The future prospects of urban parks: The life, times and social order of Victorian public parks as places of social mixing

Start date: 1 November 2015
End date: 31 October 2017
Funder: Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC)
Co-investigators: Dr Anna Barker, Dr David Churchill, Professor Adam Crawford

To understand the social significance, role and prospects of Victorian public parks in urban futures.
To examine the official governance and lived experiences and expectations of urban public parks in the past and the present
To reveal and expose to what extent the Victorian ideal of the park as a place of civilising influence over the urban poor and labouring classes was realised and experienced
To broaden and extend historical research of the governance of urban public space beyond a focus on major city streets and squares
To contribute to a reinterpretation and reinvigoration of the vision, governance and sustainability of urban parks in cities of the future

The future prospects of Victorian public parks in the present day and at the time in which they were created:
- Spaces of experience
- Horizons of expectations
The function of parks as places of social mixing:
- Possibilities for conflict around behaviour, anxieties of otherness and the potential for crime.
- Other-regarding outcomes that co-mingling may facilitate

Research questions

How did historical subjects experience and interpret their everyday lives, events and relations, in particular Victorian city parks?
To what extent do experiences depart from/shaped by expectations?

How did historical subjects (governors and governed) envision the future?
What did they expect parks might become in terms of their social promise and desired effects?
What do those visions reveal about the urban imagination of the Victorians?

How do contemporary subjects experience and interpret their everyday lives, events and relations, in particular Victorian city parks?
To what extent do experiences depart from/shaped by expectations?
What new social roles and functions are public parks expected to play in the multi-cultural city?

How do contemporary subjects envision the future?
What are the (new or changed) expectations about and visions for the future promise of public parks? To what extent are these multiple or contested?
Are these visions socially sustainable, romantic or idealistic, and what do they reveal about the contemporary age?

Roundhay Park, Woodhouse Moor and Cross Flatts Park
Opened for public use during the Victorian era
The selection of parks draw out the diversity of:
- Ideals concerning the social purpose(s) of parks
- Size and social profile of users and stakeholders, with consequences for governance and regulation
- Experiences of park life, from the more ceremonial through to the familiar and informal