Speaker 1: Welcome. This is Marsha for Radio I, and today I
Speaker 1: will be reading National Geographic magazine dated January twenty twenty six,
Speaker 1: which is donated by the publisher as a reminder. RADIOI
Speaker 1: is a reading service intended for people who are blind
Speaker 1: or have other disabilities that make it difficult to read
Speaker 1: printed material. Please join me now for the continuation of
Speaker 1: the article I began last time rethinking regional disasters. On
Speaker 1: March eleventh, twenty eleven, a section of the Pacific Plate
Speaker 1: east of the Japanese mainland shifted at a spot eighteen
Speaker 1: miles below the surface, releasing energy equivalent to two million
Speaker 1: Hiroshima bombs. Seismic waves reached Japan's main island, Hanshu less
Speaker 1: than a minute later. While around one hundred people were
Speaker 1: killed by the quake, many more in estimated twenty thousand
Speaker 1: lost their lives in the tsunami that followed. Further havoc
Speaker 1: was wrecked by the nuclear reactor at Fukushima, which suffered
Speaker 1: a core mailtdown after floodwaters snuffed out the plant's generators.
Speaker 1: The total economic damage caused by the quake exceeded three
Speaker 1: hundred billion dollars, which ultimately led to a raft of
Speaker 1: new protections and ways to use the land. With seventy
Speaker 1: with seven hundred sixty million dollars of funding in place,
Speaker 1: Big began a period of discussion with stakeholders, not just
Speaker 1: local residents, but also city agencies like the Parks Department.
Speaker 1: This work is collaborative in nature, Seagull says. In the
Speaker 1: design field, we're used to being the genius with a
Speaker 1: pen that does the sketch, but this work really requires
Speaker 1: collaboration and compromise and listening. You have to be open
Speaker 1: to relinquishing control a little bit. It's famously hard to
Speaker 1: get anything built in New York City. The Mayor's office
Speaker 1: demanded nature changes that nearly doubled the prime cost, and
Speaker 1: neighborhood residents protested not being consulted about the revised plan,
Speaker 1: but eventually the wrinkles were ironed out and construction began
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty. The first section of the ESCR project
Speaker 1: opened in twenty twenty three, followed in twenty twenty five
Speaker 1: by the first sections of East River Park, whose remaining
Speaker 1: sections are slated to open in twenty twenty seven. The
Speaker 1: whole dry line is expected to be finished sometime in
Speaker 1: the twenty thirties, few of the most creative elements from
Speaker 1: the original big U prop proposal made the transition to
Speaker 1: physical reality. Neither a reverse aquarium nor the wide overpasses
Speaker 1: were ultimately deemed practicable, but other innovative features were included,
Speaker 1: like seventy seven foot long floodgates that slide out sideways
Speaker 1: when needed, and the overall spirit of playfulness endured. As
Speaker 1: we approached the top of the berm Ziggi pauses to
Speaker 1: relieve himself on a newly planted shrub. Overhead, a subway
Speaker 1: rumbles across the Wingsburg Bridge. A couple of teenage bicyclists
Speaker 1: come rolling over the new swooping pedestrian tide arched bridge,
Speaker 1: fabricated in Italy and installed in a single night, that
Speaker 1: connects the park to the city. Two men are arranging
Speaker 1: charcoal in one of the grills, set amid an archipelago
Speaker 1: of cheerful green umbrellas. Beyond, sunlight sparkles on the Blue River.
Speaker 1: For a moment, you can almost forget that it's really
Speaker 1: all flood control. Infrastructure on Takia and the dry Line
Speaker 1: represent some of the most ambitious reconstruction projects in the world,
Speaker 1: and their proponents would like them to serve as models
Speaker 1: for how planners can dream big even in the face
Speaker 1: of urgent need. But there are a lot more places
Speaker 1: in the world that are smaller and that will never
Speaker 1: command large scale resources for redevelopment, and yet they are
Speaker 1: still managing to implement impressive visions of the future. There
Speaker 1: are some little guys out there that are doing some
Speaker 1: unbelievable stuff all around the world, says ConA Gray, president
Speaker 1: of the American Society of Landscape Architects, which held a
Speaker 1: series of conferences in twenty twenty five about disaster recovery
Speaker 1: around the United States. Take the mountain town of Paradise,
Speaker 1: home to twenty six thousand, five hundred people before it
Speaker 1: bore the brunt of the Camp megafire that swept across
Speaker 1: two hundred forty square miles of northern California in twenty eighteen.
