The High Line

In Thomas Cole’s Essay on American Scenery, the reader is able to appreciate Cole’s predilection and love for the American scenery. It is his belief this scenery is superior to the European scenery, since the latter’s “primitive features of scenery have long since been destroyed or modified … to accommodate the tastes and necessities of a dense population.” However, Cole presents his audience with a gloomy prophecy about America’s future, which he believes will be the same as Europe’s. Still, while acknowledging that industrialization could eventually take over many natural regions, Cole is hopeful that nature will remain victorious, since it will still be predominant. Because of this, he advises the American people to take advantage of

For many, Fresh Kills conjures up images of the “World’s Largest Landfill” - bulldozers pushing mountains of trash, flocks of seagulls fighting over table scraps, and plastic bags fluttering in the wind. After the closure of the landfill, many hope that this image will be replaced by Fresh Kills as a public park. The international design competition, Fresh Kills: Landfill to Landscape was the first step in transforming this image. Six finalists suggested six different visions of how Fresh Kills could be re-imagined. The winner of the competition, Lifescape by the landscape architecture firm Field Operations, proposes a design that focuses on nature not only as the antithesis of landfill, but as an agent of cultural change. James Corner, founder and director of Field Operations, first asked how might landscape architecture be a force that enriches and informs people’s perception of nature in his 1997 essay Ecology and Landscape as Agents of Creativity. Through Lifescape, Corner proposes an answer to his own question, and the resulting design responds to Fresh Kills landfill past, and it’s post-industrial future as a park.

The inception of “Covers The Ground,” begins with establishing the setting of the city of Sacramento. Understanding the natural beauty of the city is best conveyed by establish vivid imagery and Snyder accomplishes this by describing the “blossoming almond orchard acres.” As the image of nature sparks into the reader’s head, Gary Snyder is

First, it felt slightly odd to read about a city other than New York City in a Macaulay Seminar class because most, if not all, readings I have read in such a class discuss a topic in the context of New York City; nevertheless, reading about Chicago, another major American city, and its comparison with St. Louis, were refreshing. Second, this is the first time that I was exposed to the “first nature vs. second nature” concept, which I found insightful and somewhat surprising. I began to ruminate on the aspects of New York City people assume natural that are in fact artificial. Immediately, the salt marshes near the John F. Kennedy airport in Queens came to mind. According to NYC Parks, the marshes serve to “absorb fertilizer, improve water quality, and reduce erosion,” which can be considered as, using Cronon’s phrase, “natural advantages.” However, they have clearly been positioned and altered in a way that is aesthetically pleasing. In this instance, the presence of human intervention exists, yet many people would be inclined to consider the park “natural.” Perhaps this is how people in the 19th century viewed the railroads. Lastly, the following questions might be worth discussing: in today’s world, given the prolific human activity, what is considered first nature and second nature? Can there even be a third nature or

Eden by Design is a captivating read. A replica of the never-adopted 1930 Olmsted-Bartholomew parks plan for L.A. County, Parks, Playgrounds, and Beaches for the Los Angeles Region, is the essence of the book. Going through the introductory parts made me realize that had this plan, which itself is extraordinary in its latitude and farsightedness, been implemented the congestive mass of concrete that represents Los Angeles in the modern times could have been avoided. To start with, the one element I liked the most about this plan is the parkways. It was important for Los Angeles to have a system of continuous landscaped parkways dedicated to pleasure travel and to act as lungs for a rather polluted city. Even though after going through the plan, I’m not quite adamant on the fact that why was it dropped.

Unlike most of the persuasive essays needed many “power” words to persuade readers, R. Crumb’s comic, “A Short History of America”, reflects the change of the natural, ecological landscape to urban area without using any words. Nevertheless, his drawing deeply shows us the down side of the urbanization and we human-being are destroying our indispensable nature. We are going the exact opposite direction to a better life; we are going to live in the life where we totally rely on technology and advanced, luxurious materials. Humans will never be satisfied and keep changing. However, while we’re keeping changing, have we ever asked: What are we doing to our nature?

Last year brought 100,000 new feet onto Colorado soil. Not far behind those feet, rolled an army of hungry bulldozers and cranes. Even in the suburbs, old walls crumbled to make way for sparkling new housing. People want to be here. Perhaps the only bearable part of living in Denver’s suburbs for me has been the gritty old farm houses tucked behind groves of mangled cottonwood trees. Haven’t you ever seen an old, abandoned building and wondered what it could tell you? This curiosity is the basis of urban exploration, or urbexing.

