Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
INVENTING NATURE IN WASHINGTON, D.C.
TIMOTHY DAVIS
Washington has long been known as a city of beautiful parks and boule-
vards, tree-lined watercourses, and stately monuments set in stunning natu-
ral surroundings. Few capital cities are favored with such an attractive array
of soothing parks, shady streets, and verdant riverbanks. Washington, it
seems, is a city where the works of man and nature coexist in natural
harmony.
What many observers fail to realize, however, is the degree to which the
“natural” environment of Washington is a human invention. Washington's
“natural landscape” is a cultural construction, both literally and figuratively.
Not only has the physical environment of the nation's capital undergone
significant transformations over the past 200 years; the very idea of what
nature is and how the city's residents should use, shape, and interpret it has
changed dramatically. Since the first Native American occupation, humans
have been actively involved in reconceptualizing, transforming, and con-
structing (“inventing”) the nature of nature in Washington.Throughout this
process, successive generations have redefined Washington's natural envi-
ronments both physically and imaginatively in the pursuit of a variety of
social, practical, and personal goals.
In fact, changing cultural perceptions about what nature is, was, or should
be have been responsible for most of the major transformations in Wash-
ington's physical environment. The city's basic plan is a testament to
Enlightenment ideals of man's rational mastery of the natural world. Mid-
nineteenth-century plans for the Mall reflect the period's penchant for an
idealized nature rooted in picturesque aesthetics and romantic philosophies.
The city's basic infrastructure of paved streets, public water systems, and
artificial illumination exemplifies the late-nineteenth-century determina-
tion to discipline and control chaotic and unhealthy urban environments.