Speaker 1: Built along the top of a wooded ridge, Paradise was
Speaker 1: essentially wiped off the map. Eighty five percent of its
Speaker 1: structures were destroyed, and eighty five people died in the aftermath.
Speaker 1: The town enlisted Pittsburgh based architecture firm Urban Design Associates
Speaker 1: to collaborate on a recovery plan that would both help
Speaker 1: prevent catastrophe from recurring and result in a place that
Speaker 1: was more economically resilient and enjoyable to live in very long.
Speaker 1: The firm's principal first visited Paradise less than a month
Speaker 1: after the fire, when the town was still sealed off.
Speaker 1: We had to go through secure ready to get in
Speaker 1: long recalls. It was like nothing I'd ever seen. The
Speaker 1: majority of buildings had been burned to the ground. There
Speaker 1: were burned out vehicles lining the streets. Everything was black,
Speaker 1: except it looked like there were pumpkins all over town.
Speaker 1: These were large propane canisters that the paint had burned
Speaker 1: off of, and then when the rains had come, they'd rusted,
Speaker 1: so there were bright orange. The rebuilding process was run
Speaker 1: by the town's government, which didn't have a lot of
Speaker 1: resources at its disposal. Unlike in on Takia, where the
Speaker 1: national government funded a citywide reconstruction, the building of Paradise
Speaker 1: was largely left to the individual lot owners, many of
Speaker 1: whom had to wait for insurance payments to come through.
Speaker 1: All the town could do was write codes and ordinances
Speaker 1: to guide change and lobby for state and federal money
Speaker 1: to fund improvement projects. We had a very large community
Speaker 1: engagement process, Long says. The overriding message that we heard
Speaker 1: was please don't redesign our town. We just want a
Speaker 1: better version of what we had before. To make the
Speaker 1: town more fire resilient. The plan called for expanding the
Speaker 1: street grid to provide for better escape routes, varying electricity
Speaker 1: infrastructure that can cause wildfires, requiring fire resistant materials in
Speaker 1: rebuilt homes, and removing dangerously flammable trees and debris from
Speaker 1: around all structures. It also envisioned an overall improvement in
Speaker 1: equity and quality of life by creating a walkable downtown,
Speaker 1: adding green space, and building a network of bike and
Speaker 1: pedestrian trails. The plan has been only partially implemented. The
Speaker 1: town is still struggling to find funding for a new
Speaker 1: sewer system and is back to less than half its
Speaker 1: pre fire population, which is holding back its ambitions for
Speaker 1: the revitalized downtown. But the healing is underway. For several years,
Speaker 1: it has been the fastest growing community in California. They're
Speaker 1: building back and there's a lot of community pride, Long says.
Speaker 1: Around the world, many other small communities are responding to
Speaker 1: natural disasters or trying to prepare for them by thinking creatively.
Speaker 1: In twenty twenty two, after having heavy flooding in eastern
Speaker 1: Kentucky and southwestern Virginia destroyed hundreds of homes and killed
Speaker 1: forty five people, officials in Kentucky allocated hundreds of millions
Speaker 1: of dollars to create eight communities totaling five hundred homes
Speaker 1: on high ground. Half of those communities will take advantage
Speaker 1: of a local feature that had long been considered an
Speaker 1: iesore and a nuisance, the flattened hilltops left behind by
Speaker 1: the strip mining of coal. Planners envisioned the sites to
Speaker 1: consist of small clusters of houses, like those being built
Speaker 1: in the Sky View Estates subdivision in the town of Hazzard,
Speaker 1: where proximity will foster a sense of community, and many
Speaker 1: of the homes will be energy efficient and solar powered,
Speaker 1: making them affordable and environmentally friendly. In some places where
Speaker 1: rebuilding seams in, there's also the question of how to
Speaker 1: honor what was lost. One remarkable memorial has arisen in Italy,
Speaker 1: where a series of destructive earthquakes tour through Sicily's Belie
Speaker 1: Valley in January nineteen sixty eight, killing hundreds and leveling
Speaker 1: the relatively isolated village of Gibbelina. Officials decided to rebuild
Speaker 1: on a site a few miles away that had better
Speaker 1: access to the road network, But the original village wasn't
Speaker 1: simply abandoned. Artist Alberto Buri began a decade's long project
Speaker 1: to turn the site into a vast concrete artwork that
Speaker 1: follows the former street grid to entomb the ruins. When
Speaker 1: it was finally finished in twenty fifteen, the project ensured
Speaker 1: no one would ever build there again. Today, however, more
Speaker 1: places are fortifying themselves for the next seemingly imminent threat.
