Living Cities

Civic design: a practice in urban and landscape planning explicitly oriented towards the common good, maintaining healthy ecological habitats, and offering intergenerational and inclusive recreational opportunities through the creation of park systems.

The creation of park systems is a historically proven method for communities to stabilize and cultivate healthy ecological habitats in country dwellings as well as in dense urban areas. Park systems ensure clean soil, water, and air for all. Moreover, they offer intergenerational and inclusive recreational opportunities along ecological corridors. Between 1900 and 1950, civic designa practice in urban and landscape planning explicitly oriented towards the common goodexperienced a heyday. Park systems were successfully used as green armatures hosting public facilities such as playgrounds, schools, administrative buildings, hospitals, and gardens. Living Cities offers a chronological survey of civic design based on more than 30 park systems on five continents. The examples range from Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's Park an der Ilm in Weimar (1778) and John Nashs Regent Street in London (1806) to Chicagos park system (1850), Albert Bodmer and Maurice Braillards plans for Geneva (1936), and Frank Lloyd Wrights Taliesin Valley (1947), as well as to contemporary and future projects in Addis Ababa, Madrid, Medellín, New York, and Seoul. Matthew Skjonsbergs book demonstrates the ecological and social impact of park systems and highlights the diverse challenges that communities face when implementing such projects. At the same time, it encourages a reevaluation of civic design as an intergenerational practice for creating human settlements.

Matthew Skjonsberg ist seit 2022 Dozent im Programm Master of Advanced Studies in Urban and Territorial Design der EPFL in Lausanne und Direktor des Praxis Institute, einer transdisziplinären experimentellen Initiative. 2013-2022 war er an verschiedenen Instituten der ETH Zürich und der EPFL in Lausanne tätig.