Sports and athletics play a massive role in American culture and society, and this importance is reflected in the space they occupy within the built environment.  For as long as humans have grouped together there have been sports and games.  Over time, these activities moved towards the core of society, and were elevated into meaningful acts of community, courage, and spirituality.  The relationship between sports and society and the resulting reflection on the built environment can be seen time and again throughout history–from the Mayans to the Romans and everywhere between.

America’s obsession with sports–both professional and amateur–seems to make sense in the context of this long tradition.  In recent history, the proliferation of professional sports has bolstered the grand scale of American sporting infrastructure, but the popularity and ubiquity of amateur sports in every corner of the country is evidence of this shared tradition.  From Alaska to Florida and everywhere between, in every city and town–no matter the size it seems–there is a purpose built field or space to house athletic competitions both formal and recreational.  Regardless of population or geography there is always a space–baseball or football field, a rodeo or basketball arena, a baseball diamond or running track–to reflect this deeply rooted connection.

Although baseball holds the title of America’s pastime and football is the most popular sport in the United States when judged by its ability to draw television viewers, the sport with the most participants, by far, is basketball.  This massive gap in participation is in large part due to the position the sport has in the built environment.  Unlike baseball or football, basketball is more easily played indoors, and doesn’t require the same maintenance and upkeep of hockey rinks or pools.  Thus, for small communities and communities with less access to resources, an indoor basketball court is a good recreational option for the amount of investment required.

The sport of basketball was invented in 1891 for just that purpose when Dr. James Naismith–a physical education instructor in Springfield, Massachusetts–set out to create a new indoor game that would entertain and exercise his students through the long winter months.  And, although the game we play today bears many glaring differences to the one played on that December day in Massachusetts, basketball quickly grew in popularity.  High schools and colleges throughout the region soon began fielding teams, and it wouldn’t be long before the game spread across North American.  As more and more communities began to field basketball teams, more and more gyms and fieldhouses began to crop up in communities small and large.

In states like Indiana, basketball quickly became a central part of school and community identity.  Many towns and cities raced to construct new homes for their basketball teams, seeing it as an opportunity to build a multipurpose space centered around housing spectators for competitions.  Places like the Muncie Fieldhouse, which opened in 1928 and was larger than any of the college arenas in the state, were constructed not only in Indiana, but throughout the United States.  During this time, the game of basketball transformed into the game we know today, and transformed the way schools and communities build their athletic facilities.  Dr. Naismith set out to create a game that would keep his students active during the long winter months, and ended up transforming the build environment of communities throughout the United States as well as the entire world as basketball has grown into a global game.

As basketball continues to reign as the most played sport in the United States, it is important to note the influence this has on the AEC industry and the built environment.  Similar to other massively popular sports like soccer, basketball carries a very low threshold for investment in terms of participation–a ball, shoes (if necessary), and at least one hoop.  On the other side of this, however, is our investment as the creators of the built environment.  The AEC industry plays a massive role in shaping both participation and experience when it comes to sports like basketball, and these spaces have come to represent much more than just buildings.  They are the centers of community and commerce.  They are oftentimes more than places to just compete and practice–becoming places where people young and old can participate in shared experience.  Our role as the designers of the world around us is to facilitate this tradition, growing and spreading these experiences to new generations and continuing the long-held human tradition of sports and athletics.

Written in the names of streets and towns–scattered throughout the State of Ohio in aging ruins amongst rural communities–the reverberating waves of its past as a center for canal building can still be seen almost two centuries later.  Despite its current position squarely within the Midwestern United States, Ohio was a frontier territory at the start of the 19th century, becoming the 17th state admitted to the Union in 1803.  Settlers flocked to Ohio in droves–setting up farms, communities, and towns in places like the Cuyahoga and Ohio river valleys.  However, even with promises of rich land, Ohio was still a frontier, and many of its citizens found the years after its founding tremendously hard to scratch out a living.  In the years after its founding, much of Ohio was a hard place to live–made even harder by a distinct lack of access to wider networks of trade.  Although Ohioians had access to Lake Erie to the north and the Ohio River to the south, there wasn’t a reliable route connecting these to economic assets.

There had been plans to build a canal between Lake Erie and the Ohio River for some decades, but political entanglements slowed any of these plans from coming to fruition over the first two decades of Ohio’s existence.  This changed in 1825, however, with the completion of the nearby Erie Canal linking the Hudson River with Lake Erie at Buffalo as a new national transportation network began to take shape.  The completion of the Erie Canal dramatically shifted the economic fabric of what was then America’s Western frontier, connecting the Great Lakes with Eastern markets like New York City for the first time.  This shift set off a rush of canal construction, and plans were soon drawn up to build a canal from Lake Erie to the Ohio River.  Completed in sections from 1825 to the 1830s, the Ohio and Erie canal formed the superhighway of the age, transforming places like Cleveland, Akron, and Columbus into burgeoning economic powerhouses.  Its construction and economic flow also carved out a number of small communities along the route, places like Lockville, that existed to operate and maintain this vital network of infrastructure.

From its construction in the 1820s and 30s to the ending of the American Civil War, canals defined the Ohio economic and social landscape.  However, as the 19th century moved forward, it soon became apparent that canals were no match for the emerging power of railroads, and many sections of the Ohio and Erie Canal began to fall into disuse and disrepair.  Further flooding in the early 20th century led to the canal’s total abandonment by 1913.  After their economic value dwindled to nothing and work ceased on their upkeep and maintenance, many of these canals and their locks fell into disrepair or were removed to make way for roads and trains.  Some few remain to this day, and have found a new life in the modern age.  While they no longer bear witness to the thrumming clamor of flowing goods, animals, and people, many still rest where they were first set in the Ohio soil.

These forgotten relics of our ever-developing understanding of infrastructure and mobility now sit quietly amidst the verdant Ohio countryside–in places like Lockville Canal Park, which sits just outside the town of Carroll.  Once a bustling place of commerce, Lockville is now an unincorporated community that houses a handful of neat little homes.  Just beyond these homes and the road is what remains of the Ohio & Erie Canal through this place.  The depression left where the canal once was is straddled by another relic of a similar tradition: the covered bridge.  On either side of the bridge’s red walls, some 50 yards in either direction, sit what remains of Lock South 11, Lock South 12, and Lock South 13.  Although worn and tumbled by the passage of time, massive slabs of native sandstone still tower over those who walk between them.  Although it didn’t cross the Ohio & Erie Canal until 1967 when it was moved there to prevent its destruction, the Hartman No. 2 Covered Bridge has formed a poetic relationship with its new setting–giving eager visitors solid footing with which to step into the region’s history.

The history of railroad construction has no shortage of stunning and defining feats that can be attributed to our insatiable need to expand and conquer new frontiers.  During the latter part of the 19th century, this need came to fruition in a massive expansion of railroads, particularly along the Western frontier.  Although the “West” is typically portrayed culturally as a product of places like Arizona, Nevada, and Utah, the western border of the United States also represented the western border of Arkansas in 1880.  The first railroad didn’t enter Northwest Arkansas until May of 1881 when the first passenger train arrived in Rogers.  Part of the St. Louis and San Francisco Railroad (Frisco), the proposed line between Monett, Missouri and Fort Smith, Arkansas would further advance the company’s transcontinental dreams.  Construction on this new line began in the last months of 1880, progressing rapidly south into Northwest Arkansas.  

One month later, in June of 1881, the first train arrived in Fayetteville.  It was greeted by throngs of cheering spectators–and even a brass band–at Fayetteville’s Dickson Street Station.  For the spectators that day, and for countless others throughout the region, the coming of the railroad represented a new horizon of possibilities.  After being devastated by frequent clashes during the American Civil War, Northwest Arkansas lagged behind adjacent regions in terms of its economic and cultural development.  Thus, after failed attempts to do so prior, the coming of the Frisco Railroad to Northwest Arkansas generated a shockwave of excitement through the region.  This excitement was palpable–after all, estimations were that the line connecting the region to Fort Smith would be finished before the year was out.  Railroad and construction officials estimated that trains would be running through Fort Smith and into Texas before the end of 1881.  

Despite the significant challenges that stood between Fayetteville and Fort Smith, construction company press releases were confident in this timeline, and, as work began on extending the roadbed south of Fayetteville, crews also began carving out a 1,600-foot tunnel beneath the Ozark divide.  Challenges in the tunnel’s construction led to the first delay in the project as the end of 1881 would yield little luck for the crews.  South of the Ozark divide and the town of Winslow, the Frisco line would run into another engineering challenge that increased construction costs and led to dangerous working conditions.  After tunneling 1,600-feet through the Ozark divide, crews would then have to construct three trestle bridges of significant size.  The first of these trestle bridges, which sits about a mile south of the Winslow tunnel, sits 117-feet above the stream below.  This massive trestle bridge along with the other two, which are each shorter than the last from North to South, formed a section of railway that sits at an average incline of 113-feet per mile.

Despite predictions that the line would be completed by the end of 1881, challenges with tunnel construction and disease soon took their toll.  By the last months of 1881, work was faltering on the tunnel, and a decision had to be made about the continuation of the project.  In November 1881, the decision was made to double the workforce for the tunnel and construct a temporary “shoofly” railroad.  This temporary zigzag railroad was a unique innovation not necessarily in concept, but in the tremendous skill in which it took to create.  This treacherous section of railroad took only a few months to complete, and allowed work to continue south of the tunnel where the three massive trestle bridges were being erected.  Although challenges in the tunnel’s construction extended the initial deadline, the construction of this temporary railroad minimized the overall impact.

