Olmsted was an influential landscape architect whose works include many parks, recreation grounds and more. Inspired by Romantic and transcendentalist thinkers, he developed ‘pastoral transcendentalism’, a style of designing parks that mimicked natural spaces to reproduce their values within cities. Although environmental justice scholars have pointed out how these designs limit access to parks, I argue that environmental philosophers have not adequately discussed Olmsted, particularly his axiology of nature. Reflecting on it reveals how environmental injustice consists not only of restricting access to nature to protect its essential value – for Olmsted, scenery that could induce a contemplative mindset – but in delimiting nature's value without consideration of how people actually appreciate it.
BeveridgeCEHoffmanCF, eds. (1997) The Papers of Frederick Law Olmsted, Supplementary Series, Vol. I, Writings on Public Parks, Parkways and Park Systems. Baltimore, MD: John Hopkins University Press.
2.
BlodgettG (1976) Frederick Law Olmsted: Landscape architecture as conservative reform. Journal of American History62(4): 869–889. https://doi.org/10.2307/1903842.
3.
BooneCGBuckleyGLGroveJM, et al. (2009) Parks and people: An environmental justice inquiry in Baltimore, Maryland. Annals of the Association of American Geographers99(4): 767–787. http://www.jstor.org/stable/20621242.
4.
BushnellH (1881) The day of roads. In: Work and Play. C. Scribner’s Sons, 409–455. Available online at https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/100485177 (accessed on 8 December, 2023).
5.
CallicottJBNelsonMP (1998) The Great Wilderness New Debate. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press. https://doi.org/10.2307/3985315.
6.
CranzG (1982) The Politics of Park Design: A History of Urban Parks in America. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
7.
CrononW (1996) The trouble with wilderness: Or, getting back to the wrong nature. Environmental History1(1): 7–28. https://doi.org/10.2307/3985059.
DowningAJ (1848) On the moral influence of good houses. In: TwomblyR (ed.) 2012, Andrew Jackson Downing: Essential Texts. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 115–120.
10.
DrabelleD (2021) The Power of Scenery: Frederick Law Olmsted and the Origin of National Parks. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press.
FisherC (2011) Nature in the city: Urban environmental history and Central Park. Organization of American Historians Magazine of History25(4): 27–31. https://www.jstor.org/stable/23209954.
GraffMM (1985) Central Park and Prospect Park: A New Perspective. New York: Greensward Foundation.
16.
GuhaR (1989) Radical American environmentalism and wilderness preservation: A third world critique. Environmental Ethics11(1): 71–83. https://doi.org/10.5840/enviroethics198911123.
17.
KatzE (2003) The big lie: Human restoration of nature. In: LightARolstonHIII (eds) Environmental Ethics: An Anthology. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 390–397.
LeeKJFernandezMScottD, et al. (2023) Slow violence in public parks in the U.S.: Can we escape our troubling past?Social & Cultural Geography24(7): 1185–1202. https://doi.org/10.1080/14649365.2022.2028182.
20.
LinnMBRothschildNAWallDD (2019) Constructing identity in Seneca Village. In: GeorgeDFKurchinB (eds) Archaeology of Identity and Dissonance: Contexts for a Brave New World. Online edition, Florida Scholarship Online, 157–180. https://doi.org/10.5744/florida/9780813056197.003.0008
21.
LowS (2013) Public space and diversity: Distributive, procedural and interactional justice for parks. In: YoungGStevensonD (eds) The Ashgate Research Companion to Planning and Culture. Surrey: Ashgate, 295–310.
22.
LowSTaplinDScheldS (2005) Rethinking Urban Parks: Public Space and Cultural Diversity. Austin: University of Texas Press. https://doi.org/10.7560/706859.
New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission (NYCLPC) (1975) ‘Prospect Park (excluding the Friends’ Cemetery), Borough of Brooklyn’. 25 November. Available at: http://s-media.nyc.gov/agencies/lpc/lp/0903.pdf (accessed 15 June 2021).
NicholsonCJ (2004) Elegance and grass roots: The neglected philosophy of Frederick Law Olmsted. Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society40(2): 335–348.
29.
OlmstedFL (1857) Monthly report to commissioners read Oct. 13 1857. In: Olmsted JrFLKimballT (eds) Forty Years of Landscape Architecture: Central Park. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 58–59.
