People's Parks - The Design and Development of Public Parks in Britain' identifies the principal national and international influences on park development from the nineteenth century until the present, including their historical and cultural significance. Municipal parks made an important contribution to our urban environment, and they developed within a social, economic and political context which affected people's attitudes to recreation - what became known as 'rational recreation'. The promoters of parks wanted to encourage education and particular forms of recreation, and parks reflected this in their design, buildings, statues, bandstands and planting. This book is a thorough update and re-evaluation on Hazel Conway's influential book, published in 1991, adding and evaluating an extra 100 years of history, through the Victorian era, to the war years, the impact of the Garden Cities movement, and the great decline of parks from the 1970s onwards. The impact of the Heritage Lottery Fund's urban parks programme from the 1990s is covered, along with that of austerity and the Covid pandemic. The book concludes by evaluating the role of parks today and potential for the future.

This very handsome, well-designed, and superbly illustrated volume gives us a pretty good and comprehensive flavour of the Victorian public park, with its often splendid buildings. * The Critic *
Provides a detailed account of the social and political background to the parks movement from the early nineteenth century to the present day, including detailed discussion of the evolution in horticulture and landscape design which has taken place within the green spaces themselves over the years. * THE WIDER VIEW *

The late Hazel Conway was the author of the first edition of this book, published by Cambridge University Press in 1991. After an early career in technical journalism she moved into education in architectural and design history, becoming Principal Lecturer in the School of Art History at what is now De Montfort University, Leicester. As a freelance architectural historian she lectured and led study tours widely and was a consultant or office-holder for many bodies including the Garden History Society, Victorian Society, English Heritage and the National Heritage Lottery Fund Paul Rabbitts is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and of the Royal Historical Society and Founder and Chair of the Parks Management Association. He has a career in parks management and has worked as a consultant in the parks and leisure sector. Having graduated in Geography he holds a Masters degree in Landscape Architecture from Edinburgh University. The author of over 30 books, he is also a Director and Trustee of the Gardens Trust, author and lecturer on public parks and a renowned expert on the Victorian and Edwardian bandstand. He is an avid and passionate advocate for the role public parks play within our communities.