Despite persistent challenges in tunneling, the temporary railroad meant that work could continue on the vital structures further south.  While the tunnel itself posed unique challenges, the ability to adapt work meant that the three massive trestle bridges were finished at nearly the same time as the tunnel.  The Frisco line through Northwest Arkansas was open and running services by August of 1882.  Although initial predictions failed to account for the challenges in tunnel construction, the ability to adapt and overcome was a large reason for the continuation of construction.  With the Frisco line open, Northwest Arkansas entered into an era of prosperity in which the railroad provided a crucial link in expanding industry and commerce.

Although the world’s first remote-piloted car was debuted by General Motors at the 1939 World’s Fair,  the first autonomous (self-driving) car prototypes were not introduced until the 1980s after nearly 30 years of testing.  The idea of a self-driving car perhaps began with General Motors’ demonstration in 1939, but it would take another 14 years before serious testing began on a truly automated system.  In 1953, RCA Labs became the first to successfully demonstrate the viability of a self-driving car when they did so using a miniature car guided and controlled by wires on a laboratory floor.  With the system’s viability established, RCA Laboratories worked with the State of Nebraska to construct a full-size test system just outside of Lincoln.

This proposed test system consisted of a series of circuits buried along stretches of pavement, paired with a series of lights on the edges of the roads.  By sending impulses from the circuits to the car, the test was able to successfully control the direction, speed, and velocity of the car.  Despite the demonstrated success of this automated system, further development was hampered due to the cost of installing the necessary support infrastructure.  While RCA Labs’ autonomous system proved a novel approach when applied to vehicle piloting and infrastructure, it is framed on technological advancements that had been applied to railroads for decades at that point.  A century earlier, railroads played a massive role in expanding the United States to its current size.  

With a network of railroads as the fuel source, the United States expanded rapidly during the Industrial Revolution and continued to do so through the end of the 19th century.  The presence of railroads grew in tandem with the United States’ growing population and territory, and, by the 1870s, railroads were beginning to experience challenges stemming from this rapid expansion.  Running on fixed rails, trains are particularly susceptible to collisions and delays, and the process of railroad signaling was adopted at its creation to control the movement of traffic.  However, traditional hand signaling was proving antiquated by the 1870s and new systems were developed to allow this network of railroads to continue supporting this period of American growth.  

One of the first automated systems to be developed–automatic block systems for railroad signaling–was introduced in 1872.  With signals placed on trains, a train’s movement would short-circuit the electric current supply and de-energize the relay.  Using this system, railroads were able to greatly reduce collisions and delays by only allowing one train per block at a time.  When automatic systems for railroad signaling were introduced, they solved a massive problem that was hampering the reliability to railroad networks.  In the subsequent decades, railroads continued to expand, snaking out to every corner of the United States.  This twisted, dense network of passenger and freight rail, intercity lines, companies, and subsidiaries relied heavily upon simple advancements in automation technology as automated signaling systems continued to improve.  By the 1920s, advancements in automation allowed for various experiments into creating the world’s first driverless train.  And, again, despite similar viability testing, it would be decades before the first fully automated trains would be introduced to the public.  More so, these early tests of automated train systems provided the initial framework for our first attempts at self-driving cars.

The parallelled histories of car and railroad automation provide important insights into the effect that the current push towards AI and automation will have on the development of technology in the future.  Americans demonstrated a preference for the freedom and luxuries that automobile travel affords as our vast network of railroad infrastructure was slowly replaced with roads and highways.  This recently renewed push towards automated driving systems has historical similarities to the environment that brought about the first automated train testing, suggesting that technologies currently being applied to self-driving cars may have reverbating effects in technological advancements yet unknown.

The collection of islands that now make up the state of Hawaii have been inhabited by humans for the better part of the last two millennia. The first to arrive did so in wooden canoes that carried themselves, plants for cultivation, and livestock. These first inhabitants found few edible plants that were native to the islands, and began to cultivate the plants they brought with them. To support this cultivation, inhabitants began to construct irrigation ditches that carried water from the numerous freshwater streams to areas growing crops such as taro, bananas, breadfruit, sugar cane, sweet potatoes, and yams.

The islands’ streams played a particularly important role in their population growth. The fresh, cool water would flow through the irrigation ditches and provide nourishment to the growing crops before flowing back into the stream. These ditches would eventually be enhanced by the construction of dams, which would often be torn down and moved as the need arose. Over time, they cultivated the soil of mountain slopes and valley bottoms—supporting these projects with stone walls to stop erosion. These irrigation systems became part of a much larger network of water infrastructure that supported a burgeoning population.

In addition to having an unparalleled understanding of boat building and crop irrigation, Polynesian inhabitants of the islands also developed a strong tradition of aquaculture. Beginning around 1200 CE, Hawaiians started using lava rocks and packed earth to construct fish ponds that vastly increased the amount of food the islands could produce. Starting from the shoreline, fishponds were ringed by low walls of porous lava rock which allowed water to flow through without enough space for the fish to escape. The locations of these fishponds made them extremely fertile places to create thriving fish farms. These fishponds again benefitted from the cool freshwater streams. Located near the mouths of these streams, Hawaiian fishponds of this time were constructed to benefit from inland irrigation as the nutrient-rich water that resulted flooded the fishponds, supporting a massive number of fish. In the five centuries between the development of aquaculture and the first European contact, native Hawaiians constructed over 350 of these fishponds that produced over 2 million pounds of fish annually.

The nutrient-rich fresh water that provided sustenance for the enclosed fish was part of a much larger network of water-based infrastructure that supported sustained population growth throughout the time prior to European contact. Surrounded by saltwater, the native Hawaiians placed a strict emphasis on the management and maintenance of their freshwater resources. Shallow wells, springs, and streams provided the islands’ inhabitants with fresh drinking water. By creating a system that incorporated upland agriculture, fishing, aquaculture, and gardening, these early Hawaiians shifted to a society that focused more on the land than on the sea. The ability to tap into rich terrestrial and marine resources meant that, long before European contact, Hawaiians had established a sophisticated system of land-use agreements that facilitated the open trade of goods not only within the individual islands but rather between the islands. Thanks to their ability to navigate the seas effectively, trade thrived between the Hawaiian islands, and a thriving economy emerged. This resulted in residents having access to a wide variety of goods and resources, supporting further development and growth.

From this effective utilization of resources, Hawaiians began to specialize in various crafts and trades, which varied depending on the resources on the individual islands. The island of O’ahu, for example, specialized in producing a bark fabric known as kapa. This intricately designed fabric was created by beating tree bark until it became soft and dye-stamping it to create geometric patterns. Similarly, the island of Maui grew to specialize as the primary manufacturer of canoes.

Although surrounded by the vastness of the Pacific Ocean’s salty waters, the Hawaiian islands had developed a system that could not only support a significant human population but rather a thriving and diverse culture and specialized economy. This was done by effectively managing water resources with a flexible and cooperative approach, which allowed populations to shift and efficiently manage the flow of water and resources throughout needed areas.

Stardom and Hollywood are inextricably linked in modern American culture.  Located just northwest of downtown Los Angeles, Hollywood has been the epicenter of the American film industry for more than a century.  Like most places, Hollywood has changed over time, and its progress has not always been linear.  The history of Hollywood as a community is indicative of the very industry it represents in that it speaks of the importance of connection and development.  

Three years after Los Angeles was incorporated the first structure was erected in what would later be known as Hollywood, but it wouldn’t be for another 30 years until the area was laid out for larger development.  The first plan for the area came in 1887 when Harvey Wilcox–a prohibitionist from Kansas–laid the area out as a real-estate subdivision.  In subsequent years, real estate developers such as H.J. Whitley made significant investments in the area, turning it into a wealthy residential neighborhood.  17 years after the area was laid out, it had grown into a bustling community complete with a hotel, post office, and newspaper.  In 1803, the population voted to incorporate Hollywood as a municipality, and it was incorporated the following year in 1804.

Despite an immediate boom, the future growth of Hollywood was hampered by the local terrain.  Its location between the Santa Monica Mountains and Beverly Hills meant that transportation to the newly established community was limited.  At the turn of the 20th century, Hollywood and Los Angeles were separated by almost ten miles of farms, groves, and vineyards.  This made travel between the two communities difficult, and infrequent transportation made the arduous journey last up to two hours.  Additionally, despite the area having state-of-the-art telephone, gas, and electric utilities, the future growth of the community was severely limited by inadequate access to water.

Around this time, the motion picture industry began to establish itself in the then-isolated suburb.  In 1908, the Selig Polyscope Company made the decision to move locations for their production of the Count of Monte Cristo.  Moving from Chicago, the production selected Hollywood as the place to finish their film.  Soon after, film studios began to appear in Hollywood, and, by 1915, it had become the center of the American film industry.  With a rise in industry and the population to support it, the leaders of Hollywood had to search for solutions to their lack of critical infrastructure.

At the same time the Count of Monte Cristo was finishing its production, the City of Los Angeles began construction on the Los Angeles Viaduct.  This massive infrastructure project–requiring nearly 4,000 workers–was designed to greatly improve the city’s water supply through a 215-mile long conduit system consisting of six reservoirs.  Seeing a solution to these infrastructure problems, Hollywood residents voted to consolidate with Los Angeles in 1910.  This vote granted Hollywood access to the Los Angeles’ water supply and sewer system, which supported its growing population and industry.  