Speaker 1: In Iceland. After an active volcanic area threatened the small
Speaker 1: fishing town of Grindavik in twenty twenty three, officials built
Speaker 1: several miles of dikes to try to divert lava, but
Speaker 1: magma flowed below the surface and dangerous cracks opened in
Speaker 1: the earth. Although the town's residents had already evacuated, lava
Speaker 1: destroyed three homes, and a heavy equipment operator fell into
Speaker 1: a crack and died. Recently, afterducting the most intensive geological
Speaker 1: study ever carried out in Iceland, officials have begun devising
Speaker 1: plans to reinhabit the town. The reconstruction plan calls for
Speaker 1: dozens of homes to be destroyed and for new building
Speaker 1: to be banned in high risk areas. Still, Grindavic residents
Speaker 1: will be on their toes for a long time. Geologists
Speaker 1: say the eruptions could continue for centuries. Unlike in eastern Hansho, Japan.
Speaker 1: The coastal Chilean city of Constitucion has also proved that
Speaker 1: it's possible to rebuild in an inviting way against multiple
Speaker 1: potential disasters after much of it was leveled by the
Speaker 1: one two punch of an earthquake and tsunami in twenty ten.
Speaker 1: To Land architect Alejandro Aravegna worked with the local communities
Speaker 1: to incorporate nature and individualism into the rebuilding and resilience effort.
Speaker 1: Instead of using concrete retaining walls to divert future floodwaters,
Speaker 1: the city planted a forest in a newly created riverfront
Speaker 1: park to reduce their speed and absorb their wave energy.
Speaker 1: To make a new housing more affordable, displaced residents were
Speaker 1: given half built houses that they could complete themselves using
Speaker 1: their own material and ideas. Today, many of them stand
Speaker 1: as completed homes. Andy Fox, a professor of landscape architecture
Speaker 1: at North Carolina State University, thinks that smaller communities that
Speaker 1: build back better after a natural disaster could be more
Speaker 1: generally useful models for future recovery efforts than big, expensive
Speaker 1: projects like the dry line. If these ideas work in
Speaker 1: really small communities that have limited resources, then you can
Speaker 1: scale them up into places that have lots more resources.
Speaker 1: They can be bigger and better, he says. In on Takia,
Speaker 1: Imren balances carefully as he walks back toward his shop
Speaker 1: along a narrow ridge of dirt separating two newly dug foundations,
Speaker 1: Passing a row of unfinished storefronts, he points to one
Speaker 1: after another. The owner of this shop died, he says.
Speaker 1: The owner of that shop died, and that one over
Speaker 1: there too, And not just the owner, but their whole families, children, parents, grandparents, everyone.
Speaker 1: This is a city where almost everyone has been profoundly traumatized.
Speaker 1: Everyone has lost loved ones, and everyone knows people whose
Speaker 1: loss has been so soul breaking that they wonder if
Speaker 1: they can go on. I talked to one Turkish architect
Speaker 1: who told me that after pouring himself into the rebuilding
Speaker 1: project for a year, he now avoids coming to Antakia
Speaker 1: because the experience of hearing people's stories has become too
Speaker 1: painful for him. In his shop, Imren swipes through photos
Speaker 1: of his friends and relatives work gone. He pauses on one,
Speaker 1: a fellow weightlifter who was coach, mentor and dear friend.
