![]() ![]() Writer Ahdaf Soueif describes Al-Azhar Park in Cairo, with its wide promenades and fountains, as the city’s green lung: “This is a garden that restores your humanity,” she writes. The Tiergarten in Berlin, for example, is portrayed as beautiful but austere, pensive and brimming-as Marron puts it, with a “very strong, old world melancholy.” Norman Foster, an architect who had first flown over the Tiergarten in a Piper Navajo during the Cold War, wrote the accompanying essay. ![]() And indeed, many of the photographs, taken by Oberto Gili, reflect the mood of each park as if it were a character with its own story. “I really wanted to capture parks in their inherent mood, and not just in the summertime, when loads of people are there,” said Marron. ![]() There’s Jonathan Alter on Lincoln and Grant Park in Chicago, Candice Bergen on Griffith Park in Los Angeles, and President Bill Clinton on Dumbarton Oaks in Washington, D.C. Edited by Catie Marron, Vogue contributor and former board chair of the New York Public Library, the book pairs great writers – Zadie Smith, Andre Aciman, and Pico Ayer among them – with celebrated urban parks. That feeling of calm greets you upon opening City Parks: Public Spaces, Private Thoughts, a glossy new collection of essays and photographs highlighting some of the most luscious and mysterious parks in the world. ![]()
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