The Los Angeles Viaduct was completed three years after the consolidation vote, and with it, both Los Angeles and Hollywood began to grow rapidly.  By the time of the Great Depression, this consolidation would also prove to benefit Los Angeles, as the money generated from the film industry shielded the city from the worst financial effects of the era.  And, in the time since, the vast network of groves and vineyards that separated the two communities gave way to a network of streets, highways, homes, and businesses.  Likewise, the Los Angeles Viaduct has also expanded, with a new portion completed in 1970.

What remains unchanged, however, is Hollywood’s position as the center for the film industry in the United States.  From the modern perspective, this position is unquestioned, but this ubiquity lies at the heart of the common misconception that stars are born that way.  In reality, stars need to be supported, cultivated, and empowered to shine to their true potential.  Like Hollywood itself, a star needs infrastructure and support to achieve its highest potential and rise above the others.  What started as an idea from a Kansas prohibitionist to form a community based on his religious beliefs has changed over time into a center for culture and industry, which has, in turn, influenced not only the development of greater Los Angeles but also the fabric of American culture. 

Luke Carothers is the Editor for Civil + Structural Engineer Media. If you want us to cover your project or want to feature your own article, he can be reached at lcarothers@zweiggroup.com.  

As the designers of the built environment, the AEC industry has long struggled to define its relationship with its inevitable partner: the natural environment.  For the majority of human history, this partnership was heavily sided towards the natural environment.  Through the years however, humans developed new techniques and structures that could not only shelter humans from the power of the natural world, but harness small portions of its processes to fuel further growth and development.  

Early farmers developed ways to harness natural flooding cycles to improve their crops and support more robust and sustainable agricultural practices.  This and subsequent advances allowed human populations to grow and thrive in new ways.  By 300 BCE, the first large-scale environmental engineering projects began taking place.  On the Italian peninsula, the Roman Civilization constructed their first aqueduct and began developing a sophisticated system of sewers and plumbing.  These infrastructure developments were among the first to stray beyond harnessing a portion of the natural world into actually shaping those forces.  

In the case of the Roman Civilization, the ability to redirect and focus the flow of water over great distances via aqueducts not only provided a healthier population, it also affected local ecology.  The introduction of agriculture into regions where it was previously unsupported in any large scale expanded our ability to cultivate crops and increased the ability to support plant life.  Romans were also able to move water on a local level, constructing a sewer system in the capital city that drained water from surrounding marshes to carry waste from the city into the Tiber river.

Over the next two thousand years, civilization strove to maintain this relationship between the natural and built environments–in which the breadth of human ingenuity was confined by the bounds of a natural process.  However, as cities and settlements grew larger and larger, this balance shifted as the natural processes we harnessed for thousands of years could no longer support the rate of population growth.  By the middle of the 19th century, three cities had grown to populations of over one million: London, Beijing, and Paris.  As a result of the inability to safely dispose of waste, citizens of cities like London faced significant health hazards in the form of noxious gas, undrinkable water, and repeated outbreaks of diseases like cholera.  Itself an ancient city, London had long relied upon the river Thames to dispose of their waste.  After centuries of use as an open sewer, the Thames was in terrible shape, frequently breeding and emitting bacteria that caused rampant disease amongst the population.  

The City of London responded by constructing the world’s first modern sewage system, which markedly improved the lives of London residents and improved the ecological health of the Thames and North Sea.  To achieve this feat of  constructing the 100-miles of sewers that formed the original system, engineers found an easy solution: converting existing Thames tributaries into parts of the system.  As such, these rivers, while they served a new purpose, had been “lost” from an ecological perspective.  This represents a defining moment in modern humanity’s relationship with the natural world.  By removing these elements from the natural environment and placing them entirely in the built environment, humanity had shifted its relationship with the natural environment to one of consumption.

Provided the tools and technology available, this shift towards a consumption relationship between the built and natural environments was humanity’s way of continuing its natural growth path.  And, certainly, it was this shift in our relationship with the natural environment that fueled influential moments in human history such as the Industrial Revolution.  However, more than a century and a half of this relationship has severely diminished the natural half.  This has had severe consequences for the natural systems that have supported human life since its beginning.

Nearly a quarter of the way through the 21st century these natural systems have declined to the point that they can no longer function in a way that supports human growth.  Places like the Mississippi River Delta, which serves a vital role in absorbing the energy of hurricanes and tropical storms as well as countless other functions, are shrinking rapidly because of direct human interaction with the natural environment.  Countless similar stories are unfolding throughout the world.

Just as engineers from Rome, London, and countless other examples throughout history have done, the AEC industry is leading the way to a newer, more sustainable relationship between the natural and built environments.  Using the tools and technologies available, AEC professionals are now more capable than ever before of understanding the environmental impact of their projects and shaping them in a way that is less harmful to natural systems.  In doing so, the AEC industry is not simply reducing environmental harm but rather redefining humanity’s way of interacting with the natural world.

Luke Carothers is the Editor for Civil + Structural Engineer Media. If you want us to cover your project or want to feature your own article, he can be reached at lcarothers@zweiggroup.com.  

It wasn’t until recently that humans gained a tenable grasp on traversing the skies.  For far longer, the great builders of society were much more interested in what lay beneath the ground.  History is filled with examples of different peoples using the tools and techniques available to gain access to the ground.  The reasons were not uniform; some sought shelter from weather and enemies in excavated caves; other groups knew underground storage would make their food last longer.  Not least among the reasons for our obsession with the underground, however, is the bounty in materials it holds.

The extraction of underground material is almost synonymous with the development of human culture and technology.  The oldest example of mining activity by humans–the Ngwenya Mines in Swaziland–are at least 42,000 years old.  During the Middle Stone Age, the people in the area began extracting red haematite and specularite from the ground, which was then used to create red paint.  Although rudimentary in its composition, this early form of paint still exists in many places–dotting cave walls throughout Swaziland even in the modern age.

Similar examples exist all over the world–of minerals being extracted and used for paint–and are a testament to the development of human communication and expression over history.  By using tools to excavate minerals in underground spaces, humans became capable of new forms of lasting expression.  Paintings on rock walls contained key information for early humans–communicating the presence of food, water, shelter, and danger. This access to paint allowed humans to express their thoughts and feelings in a new and lasting way.

It’s also no surprise that many of these early humans chose the walls of caves as their canvas.  As humans were learning to construct external shelters capable of withstanding the elements, caves served an important purpose for many migratory groups.  As our tools and materials became more advanced, humans began to cluster into groups based around constructed buildings.  Many of these early settlements formed around resources that could be extracted from underground.  Access to these resources shaped the way cities were built and added to their wealth and influence.  

Advances in technology have changed what resources and their methods of extraction, but this pattern for shaping the built environment still exists for cities built in the modern era.  For example Kansas City, Missouri was founded on the site of a trading port on the Missouri River in 1850.  Following the American Civil War, the once-rural trading port began to grow rapidly as a result of the Hannibal & St. Joseph Railroad bridge being constructed.  To accommodate the resulting population boom, massive amounts of concrete needed to be sourced.  The answer lay beneath the Missouri soil as the area’s hills were laden with the ideal limestone for cement production.  During the latter half of the 19th century through the early 1900s, engineers and miners carved out millions of square feet of limestone in and around the Kansas City metropolitan area.

In a period where technological capacities directly align with material need, Kansas City became a very large metropolitan city in a relatively short period of time.  This time of growth coincided with the City Beautiful movement, of which Kansas City became a leading example.  Neighborhoods, parks, and buildings were constructed under the belief that their beauty would intrinsically improve the lives of the population.  Fueled by the limestone being quarried and the ideals of the City Beautiful movement, iconic buildings such as Union Station and neighborhoods like Southmoreland elevated Kansas City from a small “cowtown” to a large, cosmopolitan city.

There are countless examples mirroring Kansas City both in America and throughout the length of history.  Indeed, access to underground material and the understanding of its properties is also at the heart of the modern AEC industry.  Starting during the industrial revolution, the need arose for specialized professionals who could develop tools and machinery to extract and process resources.  Shortly after, further specializations were needed for things like moving materials over long distances.  Many of the modern engineering disciplines can find their roots in either the extraction and processing or logistical movement of these key resources.

As the AEC industry navigates the challenges of the next decade and beyond, our historical relationship with the ground and resources beneath can provide important context that can help in these struggles.  Humans have an inextricable link to these resources, and we have relied upon them to develop socially and physically.  When viewed in comparison to our historical relationship, our modern understanding is still in its infancy.  As we continue to grow our understanding of the underground, it is important to recognize and respect this need to continue learning because, as history would suggest, many solutions to these problems can be found underground. 

Luke Carothers is the Editor for Civil + Structural Engineer Media. If you want us to cover your project or want to feature your own article, he can be reached at lcarothers@zweiggroup.com.  

New Orleans is a city with a unique culture and style,painted with the revelry of celebrations and community.  What makes the Crescent City truly one-of-a-kind, however, is that these characteristics have not only endured some of the worst hardships in American history, but have been bolstered as a response.  The same reason that first made indigenous people settle in the area–followed by Europeans–is the same that puts it most at risk from climate events.  The city’s location on the Mississippi river, near the Gulf of Mexico, gives it a prime location for moving goods around the world.  This also means that the area is vulnerable to natural disasters such as flooding and hurricanes.

Having been controlled by various nations over the centuries, New Orleans’ built environment is not only old, but also stunningly diverse.  Just four years after the city was founded under French control, it was made the capital of Louisiana.  Shortly after that same year, most of the city was destroyed in a hurricane.  In its first response to natural disaster, the founders of New Orleans established a grid system, which is one of the defining characteristics of what is now the French Quarter.  Along this grid pattern, a press of wooden structures were built to accommodate the flow of trade, commerce, and people that come with being a territorial capital.  Some few brick structures–such as the Old Ursuline Convent–were also constructed during this era and still exist to this day.

