Orange County gets a new park

The 1,300 acre park is to become a 70 feet deep canyon with greenery, wetlands, an amphitheatre, and other features. Some of the park will serve as wildlife refuge. The park will connect Laguna Coast Wilderness Park to Cleveland National Forest, creating a huge biological corridor. In fact, it will be the largest band of open space in any metropolitan area of the U.S. The plans for the park do not come without controversy, however. George Hargreaves, a professor of landscape architecture at Harvard, worries that the park will have an ecology that does not reflect the native landscape. Don Marquardt from UCLA Extension, also a professor of landscape architecure, compares the site for this park with Central Park: the worst site with little or no use becomes the neighborhood park.