John Nolen And The Metropolitan Landscape

"A model city, the hope of democracy" – John Nolen on his suggested plans for Madison, Wisconsin This book connects John Nolen's political and social visions with his design proposals by analyzing his extensive writings, personal correspondence and some of his most significant works. While John Nolen is best known as a city planner, he trained as a landscape architect and used the titles 'landscape architect' and 'city planner' interchangeably throughout his career. A prolific practitioner, he was engaged in nearly 400 projects throughout the United States between 1905 and 1936, including town planning, industrial housing, state and city parks, new towns and regional planning. Focusing particularly on several projects central to Nolen’s career including Madison (WI), Mariemont (OH), Venice (FL) and Penderlea (NC), Beck investigates the ideologies that underpinned Nolen’s work. This is a rare look at a key figure in the development of 20th century American cities.

An in-depth look at a prolific US landscape architect, who was engaged in nearly 400 projects throughout the United States between 1905 and 1936, including estate gardens, State Parks and new towns.

This book examines three landmark utopian visions central to 20th century landscape architectural, planning, and architectural theory. The period between the 1890s and the 1940s was a fertile time for utopian thinking. Significant geographic shifts of large populations; radically altered relations between capital and labor; rapid technological developments; large investments in transportation and energy infrastructure; and repetitive economic disruptions motivated many individuals to wholly reimagine society – including the connections between social relations and the built environment. Landscape and Utopia examines the role of landscapes in the political imaginations of the Garden City, the Radiant City, and Broadacre City. Each project uses landscapes to propose a reconstruction of the relationships between land, labor, and capital but - while the projects are well-known – the role played by landscapes has been largely left unexamined. Similarly, the radical anti-capitalism that underpinned each project has similarly been, for the most part, left out of contemporary discussions. This book sets these projects within a historical and philosophical context and opens a discussion on the role of landscapes in society today. This book will be a must-read for instructors, students, and researchers of the history and theory of landscape architecture, planning, and architecture as well as utopian studies, cultural and social history, and environmental theory.

John Nolen’s New Ideals in the Planning of Cities, Towns, and Villages is the most thorough assessment of city planning written by an American practitioner before 1920. It records the interplay of urban reform in Europe and the United States, the rise of the planning expert, the design of new towns, and the technique for directing urban expansion on systematic lines. Most important, it documents the blueprint for investing the "peace dividend" of the Great War to make urban life "more fit for democracy". Written for men fighting to make the world safe for democracy, New Ideals revealed how the domestic part of the peace program could justify their sacrifice. The wartime housing initiative had improved the living conditions of industrial workers and the same public regulation and control of the layout and character of residential neighbourhoods could provide what "men of service expect to find on their return, a new and better type of workman’s home." While New Ideals strained towards the utopian, experience tempered Nolen’s expectations and the high aims of the book were not immediately realised in a post-war society seeking a return to pre-war normalcy. However in the last decade, Nolen’s planned communities have been closely studied as the demand for pedestrian-oriented neighbourhoods set on sustainable lines has moved from novelty to policy. New Ideals is an important text not only for its design template, but also its aspirations. Nolen’s call to "make cites that will serve the needs--physical, economic, and spiritual-- of all people" lays at the heart of the city planning profession and the lessons Nolen imparted inform a new generation planning cities to be both resilient and just.

Neighbourhood open space ranks highly as a key component in suburban liveability assessments, originating from the development of urban planning as a profession and the proliferation of the garden suburb. Community Green uniquely connects the past, present and future of planning for small open spaces around the narrative of internal reserves. The distinctive planned spaces are typically enclosed on every side, hidden within residential blocks, serving as local pocket parks and reflecting the evolving values of community life from the garden city movement to contemporary new urbanism. This book resuscitates the enclosed, almost secretive reserve from history as a distinctive form of local open space whose problems and potentialities are relevant to many other green community spaces. In so doing, it opens up even wider connections between localism and globalism, the past and the future, and for connecting community initiatives to broader global challenges of cohesion, health, food, and climate change. This fully illustrated book charts the outcomes and implications of this evolution across several continents, injecting human stories of civic initiatives, struggles and triumphs along the way. Community Green will be of interest to a wide readership interested in studying, managing and improving the quality of all small open spaces in the urban landscape.