Why wasn't NYC's Central Park concept copied by other cities?
I'm talking about a massive park in the absolute heart of the city. Located such that is naturally surrounded by city high rises. *People are giving examples of parks that are way off in the boonies. I'm trying to say located centrally, heart of the city, you know where the high rises are. Yes I understand nyc has more, the point is centrally located.
Copied by younger cities in North Americ. You know, the cities younger than NYC that could have seen the value of setting aside a large area for parkland before it was developed.
As a New Yorker, let me just assure you that it wasn’t really designed with crosstown traffic in mind. If you’re going from West 69th and say, 10th Ave, to East 69th and 2nd, you’re in for a shitshow no matter what you do. This includes walking (try not to be ran over by an Uber walking through Central Park late at night). Taking the subway(what subway line goes from upper east to upper west?? Hahahah you’re fucked!) Or taking a crosstown bus (Takes almost an hour to go from 10th avenue to 2nd avenue cause you’re gonna have to go all the way up/down to the cross park street).
Multiple smaller parks would probably be much better, or just, y’know, having space for trees outside of the designated tree infrastructure.
I think having both large and small (and tree lined streets) are good ideas. But there's something appealing about a large park that you can really immerse yourself in.
I don’t disagree with you, but due to the geography of New York, midtown smack above the meeting point of the busiest bottlenecks in the nation becomes literally the worst location for it. They could have buried FDR drive near south street seaport like in Boston and just turned the whole southern tip of the island under Houston into a huge park. Or maybe the whole northern tip up near inwood.