ABSTRACT
Chapter 9 , titled “Natural Beauty,” examines the planning projects that Ian McHarg completed during the administration of President Lyndon Johnson. The chapter begins with a discussion of the Special Message to Congress on the Conservation and Restoration of Natural Beauty delivered by President Lyndon Johnson on February 8, 1965 in which he outlines a vision of the future that equates freedom, liberty, land, and resources to progress, opportunity, spiritual fulfillment, and an unacknowledged but implicit belief in American exceptionalism. The second part of the chapter examines the White House Conference on Natural Beauty held in May of 1965 and the charge presented by the First Lady, Mrs. Lyndon Johnson, to combat the ugliness and decay of the cities and countryside through imaginative planning policies and design proposals that call attention to the inherent beauty of the land. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the Potomac River Basin study and two highway alignment studies completed by McHarg that capture the progressive policies, liberal dictates, democratic aspirations, conservation mandates, development agenda, and aesthetic charge of the Great Society of President Johnson.