Speaker 1: After the earthquake, Immrens spent weeks looking for him. He
Speaker 1: finally located his body within the ruins of a gym
Speaker 1: fifty two days after the quake. How is it possible
Speaker 1: for a place to come back better after that kind
Speaker 1: of loss? For his part, Yemez feels that the void
Speaker 1: that has been created is all the more reason to
Speaker 1: build a better version of Ontakia to make sure that
Speaker 1: pain on such a scale is never felt here again.
Speaker 1: And this isn't the only place in the world that
Speaker 1: needs this kind of vision. There is so much damage
Speaker 1: that needs to be repaired, not just from natural disasters,
Speaker 1: but from human made ones as well. So many places
Speaker 1: need to be made safe and good. So many things
Speaker 1: are doable, he says, so many things are changeable. What
Speaker 1: Yemez and his colleagues are doing in Antarchia is an experiment,
Speaker 1: and they hope that if it's a success, it can
Speaker 1: be replica by others. The idea is to heal and
Speaker 1: create a place where people can be secure and lead
Speaker 1: their best lives together as a community. This can be
Speaker 1: a model, he says, for any city in the world
Speaker 1: that needs it. Yumez anticipates that the first shops in
Speaker 1: the rebuilt region will begin opening in February, with residents
Speaker 1: moving into their new homes soon after. Even with all
Speaker 1: the pain, he feels optimistic when this is finished, I
Speaker 1: think it will be a happy place for people, a
Speaker 1: place that connects human to human. Grin Davik, Iceland volcanic eruptions.
Speaker 1: When a volcanic area rumbled to life in twenty twenty three,
Speaker 1: the Icelandic government began constructing a series of barriers designed
Speaker 1: to hold back the flow of lava. Over the past
Speaker 1: two years, nine eruptions have released lava flows that have
Speaker 1: threatened Grindavic. By carefully studying the area's geology, scientists and
Speaker 1: engineers are determining where the town may be impacted next.
Speaker 1: Officials are using maps of potential danger zones to decide
Speaker 1: where residents can safely return. Paradise, California, creating a new
Speaker 1: standard the camp fire of twenty eighteen was both the
Speaker 1: deadliest and most destructive wild lands fire in California history,
Speaker 1: with eighty five fatalities, most of them in the town
Speaker 1: of Paradise, an unincorporated community until nineteen seventy nine. The
Speaker 1: town had grown up without a master plan, and aspects
Speaker 1: of its layout would prove dangerous when fires swept over it.
Speaker 1: Many of its streets, for instance, ended in cul de sacs,
Speaker 1: from which escape was practically impossible. A post fire long
Speaker 1: term recovery plan has eliminated dead ends and calls for
Speaker 1: other improvements yet to be implemented, such as buried electrical
Speaker 1: transmission lines. To reduce future fire risk, new homes must
Speaker 1: be surrounded by defensible space, free of flammable vegetation, and
Speaker 1: built of fire resistant materials. Other measures like bike and
Speaker 1: pedestrian trails will increase the residence quality of life. Next article.
Speaker 1: Elephants talk with their trunks. A new study shows that
Speaker 1: they exhibit communication traits once thought unique to primates for years.
Speaker 1: Scientists believe that when elephants swung their trunks or flapped
Speaker 1: their ears at humans in certain scenarios, they might be
Speaker 1: gesturing to communicate their wants, but no one had proved
Speaker 1: this in experiments. Then two years ago, a research team
Speaker 1: began studying semi captive African savannah elephants near Victoria Falls
Speaker 1: in Zimbabwe. The animals were offered either a tray with
Speaker 1: apples or an empty one. If given the empty tray,
Speaker 1: they would use up to thirty eight different gestures to
Speaker 1: ask for the apples, but only when the experimenter was there.
Speaker 1: The most surprising thing was that they were so creative,
Speaker 1: says University of Vienna biologist Vesta Julietti, a lead researcher.
Speaker 1: It's as if they're really thinking about what to do next.
Speaker 1: Until now, such flexible intentional signa using many gestures had
Speaker 1: only been documented in apes and a few other primates.
