Linear park

A linear park is a park in an urban or suburban setting that is substantially longer than it is wide. Some are rail trails ("rails to trails"), that is disused railroad beds converted to recreational use, while others use of strips of public land next to canals, streams, extended defensive walls, electrical lines, highways and shorelines. They are also often described as greenways. In Australia, a linear park along the coast is known as a foreshoreway.

Examples

Possibly the earliest example is the Emerald Necklace, which consists of a 1,100-acre (4.5 km²), or 445 hectare chain of parks linked by parkways (a broad, landscaped highway) and waterways in Boston and Brookline, Massachusetts, US. It gets its name from the way the planned chain appears to hang from the "neck" of the Boston peninsula. This linear system of parks was designed by Frederick Law Olmsted to connect Boston Common and Public Garden (1837) to Franklin Park, known as the "great country park." The project began around 1878 with the effort to clean up and control the marshy area which became the Back Bay and the Fens. In 1880, Olmsted proposed that the Muddy River, be included in the park plan. The current was dredged into a winding stream and directed into the Charles River. Olmsted's vision of a linear park of walking paths along a gentle stream connecting numerous small ponds was complete by the turn of the century but for a never completed section to Boston Harbor. However, the subsequent development of the automobile severely disrupted the original concept.

Torrens Linear Park

The Torrens Linear Park was completed in 1997 as the first of its kind developed in Australia where it is the largest hills-to-coast park. It began as a flood mitigation scheme along the River Torrens running westward from the Adelaide Hills, through the Adelaide metropolitan area, to the sea. Cyclists and walkers can use a trail that runs the 30 km (19 mi) length of the park, from Gorge Road, in Athelstone in the north-east, through the Northern Parklands of the City of Adelaide, to the river mouth at Henley Beach in the west. In the Parklands section, the river runs past many notable landmarks including the Adelaide Zoo, the Adelaide Botanic Gardens, the Festival Theatre and Elder Park.

There are shared-use pedestrian and cycling paths along both sides of the river for most of the length of the park, and along one side of the O-Bahn Busway.

History

The valley of the River Torrens, particularly its lower reaches, had become badly polluted following European settlement in 1836. Land clearance lead to increased runoff and erosion, with major flood events occurring in 1917 and 1933. An artificial channel, Breakout Creek, was completed in 1937, diverting floodwaters directly to the sea, and opening up areas of the western suburbs to housing development, particularly after World War II. Rapid expansion of housing in the eastern suburbs also took place at this time. Awareness of the risk of increased runoff leading to further flooding events lead to various proposals for flood mitigation in the 1950s and 1960s, including converting the river to a concrete-lined channel, or an underground storm-water pipe below a major highway.