Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
ington's traffic needs could be satisfied by converting the city's parks into
bustling commuter arteries. Rock Creek would serve as a convenient fun-
nel for traffic to the northwest suburbs. Elevated freeways would flank the
Mall. New bridges would cross the Potomac, shattering the stillness of the
Theodore Roosevelt Island nature preserve and obliterating the picturesque
serenity of the Three Sisters Islands.
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Citizens' groups, park managers, and conservation associations rallied to
oppose these plans. Freeway promoters countered that they were not harm-
ing the parks, but making their natural beauty accessible to thousands of
motorists who would never visit them otherwise. When politically con-
nected opponents blocked a proposed expressway through Rock Creek
Park, traffic engineers attempted to shift the proposed roadway through
Glover-Archbold Park instead.When this plan was also foiled, the express-
way was relocated further west, where it was euphemistically labeled a park-
way and routed underneath the historic Cabin John Aqueduct, eradicating
the tranquil scenery that had long drawn visitors to the site. The massive
Theodore Roosevelt Bridge was constructed in the 1960s, but the Three
Sisters Bridge proposal was finally dropped after repeated skirmishing con-
vinced transportation planners to retreat. Environmentalists also challenged
the National Park Service's own parkway plans. The C&O Canal Parkway
project was shelved after a series of high-profile protests involving figures
such as Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas.The development of the
George Washington Memorial Parkway was dramatically curtailed. Broader
economic and political concerns factored into these decisions, but environ-
mentalist opposition played a prominent role in sealing the parkway's fate.
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Planning documents of the 1950s and the 1960s bore witness to yet
another transformation in reigning conceptions of the nature of nature in
the nation's capital. While highway engineers viewed parks as potential
transportation corridors, and environmentalists rallied to protect scenery
and ecological associations, planners presented undeveloped areas as a
generic abstraction called “open space.” This new terminology reflected the
planning community's determination to disassociate itself from earlier aes-
thetically motivated ideologies and emphasize an increasingly technocratic
focus on the orderly allocation of a broad array of community services
ranging from parks and playgrounds to housing, employment, and trans-
portation. The planning commission's 1950 comprehensive regional plan
employed the term “open space” as a general rubric covering undeveloped
private land, parks, playgrounds, parkways, and neighborhood recreation
