The Rise, Decline and Potential Rebirth of the American Parkway.

This paper provides an overview of the history of the American parkway, showing how technical, cultural, and aesthetic factors contributed to the form's evolution and tracing popular and professional reactions to parkway development. It concludes with a brief consideration of contemporary attempts to invoke the lessons of traditional parkway design. The history of the American parkway constitutes one of the most important chapters in the annals of twentieth-century road civilization. As the first comprehensivelydesigned limited-access public motorways, parkways paved the way for the express highways that transformed the developed world. As arteries of transportation and recreation, they were critical components of ambitious regional planning strategies. As symbols of progress and modernity, parkways embodied contemporary conceptions of modern design, efficiency and technological progress. At the same time, their naturalistic landscaping and historical allusions made modern technologies and Modernist principles palatable to those ambivalent about the social implications of modernity. The parkways' pre-eminence began to wane by the late 1930s as they were supplantedby more technically efficient designs such as the Reichsautobahnen and American freeways. Recently, both preservationists and roadway designers have begun to rediscover the cultural, aesthetic and pragmatic values of traditional parkways. For the covering abstract see ITRD E139491.