Parkification as Process: Mapping Ripple Effects in Post-Industrial Mill Landscapes

This study examines the ripple effects of parkification, the transformation of post-industrial landscapes into public parks and green infrastructure, in Greenville at the Upper State region of South Carolina. As many Southern mill towns contend with industrial decline, environmental degradation, and complex land-use legacies, parkification has emerged as a pragmatic response to constraint rather than a conventional redevelopment strategy. Framed as a process rather than an isolated design outcome, parkification is understood here as a generative mechanism that produces cumulative spatial, ecological, and institutional change beyond individual project boundaries. Using a mixed-methods approach that integrates spatial and temporal mapping, archival research, site analysis, and semi-structured interviews with key stakeholders and decision-makers, this study traces how parkification unfolds across time and scale. Three interconnected case studies in Greenville, Falls Park on the Reedy, Conestee Nature Preserve, and the Swamp Rabbit Trail, are examined to address how post-industrial parkification contributes to greenway network formation and broader urban–regional transformation in the American South. The findings reveal that parkification consistently emerged from conditions of environmental constraint, including contamination, flooding, infrastructural legacies, and limited redevelopment feasibility. Early parkification projects functioned as generative landscape nodes that catalyzed the expansion of green space and connectivity rather than remaining isolated amenities. By establishing visible, accessible, and publicly valued landscapes, these projects enabled the extension of trails, river corridors, and preserved infrastructures, contributing to the formation of an interconnected regional greenway system. Institutional alignment among civic organizations, public agencies, and landscape professionals further supported the scaling and replication of parkification. Together, these findings position parkification as a process-based landscape strategy capable of driving the spread of green areas and long-term urban connectivity in post-industrial regions.