Johanson's Brockton project on the BOSTON HERALD front page.
(Republished with permission of the BOSTON HERALD.)

"(Rocky) Marciano's early training runs through ethnically divided neighborhoods and across a variety of landscapes became a unifying image through which Johanson could conceive her project. She proposed "The Rocky Marciano Trail" as a biological corridor connecting disparate neighborhoods and disrupted ecosystems. "Green Streets" could be formed along existing thoroughfares (while) "magnet sites"... were designed to induce tourism, provide infrastructure and layer multiple community benefits. A second major unifying system, reconnected waterways, involved daylighting brooks and restoring wetlands... In 1999, writing on "The City as an Ecological Art Form: The Rocky Marciano Trail" for the French Ministry of Planning Journal LES ANNALES DE LA RECHERCHE URBAINE, Johanson says: "Even within cities there is no reason why nature should be relegated to a decorative amenity when its desire is to be functional and productive."

Copyright © 2006, Caffyn Kelley, ART AND SURVIVAL: PATRICIA JOHANSON'S ENVIRONMENTAL PROJECTS, Islands Institute, Salt Spring Island, B.C., Canada