30.
OlmstedFL (1859) Description of the Central Park. In: BeveridgeCESchuylerD (eds) The Papers of Frederick Law Olmsted Volume III: Creating Central Park 1857-1861. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 204–219. https://doi.org/10.2307/3377444
OlmstedFL (1868) Address to the prospect park scientific association. In: BeveridgeCEHoffmanCF (eds) The Papers of Frederick Law Olmsted. Baltimore, MD: John Hopkins University Press, 147–157.
33.
OlmstedFL (1870) Public parks and the enlargement of towns. In: BeveridgeCEHoffmanCF (eds) The Papers of Frederick Law Olmsted. Baltimore, MD: John HopkinsUniversity Press 171–205.
34.
OlmstedFL (1873) General order for the organization and routine of duty of the keepers’ service of Central Park. In: BeveridgeCEHoffmanCF (eds) The Papers of Frederick Law Olmsted. Baltimore, MD: John HopkinsUniversity Press, 281–307.
35.
OlmstedFL (1881) A consideration justifying the value of a public park. In: BeveridgeCEHoffmanCF (eds) The Papers of Frederick Law Olmsted. Baltimore, MD: John HopkinsUniversity Press, 331–349.
36.
OlmstedFL (1886a) Notes on the plan of Franklin Park and related matters. In: BeveridgeCEHoffmanCF (eds) The Papers of Frederick Law Olmsted. Baltimore, MD: John HopkinsUniversity Press, 460–534.
37.
OlmstedFL (1886b) Paper on the [Back Bay] and its solution read before the Boston Society of Architects. In: BeveridgeCEHoffmanCF (eds) The Papers of Frederick Law Olmsted. Baltimore, MD: John HopkinsUniversity Press, 437–459.
38.
OlmstedFL (1895) Parks, parkways and pleasure-grounds. In: TwomblyR (ed.) Frederick Law Olmsted: Essential Texts. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 311–323.
39.
Olmsted, Vaux & Company (1866) Preliminary report to the commissioners for laying out a park in Brooklyn, New York: Being a consideration of circumstances of site and other conditions affecting the design of public pleasure grounds. In: BeveridgeCEHoffmanCF (eds) The Papers of Frederick Law Olmsted. Baltimore, MD: John HopkinsUniversity Press, 79–111.
40.
Olmsted, Vaux & Company (1871) Report accompanying plan for laying out the south Chicago park. In: BeveridgeCEHoffmanCF (eds) The Papers of Frederick Law Olmsted. Baltimore, MD: John HopkinsUniversity Press, 206–238.
41.
PowellMA (2016) Vanishing America: Species Extinction, Racial Peril, and the Origins of Conservation. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
RybczynskiW (1999) A Clearing In The Distance: Frederick Law Olmsted and America in the 19th Century. New York: Scribner.
46.
Sene-HarperAMowattRAFloydMF (2022) A people’s future of leisure studies: Political cultural black outdoors experiences. Journal of Park and Recreation Administration40(1): 9–23. https://doi.org/10.18666/JPRA-2021-11006.
47.
ShutkinWA (1995) The concept of environmental justice and a reconception of democracy. Virginia Environmental Law Journal14(4): 579–588. https://www.jstor.org/stable/24782272.
48.
SnaithBOdedunA (2023) Weeds, wildflowers, and White privilege: Why recognizing nature’s cultural content is key to ethnically inclusive urban greenspaces. Journal of Race, Ethnicity and the City: 1–27. https://doi.org/10.1080/26884674.2023.2224115.
49.
SpenceMD (1999) Dispossessing the Wilderness: Indian Removal and the Making of the National Parks. New York: Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1086/ahr/105.3.940-a.
50.
SpirnAW (1996) ‘Constructing nature: The legacy of Frederick Law Olmsted’. In: CrononW (ed.) Uncommon Ground: Rethinking the Human Place in Nature. London: W. W. Norton & Company, 91–113.
TaylorDE (1999) Central Park as a model for social control: Urban parks, social class and leisure behaviour in nineteenth-century America. Journal of Leisure Research31(4): 420–477. https://doi.org/10.1080/00222216.1999.11949875.
53.
TaylorDE (2016) The Rise of the American Conservation Movement: Power, Privilege, and Environmental Protection, Reprint edition. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/s0021875818001627.