Speaker 1: As Eluteri noted, the discovery that this kind of communication
Speaker 1: isn't unique to primates opens the door to exploring how
Speaker 1: this behavior exists outside of the elephant human dynamic. Next,
Speaker 1: the team will study wild elephants to see if, as expected,
Speaker 1: they gesture to one another during activities like foraging, greeting,
Speaker 1: and playing. This by Kelsey Nowakowski. Next how to build
Speaker 1: the perfect hike Around the world. Trail designers are quietly
Speaker 1: employing surprising techniques to engineer awe. You've probably felt it
Speaker 1: without even knowing why. Inside the creative science that's transforming
Speaker 1: your time. Outside this article by Gloria Lieu. In southern Patagodia,
Speaker 1: a trail ascends a mountain to a renowned and beautiful lake.
Speaker 1: The trail was formed over several decades by climber's intent
Speaker 1: on scaling the ground spires of Argentina's Fitzroy Chain. Climbers,
Speaker 1: being who they are, walked straight up the mountain from
Speaker 1: their camp at the chalky and rushing Rio Blanco below.
Speaker 1: In the nineteen nineties, hikers began to outnumber the climbers,
Speaker 1: drawn by the site of the Emerald Lake, surrounded by
Speaker 1: an amphitheater of rock and ice. The trail eventually took
Speaker 1: the name of the lake Laguna de ros Trace, colloquially
Speaker 1: translated as Lake of the Three Peaks, and over the
Speaker 1: next thirty years, the number of visitors who flocked to
Speaker 1: the nearby town of el Chatten to hike the fourteen
Speaker 1: mile out and back trail swelled from roughly thirty a
Speaker 1: day to three thousand. As these crowds trampled through the
Speaker 1: vegetation exposed soil that was carried away by wind and water.
Speaker 1: Parts of the trail gradually expanded into a rock strewn
Speaker 1: abrasion as wide as the two lane highway that leads
Speaker 1: into town. On a cloudy March morning, Ted Jed Talbot,
Speaker 1: forty nine, peered through a device called a clinometer that
Speaker 1: he wore on a necklace as he scouted the woods
Speaker 1: around Laguna Denus traces most problematic pinch point, the rutted
Speaker 1: and extremely steep final one point two miles to the lake.
Speaker 1: He and his partner on the project, forty five year
Speaker 1: old Willie Bittner, were using clinometers to shoot grades or
Speaker 1: find a sustainably grated track across the slope. The pair
Speaker 1: of work together to build new trails and rethink deteriorating
Speaker 1: old ones for decades, and they resemble one another in
Speaker 1: both appearance and spirit, Bearded and woodsy, with a wholesome
Speaker 1: field savviness of Boy Scout troop leaders. Bittner walked ahead
Speaker 1: of Talbot, stopping several yards away. Talbot squinted through the
Speaker 1: clinometer and called adjustments. We can go higher, he said,
Speaker 1: until Bittner reached a ten percent rise about the limit
Speaker 1: of a standard treadmill. Then Talbot walked to him while
Speaker 1: running the GPS tracking amph Gaia on his phone, so
Speaker 1: that as he moved, the app mapped his route up
Speaker 1: the hillside. By the end of the day, ideally it
Speaker 1: would be a track that would become a trail. A
Speaker 1: lot of trail builders rough out a line on a
Speaker 1: map before they venture into the field, but Talbot rarely
Speaker 1: sketches before he scouts, purposely avoiding preconceiving notions of a
Speaker 1: route before he can walk the area. He wants to
Speaker 1: see where the terrain leads him. I feel like the
Speaker 1: guidance from the landscape versus a line I draw in
Speaker 1: the office, leads to a different result, he says. Talbot
Speaker 1: is among the top designers in the booming professional trail
Speaker 1: building industry from the United States to Saudi Arabia to Romania.
Speaker 1: Community planners have realized that finding affordable ways to bring
Speaker 1: people back in touch with nature not only boosts their happiness,
Speaker 1: but also represents a solid investment for tourism. In the
Speaker 1: past decade alone, Talbot has led the design on two
Speaker 1: of the field's stand out projects, both in remote Patagonian locations.
