find out when both terms were first used. [ADDED] This looks like an early example, the Emerald Necklace in Maasachusetts: 'This linear system of parks was designed by Frederick Law Olmsted to connect Boston Common, dating from the colonial period, and Public Garden (1837) to Franklin Park, known as the "great country park". […] The project began around 1878.' The term greenway appears to have been first used in the 1960s and 1970s. A search using Google Ngram Viewer indicates a similar time frame for linear park, though it seems to record the earliest use as in 1873, but I was unable to track down the book source.

Wilderness is of course another interesting topic Pippy Park, in St. John's, isn't wilderness but more like Epping Forest, though it differs in that the land was donated for both public buildings and recreation. It is an urban park. British National Parks aren't wilderness, not even in Scotland. The Swiss National Park is closer but it is still managed and has trails and a mountain hut. Someone in Switzerland earlier this year reminded my that the land outside the mountain hut, where I was staying, was "cow pasture" -- the cows, along with goats and horses, hadn't yet been brought up the mountain path for the summer. Rwood128 (talk) 12:42, 21 November 2014 (UTC)


 * I checked various dictionaries and could not find a definition for "linear park", however, "very narrow" is usually ascribed to the word linear.


 * As far as I can see Frederick Law Olmsted's Emerald Necklace looks like the first linear park, and that Britain followed much later, though it might be argued that Epping Forest was Britain's first in 1880, especially given the transfer from royal ownership to the City of London, and the prevention of enclosure, as well as the history of public parks in Victorian England. However, as I noted above, the term linear park seems to be first used on a regular basis in the 1960s and 1970s (Google Ngram Viewer). The earliest usage that I've found in Britain is re the idea of a River Thames "linear national park" in Time on the Thames by Eric Samuel De Maré (Architectural Press, 1952). Google Ngram Viewer, however, indicates a few earlier examples, including the US in 1939. It looks like it was also used in 1873, but Ngram didn't provide the source(s). Rwood128 (talk) 14:35, 23 November 2014 (UTC)

I don't think its really the matter of where the first linear park appeared, but much more so how the first recorded linear park was documented and dubbed.Myw22 (talk) 02:04, 7 December 2021 (UTC)

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