Concept
A linear park is a type of park that is significantly longer than it is wide. These linear parks are strips of public land running along canals, rivers, streams, defensive walls, electrical lines, or highways and shorelines. Examples of linear parks include everything from wildlife corridors to riverways to trails, capturing the broadest sense of the word. Other examples include rail trails ("rails to trails"), which are disused railroad beds converted for recreational use by removing existing structures. Commonly, these linear parks result from the public and private sectors acting on the dense urban need for open green space. Linear parks stretch through urban areas, coming through as a solution for the lack of space and need for urban greenery. They also effectively connect different neighborhoods in dense urban areas as a result, and create places that are ideal for activities such as jogging or walking. Linear parks may also be categorized as greenways. In Australia, a linear park along the coast is known as a foreshoreway. When being designed, linear parks appear unique as they are planned around the public's opinion of how the space will affect them. Possibly the earliest example is the Emerald Necklace, which consists of a , or 445 hectare chain of parks linked by parkways (a broad, landscaped highway) and waterways in Boston and Brookline, Massachusetts, U.S. The name comes from the way the planned chain appears to hang from the "neck" of the Boston peninsula. This system of linear parks was designed by Frederick Law Olmsted to connect the Boston Common and Public Garden (1837) to Franklin Park (Boston), also known as the "crown jewel" of Olmstead's work in Boston. The project began around 1878 with efforts to clean up and control the marshy area which later became the Back Bay and the Fens. In 1880, Olmsted proposed that the Muddy River be included in the park plan as the current dredged into a winding stream and was directed into the Charles River.