Another problem of suburbanization was that the rampant private development led to the overdevelopment of the landscape. This overdevelopment was due in large part to the fact that the private developers were manipulating the city council. The author states, “[a]t the end of the war, greenbelt zoning for the Valley was actually passed into law by the city council, but it lacked the broad political support to survive the relentless counterattack of developers and landowners.” (Davis, p. 76). Due to the fact that the city council was so small in size, developers were able to greatly gain influence in demanding for policies that would enhance their desire for even more private development. But, lost in this mix was the fact that overdevelopment led to a decreased amount of public space and the loss of natural beauty to the landscape. “By 1928 parks comprised a miserable 0.6 percent of the surface of the metropolis…No large city in the United States was so stingy with public space.” (Davis, p. 65). This statistic gives us clear indication of who the culprit was for the overdevelopment which occurred in Southern California in the 1920s and beyond: the developers.

In The book The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell the narrator takes us back to when he did a test on people. The test was, how many names of people they are friends with. This information the reader gathered from this section, will help them infer that the author will use what he has learned somewhere else in the book. You can also infer that this information will help you understand what the author is saying.Like when he explaned “ On the test to see how many people know each other the scorer where 9-108 this means...” Later in that section he explained how the people did so well, and how people with higher incomes get more friends. When the author told us about the test it help me understand this chapter more fully.

They contributed many photo essays to Arizona Highways, though Adams was less than thrilled with their color reproductions. Still, they are important for they championed a “uniqueness of the ‘American’ earth at a time when other artists and intellectuals were drawn to ideas of internationalism” (Dunaway, 2005, p. 131). The Sierra Club’s new storytelling technique the coffee table book and National Geographic’s photo-driven essays also grew in popularity. Other conservation organizations quickly grasped the value of photos as a way to appeal to Americans on a more personal and intimate level the importance of humanity’s relationship with land and nature (Corbett, 2006; Neuzil, 2008; Sierra Club,

The building of Central Park was one of nineteenth-century New York’s most massive public works projects. Some 20,000 workers – Yankee engineers, Irish laborers, German gardeners, and native-born stonecutters – reshaped the site’s topography to create the pastoral landscape. After blasting out rocky

Imagine a city where no green space can be found. Where concrete and steel buildings rise up and block the sun. Where streets are chaotic and gridlocked and citizens are stuffed in cramped, dirty and unsanitary apartments. This was the world of 19th-century cities where human health and happiness were disregarded for economic gain. These horrid conditions shaped the lives and ideas of three very influential men: Ebenezer Howard, Le Corbusier, and Frank Lloyd Wright. They took their own experiences and redesigned the sprawling metropolis to improve the lives of the residents. Each man created urban utopias that included green spaces, farms, and parks to improve air quality and the livelihoods of the people. Despite theses similar views, each design differed from the others. Howard, Le Corbusier, and Wright all completely reimagined the urban city in differing ways based on scale, distribution of land and technology. Their design concepts have been adapted across the globe and implemented into modern urban planning everywhere.

When you mention New York to anyone, they automatically think about Times Square. This beautiful place with skyscrapers, Central Park, and a unique transportation system. However, if you were to ask me what I think about New York; I believe the skyscrapers block the sun, Central park is just a regular park for dogs, and the subway trains rarely run consistently especially in the mornings. I have lived in New York for 18 years, and I have yet to understand what everyone likes about the “ Big Red Apple.”

In American urban parks, the construction of nature as exemplified in the naturalistic park settings speaks to the culturally determined social process of defining social spaces. Indeed, as the word “construction” suggests, nature serves as an abstract ideal in urban American consciousness, which in turn is concretely actualized as per the socio-political leanings of the age.

This photo was taken at Nuit Blanche, an annual arts festival that transforms the streets of Toronto into a contemporary art gallery. The photo depicts an installation entitled “STARscape,” which consists of a canopy above an alleyway, lit up by moving projections of stars. Occupants can stand inside vertical tunnels and surround themselves with stars. At the top ends of the tunnels are gaps in the canopy that look out onto the real night sky, emptied by light pollution. The installation is meant to show a contrast between an artificial fantasy and a grim reality, while asking us how we can reconnect to our shared heritage – nature (“Starscape,” n.d., para. 1).