HABITAT: A LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE PERSPECTIVE

The design process for new, reconstructed, and/or relocated roads - historically "top down" - has become more recently an all-inclusive undertaking, reflecting the involvement of "grassroots stake-holders" and professionals. Such efforts frequently seek to include residents, users, and a cadre of multidisciplinary professionals dealing with a range of concerns from landscape architecture to zoology, from aesthetics to engineering, and from biology to limnology. These efforts embrace aspects of the landscape from pre-history and history through contemporary cultural land use patterns. They are concerned with a range of issues from slope stabilization and roadway edge conditions, to soil conservation and stream sedimentation, and from the preservation of native vegetation to methods of safe passage for fauna across transportation corridors. The preservation and protection of existing wildlife and their habitats, and the appropriate restoration, enhancement, and reconnection of such habitats as may have previously existed, are primary and critical activities to this design process. These endeavors must also draw upon the information - or story - of the regional landscape in all of its manifestations and characterizations, to assure an appropriate response to cultural as well as scientifically grounded values. There are too few archetypes in Florida today of roads conceived within a broad egalitarian concept embracing multidisciplinary efforts. A litany of examples exist in which roads fail individually and collectively to respect both nature - habitat, connectivity, corridors - and culture - sense of place, community and cultural attributes. A new model is necessary for road design conceived to address not merely vehicular movement, but structured to address the functional value of the landscape as well.

Language

  • English

Media Info

  • Features: Figures;
  • Pagination: p. 228-234

Subject/Index Terms

Filing Info

  • Accession Number: 00745668
  • Record Type: Publication
  • Report/Paper Numbers: FHWA-PD-96-041
  • Files: TRIS, USDOT, STATEDOT
  • Created Date: Feb 3 1998 12:00AM