reshaping the american landscape to minimize disease professor robert hewitt professor hala nassar...
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Reshaping the American Landscape to Minimize Disease
Professor Robert Hewitt Professor Hala Nassar Department of Planning and Department of Planning and Landscape Architecture Landscape ArchitectureClemson University, USA Clemson University, USA
Professors Hewitt and Nassar teach courses in planning and landscape architecture at Clemson University in the United States. They are practicing landscape architects working internationally on urban design projects that address sustainability and human health. Their research interests include the influence of medicine on environmental design and international education. Their research on medicine and public health addresses both historical and contemporary changes to urban areas based on medical thought.
Background
Steady exchanges of medical knowledge between
Europe and America, and popular beliefs that
environmental modification alleviated urban
disease and improved health, contributed to the
transformation of a rapidly urbanizing
nineteenth-century America interested in
creating healthier urban landscapes.
Medical thought played a meaningful role in
this structural and functional transformation of
the nineteenth-century American urban
landscape, particularly in terms of urban
features such as hospitals, asylums,
almshouses, penitentiaries, sewerage systems,
parks, and cemeteries.
This second of two courses illustrates the
influence of medial thought on the design of 19th-
century American urban landscape through an
examination of American physician Daniel Drake,
and American landscape architect Frederick Law
Olmsted’s writings and work.
Medical Topographies in America
The publications of John Claudius Loudon and
the widely published medical topographies that
identified environmental factors
related to disease and miasma
influenced the exchange of medical
and urban design ideas
between England and AmericaFigure 9 Daniel Drake’s New Orleans Topography
Physician Daniel Drake’s (1785-1852) medical
topographies are representative of many of the
period medical studies in America referencing
conditions that associated environmental
characteristics with miasma. For example, in
these topographies, Drake described certain kinds
of soil as “necessary for autumnal fever.”
And in this work, Drake also suggested that organic soils provided “ the matter out of which a poisonous gas is formed,” and that “autumnal fever prevails most where the amount of organic matter is greatest . . .” (Drake 1854)
Mounting Etiological Evidence in America
Like Southwood Smith’s studies, Daniel Drake’s
and other physicians’ studies provided a
medical basis for the elimination,
remediation, and enhancement of
landscapes associated with specific
soil types, climates, topographies,
and settlement patternsFigure 10 Daniel Drake’sTopography of Louisville
As in England, problematic environmental
conditions were associated with standing
water, moisture in the soil, wetlands, a lack of
air circulation ( in streets and dwellings), high
population densities, and the decay of
vegetative and animal matter.
The presence of trees for oxygenation and the
mechanical cleansing of the air, wide and well-
drained streets, breezes, and wide-open spaces
were thought to prevent miasma. In America, as
the etiological evidence mounted ,so did the
impulse to develop a body of landscape and urban
design responses to the threat of disease.
New Urban Typologies
Just as physicians identified environmental
characteristics within their rationale of disease
causation, American urban designers identified
“salubrious” environmental
typologies through which to
create healthy urban areas.
Figure 11 Robert Morris Copeland’s Planfor Boston Parks and Boulevards 1852
These environmental typologies included parks
and open spaces, the planting of street trees,
the removal of urban wetlands and cemeteries,
the filling of low-lying lands, the straightening
and/or widening of streets, and the design of
new boulevards and suburbs that were less
densely populated.
Frederick Law Olmsted and Miasma
It was on the basis of these landscape typologies
that distinct urban design proposals were
provided to public health and city officials by
architects and landscape architects.
One of America’s most significant
landscape architects advocating such
proposals was Frederick Law
Olmsted.
Figure 12 Frederick Law Olmsted 1895
F L Olmsted’s (1822-1903) awareness of both
American and English medical opinion related to
disease and miasma was heightened during his
appointment as the General Secretary of the
Sanitary Commission during the American Civil War,
where he worked closely with nationally recognized
physicians and sanitarians.
Landscape Transformation
Based on Miasma Theory
Landscape characteristics
identified with miasma theory
were published by the
Commission during Olmsted’s
tenure.
Figure 13 Boston Landscape with Affinity for Miasma Prior to Transformation
Figure 14 Boston Landscape Transformed into Franklin Park
These characteristics described miasma’s affinity
for dense foliage, the power of vegetation to
obstruct its transmission, the association
between miasma and soil, and miasma’s
absorption by bodies of water. (Beverage, 1997)
Olmsted’s readings of John Loudon also
introduced him to the intricacies of miasma
theory and urban landscape design.
Urban Transformation Based
on Miasma Theory
Based on assumptions that
industrializing cities would
continue to grow Olmsted
proposed three landscape
typologies to prevent disease.
Figure 15 F L Olmsted Proposed Plan for the Riverside District in New York City
Figure 16 F L Olmsted Proposed Plan for the Riverside, Illinois
Those three typologies included: low density
urban and suburban neighborhoods, large
pleasure parks and smaller local parks, and tree-
lined parkways with connecting promenades.
According to these typologies, urban housing
needed to be less dense to permit the flow of air
to diffuse miasma.
Trees were needed throughout the city to purify
the air passing through their foliage and to act as a
barrier to miasma.
And trees in parks were needed to absorb excessive
moisture from the soil preventing the release of the
miasma.
Park Design Based on
Miasma Theory
According to Olmsted, park
edges should be planted with
trees to act as barriers to
urban miasma sources.
Figure 17 F L Olmsted Plan for Central Park, New York City
Figure 18 F L Olmsted Photo of Prospect Park, New York City
But in park interiors trees were to be planted in
small groupings to prevent the damming up of
miasma. Grass was also to be kept very short to
prevent excess moisture on its foliage, which
could create miasma. And tree-lined boulevards
were proposed to provide healthy connections
from all parts of the city to parks and less dense
housing.
These ideas shaped the American urban landscape
for at least fifty years during the 19th century. The
remnant parks, suburbs and boulevards created
through the belief in miasma theory underlying
their design still remain important parts of most
American cities; and reminds us of the important
role that medical thought plays in urban design.
References
Beverage, C E., Hoffman, C, eds. (1997) The Papers of Frederick Law Olmsted: Defending the Union, London and Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press
Cassedy, J. H. (1986) Medicine and American Growth, 1800-1860, Madison, Wis.: University of Wisconsin Press
Drake, A. (1854) A Systematic Treatise, Historical, Etiological, and Practical, on the Principal Diseases of the Interior Valley of North America, as they Appear in the Caucasian, African, Indian and Esquimaux Varieties of its Population, ed. by S. Hanbury Smith, Francis G. Smith, 2nd. Philadelphia: Lippincott, Brambo & Co
Hamlin, C. (1992) "Predisposing Causes and Public Health in Early Nineteenth-Century Medical Thought," Bull. Soc. Hist. Med., 5:1, 41-70.