Green trails as catalyst: revitalization of six post-mining towns in Illinois

This thesis aims to illustrate a strategy for revitalizing post-mining towns for their important history and culture. Since being surrounded with features from the past is considered an excellent way to learn about the environment and history (Lynch 1972, 53), this thesis proposes to generate green trails to connect the features and form a story-telling setting, exhibiting the post-mining towns’ past, thus revitalizing the post-industrial towns’ culture. Afterwards, by generating green trails and programming by using the strategy of incremental urbanism, the post-mining towns could also be economically, industrially, and academically revitalized. The study site for this thesis includes six mining towns in Illinois on the outskirts of the Chicago metropolitan region: Braidwood, Coal City, Diamond, Carbon Hill, Godley, and Braceville. Each of the towns once had a very proud industrial history. However, as industrial economy continues to change over decades, old industrial sites may get lost in the transition; cultures related to people’s lives in the old industrial era then change as well. Instead of ignoring the towns’ important history, there is an opportunity to reveal it and make the towns culture playgrounds for nearby metropolitan cities, in this case, Chicago. To achieve revitalization, these important post-industrial towns are proposed as part of the regional cultural heritage, to be preserved and probably designed. Based on theories of Kevin Lynch and Rem Koolhaas, as well as information from site and regional surveys, the strategy developed in this thesis could also be applied in other post-mining towns.

Name thesis:degree_name

M.L.A.

Level thesis:degree_level

Thesis

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Landscape Architecture

Grantor

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2013

Author dc:creator

• Huang, Yuling

Contributors dc:contributor

• Deming, Margaret E.

• Post-mining landscape
• Revitalization
• Green trails
• Incremental urbanism
• Cultural heritage.

Statement dc:rights

• Copyright 2013 Yuling Huang

Language dc:language

en

Handle dc:identifier

http://hdl.handle.net/2142/45370

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/45370