Parks as Lungs

Frederick Law Olmsted, the granddaddy of American landscape architecture, had little idea how prescient he was when he told the City of New York in 1872 that the midtown Manhattan park he was busy creating would serve as the “lungs of the city.” Today, the urban forests found within city parks across the country serve not only as recreational and social centers, but also as organic sponges for various forms of pollution and as storehouses of carbon dioxide to help offset global warming. Indeed, recent experiences in several U.S. cities have shown Olmsted’s metaphor for what is now Central Park to be far more literal than figurative.

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