Drydic wrote:I'm going to leave the rest aside for the moment and focus on this
Salmoneus wrote:a small open highly unnatural green space in the middle of a town.
Your usage of unnatural here is nigh-cringe-inducing to me.
In what way? Natural = produced by nature, with relatively little human intervention. Unnatural = would not be that way without considerable human intervention.
In general, 'nature parks' are left to be how they are, with some interference aimed at preventing or reversing change. Whereas, in general, urban parks are nothing like what would be there without intervention, and indeed couldn't exist anywhere without extensive and continual human management, let alone exist in a city.
Do you not think this is a fair distinction to draw?
[Obviously, there are always exceptions. I live near both an area that could be called a park (it was a hunting park, and for a long time was called a Great Park, but now it isn't, in this area 'park' usually meaning the grounds of an estate; the legal term used is 'Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty') that appears natural but is in fact entirely artificial, and also an urban park in the 'wilderness' style that is mostly left to its own devices, at least in the middle. But for the most part I think the distinction holds good.]
Oh, and I've just thought of a fourth type of park: an open area filled with a certain type of thing, specified in the name of the park. For instance, near me there is a llama park, filled with llamas. You also get sculpture parks. And I guess 'car park' is an example of this also.
EDIT: it's true that in my own country, there's nowhere that's entirely untouched by human usage, except maybe a few hilltops here and there, though I imagine that in other countries there are more substantial areas that are, if not entirely untouched, at least more or less as they would be without intervention. In any case, however, I think it's legitimate to distinguish between environments that are the product of intentional shaping into parks, and those that are not intentionally shaped into parks, but have their picturesqueness emerge without intent.