Speaker 1: More than sixty miles of new trails in Perito Moreno
Speaker 1: National Park, created from twenty seventeen to twenty nineteen, and
Speaker 1: over thirty miles of trails around Cave of the Hands,
Speaker 1: a UNESCO World Heritage site in the Pinturas River Canyon,
Speaker 1: designed and built from twenty twenty to twenty twenty four.
Speaker 1: The Perito Moreno project, in particular, was a tour de
Speaker 1: force of trail building in a notoriously rugged and remote
Speaker 1: environment in just two seasons. Talbot and Bittner designed the
Speaker 1: trails and also trained an Argentinian crew of over one hundred,
Speaker 1: many of them mountain guides, to hand build them. The
Speaker 1: nonprofit American Trails recognized it as the most extensive trails
Speaker 1: development and training effort in Patagonian history when granting it
Speaker 1: an International Design Award in twenty nineteen. Now, Talbot has
Speaker 1: been hired by a coalition of El Chatin locals to
Speaker 1: propose a redesign of the famed Laguna Delos Trace trail
Speaker 1: for Argentina's and Ministracion de Park Nazionales a p N.
Speaker 1: The main problem with the current path is at its
Speaker 1: route straight up the mountain channels water and forcess hikers
Speaker 1: to displace rocks and dirt as they scrabble up the
Speaker 1: steep slope. The section Talbot is assessing rises about fifteen
Speaker 1: hundred feet and at some points attains the steepness of
Speaker 1: a black diamond ski run. It culminates in a near
Speaker 1: vertical rock staircase that becomes a treacherous creek when it rains,
Speaker 1: and a two way traffic jam during peak hours, often
Speaker 1: at the same time. The eroded trail is dangerous and
Speaker 1: also not much fun to hike. The energy on this
Speaker 1: final section is anxious. Talbot tells me hikers are stuck
Speaker 1: in a bottle neck and its physically gruelling too. As
Speaker 1: we walked through the thick forest of Linga beech trees,
Speaker 1: Talbot says, you have one chance to make a scar
Speaker 1: on this landscape. I don't take that responsibility lightly. He
Speaker 1: aims to make that scar. Surgical trail builders want to
Speaker 1: design and build roots that transport and delight us and
Speaker 1: stand up to the accumulated impacts of our footfall. The
Speaker 1: final project is more than a path through the woods,
Speaker 1: as a reflection of our relationship with the natural world.
Speaker 1: Erosion in is the nemesis of any trail unmitigated, it
Speaker 1: can turn the most beautiful track into a gaping wound.
Speaker 1: Water Winded people are the culprits, but water is the
Speaker 1: most problematic, relentlessly flowing down the path of least resistance
Speaker 1: and carving deep ruts. Focused water can do more damage
Speaker 1: to a trail than any user, states the International Mountain
Speaker 1: Bike Association's Trail Solutions Manual. Most trail building techniques thus
Speaker 1: focus on managing hydrology through grade A sleeps a slope's steepness.
Speaker 1: A sustainable trail follows guidelines that can read like a
Speaker 1: civil engineering manual. The half rule, for example, states that
Speaker 1: the grade of a trail shouldn't exceed half the grade
Speaker 1: of the slope it's built on, lest its channel water
Speaker 1: instead of shedding it. Trails also incorporate rolling grade reversals
Speaker 1: undulations that drain water at low points and are out sloped,
Speaker 1: meaning the outer edge is slightly downhill, in order to
Speaker 1: facilitate water shedding. They're generally no steeper than ten percent
Speaker 1: on average, which prevents user caused erosion. Sustained grades greater
Speaker 1: than that will cause hikers to loosen more dirt as
Speaker 1: they work harder to travel uphill or down. Many trails
Speaker 1: in the United States weren't built with these principles in mind,
Speaker 1: in part because they weren't built at all. Early hiking
Speaker 1: trails often subsumed what are called legacy trails or old
Speaker 1: game trails, Native American paths, and other human and animal thoroughfares.
Speaker 1: Trails that were constructed beginning in the nineteenth century, especially
Speaker 1: in the Northeast, often went straight up mountains. While many
Speaker 1: of the practices of sustainable trail building were established from
Speaker 1: the nineteen twenties onward by trail builders in agencies raging
Speaker 1: from the Civil Civilian Conservation Corps to the U. S.
