Parks for Profit: Selling Nature in the City

Urban parks have become profitable in recent years, as city governments, corporations, real estate developers, philanthropists, and other elites have rediscovered parks’ cultural and economic potential. Embodied by linear postindustrial spaces like New York’s High Line, Chicago’s Bloomingdale Trail/606, and Houston’s Buffalo Bayou Park, new green interventions serve as civic shields for elite-oriented investments. Loughran reveals how elites deploy the popularity and seemingly benign nature of parks to achieve their cultural, political, and economic goals, and discusses the implications for parks equity.

Kevin Loughran is Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology at Temple University.

Visit the Columbia University Press website to pre-order a copy of Dr. Loughran’s book Parks for Profit: Selling Nature in the City.