Consuming Landscapes

For better or worse, windshields have become a major frame for viewing the nonhuman world. The view from the road is one of the main ways in which we experience our environments. These vistas are the result of deliberate historical forces, and humans have shaped them as they simultaneously sought to...

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语言:英语
出版: Johns Hopkins University Press 2022
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collection Directory of Open Access Books
description For better or worse, windshields have become a major frame for viewing the nonhuman world. The view from the road is one of the main ways in which we experience our environments. These vistas are the result of deliberate historical forces, and humans have shaped them as they simultaneously sought to be transformed by them. In Consuming Landscapes, Thomas Zeller explores how what we see while driving reflects how we view our societies and ourselves, the role that consumerism plays in our infrastructure, and ideas about reshaping the environment in the twentieth century. Zeller breaks new ground by comparing the driving experience and the history of landscaped roads in the United States and Germany, two major automotive countries. He focuses specifically on the Blue Ridge Parkway in the United States and the German Alpine Road as case studies. When the automobile was still young, an early twentieth-century group of designers—landscape architects, civil engineers, and planners—sought to build scenic infrastructures, or roads that would immerse drivers in the landscapes that they were traversing. As more Americans and Europeans owned cars and drove them, however, they became less interested in enchanted views; safety became more important than beauty. Clashes between designers and drivers resulted in different visions of landscapes made for automobiles. As strange as it may seem to twenty-first-century readers, many professionals in the early twentieth century envisioned cars and roads, if properly managed, as saviors of the environment. Consuming Landscapes illustrates how the meaning of infrastructures changed as a result of use and consumption. Such changes indicate a deep ambivalence toward the automobile and roads, prompting the question: can cars and roads bring us closer to nature while deeply altering it at the same time?
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spelling doab-20.500.12854ir-932752024-04-11T15:11:32Z Consuming Landscapes History of engineering & technology thema EDItEUR::T Technology, Engineering, Agriculture, Industrial processes::TB Technology: general issues::TBX History of engineering and technology For better or worse, windshields have become a major frame for viewing the nonhuman world. The view from the road is one of the main ways in which we experience our environments. These vistas are the result of deliberate historical forces, and humans have shaped them as they simultaneously sought to be transformed by them. In Consuming Landscapes, Thomas Zeller explores how what we see while driving reflects how we view our societies and ourselves, the role that consumerism plays in our infrastructure, and ideas about reshaping the environment in the twentieth century. Zeller breaks new ground by comparing the driving experience and the history of landscaped roads in the United States and Germany, two major automotive countries. He focuses specifically on the Blue Ridge Parkway in the United States and the German Alpine Road as case studies. When the automobile was still young, an early twentieth-century group of designers—landscape architects, civil engineers, and planners—sought to build scenic infrastructures, or roads that would immerse drivers in the landscapes that they were traversing. As more Americans and Europeans owned cars and drove them, however, they became less interested in enchanted views; safety became more important than beauty. Clashes between designers and drivers resulted in different visions of landscapes made for automobiles. As strange as it may seem to twenty-first-century readers, many professionals in the early twentieth century envisioned cars and roads, if properly managed, as saviors of the environment. Consuming Landscapes illustrates how the meaning of infrastructures changed as a result of use and consumption. Such changes indicate a deep ambivalence toward the automobile and roads, prompting the question: can cars and roads bring us closer to nature while deeply altering it at the same time? 2022-10-25T09:05:11Z 2022-10-25T09:05:11Z 2022 book ONIX_20221025_9781421445649_128 9781421445649 https://directory.doabooks.org/handle/20.500.12854/93275 eng image/jpeg Attribution 4.0 International https://muse.jhu.edu/book/103002 Johns Hopkins University Press 10.1353/book.103002 10.1353/book.103002 1f9b1002-ec35-4fcf-94be-32cfd0a1dfd3 9781421445649 264 open access
spellingShingle History of engineering & technology
thema EDItEUR::T Technology, Engineering, Agriculture, Industrial processes::TB Technology: general issues::TBX History of engineering and technology
Consuming Landscapes
title Consuming Landscapes
title_full Consuming Landscapes
title_fullStr Consuming Landscapes
title_full_unstemmed Consuming Landscapes
title_short Consuming Landscapes
title_sort consuming landscapes
topic History of engineering & technology
thema EDItEUR::T Technology, Engineering, Agriculture, Industrial processes::TB Technology: general issues::TBX History of engineering and technology
topic_facet History of engineering & technology
thema EDItEUR::T Technology, Engineering, Agriculture, Industrial processes::TB Technology: general issues::TBX History of engineering and technology
url ONIX_20221025_9781421445649_128