Half a century later in 1763, New Orleans passed from French control to Spanish.  While the city had already established itself as an important trade city, Spanish control opened it up to important trading routes to Cuba and Mexico.  These new trading routes resulted in further growth and prosperity.  However, two decades into Spanish rule in the city, much of what had been constructed was decimated by a series of fires.  Despite more than 1,000 buildings being consumed by fire over a six year span, the city of New Orleans responded by building the city back in brick and producing more landmarks that continue to define the city’s architectural landscape to this day.  New Orleans’ response to massive fires in 1788 and 1794 still exists in its architectural landscape through structures like the St. Louis Cathedral and the Presbytere.

With the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, the city again changed hands to the United States.  The already-important port town began growing rapidly, quickly becoming the United States’ wealthiest and third-largest city.  New Orleans was saved from destruction during the Civil War due to its willingness to surrender, but it experienced no shortage of natural and manmade disasters during the 19th century, and, like many other Southern cities, struggled through the Reconstruction period.  

At the turn of the 20th century, New Orleans was a modern city with electrified streetcars and a thriving cultural center.  Furthermore, advances in pump technology meant that the swampland between the riverside crescent and Lake Pontchartrain to be drained.  New pump technology, coupled with levees and drainage canals, allowed new areas below sea level could be developed and expanded into.  During the 20th century, four major hurricanes hit New Orleans, and, while these storms certainly caused damage, none of them catastrophically threatened this system of pumps and levees.  New Orleans’ levees also narrowly avoided being topped in the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927.

However, this ambitious system that facilitated New Orleans growth into a cultural and financial capital encountered conditions it could not handle when Hurricane Katrina made landfall in August 2005.  The resulting storm surge breached four levees, which resulted in flooding in 80 percent of the city.  This flooding trapped thousands of people in the city, resulting in more than 1,500 deaths as well as billions of dollars of damage to businesses, homes, and infrastructure.  With nowhere else to go, many people sought refuge in the Superdome, which itself suffered significant damage as a result of the storm.

The days and months following the storm were some of the darkest moments in American history, with slow federal relief efforts and the subsequent flooding from Hurricane Rita adding to the traumatic devastation the city had already endured.  However, standing testament to its capacity to recover, the city slowly began to rebuild.  One of the defining moments of this recovery process was the restoration of the Superdome–with its reopening for the following NFL season emblematic of the city’s famous resiliency.

However, the recovery process after Hurricane Katrina is ongoing as communities in the city are looking to help heal the wounds left by improving their infrastructure in a way that will prevent that kind of devastation from happening again.  Efforts like the Blue and Green Corridors project are tapping into the knowledge and resilience of these communities.  By engaging a community level involvement in resiliency planning, such projects are a valuable evolution of historical trends, proving all the more important as these vibrant and unique communities face the threats of climate change.

Luke Carothers is the Editor for Civil + Structural Engineer Media. If you want us to cover your project or want to feature your own article, he can be reached at lcarothers@zweiggroup.com.  

Although San Francisco Mission was founded in the same year of America’s independence in 1776, the community that sprung from this Spanish settlement didn’t officially become part of the United States nearly nine decades later at the end of the Spanish-American War in 1846.  Soon after, the 1849 Gold Rush began, and the small settlement expanded into a busy port.  By the time California was granted statehood two years later, the town’s population exploded from around 1,000 to over 25,000.  In addition to an expanding population to support a gold mining industry, there was also a steady stream of Chinese immigrants moving to the area to work on the Central Pacific Railroad.  A few years later, San Francisco’s population and wealth grew again when gold was discovered in Nevada.  

San Francisco’s location meant that there was a significant amount of infrastructure needed to support a modest population, let alone a growing cosmopolitan port city.  Sitting atop more than 50 hills, surrounded by marshland, the city sits at the end of the San Francisco Peninsula with the eponymous bay on to its east and the Pacific ocean to its west.  San Francisco is also notable for its proximity to both the San Andreas and Hayward Faults, which means the area is highly seismically active.

One of the first major infrastructure projects designed to support the growing population was started and completed in the late 19th century: a system of cable cars that would connect the city’s steepest hills, thus increasing the population’s mobility to different parts of the city.  However, despite this and many other infrastructure and building projects, much of the city was destroyed by an earthquake in 1906.  Luckily, San Francisco’s economic importance and influence meant that the city would be rebuilt quickly and with improvements.  This improvement and the subsequent World’s Fair just nine years later sparked a golden age of improvement in the city, which led to several notable infrastructure projects such as the construction of Treasure island as well as tunnels, reservoirs, and other projects that improved the city’s water supply and supported the population’s mobility.  

However, the most iconic of these projects–the one which has become nearly synonymous with San Francisco itself–is the Golden Gate Bridge.  Spanning nearly two miles across the mouth of the San Francisco Bay, the Golden Gate Bridge is one of the world’s most iconic structures.  The structure is named for the strait it crosses, which opens the San Francisco Bay to the Pacific Ocean.  Likewise, the bridge opens the city of San Francisco to Marin County and a large portion of the surrounding bay.

The need for a bridge spanning the Golden Gate strait was first recognized when gold was discovered in the area, but no serious proposals were started until 1916.  A journalist and former engineering student, James Wilkins, proposed a suspension bridge with a center span of 3,000 feet.  This proposal also came with an unbearable $100 million price tag, but the idea of a suspension bridge with a massive center span sparked the interest of San Francisco’s city engineer Michael O’Shaughnessy who began searching for a similar but less expensive proposal.  O’Shaughnessy soon found Joseph Strauss who proposed an even larger center span–at 4,000 feet–at a fraction of the cost.

Strauss–a poet, engineer, and native Ohioan–revolutionized not only the design of bridges, but also the approach to building them.  In the era of the Golden Gate Bridge’s construction, the injury and death rate of workers was astronomically high, and most large scale projects expected to lose dozens of workers to workplace hazards.  However, Strauss was determined to change the way things were done.  Although Strauss was originally chosen for the project partially due to his ability to shrink the budget, this frugal mindset didn’t apply to the health and safety of the people working on the project.  Strauss required all workers to wear hard hats, making it the first project in the United States to do so.  Additionally, Strauss ordered the construction of a $130,000 movable safety net suspended under the bridge deck.  

During the four years the Golden Gate Bridge was under construction, only 11 workers died as a result of workplace injuries.  This was staggeringly low compared to similar projects such as the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge, which opened 6 months before and lost 28 workers during its construction.  Strauss’ innovations are directly credited with saving the lives of 19 workers who fell but were caught by the safety net.  When the Golden Gate Bridge opened in 1937, it was both the longest and tallest suspension bridge in the world–spanning 4,200 feet in length and 746 feet in height.  The structure is iconic in its scale, design, and aesthetics, but it is equally important for its legacy in safety.  

Projects like the Golden Gate Bridge are emblematic of San Francisco’s importance to the historical development of the United States.  Just as the city’s earliest infrastructure projects laid the groundwork for a growing gold rush, the Golden Gate Bridge laid the groundwork for a new era of construction that pushed the boundaries of what is physically possible while also maintaining a strict standard of safety.  Safety measures such as hard hats and safety netting are now ubiquitous, and Strauss’ legacy has been elevated to new heights with each new safety technology development.

Luke Carothers is the Editor for Civil + Structural Engineer Media. If you want us to cover your project or want to feature your own article, he can be reached at lcarothers@zweiggroup.com.  

“The Dry Salvages” by T.S. Eliot:
I do not know much about gods; but I think that the river Is a strong brown god–sullen, untamed and intractable, Patient to some degree, at first recognized as a frontier; Useful, untrustworthy, as a conveyor of commerce; Then only a problem confronting the builder of bridges. The problem once solved, the brown god is almost forgotten By the dwellers in cities–ever, however, implacable. Keeping his seasons and rages, destroyer, reminder Of what men choose to forget. (1941)

As humans, our relationship with water is biologically etched into the very structures of our most fundamental building blocks.  More than half of our bodies are made of water, and we must consume it to survive; water is also essential to the growth of our crops and the health of our livestock.  At the same time, water shares an equally important role within the social development of humanity–from the most ancient of our predecessors to this very moment, the presence of fresh water has dictated where and how humans choose to build their communities.  

In the context of the history of water-based engineering, T.S. Eliot’s musings on our collective relationship with water seem resoundingly astute.  The progress of civilization is often marked by its ability to control water and use its power to drive growth in population, industry, and agriculture.  Likewise, water systems are often the branches from which the fruits of growth ripen into towns, villages, and cities.  The Indus River Valley fostered some of the earliest examples of civilization in known history with settlements such as Harappa and Mohenjo-daro.  By taking advantage of annual flooding through irrigation, the Indus Valley Civilization advanced human civilization by domesticating several plants and animals for the first time.  However, as the monsoon-fed rivers of the valley began to dry up, so too did the population of Indus Valley Civilization.

This is not dissimilar to the growth of towns and cities along the Ohio river in the 19th century.  During the years after America’s founding, many Americans began to move to what was then considered the West, settling in the Appalachian mountains.  For these early Americans, the Ohio river was a vital trade link, flowing west into the Mississippi then journeying south to New Orleans.  This meant that crops and manufactured goods from Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Kentucky could be relatively easily transported to ports on the East Coast via New Orleans.  With this transportation network established, the Ohio River valley and the Appalachian mountains became integral engines of the American Industrial Revolution.  

