Theme Towns: The Pitfalls and Alternatives of Image Making

Engler, Miriam

Theme Towns: The Pitfalls and Alternatives of Image Making

File

1994_EnglerM_ThemeTowns.pdf (1.54 MB)

Date

1994

Authors

Engler, Miriam

Authors

Person

Engler, Miriam

Professor Emeritus

Organizational Units

Organizational Unit

Landscape Architecture

Landscape Architecture is an environmental design discipline. Landscape architects actively shape the human environment: they map, interpret, imagine, draw, build, conceptualize, synthesize, and project ideas that transform landscapes. The design process involves creative expression that derives from an understanding of the context of site (or landscape) ecosystems, cultural frameworks, functional systems, and social dynamics. Students in our program learn to change the world around them by re-imagining and re-shaping the landscape to enhance its aesthetic and functional dimensions, ecological health, cultural significance, and social relevance. The Department of Landscape Architecture was established as a department in the Division of Agriculture in 1929. In 1975, the department's name was changed to the Department of Landscape Architecture and Community Planning. In 1978, community planning was spun off from the department, and the Department of Landscape Architecture became part of the newly established College of Design. Dates of Existence: 1929–present

Department

Landscape Architecture

Abstract

In a Small Town article published a few years ago, Marti Willetts of Albia, Iowa, described her experience of living on the town square in a restored second-floor apartment: "It's just like living in Disney world. I look through my front windows at the wonderful Albia Square and feel as if I'm in Disney's Main Street U.S.A. with the little shops and people walking around and things going on." But Marti did not realize that Disney's Main Street image is based on those real images existing in small towns like Albia. Mrs. Willetts' description expresses the dependence people have on images shaped by commercial settings and the mass media and also exemplifies a desire of people who live in small towns to revive community identity and the lost vitality of their downtowns.