C-SPAN 3 hosts Iowa State professor's modern road design lecture

C-SPAN 3 will show a lecture from a professor at Iowa State University, discussing “From Parkways to Freeways: Modern Road Design” as a feature with the network’s back-to-school week of American History TV.

Heidi Homann, a landscape architecture associate professor, gave the lecture. The presentation discusses the various changes that have happened in how the U.S. has designed its roads since the 1800s. It is only recently that parkways (or park-like transportation corridors) have transformed to modern-day freeways.

This shift has made a significant change on how professional landscape architects work. Now curving, tree-lined roadways that display scenic natural landscapes have changed into faster, straighter highways that will handle more traffic.

Hohmann received her bachelor’s in molecular biophysics and biochemistry from Yale and earned her master of landscape architecture  at Harvard University. In 2000, she stopped her urban designer private practice to teach at Iowa State University.

The program will air during the network’s weekend “Lectures in History” on Oct. 29 at 7 p.m. and 11 p.m. The lecture was first given in April in a “History of Modern Landscapes” class with 42 ISU landscape architecture students.