New Directions in EcoPlanning Annual Lecture A Great Green Cloud: The Rise and Fall of the City of Elms March 8, 2012

Lecture by Thomas J. Campanella
THURSDAY, MARCH 8, 6:00 PM
Decades before Olmsted park, Yankee villagers planted elm trees on their streets and commons to forge a union of rus and urbe, i.e. the rustic and the urban. The trees brought about “a kind of compromise between town and country,” observed Charles Dickens, as if each had met the other halfway and shaken hands upon it. The result was that lost masterpiece of American urbanism, “Elm Street.” Thomas J. Campanella, Associate Professor of Urban Planning and Design at the University of North Carolina, will explore elm culture in the U.S., and how our love affair with this giant nearly brought it to the edge of disappearance. Reception to follow.

Free and open to the public, Harvard Museum of Natural History, 24 Oxford Street. Free parking available in the 52 Oxford Street garage. Supported by a gift from Michael Dyett (AB ’68, MRP ’72) and Heidi Richardson.