It's Your Park - Get Involved

The National Park Service has announced plans for a major update to the National Mall in Washington, DC, home to the White House and Capitol grounds, Smithsonian Museums, and national monuments from the Vietnam Veterans' Memorial to the Jefferson, Lincoln, and FDR Memorials, and many more. The public is now invited to participate in the plans for the future.  Congress has already authorized several new Mall additions, including memorials to George Mason, Martin Luther King Jr. and Black Patriots of the Revolutionary War.  National Park Service Director Mary Bomar said the mall "symbolizes our nation and our freedoms," and she added that the Park Service "wants to give the American public the chance to help determine how future generations will continue to honor, commemorate, and celebrate and enjoy this national treasure."

Exactly what that's going to mean is as yet unclear.

(photo: NPS)

On  November 15th, the NPS is hosting a symposium in Washington DC to launch the new initiative. National and international experts in the fields of landscape architecture, urban planning, turf management (that they DO need), and related industries have been invited for the initial round of discussions.

A new Park Service web site is now up and running which will provide updates on the plan's progress and solicit feedback from the public.

If anything, this new plan will inevitably change the landscape and it is certain to create a lot of controversy.  The latest additions to the mall are the World War II Memorial, the National Museum of the American Indian and the National Garden, which just opened last month.  As anyone who lives in DC can tell you, the Mall is running out of space, and anyone who's pushing for another commemorative something wants THEIR memorial to be squeezed in to the already crowded space right at the center of things.

The last major Mall update was the plan conceived by the McMillan Commission at the beginning of the 20th century, which greatly expanded the Mall's area, determined the placement of the Lincoln and Jefferson Memorials, and opened the Mall's long vista by removing a lot of big 19th century trees and temporary buildings from World Wars I and II.  That vista has now been somewhat blocked by the World War II Memorial and all the monuments are now surrounded by a multitude of ugly new security barriers.

Let's hope that this new proposal will guarntee the open character of the Mall for future generations, where tens of thousands can gather freely for celebrations, protests, speeches, inaugurations and even simple visits to the Mall's wonderful showcase of American culture and history.