Wednesday, February 13, 2008

Why do they call them Parkways when you Drive on them?

This was one of the "101 Questions To Ponder During Humanities Class: Volumes 1 and 2" that fellow Stillwater High School classmates and I scribbled into a notebook that I would love to find! As far as the answer to the question --I think I have a pretty good idea why they call them parkways here in the Twin's because these spaces are practically parks that happen to have roads going through them. Mature trees create canopies over the street, grassy medians separate lanes of traffic and sometimes have benches and paths that encourage pedestrians to be in the middle of the road. They force you to slow down and take in the lovely natural and residential surroundings (it's no surprise that nicer homes are built along the parkways--who wouldn't want their street to feel like a park?!?)

As usual, I have none of my own photos to show you my favorite parkways in the Twin Cities. But the University of Minnesota Design Center did a regional parkway compendium in 2003 called "Community Parkways: An Urban Design Survey of Green Streets in the Twin Cities"
that includes illustrations.

My top 5 favorite parkways:
  • Minnehaha Parkway (Minneapolis)
  • East and West River Roads (Minneapolis and St. Paul)
  • Midway Parkway (St. Paul)
  • Stinson Boulevard (north of 35W in Minneapolis)
  • The Chain of Lakes portion of the Grand Rounds byway (Minneapolis).

Minneapolis has this handy parkway map of all the roads and portions of roads that are classified as parkways.

There's also a YouTube video of someone driving on the Minneapolis Parkways. It makes me nauseous to watch, but you can get a feel of what these roads are like.

Images: Top, Summit Avenue, by Tim. Bottom, Minnehaha Parkway, by R. Bunney.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Since you are into parkways maybe you can tell me why we have "Mississippi River Boulevard Parkway". How about "Grand Avenue Street" or Summit Avenue Boulevard"?