Cities like Cincinnati exploded in population as new industries sprang up to support vital trade along the river.  In addition to an already-thriving meat packing industry, new infrastructure was built along the river’s banks to repair steamboats as they moved West, and soon the Miami and Erie Canal flowed into it, bringing even more trade to the city.  By the late 19th century, dams were being constructed for the first time on the Ohio River.  However, this growth wasn’t to last, and the population remained roughly the same since this time.  The same cannot be said for other towns and cities along the Ohio River.  Towns like Stubenville, which grew to nearly 40,000 people in the early 20th century, faded as coal fell out of favor and more of the transportation network relied upon rail transportation.  This is true of many other cities on the Ohio river who, at the river’s economic peak, were capable of supporting large populations, only to dwindle as the river’s economic reach lessened, echoing Eliot’s sentiment of river’s as “useful” but “untrustworthy” as a “conveyor of commerce.” 

Eliot’s words ring especially true in the state in which the AEC industry currently finds itself.  Rivers no longer belong to those journeying to find new frontiers, they belong to us, the builders of bridges.  However, we must journey a different course than that of Eliot’s imagination.  Although our understanding of water and how it can be engineered to improve our lives and support growing populations has advanced significantly since the time of the poem’s writing, we cannot see our problems as solved.  With increasing threats from climate-related events such as hurricanes and flooding, we are reminded of the power that drew us to settle near water in the first place.  As the designers of the world around us, it is the responsibility of the AEC industry to not “choose to forget” but to approach these waterways with the same awe and respect that drew the first settlers there.

Luke Carothers is the Editor for Civil + Structural Engineer Media. If you want us to cover your project or want to feature your own article, he can be reached at lcarothers@zweiggroup.com.  

There has been no shortage of works throughout human history that try to define the relationship between humans and the stars in the night sky.  Our earliest ancestors looked up at the stars and saw patterns that reflected their own lives, crafting stories to understand the worlds contained in the sky above them.  As soon as we developed the technical capacity for doing so, we erected monuments that mirrored the positions of the sun, moon, and stars.  At the same time Stonehenge was being built in England, between 3000 and 1520 BCE, ziggurats were serving a similar purpose across the world in Babylonia.  Still further away, in modern day Mexico, the Maya people utilized a dome-shaped structure called El Caracol for the same purposes.  

These early construction projects are exemplary of our ancient need to understand the sky above us.  While there is no evidence to suggest that these ancient structures served any scientific purpose, they were able to reflect the sky above us in a way that our ancestors could better understand, bringing what once must have seemed so very far away just a little closer.  

Later in history, advances in not only astrology but also engineering and construction allowed civilizations to further advance their study of the heavens.  By the early 9th century CE, several early scientific tools had been developed to help accurately measure the positions of heavenly bodies.  The Islamic world was at the forefront of these developments, with several notable observatories being erected in Damascus and Baghdad.  Perhaps the most notable of these early Islamic observatories is the Ulugh Beg Observatory in Samarkand, Uzbekistan.

Although the exact date is unknown, construction on the Ulugh Beg Observatory began some time during the 1400s CE when Ulugh Beg, the city’s ruler, invited a number of notable astronomers, mathematicians, and architects to help design and construct the structure.  Built on a hill 21 meters above the ground, the observatory contains a cylindrical structure with a height of roughly 33 meters that contained a sextant.  The weight and height of the sextant compromised the strength of the brick walls, so half of the sextant was constructed below ground, reducing the height of the building and strain on its walls.  Using these architectural and astronomical advancements, Ulugh Beg was able to correct several mistakes made by the legendary astronomer Ptolemy.  

Our quest to understand the heavens was further aided in the 17th century CE when Galileo developed the first optical telescope.  Further developments led to the first observatories being built with telescopes, with their motion being entirely limited to movement along a single plane.  By aligning this movement along the local meridian, astronomers could time the passing of stars based on the Earth’s rotation, greatly improving the accuracy of position measurements.  

Not satisfied, humanity again sought answers from the stars.  By the 20th century, telescope technology afforded astronomers a much broader and clearer view of the night sky.  In 1916, the Canadian government started work on the Dominion Astrophysical Observatory in British Columbia.  When completed, the observatory housed a groundbreaking reflecting telescope nearly constructed on an asymmetrical mount, giving it access to most of the night sky with movement being provided by mechanical ball bearings.  This groundbreaking telescope weighs nearly 42 tonnes and is 1.83-meters in length.  To house this telescope, a cylindrical construction was topped by a domed roof with arched slat openings to allow access to the sky.    

Since its completion, the Dominion Astrophysical Observatory has hosted many of the greatest achievements in our quest to understand the stars.  For example, this structure allowed Canadian astronomer John Stanley Plaskett to demonstrate that the Milky Way is rotating, while also accurately measuring its size, mass, and rotational speed.  Achievements such as these are significant steps in the evolution of our human quest for understanding.

Our earliest ancestors looked at the heavens and studied them, coming to an understanding that the movement of heavenly bodies has a definite impact on our lives.  These generations knew the heavens shared some patterns with the natural world, and they constructed structures– temples, sundials, stone markers–as well as stories to make sense of what patterns they found.  As our understanding of engineering, architecture, and construction grew, we paired those pursuits with our need to understand the stars.  Throughout history, from our earliest ancestors to now–in every part of the world–we seek to utilize our understanding of design and technology to know more about the worlds contained in the sky above us.  Although we no longer color our exploration and knowledge of the stars with tales of gods and heroes, our fascination is still enraptured in the belief that the stars will tell us what is next for humanity.  Our ancestors looked to the stars to answer their questions about the next harvest, war, or migration.  In the same way, we now look at the stars to answer our questions about exploring and inhabiting new planets and finding other intelligences that share our yearning for the stars.

Luke Carothers is the Editor for Civil + Structural Engineer Media. If you want us to cover your project or want to feature your own article, he can be reached at lcarothers@zweiggroup.com.

Cutting through the heart of Cleveland and Akron, Ohio, the Cuyahoga River once served an important role in the industrial development of the United States.  In 1827, engineers changed the course of the river, creating a man-made mouth that provided easy access from the river to the port.  To further support growing industry, the Corps of Engineers also dredged the bottom of the river West of Cleveland and straightened riverbanks in portions.  This, as well as the river’s close proximity to the Ohio & Erie Canal, made the banks of the Cuyahoga prime real estate for railroads and manufacturing companies.  

These transportation networks made Cleveland and Akron incredibly important cities for the time, sitting at the crossroads of many industries that were foundational to the expansion of the United States.  Industrialists and enterprising business owners began establishing factories along the river’s banks.  Companies such as Standard Oil, BF Goodrich, and what would eventually become Quaker Oats used the banks of the Cuyahoga River to launch empires in their respective industries.

As a result, both Cleveland and Akron exploded in their industrial development with little space being left along the river’s banks.  With this influx in both industry and population, local officials had to figure out how to move industrial and sewage waste away from the area.  The most obvious and costly solution was to use the waters of the Cuyahoga.  In the best cases, industrial waste was hauled away on barges that were prone to sinking or otherwise spilling its contents into the river.  In many more cases, industrial waste and sewage were simply dumped straight into the river.  

By 1900, the Cuyahoga River had caught fire no less than three times.  For many residents, this was just the cost of doing business.  It was common knowledge amongst locals that you should not swim in the river if you knew what was good for you.  In this way, the ecological status of the Cuyahoga River has had an inverse relationship with the rise and fall of industrialization along its banks.  

In the late 1950s, industry in Cleveland and Akron began to wane as manufacturers moved their plants elsewhere.  By the start of 1969, Cleveland had lost nearly 60,000 manufacturing jobs, and the loss triggered a sense of urgency to change.  When times were good, the putrid smell and taste of the Cuyahoga River was that of money, but that turned to a medicinal taste as the reality of the future began to set in.  In June of 1969, the Cuyahoga River caught fire for the 13th and final time.  

Ignited by sparks from a passing railcar that landed on an oil slick, the Cuyahoga’s final fire only lasted about 30 minutes before being put out by fireboats, and it only caused about $50,000 in damage.  This final fire was only a match flame compared to other fires on the river, but it was enough to spark a movement.  Although the city’s active cleanup measures had begun the year before, the event provided the perfect framing for a larger national conversation about environmental protection.  The following year in 1970, Time Magazine published an article about waterway pollution in America, using a picture from the massive 1952 Cuyahoga River blaze that caused upwards of $1.3 million in damages.

The dramatic image of the Cuyahoga River burning was etched into the public image, and massive efforts began to not only clean up the Cuyahoga, but all of America’s waterways and environmental landscapes.  The same year, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was established at the federal level to manage environmental risks and regulate environmental policy and action.  By introducing legislation such as the Clean Water Act in 1972, the EPA established a baseline for cleaning up rivers like the Cuyahoga.  

In addition, local agencies stepped in to begin cleaning up the Cuyahoga River.  The Northeast Ohio Regional Sewer District has invested over $3.5 billion towards the river’s purification and sewage infrastructure.  Investments such as this have gone a long way in making the Cuyahoga River safe once again, but areas of the river still experience pollution from urban runoff and other factors.  Yet, in 2019, fish caught in the Cuyahoga River were deemed safe to eat, which would have been unthinkable to a Cleveland resident alive at the time of the last fire.

