Previous articleNext article FreeBook ReviewsPlanning the Greenspaces of Nineteenth-Century Paris. By Richard S. Hopkins.Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2015. Pp. xiv+218. $42.50.Sun-Young ParkSun-Young ParkGeorge Mason University Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditEmailQR Code SectionsMoreOne of the paradoxes regarding the modernization of Paris in the nineteenth century is that this transformation was effected as much through nature as through architecture and infrastructure. In celebrating Paris’s modernity, contemporary observers extolled the capital’s tree-lined boulevards, public gardens, and neighborhood squares, alongside its new sewer system and grand buildings. Yet nature as integrated into Parisian urbanism was never simply that, idealized as some unspoiled counterpart to the artifices of urban life. In an age of positivism and rapid urbanization, nature entered the city as a planned, engineered, and policed realm. In his compact new book, Richard S. Hopkins uncovers the rich history of Paris’s network of greenspaces, documenting the wide gamut of preoccupations informing their creation and maintenance, from the establishment of plant nurseries and horticultural schools to the internal culture of the daily park service workers. By examining both the makers and users of these spaces, Hopkins argues that the interactions and conflicts arising from their competing needs and visions shaped the form, as well as the meaning, of public parks and squares.To capture these contending voices, Hopkins charts greenspace development in Paris from conception to afterlife, and “challenges an understanding of mid-century urbanism as merely a top-down process” (2). There were, certainly, key figures at the “top” whom Hopkins does not discount. The book’s first chapter situates the Second Empire program of urban renovations against Napoleon III’s desire for a grand capital that would restore national prestige. Georges-Eugène Haussmann’s appointment of Adolphe Alphand to the head of the newly established Service des Promenades et Plantations, and the latter’s tremendous output and influence in this role, set the stage for understanding the centrality of greenspaces in reimaging, and even reordering, Paris into a model of metropolitan grandeur and public health. But Hopkins’s most valuable contributions to this history are the glimpses of labor and struggles in these spaces, alongside pomp and leisure, which he draws out from the archives. Once created, the green network required a constant system of maintenance and governance, and the book shines when delving into the social backgrounds and duties of park guards, laborers, and concessionaires, as well as their interactions with each other and with local residents. With these forays into the daily, lived realities of Parisian greenspaces, Hopkins links the familiar story of Second Empire urbanism to a less familiar sociocultural history of neighborhood life as experienced in these shared, public amenities.Through this exploration, Hopkins analyzes not only the planning and creation but also the inhabitation and appropriation of greenspaces against larger social discourses pertaining to individual rights, liberty, and agency. Located at the boundary of the private and public spheres, and claimed by users of mixed classes and genders, parks and squares were rife with unexpected encounters and local conflicts. From guards disciplining rowdy neighborhood children to prostitutes and vagrants asserting their rights to a public space, social divides and hierarchies constantly broke down in these venues—circumstances that Hopkins interprets as “furthering the democratization of these urban spaces” (128). This reading of greenspaces as sites of community formation and engagement is best supported by examples of local residents petitioning, sometimes successfully, for changes to their neighborhood parks, whether installing new gates to the Parc des Buttes-Chaumont to improve access or removing a water feature in the Square Montholon with a view to children’s safety. As these stories reveal, the designing of greenspaces did not end with their creation.Hopkins follows in a line of cultural historians, from Sharon Marcus to Rebecca Rogers, who have drawn on the theories of sociologists and cultural geographers such as Michel de Certeau and Henri Lefebvre to interrogate how physical space and social space intersected in the past. By culling examples from the archives of instances when social confrontations materially impacted greenspace occupation or design, Hopkins takes this project further than most. Yet what seems to get lost in this investigation is the visual discourse of these landscapes. If greenspaces helped cultivate an international image of Paris as a modern city, what kinds of images ensued, and how did nature make its appearance in them? In this golden age of cartography as an instrument of science and engineering, how were political and social agendas expressed, or perhaps even countered, through maps of the projected green network and its integration with the larger urban renovation scheme? While the fourth chapter makes effective use of diagrams to illustrate some of the proposals contained in neighborhood petitions, the book as a whole gives us very little idea of what these parks looked like, or their impact on the greater urban geography. A discussion of Alphand’s Les Promenades de Paris (1867–1873), a rich visual documentation of the different hierarchies of park and square design, is curiously absent. Hopkins raises an important point early on about the French adoption and adaption of the jardin anglais, touching on the “engineered picturesque” aesthetic that has been examined by other architectural and landscape historians, yet this might have been better substantiated through the material language of parks and their ornamentation. After all, images did not simply re-present the city—they also shaped perceptions and spatial practices. For example, the argument that greenspaces “[showcased] the city” (33) during the Universal Exposition of 1867 could have been enriched by incorporating sources such as visitors’ maps, which visually linked isolated displays, monuments, and parks into an itinerant network of urban spectacles. Far from shifting the focus of this study, a greater use of illustrations and maps as evidence would have added new dimensions to the book’s core themes of national prestige, rights to nature, and participatory design.While deepening our knowledge of the Second Empire’s greenspace development program, Hopkins argues that the ensuing parks and gardens were not merely urban embellishments, but elements of a large-scale environmental management system that continues to inform contemporary urbanism. Indeed, at a moment when “green cities,” “eco-cities,” and “sustainability” have become buzzwords in urban planning initiatives, this book offers a timely and nuanced look at the lineage of this environmental discourse in the nineteenth-century capital of modernity. In so doing, Hopkins demonstrates that current debates are, and have ever been, entangled with larger questions of social justice, democracy, and community. And by giving due weight to both creators and users, form and program, and space and experience, Planning the Greenspaces of Nineteenth-Century Paris, in the best tradition of historical investigations, ultimately calls attention to our own subjective agency as modern citizens. Previous articleNext article DetailsFiguresReferencesCited by The Journal of Modern History Volume 89, Number 1March 2017 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/690162 For permission to reuse, please contact [email protected]PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.