Travel to the World's Coolest New City Parks
Many of us aren’t aware, but we’re actually living in a second golden age of urban parks. That, at least, is the takeaway from the fascinating new book from Rizzoli, Parks of the 21st Century: Reinvented Landscapes, Reclaimed Territories by Victoria Newhouse. The engrossing survey is the latest selection for our series on new travel-related coffee table books–Just Booked.
Inside, the book is a very serious examination of the explosion over the last decade in innovative and spectacular urban parks–places that have been reborn out of the remains of the second industrial era. Highways, airports, waterfront industrial sites, and railroads have been transformed into playful and serene spaces.
But given how beautiful so many of these parks highlighted are and how global the survey is, the book has already become an essential trip planner. It introduces parks as far flung as Shanghai’s Xuhui Runway Park and Chattanooga’s Renaissance Park. Our favorite after flipping through, though, is undoubtedly Shanghai’s Quarry Garden, a 10-acre components of the city’s botanical garden that features a floating walkway in the flooded quarry!