In 1998, the Cuyahoga River was designated one of 14 American Heritage Rivers, which recognizes not only the cultural significance of the Cuyahoga on the region’s development, but also the further need to revitalize the river ecologically to continue that development.  Once a site of industry, the Cuyahoga River has a vastly different future ahead, drawing more and more recreational visitors every year.

Luke Carothers is the Editor for Civil + Structural Engineer Media. If you want us to cover your project or want to feature your own article, he can be reached at lcarothers@zweiggroup.com.  

Although much of the conversation about stadium design and construction in the United States is focused on the various professional sports leagues and collegiate sports, it is important to also understand that similar conversations are taking place in almost every town, large or small.  While these local decisions to build stadiums, parks, and other sporting facilities may not have the same financial stakes as professional and collegiate sports, they have a relatable impact in terms of the local economy, civic pride, and youth engagement.

In the mid- to late- 19th century, as a new middle class emerged in the United States, so too did the concept of spectator sports.  With a more formalized work schedule and money to spend, many people turned to attending sporting events such as baseball, cricket, and boxing.  By the end of the century, cricket had fallen away in popularity, but it was quickly replaced by the new and exciting sports of football and basketball.  With more and more people coming to watch these amateur athletes compete, the need to seat these people and give them a better view of the action became more pressing.  The first true baseball stadium, Elysian Fields in Hoboken, was constructed in 1845.  It was the first enclosed sporting venue in the United States, meaning it was gated off and admission could be charged.  Those who paid for a ticket were seated on wooden benches around the field while those who didn’t pay sat on a grassy embankment behind the outfield.  The first true football stadium constructed was Feld Field at St. Anthony Catholic High School in San Antonio, which was built in 1910.  Like Elysian Fields, Feld Field utilized a nearby hillside, building a small set of stone bleachers into it.

As the popularity of professional sports continued to grow throughout the 20th century, so too did the popularity of youth and amateur levels.  The rise in popularity at the youth level meant that, for the first time, towns and communities could field athletic teams to compete against other local teams for the point of civic pride.  To compensate for the ever growing crowds and attract more visitors, many towns began building bigger stadiums and arenas.  Shortly after Feld Field was completed in Texas, the Stadium Bowl was finished in Tacoma, Washington.  Like Feld Field, the Stadium bowl also took advantage of a natural change in elevation, cutting nearly 180,000 cubic yards from the sides of a gulch to provide enough space for a playing field.  Once the sides of the gulch were removed, wooden frames were installed along the inclines to pour concrete for seating.  The result was a massive concrete bowl with a seating capacity of 32,000.  What started as a place to host local football games has morphed into a cultural icon, hosting speeches from multiple presidents and appearing in films such as “10 Things I Hate About You.”

The Stadium Bowl was unique in both its size and its utilization of the surrounding landscape, but other communities have to contend with a lack of space.  While the Stadium Bowl has hosted a few baseball exhibitions over the years, its use is limited by design.  Looking to save space and money, many local communities have opted to build multi-use facilities capable of hosting several sports.  Roosevelt Stadium in Union City, New Jersey was built in 1936 and hosted the Union City High School football team for more than 7 decades.  However, when it came time to construct a new high school in 2005, the stadium had to be demolished to make space for the building.  Unable to relocate the stadium because of the same constraints, the school’s athletic complex was built directly on top of the building.  Named the Eagle’s Nest, the 3-acre facility is supported by two floors of steel and reinforced concrete and can support up to 2,100 spectators.

The development of local athletic facilities often reflect the needs of the community and have developed innovative solutions to address these needs.  This development also shows the importance of these spaces in the local community.  As such, the question of funding for local stadiums and arenas is frequently debated in local politics.  There are many who believe that too much money is allocated towards developing and renovating athletic facilities, particularly when it comes to school budgets.  While this is certainly a valid thread of argument based on a historical decline in funding for areas such as the arts, there is also some middle ground to be found.  Large and unique stadiums not only generate ticket revenue through hosting their school or town’s games, but also in attracting statewide and national competitions to the area, which provides additional revenue that is, in many cases, being used to fund other areas of development.

Within the American landscape, there are very few connecting elements that span from coast to coast, in every town and city.  Everywhere you go, in all corners of the United States and in every landscape you will find a football field, basketball court, baseball arena, or soccer pitch.  On any given night, you can drive from town to town and chances are you will see at least one field lit up, with a small crowd of parents and community members cheering on their hometown athletes.  In the pursuit of civic pride and the youthful fun that comes with competing, communities throughout the 20th century continued to erect spaces to hold competitions.  In some cases, these are small spaces, little more than a flat surface with a track around it and some bleachers, set amid the vastness they inhabit.  Still, in other cases, this same pursuit comes to fruition through massive local undertakings that result in large, highly technical, and multi-use stadiums.

Luke Carothers is the Editor for Civil + Structural Engineer Media. If you want us to cover your project or want to feature your own article, he can be reached at lcarothers@zweiggroup.com.

In 2021, digitalization, increasing efficiency and sustainability in the resource-intensive construction industry were clearly in focus. The Nemetschek Group has a proven track record in developing innovative software for the entire building lifecycle and leveraging open standards in the construction industry as well as the media & entertainment industry – for almost 60 years.

For the Nemetschek Group, 2021 was also characterized by collaborations for a better built world: For example, the Nemetschek Group cooperates with the Technical University of Munich and its Venture Labs as a new sponsor. In addition, the software provider supports innovative and disruptive technologies of promising start-ups: With investments in the German ConTech Sablono, the American AI expert Reconstruct Inc. and the Norwegian deep-tech company Imerso, Nemetschek is driving forward the digitalization and sustainability of the construction industry. In Germany, the Group also joined Madaster in 2021, a platform for more resource efficiency in the industry.

“However, our biggest focus in this challenging year has naturally been on the health and well-being of the people we work with. Already in the beginning of 2020, we switched our processes to pure digital collaboration making additional offerings for our nearly six million customers and more than 3,500 employees,” Kaufmann explains. “This has allowed us to strengthen the collaboration even further. A big thanks goes to our brands for their flexibility and great commitment.”

The brands of the Nemetschek Group in the four segments Planning & Design, Build & Construct, Operate & Manage and Media & Entertainment presented their solutions at numerous online events, but also again in person. “It was very nice to meet our customers and business partners personally again, at least at some of the events. Digital collaboration does work well but meeting face-to-face cannot be completely replaced and is still very important to us,” says Kaufmann.

The development and promotion of innovative solutions for a digital, efficient, and sustainable construction industry as well as a strong customer and employee focus – the success of this approach paid off twice in 2021: The software solutions of the Nemetschek Group were on the one hand honored several times at the renowned Construction Computing Awards, and on the other hand the Nemetschek Group itself again received numerous prizes, including the “Axia Best Managed Companies” Award.

Located in the American Southwest, some of the world’s most impressive early examples of vertical engineering can be found perched on the walls of deep canyons and along the face of steep mesas.  Built by the Ancestral Pueblo, who are also sometimes known as the Anasazi, these structures were complex construction projects that served as apartment-like housing for the population as well as sites for significant religious events.  These dwellings were often multiple stories and, in the largest example, could contain up to 800 individual rooms.

Earlier in their history, the Ancestral Pueblo were a nomadic, hunter-gatherer society, but by 750 CE the culture had shifted towards a focus on agricultural products like cotton.  In turn, larger communities and villages began to form throughout the region.  During this period, the Ancestral Pueblo also developed stone masonry, which allowed them to build community structures, known as pueblos, with dozens of adjoining rooms.  The development of stone masonry also allowed the Ancestral Pueblo to create larger structures both vertically, in the form of great houses, as well as downward in the form of kivas.

By around 1000 CE the Ancestral Pueblo began to build bigger structures to support a growing population.  In this pursuit, they turned their eyes downward from their mesas towards the cliffs high above the canyon floor.  It is believed that this movement was also a form of defense against raiding parties from neighboring Apache and Navajo tribes.  Rather than building defensive structures around their cities, the cliff dwellings relied on a single means of egress, a ladder or rope, that could be pulled up in the event of an attack.  Their agriculture assets would also be protected high on the cliffs.  It is also theorized that this move to the cliffs was done as a way to shelter from wind in the winter and draw heat from the sun.

While their exact reasoning for building settlements on what seems like precarious footing will likely never be known, it is clear that these structures were capable of supporting large populations at one time.  The Ancestral Pueblo cliff dwellings were made primarily with hand cut blocks and plastered with adobe mortar. Built in a stepped fashion with the highest floors built against the stoneface, many of these cliff dwellings were designed to have terraces on each floor.  To create floors and rooms, the Ancestral Pueblo again turned to adobe mortar.  The process began with installing large crossbeams followed by smaller branches to fill in the gaps.  This structure would be repeatedly plastered over with adobe mortar until it was solid enough to serve as a roof.

The largest of these Ancestral Pueblo cliff dwellings is Pueblo Bonito, which is located in modern day New Mexico.  In an area of roughly 3 acres, Ancestral Pueblo were able to construct more than 800 individual rooms.  Another notable site of these cliff dwellings is the Mesa Verde area, which now forms Mesa Verde National Park.  The Ancestral Pueblo inhabited Mesa Verde from around 500 CE to 1300 CE when they were forced out by drought.  During this time, the area’s inhabitants created hundreds of dwellings, from the earliest single story clusters of semi subterranean structures along the mesa’s top to the iconic Cliff Palace, which features 217 individual rooms.

