Green space ideas and practices in European cities

For almost two centuries, green spaces in European cities have been rethought and built based on the shifting ideas and practices about the role of nature in cities. Although there is a great diversity in the quantity and quality of green spaces in European cities today, the ideas and practices behind their creation and destruction are quite common across the continent. Starting in the mid-nineteenth century, European city leaders started bringing nature back into the city to counter the negative effects of industrialization. Later, modernist architects and planners began using scientific methods and populist ideas of nature in an attempt to create accessible healthy quality living for a rapidly expanding urban industrial workforce. Most recently, European cities are embracing sustainability, a sometimes contradictory effort to balance neoliberal commodification of nature with its scientifically legitimated quality of life benefits.