Ten Thousand Central Parks: A Climate-Change Parable

by David Brown Morris

A visionary look at Central Park’s creation as an urban success story inspiring bold climate action

Climate change is the existential crisis of our time. With extreme heatwaves, wildfires, hurricanes, and floods displacing millions, many What can I do? Ten Thousand Central Parks challenges the despair of inaction, using the history of Central Park as an unlikely yet urgent environmental parable.

Created in the years immediately before, during, and after the Civil War, Central Park IS a radical experiment in urban renewal, transforming a chaotic and polluted terrain into an 843-acre refuge. More than a scenic landmark, it was a visionary public project that provided jobs, green space, and a lasting environmental legacy. Designed by Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux, the park was America’s first large-scale public works project, undertaken at a time of national crisis and built almost entirely by immigrants. Its creation offers a powerful even in turbulent times, cities can be reimagined, and large-scale ecological transformations are possible.

With over half of the world’s population living in cities today, predicted soon to reach nearly 70%, urban green spaces are more crucial than ever. Morris argues that Central Park is not just an artifact of the past but a model for the future. Its 18,000 trees sequester nearly a million pounds of carbon dioxide annually, proving that ambitious, nature-based solutions can improve the quality of life while addressing environmental challenges.

Written with urgency and optimism, Ten Thousand Central Parks offers a fresh perspective on the climate crisis, rejecting doom in favor of possibility. We need projects on the scale of Central Park— thousands of them—to meet today’s environmental challenges. This book—a boundary-crossing work of narrative nonfiction—is an invitation to think big, act boldly, and embrace radical hope.

224 pages, Hardcover

Published October 7, 2025

Reviews

[Amelia · Rating 5 out of 5]

What I appreciated most about Ten Thousand Central Parks is how it reframes climate change as a civic and moral challenge rather than a technological puzzle. David Morris doesn’t write from panic or abstraction; he writes from history, showing how Central Park emerged during a period of political fracture and social instability and yet became one of the most successful public works projects in American life. That context matters. By grounding today’s climate crisis in a real, audacious act of collective imagination, the book restores a sense of agency that many climate narratives quietly strip away. It’s not just an argument for urban green spaces it’s a reminder that large-scale environmental progress has always required courage, patience, and a willingness to think beyond the immediate moment. I finished the book feeling less overwhelmed and more convinced that ambition, not awareness, is what we’re missing.

[Julie Sando · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book. I have never visited Central Park, but now I feel a bit like I have. I really liked Morris's focus on the lives of the park developers Olmstead and Vaux as a framework on which to hang the cultural, political, financial, artistic and historical insights about how the park came to be. I am newly grateful for Olmstead/Vaux's focus on making a non-imperial park emphasizing American principles of democracy with access for all, though I'm sorry about the loss of Seneca Village.

I especially liked the discussion about the values of the park - the emphasis on scenery and openness with, albeit simulated, wild spaces -that promote a sense of peace, with measurable benefits on health and crime. And finally, I appreciated the emphasis on climate change and how the Central Park story shows how parks can decrease a few effects of climate change and help to measure its advancement.

[Freeman · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you care about cities, this book is eye-opening. It connects green space, public health, jobs, and climate in a way that feels realistic and actionable. Central Park becomes a blueprint, not a symbol.