Growing up in the countryside, I never thought much about urban parks. Who needs a park when you have all that space to play in?

With the kids grown, we moved to a tiny old house on Melbourne Street at the top of Munjoy Hill. Our house had a postage-stamp backyard hardly big enough to throw a ball. But just across North Street was Fort Sumner Park. That became our new backyard, where my grandson and I played catch and soccer. A photographer from this newspaper took a picture of 6-year-old Teddy kicking a soccer ball and ran it big on the front of the local section.

We realized then why cities needed parks. In dense areas, not everyone can have a backyard, but everyone needs one.

Seven years later, we moved across the hill to Sheridan Street to a home with no backyard at all. So the Eastern Prom parks became our backyard, where we walked, played, sat, picnicked, gardened and took in the incredible views of Casco Bay and its hundreds of islands.

Much has changed in Portland in the nine years since our last move, but the 68-acre Eastern Prom park system, a bejeweled necklace encircling the peninsula from the Old Port all the way around to the Mount Joy Orchard on Washington Avenue, has only gotten better.

In 1883, Portland historian William Gould declared, “The Eastern Promenade has a more beautiful outlook than any other vacant space in the city and should be preserved as an open space.”

To the city’s great credit, and thanks to the Friends of the Eastern Prom and a number of other organizations, that’s what has happened. It was Gould who first proposed the idea of the park when a hotel was proposed for the current site of Fort Allen Park on the tip of the peninsula.

In the ensuing years, Portland secured 21 acres of waterfront land, and the Eastern Promenade Park was born and design was handed over to the Olmsted Brothers landscape architecture firm, the most prominent park designers in the world.

According to the Olmsted Network, the firm believed that in crowded cities urban parks would address “fundamental social and psychological needs,” and that “connection to nature in urban areas was restorative and conducive to mental and physical well-being,” all the while helping to “foster community.”

Today, as cities like Portland attract more and more people needing more and more homes, the Olmsted philosophy becomes more important than ever. Bounded by water, Portland has little space to grow other than up. One of Portland’s newest apartment buildings, The Casco on Federal Street, is now the state’s tallest building.

Portland needs housing desperately. But as we stack homes on top of each other in condos or apartment blocks, fewer people will have backyards to enjoy. The city’s parks will become our shared backyards. Protection of the parks has never been more important.

Portland residents understand this. That’s why in 2017, when a condo development on Sheridan Street threatened to block the treasured sunset views from Fort Sumner Park, citizens responded with a campaign to permanently protect the view with a zoning overlay, which the City Council approved, forcing the developer to take the top floor out of the design. The view was preserved, thanks to the Friends of Fort Sumner Park, the work of hundreds of citizens and the good sense of the City Council.

Yet the parks of the Eastern Prom face new challenges. The Portland Planning Board is developing recommendations to the Planning Department for final revisions to Phase II of Portland Recode, a major revamp of the city’s zoning. Current land use codes require that  “buildings and structures shall not obstruct significant views presently enjoyed by residents, passersby, or users of site.” Portland Recode should embrace that concept.

Such a threat already exists at 165 Washington Ave., where under new zoning proposed for the area, a seven-story, 75-foot building would obstruct popular views of the Portland skyline, including views of the Cathedral of Immaculate Conception and Portland City Hall. With Recode, more obstructions could occur along Washington Avenue.

It doesn’t have to be this way. The city view can be kept open with the same kind of zoning overlay that protected the Fort Sumner Park view. Hundreds of people have already signed on to a petition urging the City Council to approve the overlay.

Views are intrinsic to the park experience. Blocking these popular views would degrade Eastern Prom Park, which is on the National Register of Historic Places. But this is about more than views; this is about the promise our city leaders made to future generations. They made a commitment to park space for the benefit of the public. We need to honor their promise. Approval of the proposed zoning overlay will protect the view of the city and Back Cove.

Future generations will thank us, as we thank those with the foresight to create these beautiful parks in the first place.