|
|
|
contact us | site map | comments |
|
||
|
|
|
|
|
CHARLES RIVER PARKLANDS
UPDATE Parklands
. . . A Place of Refuge and Hope
In early September, Charles River Parklands spoke with Karl Haglund, author of Inventing the Charles River. Haglund is a landscape architect, an architectural historian and a senior planner with the Metropolitan District Commission, where his responsibilities include oversight of new parklands construction in the "Lost Half Mile" of the Charles River Basin. In the throes of final galley edits just prior to sending his volume to press, the ever-thoughtful Haglund took a brief break from his demanding routine to consider the origins and intentions of his work, Inventing the Charles River. In collaboration with the Charles River Conservancy, the MIT Press will formally introduce the volume at a symposium to be held at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology on November 9th of this year. Parklands: Karl, to the average person, the reason for undertaking an exhaustive history of such an obscure subject as a river and the parklands surrounding it is not readily apparent. Can you give us a sense of the circumstances that led to your decision? KH: I'd be pleased to. I'm a landscape architect and planner, but have maintained a long-term interest in urban history and the profession in which I have practiced for many years. Back in the early '80s I was working for the American History Workshop while finishing up my work for a PhD at MIT. The Workshop's founder was a fellow named Richard Rabinowitz, who had a strong interest in cities and how they develop. Sam Bass Warner, under whom I was studying at the time, also supported my interest in the Charles. Parklands: So you were working toward a degree, but the idea of writing about the Charles came late in your studies. KH: I had finished my course work, but I needed to write a qualifying paper for my dissertation. Also, my wife and I had lived off Mt. Auburn St. in Cambridge right near the river. So here was a situation in which the two fellows for whom I was working and under whom I was studying combined with my prior living circumstances to point me in a certain direction. I did a seminar paper on the history of the river that was kind of a first effort to get the basic story outline of what would eventually become my doctoral thesis and the basis for Inventing the Charles River. Parklands: Looking at the history of a river would seem naturally to lead to a review of the political and social events of abutting communities. But you've stayed focused almost exclusively on the Charles itself, and the surrounding parklands. What led to that? KH: It turns out that Eliot (Charles Eliot was a late 19th-century landscape architect who was among the first to see the value of large-scale park systems in the life of urban areas.) had accurately described how natural features, like rivers, tend to be used as political boundaries. Interestingly, cities are often negligent about boundary lands, and the Charles was no exception. No one paid much attention to it except as a commercial resource until, beginning in the mid-19th century, for a number of reasons, it could not be ignored. The more research I did, the more I became fascinated with the transforming events that led to the river becoming what it is today. Remember, until relatively recently, the Charles could be called an industrial wasteland and open sewer. Today it is a very large public parkland surrounding a great urban lake. There's a bit of history in the events and personalities leading to that change actually taking place. Parklands: What seized your imagination about the river? KH: The way the Charles became a stage on which major Boston institutions decided to establish themselves, the way its boundaries shifted, and the social intentions underlying the creation of the Parklands that surround it. Mark Twain, commenting on the value of land, once famously noted that one should acquire and hold as much as possible, because "They're not making any more of it." But in the case of Boston and Cambridge, he was wrong. One way to envision the growth of the metropolitan area, especially Boston and Cambridge, is not as a succession of buildings that replace each other but as a place where the land itself is expanding. So that's where the book begins, with the land-making. Parklands: What's different about the genesis of the Charles in the land making days of the 19th and early 20th centuries and today's circumstances? KH: At the beginning of the 20th century you could get people around a table who were the leaders of the city and take positive action in a straightforward and fairly immediate way. You can't do that now. Urban development, whether it is roadways, housing or parklands, is complex, exhaustive and glacially slow. The thing people need to understand is that Olmsted, Eliot and their contemporaries, the people whose vision and action left us with the extraordinary legacy of the river and its surrounding parklands as public space, have presented us with a special opportunity. Parklands: Which is? KH: The opportunity is for the Charles River Conservancy and similar groups to come together on the basis of carefully focused interests, for people up and down the river to recognize the parklands latent power to unify aesthetic, cultural and social forces. I did not use the word "inventing" casually in the title of the book. When those who came before us "invented" the river, they were also defining themselves. Now, as we continue this act of reinvention in the creation of new parklands in the Charles' "Lost Half Mile" and through the MDC Master Plan for renewing the river parklands as a whole, we have a chance to redefine ourselves, as well. Parklands: What's the overall impression that you want people to take away from reading Inventing the Charles River? KH: A long time ago I was very much struck by the beginning paragraphs of Lewis Mumford's The City in History. "Without a long running start in history," he says, "we shall not have the momentum needed, in our own consciousness, to take a sufficiently bold leap into the future." I have found the study of history to be enormously important in my approach to planning projects. The history of a place teaches us respect for those who preceeded us, gives us a sense of our own times and some humility about what can be accomplished. But I think the most important thing is that it gives us a sense of the range of opportunities confronting us. Once people awaken to the possibilities of urban parklands, the outcomes can be extraordinary. The mayor of Boston, for instance, has recognized the centrality of greenspace as a major part of the public life of the city. In another example, the Community Preservation Act offers wonderful greenspace opportunities for all the municipalities in the state. Parklands: So you can see constructive links between past and present-day public policy in so far as they relate to greenspace and parklands. But public money, the recent passage of the Environmental Bond Bill not withstanding, is getting harder and harder to come by in the current political climate. What can we do? KH: We are still struggling to address the need that Eliot recognized, the need to see across boundaries in Greater Boston. Notably, from its founding in 1893 to the advent of Proposition 2 1/2, the MDC was funded by the over 38 cities and towns in the district. So there was a sense of direct contribution and participation. But now much of that sense of ownership and stewardship is lost. Parklands: You're saying we need to reestablish that sense of ownership. Is your book part of the way to do that? KH: The book and the Master Plan are two of the ingredients. There is also an enormous and ever-growing constituency of those who care about the environment. Public dialog about the importance of the Charles and its surrounding parklands will help those people more fully recognize the contribution that a careful stewardship of the parklands will mean to the life of the city; to the way we feel about our connection to this place; to the notion that we share a public realm that reflects our concern for ourselves and each other. There is no end to the number of people who care. Hubie Jones, who for years was dean of the School of Social Work at BU, once told me how he felt about parklands when he was growing up. He saw them as a place of refuge where there was hope for people, that they reflected a commitment to life and that life mattered. Put another way, it's the notion of the river as our front yard, where we can lean over the fence and talk to people, then open the gate and let them in. Charles River Parklands is published by The Charles River Conservancy, a not-for-profit organization dedicated to the rehabilitation of the Basin parklands of the Charles River.
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| top |
|
calendar | projects | river basin | get involved | press | river portraits | home |
|
|
|
|
|
