WHERE THE RIVER LEADS
Downtown Jacksonville’s Parks & Trails as Living Works of Civic Art
Jacksonville’s city center is in the midst of a generational design movement —one that treats parks and trails not as passive green space, but as active civic infrastructure and works of public art. Across the Northbank and Southbank of the St. Johns River, landscape architects, engineers, artists, nonprofits, philanthropists, and public officials are composing a connected urban experience rooted in movement, belonging, and wellness.
For arts and business leaders alike, this evolution represents far more than beautification. It is the deliberate repositioning of downtown through public space as economic infrastructure, cultural stage, and social commons. Strategic investment in quality of place has become a competitive advantage in talent attraction, economic vitality, and civic identity. Downtown’s emerging park network demonstrates how design excellence, environmental repair, and inclusive programming can function simultaneously as aesthetic achievement and economic catalyst.
Nature as Art
Landscape architects—those trained in a discipline that artfully combines landscape design and civil engineering—create outdoor rooms and experiential spaces with an approach akin to immersive installation art. Yet their medium is living, seasonal, and unpredictable.
Compare their work to that of Yayoi Kusama, renowned for her Infinity Mirror Rooms that create the illusion of infinite space. What if a few of her strategically placed mirrors chose to grow 10 inches or turned brown and cracked? What if Chiharu Shiota’s intricate, room-spanning thread installations suddenly untied themselves? And here’s a thought: What if contemporary sculptor Márton Váró’s 48-foot, trumpet-blowing angels on the facade of Bass Performance Hall in Fort Worth, Texas, got tired of holding their arms out and repositioned themselves?
