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Shelby Farms Park

$70.00
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Shelby Farms Park: Elevating a City: The Improbable Journey of America’s Great 21st Century Urban Park

This is the unlikely and inspiring story of how a sprawling footprint of a former prison became a leading American park. At 4,500 acres, the Shelby Farms Park in Memphis, Tennessee, is the largest urban park in the United States--more than five times the size of New York's Central Park. This book about the vision, process, benchmarks and priorities that led to the building of this great park show how people with vision can change a community, and how support from the public can protect land for future generations.

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Shelby Farms Park: Elevating a City: The Improbable Journey of America’s Great 21st Century Urban Park

This is the unlikely and inspiring story of how a sprawling footprint of a former prison became a leading American park. At 4,500 acres, the Shelby Farms Park in Memphis, Tennessee, is the largest urban park in the United States--more than five times the size of New York's Central Park. This book about the vision, process, benchmarks and priorities that led to the building of this great park show how people with vision can change a community, and how support from the public can protect land for future generations.

Shelby Farms Park: Elevating a City: The Improbable Journey of America’s Great 21st Century Urban Park

This is the unlikely and inspiring story of how a sprawling footprint of a former prison became a leading American park. At 4,500 acres, the Shelby Farms Park in Memphis, Tennessee, is the largest urban park in the United States--more than five times the size of New York's Central Park. This book about the vision, process, benchmarks and priorities that led to the building of this great park show how people with vision can change a community, and how support from the public can protect land for future generations.

  • Hardcover, 12x9.25in, 4.05lbs, 272 pages

  • “Here, then, is the story of the park space that is putting Memphis on the national map – the map of healthy, environmentally sustainable, beautiful, conserving, historical and enlivening spaces that Americans increasingly want and demand for their urban lifestyles. Shelby Farms Park – a landscape for the ages.”
    - Peter Harnik, Director, Trust for Public’s Land Center for City Park Excellence

    “Shelby Farms Park is a “real place” and The Kitchen restaurants there are at a magical site. When the park was still just a grand idea a decade ago, its advocates promoted its potential as a place to build the bonds of community. It is obvious that our values at The Kitchen spring from the same place, and acting on them, we will create something unique in the entire county.”
    - Kimball Musk, founder of The Kitchen Cafe restaurants located in Boulder, Fort Collins, Denver, Glendale, Chicago, and Memphis and The Kitchen Community, a nonprofit that brings outdoor learning gardens to schoolyards and community spaces.

    "Because the citizens of Shelby County now own this land – and since the good Lord isn’t creating any more – and because our Metropolitan Area is growing so rapidly, we should never let it leave the ownership of the people of this county… (if) we have let this precious and irreplaceable acreage get away from us, it will be gone forever."
    - Abe Plough, Philanthropist and Founder of Schering-Plough and the Plough Foundation

    "This has long been a role for Memphis, offering a collection of its local culture to the world at large, and now Shelby Farms Park offers the opportunity for these tides – the outflow of the local, and the inflow of the universal – to wash across a common landscape."
    - Marlon Blackwell, Architect and E. Fay Jones Distinguished Professor at the Fay Jones School of Architecture + Design at the University of Arkansas

    Written by Tom Jones with contributions by nationally known park experts and Shelby Farms Park leaders, including James Corner, Alex Garvin, Peter Harnik and Laura Morris, Shelby Farms Park: Elevating a City includes stunning photography by Justin Fox Burks and Murray Riss.

    About the Authors
    Tom Jones writes a monthly City Journal column for Memphis magazine and the Smart City Memphis blog, recognized by the Pew Partnership for Civic Change as “one of the most engaging” civic-minded blogs in the U.S. He lives in Memphis, Tennessee.

    James Corner, Founder and Director of James Corner Field Operations, a leading-edge urban design, landscape architecture and public realm practice based in New York City. Author of The High Line, his major projects include the High Line in New York, Seattle's Central Waterfront, Tsim Sha Tsui Waterfront in Hong Kong, Chicago's Navy Pier, the Civic Center Parks in Santa Monica, and Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park in London.

    Susan Schadt, from Memphis and New Orleans, is Editor and Publisher, founder of Wild Abundance Publishing and Susan Schadt Press.

    Peter Harnik, Director of The Trust for Public Land’s Center for City Park Excellence has led numerous research projects into what makes for great park systems. His book, Urban Green: Innovative Parks for Resurgent Cities, was named one of the five best books of 2011 by the American Society of Landscape Architects’ blog.

    Alex Garvin, President and CEO of of AGA Public Realm Strategists, Inc., a planning and design firm in New York City that is responsible for the initial master plans for the Atlanta BeltLine, Austin’s Tessera and Hinton Park in Collierville, Tennessee.