Archaeological evidence suggests that most of the region inhabited by the Ancestral Pueblo experienced a severe drought that lasted several decades at the end of the 13th century.  This in turn made the traditional method of mesa-top farming unsustainable for the Ancestral Pueblo, and they were forced to abandon their cliff dwellings and seek wetter areas elsewhere.  While the Ancestral Pueblo moved to find more suitable living environments and eventually broke into the modern Pueblo tribes, these Ancestral Pueblo left behind an incredible testament to their engineering and architectural prowess, a feat that was not replicated by their descendants following the abandonment of the cliff dwellings.

luke carothers is the Editor for Civil + Structural Engineer Media. If you want us to cover your project or want to feature your own article, he can be reached at lcarothers@zweiggroup.com.

When writing about the history of bridges in the United States, it is easy to focus on the grandiose and spectacular, and rightfully so. Some of the nation’s most spectacular engineering feats are bridges; stories of these projects–such as the Brooklyn and Golden Gate Bridges –fill the pages of our engineering histories.  However, solely focusing on the grandiose undermines the full measure of their impact on American society.

When Europeans first colonized North America, many of their villages and settlements were scattered along the bays and inlets of the East Coast.  As a result, these waterways served as early highways for European settlers who later became the first American citizens. When American settlers expanded Westward they relied more and more on newly laid roads as well as natural waterways. These early American roads, linking growing cities and settlements, struggled to navigate the dense wilderness in many places, and, in other places, had to contend with crossing wide, strong rivers. In some places, such as Philadelphia, these early Americans built bridges in stone, although this was not the preferred method.  Due to the expense and expertise necessary to construct a stone arch bridge, builders often opted for wooden structures using timber felled at the crossing site. Most of these early American bridges were simple wooden truss structures.

However, because of their importance to the local militias, many of these early wooden truss bridges were destroyed during the Revolutionary War.  This sparked an intense period of bridge building in the United States as they began to lay the infrastructure that would support a burgeoning population.  From the early to mid 19th century, the covered bridge was one of the most popular designs for rural bridge construction.  These early covered bridges were timber truss bridges with a roof, deck, and siding.  These simple structures were almost always single-lane.

As the population grew, it soon became clear that these single lane bridges were not capable of supporting a mobile population.  Farmers who were using covered bridges to transport their crops to market were frequently frustrated by having to wait their turn to use the bridge, giving rise to the modern headache of traffic jams. This issue, coupled with improvements in bridge design and cheaper wrought and cast iron, led to the covered bridge falling out of favor. Whereas timber bridges, particularly covered bridges, require significant upkeep of exposed materials, cast and wrought iron are better suited to being exposed to elements. In addition, these stronger materials were better able to support two-lane bridges.

In 1839, the first cast iron bridge was constructed in Brownsville, Pennsylvania. Constructed after the original timber bridge was washed away in a flood in 1808, the Dunlap’s Creek Bridge was a vital link along the National Road, which allowed America to continue expanding westward. The Dunlap’s Creek Bridge is still standing today, and continues to carry a heavy vehicle load.

As the United States moved through the 19th century, railroads exploded in popularity, and the need for new bridges again reached a peak. Unlike previous bridges, these new bridges had to be capable of supporting the higher loads associated with trains. In order to compensate for these heavier loads, engineers turned to steel, which was easier to produce as a result of the Industrial Revolution. The addition of steel to design allowed for new innovations in design such as cantilevered arches.

Bridge design was further influenced in the later half of the 19th century with the invention of reinforced concrete, which was originally based on a patent for reinforcing thin clay flowerpots with steel mesh. Concrete, which is significantly cheaper to source and use than stone, could easily be molded and transported. When reinforced with steel, concrete also posed a significant advantage over stone in terms of its load-bearing capacity. 

These new developments meant that, by the early 20th century in the United States, bridges were stronger and cheaper than ever before.  Coupled with the invention and growing popularity of automobiles, these circumstances led to an explosion of bridge construction projects throughout the United States. Particularly amongst rural farming communities throughout states like Missouri, Kansas, and Ohio these early 20th construction projects were vital to the growing mobility of the population and a reliance on vehicular travel.

From the 1940s to the 1960s, rural American communities experienced their largest period of infrastructure expansion. As the nation experienced significant economic growth following World War II, rural communities benefited. In addition, programs enacted by Franklin D. Roosevelt’s government as a response to the Great Depression also came to fruition through numerous rural construction projects.

In light of the challenges the United States will face in coming years such as climate change, economic uncertainty, and aging infrastructure, the history of rural bridge construction in the United States is given a new context. Following the Revolutionary War, an investment in rural infrastructure laid the groundwork for expansion West. When the world was in the grips of the Great Depression followed closely by World War II, a large part of the American response was investment in rural infrastructure. Now, as we face new challenges and scramble for solutions, there is evidence to suggest that at least some part of the solution can be found in rural infrastructure investment.

Luke Carothers is the Editor for Civil + Structural Engineer Media. If you want us to cover your project or want to feature your own article, he can be reached at lcarothers@zweiggroup.com.

In August of 2005, Hurricane Katrina made landfall in the United States.  Although landfall in Florida caused damage, the bulk of the $125 billion in damages were suffered by the City of New Orleans, the Mississippi Gulf Coast, and the surrounding areas.  The flooding was intense, and, with much of the region under water for weeks after the storm moved on, transportation and communication infrastructure was rendered unusable.  This was one of several reasons for the delay in rescue efforts after the storm; there was simply no safe way to get rescue workers to certain locations so that effective aid could be provided in critical areas.

One particular case where responders were facing these circumstances was Pearlington, Mississippi.  Located at the mouth of the Pearl River, which straddles the border between Louisana and Mississippi, Pearlington felt the full force of Hurricane Katrina and the 30-foot wall of water that accompanied it.  Due to its small size and isolated location, Pearlington was one of the hardest places for volunteers to reach in the days after the storm.  The flooding destroyed nearly all of the houses in the community with only two spared out of nearly 1,700. Many of Pearlington’s homes were simply wiped off their foundations, and the ones that held in place were still severely damaged and covered in debris. 

Several of these homes provided a daunting challenge for rescue volunteers. They had been swept from their foundations and deposited side-by-side, blocking the only paved access to the small town.  To add to this, additional areas of the roads were covered in downed trees and debris while nearly every powerline was pulled down. With no means of egress nor communication, rescuers were unable to to determine the extent of the damage and whether or not there were more survivors trapped in the town.

Rescuers turned to an unfamiliar solution in the realm of search and rescue at the time: UAVs. Nearly all uses of UAVs and drones at that point in time were to be found in military applications. However, developments in the base technology for UAVs meant that, for the first time, they could be operated by teams as small as 3 people. Additionally, advancements in flight and rotor technology meant that drones could fly for longer durations and could carry more sophisticated cameras.

To achieve this mission, rescuers turned to scientists at the University of South Florida and the Center for Robot-Assisted Search and Rescue (CRASAR) who decided to use two drones: one fixed-wing and one quad-rotor craft. Taking off from a small clearing in the road before obstruction, the team and their two vehicles completed their mission in less than two hours.  Not only did the team determine that there were no survivors trapped in the town but also that the nearby cresting Pearl River posed no immediate danger to the town. 

This was the first time that a federal government used UAVs as a critical part of disaster relief efforts, particularly search and rescue, but it certainly would not be the last. Armed with a new tool to fight back against Katrina’s immense destructive power, rescuers were determined to use drones to their fullest extent. Just a few days after the two vehicles were deployed in Pearlington, another group set about using the same technique to collect data on the US-90 bridge in Bay St. Louis which had been severely damaged in the storm. 

This mission to survey the damaged Bay St. Louis bridge and the other missions undertaken during the Hurricane Katrina recovery efforts represent a transformational shift in the relationship between drones and users. With better flight technology, better cameras, and more connectivity, rescuers and researchers were not only able to collect vast amounts of data, but they were also able to share that data with the people who needed it most. In fact, this influx of relevant data spurred recovery efforts and allowed the bridge to be reopened just 21 months after the storm.

Following the success of UAVs and drones in the recovery efforts after Hurricane Katrina, these vehicles have played an important role in almost every major disaster recovery effort over the last two decades.  In addition, UAVs are also used to preemptively plan for coming natural disasters.  With Hurricane Florence approaching in 2018, teams at the North Carolina Department of Transportation flew more than 200 drone missions and collected 8,000 videos and images.  These images and videos were then compiled and used to create a plan of action, diverting people away from dangerous areas.

As UAVs and drones become more and more commonplace, their uses in the realm of disaster recovery seem to grow exponentially.  From creating 3D building maps after earthquakes, through spotting wildfires, to navigating molten lava fields, drone technology has been adapted to confront some of our most inhospitable disasters and help during some of our darkest hours.  As the threat of climate change becomes more real and larger, more intense weather events are on the horizon, drones and UAVs will be pivotal in how we overcome these new challenges.

Luke Carothers is the Editor for Civil + Structural Engineer Media. If you want us to cover your project or want to feature your own article, he can be reached at lcarothers@zweiggroup.com.

Lake Leatherwood and the dam that created it are located in Eureka Springs, Arkansas, nestled snugly in the Boston Mountains region of the Ozark Plateau.  If it’s your first time visiting the area, you are bound to hear a common local legend: that the Lake Leatherwood Dam is the largest hand-carved limestone dam in the country.  While this is almost certainly not true, the real story behind the dam and its history is no less interesting or significant.  

