A panel of top design experts led by the American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA), has called for a comprehensive plan to re-vitalize the National Mall in Washington DC. According to the panel, the Mall, which stretches two miles from the US Capitol to the Lincoln Memorial, is now in a state of crisis.
At a Washington news conference, ASLA president Angela Dye said the Mall's "deplorable conditions" make it an "international embarrassment." She said that wear and tear from 25 million visitors a year has made the soil as "hard as concrete" and reduced the average life of newly-planted trees to no more than seven years. In addition, she noted, stagnant water in the reflecting pool at the base of the Capitol is a "danger to wildlife."
The six-member ASLA design panel issued its report after a two-day meeting and tour of the Mall in March. While the panel strongly supports a preliminary National Park Service plan to improve the Mall, it urged a broader vision that would also preserve the legacy of the original 1791 design plan by Pierre L'Enfant.
As panel member Gary Hilderbrand put it, "We need a comprehensive urban design plan that venerates the Capitol and venerates the Grant Memorial, one that accommodates our democratic tradition of public assembly... and one that re-connects these great symbolic components with the larger urban fabric of the District of Columbia."
Hilderbrand said the National Mall should be a "model of sustainable urban ecology," and he added that a plan is needed to re-vitalize the soil, improve the water quality, and revive or replant the "most significant stand of American elms in the United States," (600 of them).
The panel's report strongly supports the current standing ban on any new memorials or museums that have not already been approved; proposes an international design competition to reconsider plans for the Union Square/Reflecting Pool area at the base of the Capitol; calls for a centralized interpretation or visitor orientation center; and agrees with the Park Service plan to re-build the crumbing seawall around the Tidal Basin and calls on Congress to come up with the funds to bring the Mall back to life.
As the panel members noted, Congress should certainly consider using some economic stimulus funds to support the plan -- and create jobs in Washington DC in the process.
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