Publisher Rizzoli New York | Reviewed by Lauren Nelson

City parks have been around for decades, but the design, purpose, and use of these modern landscapes are evolving. Today, parks are built with the intention to create open public space, combat climate change and attract tourism. Parks are fairly modern inventions that began as garden cemeteries in the mid-19th Century. Monumental municipal cemeteries such as Forest Home in Milwaukee, where the city’s beer barons are buried, and St. Louis’ Calvary Cemetery, where you’ll find the graves of Tennessee Williams, Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman and Dred Scott, were used as much for recreation as remembrance. After the 19th Century industrial revolution led to the growth of cities, the creation of a middle class and the concepts of weekends and leisure time, Americans needed public spaces without grave markers where they could play newly popular games like baseball and football. Today, many industrial “brownfields” once considered contaminated and unredeemable now are regarded as “dynamic green spaces” that benefit the economies of developing communities.