Good morning I'm Ellen Dunham JONES I'm
a professor in the College of Architecture

and also co-hosting the search committee
and it is my delightful privilege

to introduce Doug Allen who will
be kind of kicking us off and

really telling us we can't there
could not be a more perfect person.

I think to open up this symposium
Doug is a Fellow of the a S.L.A.

American Society of landscape architects
he was the the interim dean of the College

of Architecture where he's also been
a professor for many many years.

He has taught a legendary
course on the history

of urban form to over
five thousand students.

Across Georgia Tech and
we just couldn't be more proud

embodying really the spirit of
Frederick Law Olmstead more than any other

faculty member that I
know at Georgia Tech.

I would like to invite Doug to give us
some opening remarks and kick it up

like you know him and I just want to
echo what school charity the rose

and said and that is thank you
Mark master and master family.

Gary Schuster who was

provost here for a number of years
in the interim president for

a while once asked me if
I had ever seen lions

hunt and I said Well only on television.

I don't know what do you mean
by that he said well you know

they're all lying around as an
uncoordinated group looking themselves and

scratching their backs and so forth and
you drop an antelope in the middle.

And suddenly they become this highly
organized unit coordinated unit

cooperating with one another and
in pursuit of a single goal and

what you need to find dog is an animal
read yeah I think this may be an animal.

OK And

I say that because it it
it offers an opportunity

sense own stead was the founder
of my profession and

as far as I know I'm the only
landscape architect on the faculty.

I think I am anywhere it Georgia Tech and

the he really founded my profession.

You know there was no such
thing till he came along and

so I think that the what.

What he did his real genius was in
the ability to figure out what was

needed to solve a particular kind of
problem and then assemble the people and

the resources necessary to
solve those problems and

along the way he usually
attempted to do what

any good poet does which is to
sort of Tagamet a language of

poetic language onto ordinary language
in other words a sewer can also become

a parkway.

So the so I want to thank you.

Because I think this will
have repercussions long after

most of us in the room actually or
a longer George attack.

I I want to just set
the stage a little bit and

not talk too much because I know what
some of the people here will be.

Talking about and
they can do it much better than I can but

I do want to kind of set the stage for
the proceedings and

that is that owns Ted was born
in eight hundred twenty two

outside of Hartford Connecticut
in the Connecticut River Valley.

He died in one thousand three think about
that time period New England in eighteen

twenty two was a rural pre-industrial
landscape and by nineteen zero three.

It had converted by and
large to an industrial urban landscape and

or problems that came along with
that that he enumerated in his

Elizabeth MacDonald in hours trying
to tease this out last night.

I'm going to go home.

Look it up and I failed to do so.

I believe it was his eight
hundred seventy one address to

the American Social Science Association
in which he sort of points out what

he believed to be the fundamental
problems of the day and

that is that without great cities.

You don't have cultural opportunities you
don't have educational opportunities you

don't have health care you don't have
all of the things that cities provide

because of the concentration of
economic activity on the other hand.

So these were pretty much a mess.

I mean there were places that could
kill you because of the toxic

material that was I mean.

London is sort of the example
par excellence here with cholera

epidemics in the late eighteenth forty's
and early eighteenth fifty's and

Jon Snow The sort of grandfather of
the Godfather I guess of epidemiology is

a wonderful book about the Broad Street
pump and John Snow and

how he sort of playing Sherlock Holmes
really how he sort of.

Figured out in fact that cholera was
a water borne I guess bacteria right.

Bacterium and
he was vilified by his colleagues and

almost thrown out of his profession

medical profession because at
the time everybody believed that

cholera was something you
inhaled miasma of the vapors.

And of course part of that had to do
with the fact that the Thames was so

polluted that it was the year of the great
stink where people could not even cross

the bridges on foot because of
the odor of human waste that was

that was in the in the water capsule
waiting sewers providing fresh

water separating out all
of the necessary but

infrastructure and doing so in a way
that not only save people's lives.

It was able to actually sustain the growth
of London over a long period of time

is something that John Snow and
Olmsted in this country.

Both were involved in I think that
there are three things if we look

at the twentieth century and ask ourselves
the question What is the legacy that we

inherited in the twentieth century from

the nineteenth century there were really
three things and Olmsted played a major

role in the creation of all three
the first was the public park.

This is not simply about
nature in the city.

This is about a new kind of public
space for a new kind of public.

If you look at you know the form

of this these nineteenth century public
parks they didn't lead to the palace.

They didn't lead to the church.

They didn't lead to the king or
to they were free and empty and

open to suggestion to be inhabited
by a variety of people in the.

Widest possible or
a of activities that one can conceive of

I was just in New York last
week stop by Central Park and

it's still being used exactly that way.

It's just amazing sad from
the fags absolutely beautiful.

The second thing is the parkway

which really is remarkable
invention a new kind of street

which was piggybacked onto
a concept of a park and

a sewer system the sewer.

Of course being the Back Bay fans but
but this new kind of Parkway and

Professor McDonnell will talk a little
bit about parkways as in a few moments

today that you know this time
we become sort of confused.

I think as to what park ways
are we tend to think of them today

at least it seems that I'll
leave Georgia out of this but

most departments of transportation
seem to think a parkway is

an interstate highway with a median in
the middle right and maybe a tree here or

there when the manual calls
them fixed hazardous the tree

is a fixed hazardous object
of all it was amazing.

I fixed hazardous objects.

Yet I have to get a permit to cut
one down in my yard that I planted.

I mean so obviously there is a public
interest in the fact that I have

this tree in my yard that I need to take
down because it's going to take over and

the third thing is the plan
garden suburb which

attempted I think was
his attempt to combine

the best aspects of rural life and
the village life of new.

With urban life Riverside Illinois

is of course the prototype
with his partner at the time.

Calvert Fox partnership split up.

Unfortunately.

But those three things continued on into
the twentieth century and if we look at.

I think we could parachute into
almost any American city today and

we would find that.

Those parts of cities that contain
these three elements in some

intentional relationship put it that way.

Are the best parts of our cities and and

I think that with the creation
of able to share it it it it.

It provides us with an opportunity.

Between the college architecture ins and

the Civil Environmental Engineering
to do some great things.