Week 9 - Professor Elizabeth Blackmar PDF

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Professor Elizabeth Blackmar...

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Reading, JB Jackson -

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Read him as a 1950 source. Gives a full reflection on the impact of highway that influence American landscape, and think about highway itself designed for movement can itself be understood as a kind of place. Ambivalence towards being managed on the highway, and also deeply attached to the project of making sense of highway as a landscape feature.

“Other directed House” ● Highway strips: they are not meaningless because they satisfy popular needs instead of those of the elite class. ○ Their survival means that people like them. ○ But they can be improved, eliminate billboards. ○ They were never studied but should be, imitate European designs. “The Abstract Word of the Hot-Rodder” ● American obsession with driving to experience nature in a new way ● Mobility gives people the sense of freedom. ● Celebration of the creativity of the mobile landscape.

4/2 ● J.B Jackson: the association of road with freedom. ○ Automobile brings a capacity for mobility. ○ Highway gives American access to their country. ○ 1920s-1930s camping craze. ● Highway design for the drivers ○ Curves are designed to accommodate the topography but also to make driver less bored (straight line is dangerous for long-distance driving) ■ Abrupt vs. smooth curves. “Steady flow”. ○ New design so that there’s no interruptions when entering different lines. ○ Considering what drivers see at different speeds. ● Meridians - the space between highway lines. ○ Ban billboards, and beautify the highways through landscaping. ○ Opening up vistas along the highway lines. ● African american protest highways as displacing their communities. ○ Also from middle working class. ● Highway system is decentralizing the american landscape. ○ “Edge city”. ● ISTEA Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act: expand highway from 4 lanes to 8 lanes interstates. ○ Driven by need to accomodate more and larger trucks as well as commuter traffic.

○ Prioritize commerce. ● Backlash: public transit system in cities, revival of bike share in NYC. ○ The end of steady flow by traffic....