Working with Wood: Relationships with the Material of the Forest

massive amounts of demographic and user data and then analyzing it "in an effort to balance the conflicting demands of the Park's different types of users" (p. 9). Interestingly, the planners find that while various spokesmen argue that the park is either "too 'aristocratic' for today's users or 'too old-fashioned' to meet today's recreational requirements . . . the motivation of current users is very much the same as it was a century ago: simple rest and relaxation" (p. 8). They also find that "far from being exclusive or elitist . . . demographically, attendance almost exactly parallels the city's ethnic composition — fifty-five percent white, twenty percent black, nineteen percent Hispanic and six percent Asian — and . . . they came from all over the borough" (p. 8). The ways in which future administrators and planners attempt to serve that clientele while protecting the aesthetic integrity of the park will be of great interest to historians and other scholars. It is also of interest that the study was prepared under the auspices of the Office of Central Park Administrator. Created in 1980, this office is the product of a growing realization that Central Park is a unique and significant facility that requires special attention and care. Previously managed as simply another unit of the huge New York City park system, Central Park's disproportionate suffering during the city's financial crises prompted the creation of a special management unit and a private fund-raising agency, the Central Park Conservancy, dedicated to protecting the park in the future. Scholars will find the performance of this experiment in public-private cooperation instructive, and this volume will be a standard research tool for future urban and social historians. As the authors conclude, their plan "represents a vision rooted in a particular time and culture" (p. 155). None of the works discussed in this essay can be considered "significant" additions to the literature on urban parks in North America, with the possible exception of the volume on Central Park, which is, after all, essentially a primary source. However, the institutional history of St. Louis's Forest Park will be useful to scholars attempting to place that park into broader perspective, and the study of Portland's Forest Park is a convenient guidebook. Wright's volumes are in many ways the most disappointing, for his purpose was more ambitious and yet his products are flawed. More than brief "guidebook" treatments of Ontario's urban parks, they fail as comprehensive histories because of their superficial treatment and narrow research base. Though they hint occasionally at some of the philosophical and social issues influencing the parks' origins and development, they fail to address these topics fully, and they utilize little of the current literature. A satisfactory history of urban parks in Ontario remains to be written. Viewed as a group, these volumes reflect the urgent need for more work by urban, social, environmental, and other historians who are willing to examine urban parks from a variety of interpretive perspectives. Although the old cliche that "history repeats itself" is surely open to question, there is no doubt that carefully constructed historical treatments of urban parks could be useful tools for park administrators, designers, planners, and programmers. An understanding of history can help us avoid past mistakes and enable us to use the best of the past in making contemporary decisions.