Becoming a park: The assemblage of Olomouc parks in the 19th and first half of the 20th century

Abstract

We conceptualize an urban park as an assemblage, and we use the urban parks in Olomouc as examples. We do not understand a park as a complete product, but we approach it as a never-finished process, which results from the mutual relationships between material and discursive practices. Using local newspapers, we have studied the process of becoming a park. During this process, concrete space acquires characteristics that are related to a park in a given place and given time. Inquiring into this process, we focused on three closely connected problems: 1) How was the material and discursive limitation of parks distinguished from the wider urban structure? 2) What role did the material design of parks play in the analysed process? 3) What were the means of regulating park visitors and what were its objectives? The use of the concept of assemblage in the research into the history of urban parks results in a more differentiated view of urban greenspace, and thus it can contribute to a better understanding of the current state of the urban greenspace.