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Story: City parks and green spaces

Old-world city congestion

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Old-world city congestion

The New Zealand Company set aside green spaces in the plans for new towns so they would not turn into the polluted, overcrowded cities found in Britain and Europe. This engraving shows a slum neighbourhood in London in 1872 – a scene which would have been common in the 1840s when New Zealand was first settled by Europeans (minus the trains, which were in their infancy then).

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Museum of London

by Gustave Dore

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How to cite this page

Kerryn Pollock, City parks and green spaces – Origins of green spaces, Te Ara – the Encyclopedia of New Zealand, https://teara.govt.nz/en/artwork/20550/old-world-city-congestion (accessed 10 June 2026).

Story by Kerryn Pollock, published 26 February 2010.