 | Parkways and park roads |  |
AN ATTITUDE:
This course is not to train Landscape Architects in the engineering
of a roadway. It is intended to help you to regain the skills
of working with Engineers in preserving the scenic quality associated
with park roads and parkways in the tradition of F. L. Olmsted,
Gilmore Clarke, Michael Rapuano, Tommy Vint, Stanley Abbott, Dudley
Bayliss and Ed Abbuel.
AASHO has said in its publication "A Guide for Highway Landscape
and Environmental Design" (HLED-1, 1970) that Landscape Architects
are to be involved in highways from the initial stages of location
to the final development of the roadside. It is because of the
National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 that Federal Highways is
required to include Landscape Architects on the interdisciplinary
design team. Engineers are masters of geometrical calculations for
alignment and for the structural components of the pavement and
bridges, and for establishing cost-benefit ratios to justify construction
of new roads. They have relegated the off-road features
to Landscape Architects provided that requirements for safety,
drainage, lighting, and sight distances are satisfied.
When we consider that one third of the traffic fatalities take
place off the pavement, Landscape Architects do indeed have a
responsibility for the safety of users of the highways! It is
incumbent on you to learn the language of the Engineers, to know
and appreciate their capabilities and training, and to respect their
aspirations as you respect your own. It is when you are in charge
of projects that the responsibility for all professional services
is yours alone; and you will surely be in charge sometime in the
future! I promise you!
If we are to have parklike roads, we must be trained to work
with Engineers in their design. In park road construction we can
assume that the pavement and other structures will be intrusions
into a natural or historical environment; therefore, I am "anti
road." We can justify intrusions only from the benefits to visitors
who will come to this place and whose daily lives are made more
meaningful from having experienced this Park. Otherwise, we are
intruders rather than stewards of the landscape we are obliged
to preserve. To deny visitors an opportunity to enjoy the Park's
resource in the name of preservation is equally difficult to justify.
This is the dilemma of conservation and of our professional
conscience in the management of natural and cultural landscapes.
Arguments have seldom resulted in acceptable compromises, and we
never escape the soul-searching struggle to arrive at a rationale
we can live with. Every road proposal presents new arguments and
every Park presents its own unique set of circumstances to be
wrestled with and resolved...and lived with forever after. It's
an unforgiving world living with our commitment to protection of
our resources.
While we argue for flatter slopes, we face the grand old oak
just inside the limit-of-grading line...then we must decide whether
to live with a slope too steep for safety or to cut the "magnificent
monarch" to the ground. An elevated structure over an estuary may
preserve the spawning shallows of the shad...but it's a difficult
argument to win when the job is already over the cost estimate and
you have an impossible deadline for completion.
The difficulty with park roads and parkways is that they soon
become swallowed up on the larger road system. Rock Creek Park,
the Baltimore-Washington, the Suitland and the George Washington
Memorial Parkways have been taken over by mightier forces than our
own. The East Leg of the Inner Loop, Route 295 along the Anacostia
River, the E Street Expressway, Theodore Roosevelt Bridge over the
Potomac, Military Road over Beach Drive in Rock Creek Park, all
have been built in part on Park land. We simply did not defend the
park land with enough determination to stop the Engineers. And we
would have lost the Spout Run valley if the public had not protested
the construction of Three Sisters bridge over the Potomac. We are
required to preserve parkland by law!
Within our responsibility to spend the taxpayer's dollar as
frugally as possible, we wrestle with decisions of design economy
versus aesthetics and pray that what we decide is truly in the
public interest. In public service we landscape architects serve
most effectively as protectors of the public land rather than as
designers of roads. The task is not to build a road but to preserve
the landscape by building a durable structure which concentrates
visitor use in a way that provides maximum enjoyment and causes the
Park that we are obligated to protect and not a road! I am a
Park Man.
The new road in Yellowstone between Norris Junction and Canyon
Village is contrary to every principle that I advocate in the design
of park roads. It is too straight; it is too wide; it severs animal
habitat; and visitors tend to use the road as a thing in time and
place to be tolerated rather than as a means of enjoying the Park.
The Engineers built a road to satisfy the cost benefit ratio and
the structural requirements for traffic and the site. The sin of
the road is on the backs of Landscape Architects who neither opposed
the plan during the design stage nor collaborated with the Engineers
during construction.
We have not kept abreast of the developing art of preservation;
neither have we kept our traditional training in road construction
in the schools offering degrees in Landscape Architecture. Instead,
we have surrendered our tradition and in the process have abandoned
our role as collaborators with the Engineers. We have become intimidated
by the skills we once regarded as our own; it is up to your
generation to reestablish the role of Landscape Architects working
with Engineers in the art of park roads and parkway design.
The Nation is now on the threshold of launching a program for
the reconstruction of a network of scenic roads and byways. If
you are not prepared to assume a responsible role, then construction
will prevail over scenery, and bypasses will prevail over pleasure
roads. The public needs your talent; you cannot be negligent in
offering to help!
| Parkways and park roads | |