"Should parkland courses always be green, lush, defined, soft? Is there a counter argument?"
Marc:
This is a very good question, even if it appears it has not yet become that much of a question at various parkland courses.
Also, and as usual, Rich Goodale is wrong about the Ideal Maintenance Meld and Doug Ralston is absolutely right.
The IMM philosophy has so far generally been used with classic style courses which certainly include the "parkland" style or look, but that is not to say that their IMM of firmness generally "through the green" and particularly on the green surfaces should be transposed to all types and styles of courses and architecture around the world.
Obviously, we can certainly see that there are a number of modern age primarily aerially designed courses around the world now and at the very least the IMM for them should logically include green surfaces that may be fast but are necessarily more receptive to aerial shots (ie softer rather than firmer green surfaces) than many of the classic designs.
Again, one of the primary philosophies of the IMM is that it be "course specific", that any golf course's architectural style and design intent needs to be carefully analyzed and maintenance practices needed to be designed to specifically highlight it's inherent design options and design intent.
The IMM is to get away from the old "one size fits all" mentality of maintenance practices that seems to have occured prevalently in the second half of the 20th century. That used to be basically soft and over-irrigated for most all golf courses (a "one size fits all" mentality of soft and receptive for all types and styles of architecture). Now firm and fast is coming back for those that are designed for it, but that doesn't mean it needs to be applied, iN ALL ASPECTS, to those that are not exactly designed for it.
In other words, the IMM for some modern aerial designed courses should not be exactly the same as it should be for most of the pre-WW2 classically designed courses.
Clearly the "parkland" style classic era golf course and its architecture is an interesting variation that needs to be analyzed carefully, and certainly when it comes to its "look" through maintenance practices.
For instance, the prevalent and heavy use of areas of high fescue, is, in my opinion, not the look of a classic parkland course, and I feel those who use it on parkland style courses are doing something sort of antithetical.
Aronimink (a classic American Parkland Style course) did it in their recent restoration and it didn't play very well and certainly looked pretty odd and they have since removed most of it, and certainly from areas anywhere near play.