The Camaro in the Pasture: Speculations on the Cultural Landscape of America
Robert Riley has been a renowned figure in landscape studies for over fifty years, valued for his perceptive, learned, and highly entertaining articles, reviews, and essays. Much of Riley’s work originally ran in Landscape, the pioneering magazine at which Riley succeeded the great geographer J. B. Jackson as editor. The Camaro in the Pasture is the first book to collect this compelling author’s writing. With diverse topics ranging from science-fiction fantasies to problems of academic design research, the essays in this volume cover an entire half-century of Riley’s observations on the American landscape. The essays—several of which are new or previously unpublished—interpret changing rationales for urban beautification, the evolution and transformation of the strip, the development of a global landscape of golf and resorts replacing an older search for exoticism, and the vernacular landscape as wallpaper rather than quilt. Ultimately, Riley envisions our future landscape as a rapidly fluctuating electronic net draped over the more slowly changing and familiar land- and building-based system. Throughout, Riley emphasizes the vernacular landscape of contemporary America—how we have shaped and use it, what it is becoming, and, above all, how we experience it.

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The Camaro in the Pasture: Speculations on the Cultural Landscape of America
Robert Riley has been a renowned figure in landscape studies for over fifty years, valued for his perceptive, learned, and highly entertaining articles, reviews, and essays. Much of Riley’s work originally ran in Landscape, the pioneering magazine at which Riley succeeded the great geographer J. B. Jackson as editor. The Camaro in the Pasture is the first book to collect this compelling author’s writing. With diverse topics ranging from science-fiction fantasies to problems of academic design research, the essays in this volume cover an entire half-century of Riley’s observations on the American landscape. The essays—several of which are new or previously unpublished—interpret changing rationales for urban beautification, the evolution and transformation of the strip, the development of a global landscape of golf and resorts replacing an older search for exoticism, and the vernacular landscape as wallpaper rather than quilt. Ultimately, Riley envisions our future landscape as a rapidly fluctuating electronic net draped over the more slowly changing and familiar land- and building-based system. Throughout, Riley emphasizes the vernacular landscape of contemporary America—how we have shaped and use it, what it is becoming, and, above all, how we experience it.

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The Camaro in the Pasture: Speculations on the Cultural Landscape of America

The Camaro in the Pasture: Speculations on the Cultural Landscape of America

by Robert B. Riley
The Camaro in the Pasture: Speculations on the Cultural Landscape of America

The Camaro in the Pasture: Speculations on the Cultural Landscape of America

by Robert B. Riley

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Overview

Robert Riley has been a renowned figure in landscape studies for over fifty years, valued for his perceptive, learned, and highly entertaining articles, reviews, and essays. Much of Riley’s work originally ran in Landscape, the pioneering magazine at which Riley succeeded the great geographer J. B. Jackson as editor. The Camaro in the Pasture is the first book to collect this compelling author’s writing. With diverse topics ranging from science-fiction fantasies to problems of academic design research, the essays in this volume cover an entire half-century of Riley’s observations on the American landscape. The essays—several of which are new or previously unpublished—interpret changing rationales for urban beautification, the evolution and transformation of the strip, the development of a global landscape of golf and resorts replacing an older search for exoticism, and the vernacular landscape as wallpaper rather than quilt. Ultimately, Riley envisions our future landscape as a rapidly fluctuating electronic net draped over the more slowly changing and familiar land- and building-based system. Throughout, Riley emphasizes the vernacular landscape of contemporary America—how we have shaped and use it, what it is becoming, and, above all, how we experience it.


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780813938073
Publisher: University of Virginia Press
Publication date: 05/18/2017
Pages: 184
Product dimensions: 5.90(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.50(d)
Age Range: 18 Years

About the Author

Robert B. Riley, Professor Emeritus of Landscape Architecture and Architecture at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, is coeditor, with Terence Young, of Theme Park Landscapes: Antecedents and Variations.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments xi

Openings 1

On the Value of the Vernacular: Some Skeptical Thoughts 2

Autoterritoriality 8

Understanding the Strip 11

The Urban Cosmeticians: Or, The City Beautiful Rides Again 18

The Search for Certainty 22

Green Chaos 30

What History Should We Teach and Why? 31

Sex in the Garden 43

Dreams of Tomorrow 43

Reflections on the Landscapes of Memory 52

Around the House 68

From Sacred Grove to Disney World: The Search for Garden Meaning 69

On Criticism 90

The Camaro in the Pasture 92

The Indeterminate Eye: Place and People in Three Decades of Landscape Photography 99

Authority and Insecurity 110

Some Thoughts on Scholarship and Publication 111

About Palimpsests 120

Speculations on the New American Landscapes 121

Vision, Culture, and Landscape 138

Garden, Meaning, and Symbols 145

Mystiques and Constructs 146

The Postmodern Landscape 153

The Goose and the Dish 154

Closings 157

Readings 161

Interviews

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