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Book Review
| Regional Visionaries and Metropolitan Boosters: Decentralization, Regional Planning, and Parkways During the Interwar Years. By Matthew Dalbey. Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2002. 202 pp. Maps, notes, bibliography, index. $95.00.
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| Matthew Dalbey, an urban planner, advises "historians of design artifacts" (p. 12) to consider the significance of scenic parkways in the United States within the context of urban reform and regional planning between World Wars I and II. In this slim volume, Dalbey briefly summarizes the genesis of the Regional Planning Association of America, organized in 1923. He then examines the emergence of scenic parkways as manifestations of competing visions articulated by the "regionalists," notably Benton MacKaye and Lewis Mumford, and by metropolitan planners such as Thomas Adams's Regional Plan of New York and Its Environs (Arno, 1929) and a host of pragmatic-minded metropolitan boosters. He draws heavily on the writings of MacKaye in particular to demonstrate that, at least during the 1920s, regionalists embraced transportation technology as a means to effect planned decentralization that simultaneously would relieve urban congestion and strengthen rural economies. They envisioned parkways as integral elements of regional land-use planning tied to social reform. Conversely, metropolitan boosters of the 1920s and 1930s envisioned parkways in pragmatic terms—as directed opportunities for economic development along the corridors of metropolitan expansion into the hinterland. Dalbey argues that the building of Skyline Drive brought opposing views into sharp relief. Conflict over routing, which interfered with the Appalachian Trail, being developed at the same time under MacKaye's direction, not only caused a rift among trail supporters, but prompted MacKaye to challenge the Southern Appalachian National Park Commission to use its "power to determine for [the United States] what the word 'Park' is going to mean ... offsets to our civilization or adjuncts of it?" (p. 119). The answer, as Skyline Drive materialized, caused MacKaye to shift his own efforts toward wilderness preservation. |
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This book is written in the style of a technical report, with sequentially numbered sections and subsections, which makes for easy referencing but chops up the narrative. Additionally, a paucity of illustrations—only three maps—is incomprehensible given the price. Environmental historians should note that the author draws selectively from the rich scholarship on national parks and the National Park Service. Instead of a broader historical context, readers will find a second case study on the proposed but never built Green Mountain Parkway, which adds relatively little to the story. Nonetheless, Dalbey contributes a concise and accurate summary of important ideas about regional planning that flourished during the interwar years. Less successful is his attempt to draw meaning from this history that would "inform on issues important to the contemporary planning profession," notably sustainable development, growth management, and "smart growth" (preface). Overall, he convincingly demonstrates that, as cultural artifacts, parkways are significant not only for their design features but for their association with conflicting ideas about the purpose and value of regional planning in the early twentieth century. As such, this narrow study provides a useful reference for cultural resource experts and for scholars with an interest in the history of regional planning. |
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Rebecca Conard is professor of history and co-director of the public history program at Middle Tennessee State University. Her major publications include Places of Quiet Beauty: Parks, Preserves, and Environmentalism (Iowa, 1997) and Benjamin Shambaugh and the Intellectual Foundations of Public History (Iowa, 2002). |
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