An on-again, off-again romance smolders between nature and the American city. It’s complicated. The original matchmaker was 19th century landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted, whose picturesque green spaces like New York City’s Central Park offered urbanites an idealized experience of nature. During the Great Depression, the Works Progress Administration built smaller neighborhood parks for the industrial working classes (though these, of course, were racially segregated and unequal).

An on-again, off-again romance smolders between nature and the American city. It’s complicated. The original matchmaker was 19th century landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted, whose picturesque green spaces like New York City’s Central Park offered urbanites an idealized experience of nature. During the Great Depression, the Works Progress Administration built smaller neighborhood parks for the industrial working classes (though these, of course, were racially segregated and unequal).