Great City Parks. (Purple Heat).

By Alan Tate. London: Spon Press. 2001, [pounds sterling]49.50

Alan Tate tells us that he has been Hong Kong head of the Clouston landscape design empire and is now head of the landscape department at Manitoba University. His book is, he says, not a history but a comparative study of 20 public parks in the northern hemisphere based on the proposition that well planned, well designed and well managed parks remain invaluable components of livable and hospitable cities. So this is not exactly groundbreaking stuff -- especially when you look at his list of case studies: Paley Park, Seattle's Freeway Park, Regent's Park, Berlin's Tiergarten, Central Park and the Amsterdam Bos among them. All their stories have been well documented by others and the material in this book has been gleaned largely from visits and via non-probing questionnaires answered by their managers. So you are not exactly surprised to find the reading a bit dull. Until, that is, you come to the modern gardens of which Tate disapproves. Poor old Bernard Tschumi, author of the wonderful concept of Paris's Par c de La Villette.

At the point in the book where his garden falls under the professor's scrutiny the dry narration of dull fact suddenly turns into a stream of bile. Johnny Foreigner Tschumi ('culturally diverse background -- studying in Zurich and Paris, teaching in London and the United States') he says, '... came to the project with little practical experience ... his investigations did not directly address issues in landscape architecture -- other than to make some broad generalizations about urban parks. This is a pity,' intones Tate. Here and in subsequent passages ('sea of metal', 'culturally programmed, architecture-theory-driven') you can feel the purple heat of the author's indignation. The trouble for Tate is that, looking back, it was precisely the absence in landscape of even a whiff of theory which made the corporate landscape dross of which Tate seems to approve, a kind of laughing stock in the design world. There certainly wasn't much visual design talent either. Tate may not see it but I'm happy to say that th ere now is both talent and some supporting theory. This is a dull and pointless text by a boring writer with a determinedly narrow view of landscape design. I can't think why anybody should want to read it.