How Ray Irvin Turned Indianapolis into the Greenway Capital of the World!
Why Ray Irvin is known internationally as Mr. Greenway
In addition to Hudnut's amateur sports initiative, city leaders had also begun to think that the manufacture of information and not hard goods was the future. For this they knew that would require a different work force of well educated, younger people. But how could they make their city attractive to them? How could they interest them in all the parks the city was busy overhauling?
It was here that landscape developer, Ray Irvin, saw a solution. His thinking was shaped by famed urban studies author/theorist, Richard Florida, who maintained that the kind of people Indianapolis was looking to attract honored the bicycle. They saw it as a potent symbol of identity and status.
In having his listening turned up for what Florida called the ‘young creatives’, he was learning what the needs were of these future drivers of the city he and his group were envisioning. It was here that he shared Florida’s vision that they would become less reliant on the car in their transportation decisions. He started to lean how their mobility needs were different from those who drove automobiles.
Irvin knew if he could get infrastructure for cyclists built, the smart young people he was looking to attract would come. He began to wonder what he could do along the edges of the polluted river too shallow for boat traffic that ran through the center of town. Or if there was anything he could do with the many streams that fed it that were strewn with litter, car tires and other debris.
In daring to see a radical new Indianapolis that could reverse the slide it had taken to its being a worn out, contaminated waste land, besides serving the travel needs of young people, he also knew it had to be beautified. It was here that Ray’s thinking was also influenced by George Kessler, the world famous city planner, talked about above. Celebrated for being able to blend natural landscapes with transportation corridors and places where large numbers of people congregate, Kessler’s projects can be found in 23 states, Mexico, China and in 100 different cities.
With the city’s broad expanse of parks as his canvas, as a real life expression of Goethe’s words -
Whatever you can do or dream you can,
begin it, boldness has genius power and magic in it
Irvin drew up the Indy Greenway Master Plan. It would not only access all the new sports facilities (swimming pools, gymnasiums, disc golf, ballfields etc) in the parks, but also serve the transportation needs of the new workforce he and other city fathers foresaw. It was here that he interconnected the learning centers, libraries, parks, all the public places people go on their bikes, with greenways. To help him achieve this, he turned the blight of the undeveloped flood plains needed to control runoff from storm events into even more greenway travel corridors.
Ambitious and massive, his plan required bridges, underpasses, earth moving, building renovation and a gargantuan amount of engineering work. Then his enthusiasm began to find money for it. Irvin set the city of Indianapolis on fire with his vision. Soon, toward the end of making it real, he had many different businesses and people from many walks of life contributing to what he foresaw.
He even had a handful of the local colleges and universities plugged into his excitement (Indianapolis is home to 40 institutions of higher learning, and 31 percent of the city's residents hold a bachelor's degree which is above the U.S. average). Their students were doing a lot of the study and research he needed to be able to prove greenways did not induce crime and other trouble. Their work instead helped him prove greenways united communities and increased property values as they made the turf all along them desirable places to live, work and play.
Through endless meetings with the public at large, local government organizations, property owners and businesses, Ray sold his vision of a greenway filled Indianapolis. Tirelessly, he also worked to get residents interested in reclaiming their waterways. He even went out on many of the countless litter pick up missions he organized.
Being a former politician, Ray was in line to become the Mayor of the City when he chose to build the Greenway plan he felt called to devise instead. Armed with a deep understanding of city bureaucracy, he also knew he had to position the plan he would draw up in such a way that it would take maximum advantage of all of the opportunity in Indy city planning architecture. For example, because of Ray, Greenway alignments are also part of the permitting process in Indianapolis, any future road building has to take them into account.
To keep it funded, growing and maintained, Irvin also called for the building of the very active nonprofit, the Greenway Foundation of Indianapolis. Soon, infected by the desire to build Greenways for themselves, other parts of the state found themselves needing a way to be able to receive donations. As a result, the name of Irvin's charitable organization was changed to the Greenway Foundation of Indiana..
It was an honor to finish the work Olmsted and Kessler started, and even though I saw the unfinished opportunity, it took Indy to realize the unfinished need of their work, I worked to take my vision and instill it in so many others, so they might join the effort and insure its future for another 100 years for Indy’s residents and nature lovers.
Thanks to everyone that joined the vision.
Ray R Irvin
As more and more locals got infected by Irvin’s passion, Indianapolis became more and more of a bicycle playground. The 250-acre White River State Park (WRSP) paradise, for example, now epicentered around the pedal machine, was the result of a total and complete facelift to a blighted landscape as I document in my book "How Indianapolis Built America and How it will Rebuild It with the National Bicycle Greenway.” A charge led by Ray, the public was much involved through many meetings as they helped public officials and landscape developers design the park that resulted.
A world-class state park, several blocks from the dead center of the city, White River State Park extends for almost a mile on both sides of the now 600-foot wide (for flood prevention, its width was doubled by the Army Corps of Engineers in 1917) White River. [..]
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Excerpted from the chapter about Indianapolis in NBG Blueprint - Making the National Bicycle Greenway Real