Parks for profit : selling nature in the city Not since the first wave of city parks built in the United States and Europe during the latter half of the 19th Century has there been as much focus on the park as a space and symbol of urban vitality as there is now. This new generation of parks is post industrial transforming derelict remnants of an urban past into neighborhood anchors that mix green space repurposed industrialism and creative landscape architectural features. The argument for such development is couched in the language of environmentalism and sustainability but this obscuring an economic motive that is difficult to ignore. For instance since its opening in 2009 The High Line has become one of New Yorks most visited tourist attractions while contributing hundreds of millions of dollars to adjacent real estate values and tax revenues. How should we think of these new urban spaces What do they contribute to the life of the city In Parks for Profit Kevin Loughran considers three overlapping ways to think of the rise of the postindustrial park using The High Line in New York Bloomingdale Trail 606 in Chicago and Buffalo Bayou Park in Houston as primary case studies. He argues that as urban economies have become engineered around finance real estate tourism and cultural consumption the healthful seemingly apolitical symbolism of nature allows for parks to serve as civic shields for elite oriented investment. The books three substantive chapters unpack this thesis to consider the post industrial park in the context of the urban economy nature and race the latter of which is often an unacknowledged subtext in urban redevelopment. Much as abandoned rail viaducts and vacant residential lots marked the disappearance of people and capital the revitalization of such spaces is a retaking of space. Post industrial parks make aesthetic use of the symbols of past disinvestment while serving as green engines of gentrification and displacement