Speaker 1: Forest Service, Arguably no group did more to popularize the
Speaker 1: idea of sustainable trail building in the modern era than
Speaker 1: mountain bikers. The International Mountain Bicycling Association organized in nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty eight in response to hiker's fears that cyclists would
Speaker 1: destroy trails, and it helped promote guidelines through its nationwide
Speaker 1: trail building program and its Trail Solutions Handbook. In the
Speaker 1: nineties and early two thousands, when sustainable design was taking
Speaker 1: hold of trail building, a lot of us had the
Speaker 1: zell of the newly converted recalls Alaska Bay's trail builder
Speaker 1: Gabe Travis, who helped Talbot design trails in Perito Moreno.
Speaker 1: But it soon became apparent that trails adhering blindly to
Speaker 1: the rules of sustainable design were getting cut by users.
Speaker 1: We started to realize that meeting the needs of the
Speaker 1: intended users just as important a rule of sustainability, Travis says.
Speaker 1: Over time, trail designers became savvier in the art of
Speaker 1: managing hiker behavior and designing toward the goals of a
Speaker 1: trail's target user group. Because if a trail doesn't go
Speaker 1: where users want to go, or how up or down
Speaker 1: a hill efficiently, for instance, for a fourteen er summit trail,
Speaker 1: they will create their own roots, called social trails or
Speaker 1: desire lines. Desire lines or lack thereof, are the evidence
Speaker 1: of a trail. Trail builders grasp of not only the
Speaker 1: hard sciences of the trade hydrology, geology, and geography, but
Speaker 1: also psychology. Trail builders know you can't just stop people
Speaker 1: from doing what they want to do, says Robert Moore,
Speaker 1: author of On Trails and Exploration. Hences blocking desire lines
Speaker 1: in New York City parks, for example, simply get stopped down,
Speaker 1: the art becomes shaping people's desires instead of thwarting it.
Speaker 1: War says, if we do all this stuff really well,
Speaker 1: people will never know we did anything. Says Colorado, Colorado
Speaker 1: based trail builder Scott Gordon, they don't feel like they're
Speaker 1: being managed. In Perito Moreno, Talbot highlighted a clumsy attempt
Speaker 1: at user management, putting to what he calls a gardening
Speaker 1: path that was built after his tenure, a trail bordered
Speaker 1: by pebbles on either side. Besides drawing the hiker's eye
Speaker 1: from the environment, bordered trails trap water and feel like
Speaker 1: a prison for the hiker, he says, borrowing an idea
Speaker 1: from trail builder Troy Scott Parker, author of natural surface
Speaker 1: Trails by Design, rebellious hikers will walk outside them. Talbot
Speaker 1: prefers to use confidence markers, large stones placed intermittently to
Speaker 1: suggest the route when needed. It's even better if he
Speaker 1: can just hide the trail from you. And Perito Moreno,
Speaker 1: Talbot and Bittner design the trails to be invisible from
Speaker 1: other points in the park by nestling them among the terrain.
Speaker 1: They'd flag a section of trail, walk to another vantage point,
Speaker 1: and make sure they couldn't see the flags. Not only
Speaker 1: does this tactic create a sense of wilderness and solitude,
Speaker 1: but hikers are less likely to cut a trail if
Speaker 1: they can't see where it's going. Directional changes turns can
Speaker 1: also interrupt flow and encourage trail cutting, so Talbot deploys
Speaker 1: them thoughtfully, avoiding stacks of frequent and visible switchbacks. When
Speaker 1: he does turn a trail, he tries to wind it
Speaker 1: around a small rise in terrain so the exit can't
Speaker 1: be seen from the entrance. He also favors climbing turns,
Speaker 1: wide uphill bends where a hiker is gaining elevation while
Speaker 1: turning over switchbacks, which kill more momentum and are easier
Speaker 1: to cut. But it's a tenuous balance. This concludes readings
Speaker 1: from National Geographic Magazine for today. Your reader has been Marsha.
Speaker 1: Thank you for listening, Keep on listening, and have a
Speaker 1: great day.