Plans to create Lake Leatherwood came as a result of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Soil Conservation Service (SCS) at the height of the Dust Bowl.  In 1937, Arkansas Governor Carl E. Bailey signed legislation that split the state into four soil conservation districts.  Amongst the projects that improved soil quality in the four districts, the Lake Leatherwood Dam was considered the premier project.  When the dam was completed in 1940, it featured a concrete-poured core covered in locally-quarried limestone.  It is this on-site quarrying that lends to the myth of it being the largest hand carved dam in the country.  The other contributing factor to the myth is the dam’s size: 630 feet long and 55 feet tall.

Work on the project began early in 1938 under the direction of the Works Progress Administration (WPA), the Soil Conservation Service, and the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC).

Straddling two hills, the dam is impressive when approached from either angle.  When approached from beneath, the cascading fresh water and natural feel of the local stone give the structure the feeling that it grew from the landscape naturally.  When you traverse the walkway across the dam’s span, you are treated to commanding views of not only Lake Leatherwood, but also the lush valley to the north.  

On one hand, the Lake Leatherwood Dam was constructed as a soil conservation project.  Prior to the dam’s construction, the northern area of West Leatherwood Creek was experiencing significant forest loss.  Once completed, the dam was able to curb further soil erosion and loss, which allowed the verdant land around the creek to flourish.  Additionally, the formation of Lake Leatherwood provided a stunning outdoor space for local residents to enjoy canoeing, sailing, fishing, and swimming. From its initial plan to create Lake Leatherwood, the project soon grew to include several other buildings and facilities along its shores.  These additional structures are indicative of the dual purposes the project served.  Approximately one mile south of the dam, on Lake Leatherwood’s western shore, the CCC constructed a stone bathhouse and a barbecue pit to form a larger picnic area. 

In order to facilitate the building of the dam, workers had to construct a new road, which is now part of Country Road 61, connecting the park to Highway 62 and making the park much more accessible to modern tourists and local residents  Along this road, workers for the CCC built 6 stone culverts and 2 bridges: one single arch bridge and one double arch.  In addition, the service road workers used to access the dam has been repurposed as Beacham Trail, which allows hikers to traverse the shores of the 120 acre Lake Leatherwood and cross the top of the dam.

For over 80 years, travelers and hikers visiting the region who are not afraid of heights have been able to walk the shores of the Lake and cross the small walkway at the top of the dam, accessing the Eastern shore.  In August 1992, the site was nominated and accepted to the National Register of Historical Places.  The report submitted with the nomination noted a few issues such as spalling in a few places, but otherwise recorded the dam as being in good condition.

Since that time, however, significant issues have developed with the structural integrity of the dam’s stone walkway.  In March 2021, the Eureka Springs Parks and Recreation Commission announced that the dam was closed indefinitely to cyclists and hikers.  After finding significant damage to not only the railings but the integrity of the concrete itself.  The commission found the reasons for such rapid deterioration twofold.  On one hand, the locally sourced concrete, poured half a century ago, would not meet current standards, making it more and more susceptible to corrosion as time goes on.  On the other hand,  the area recently experienced the severe cold weather that affected much of the Southern U.S. in February.  This bout of extreme cold weather took a huge toll on the structure, shearing off large portions of the upper railing structure.

Repairs to the dam have been estimated to be upwards of $500,000, which can be a daunting number for a municipally-owned park.  Luckily, the integrity of the dam itself is not thought to be in jeopardy, only the portion open to the public.  Moving forward, the City plans to reassess their maintenance and inspection practices and figure out what can be done to monitor the health of the structure moving forward.  Although the dam is closed to the public for now, there is hope that the proper repairs can be made to ensure its continuing use by the public.

Luke Carothers is the Editor for Civil + Structural Engineer Media. If you want us to cover your project or want to feature your own article, he can be reached at lcarothers@zweiggroup.com.

By Luke Carothers

The concept of national parks has existed for the better part of the last 150 years since Yellowstone National Park was established in 1872.  These parks, which in all forms encompass nearly 400 separate areas, provide people with a space to reflect on the immense beauty and importance of our natural environment.  And, just as the Roosevelt Arch entrance to Yellowstone reads, these parks are “for the benefit and enjoyment of the people.”

However, in the late 19th and early 20th century getting to remote parks was incredibly difficult.  Not only were these parks located in rugged, rural areas with little to no automotive infrastructure, they forbade access to vehicles even if they managed to get there.  In fact, many of the “roads” in our national parks were little more than footpaths and army patrol routes with occasional stagecoach routes. With an increase in the popularity of auto-tourism at the start of the 20th century, there was an intense push to not only construct new roads that would improve the parks’ accessibility, but also to update and modernize the footpaths and stagecoach routes. 

In order to maintain the spirit, integrity, and natural aesthetic of the parks, the roads being constructed had to minimize impacts on both the aesthetics of the landscape and ecology of the living environment.  One major early proponent of this method of thinking was Andrew Jackson Downing, who is considered one of America’s first great landscape designers and architects.  Downing stressed road construction practices such as following the natural curves and topography of the landscape and planting trees at the curve of a road.  The latter gives the impression that the road was moved to avoid the stand of trees.  Downing also emphasized constructing these roads to lead to specific viewpoints or natural vistas.

Another landscape architect, Frederick Law Olmsted Sr., built upon Downing’s ideas and introduced the concept of a loop drive, which he had perfected in New York City’s Central Park.  Building on Central Park’s successful landscape, Olmsted argued for designs that were easy to navigate, revealed the rural world, and minimized environmental “violence”. 

With the need for roads capable of supporting automobiles established, several groups set about modernizing park road infrastructure.  Much of the early road-construction in areas such as Yellowstone and Sequoia National Parks was undertaken by military units.  At Sequoia National Park, the first highways connecting the park to the public were constructed by Charles Young and his unit of Buffalo Soldiers, which was a nickname given to Black enlisted men who served in the American West after the Civil War.

However, with the establishment of the National Park Service (NPS) in 1916, the responsibility for updating and maintaining roads in these areas was centralized.  Stephen Mather was selected as the first head of the NPS, and, along with introducing amenities such as restrooms and concession stands to the parks, he set about improving the infrastructure necessary for increased auto traffic.

This push for improved infrastructure by the NPS led to the undertaking and completion of some of the most innovative and noteworthy road construction projects in the United States’ history to that point.  With funding from both the Department of the Interior and several acts of congress, the NPS set about tackling the problem of accessibility to some of the country’s most remote and rugged terrains.

In 1921, work began on Going-to-the-Sun Road in Glacier National Park.  With a total land area of more than 1 million acres, Glacier National Park contains two mountain ranges and over 130 lakes.   Working with the Bureau of Public Roads, the NPS sought to create the first road that would not only traverse the park but also cross the continental divide.  

The plan was to create a roughly 50-mile road that included two tunnel sections and a switchback section climbing to 6,646 feet.  Construction on Going-to-the-Sun Road was officially completed in 1932, although lower elevation sections of the road were not completed to standard until the early 1950s. Records indicate that three workers lost their lives in the project.

In 1927, a slightly larger project involving three separate National Parks was launched in Southern Utah.  In order to provide direct access to Bryce Canyon and Grand Canyon National Parks, officials at Zion National Park drafted a plan for the Zion-Mt. Carmel Highway.  This 25-mile stretch of highway would be the final piece in a “Grand Loop”, which would allow people a tour of the area’s parks and monuments.

Construction on the Zion-Mt. Carmel Highway would prove to be uniquely difficult.  Deemed “a road designed to go where no road had gone before”, the highway not only winds through and up Pine Creek Canyon,  it also features a stunning 1.1 mile tunnel through solid rock.  The task of constructing this tunnel was given to the workers of the Nevada Contracting Company who began the project by blasting several gallery windows into the cliff face.  These windows, which now provide stunning views of the landscape, were instrumental in the tunnel’s construction–providing both ventilation and a point at which they could unload debris from the tunnel.

Two years and ten months from the day construction began, the highway and tunnel were open to the public, and the dream of the Grand Loop was realized.  Now listed on the National Register of Historic Places as well as a Historic Civil Engineering Landmark by the American Society of Civil Engineers, the Zion-Mt. Carmel Highway is an enduring testament to the way in which engineering and the environment can harmonize.

This is by no means a comprehensive accounting of all the major infrastructure and engineering feats that have aided our appreciation of the world’s natural beauty.  These projects have created an indelible legacy–providing comfort, solitude, and stunning views to visitors from around the world.  The legacy of the men who built these roads, tunnels, bridges, and walls is not only written in stone and concrete, but also that infrastructure can provide a gateway to something that can be shared by everyone: nature.

Luke Carothers is the Editor for Civil + Structural Engineer Media. If you want us to cover your project or want to feature your own article, he can be reached at lcarothers@zweiggroup.com.

For as long as humans have congregated into communities, there have been attempts to manipulate nature’s forces in a way that benefits the health and quality of life of the members in that group.  For the ancient civilizations of the Indus Valley, this meant controlling water resources through public works projects such as wells, storage tanks, public baths, and early sewage removal systems.  Later civilizations, such as the Greeks and Romans, designed and constructed aqueducts to ensure the flow of water into agricultural works and public spaces even when a drought was present.     

However, environmental engineering considerations remained largely unchanged from the time of Rome’s fall to the Industrial Revolution.  As human populations became more and more dense, engineers were struggling to design systems capable of providing a clean living environment, particularly to those living in working class communities.

This situation came to a head in London in the mid-1800s.  Starting in the late 1700s, London’s population exploded as more and more people flocked to the cities for work in the burgeoning factories.  With the population nearly tripling from 1 million residents to 3 million and the invention of flushing toilets, city engineers were facing a waste problem bigger than they had ever anticipated.  To accommodate this population influx, engineers built hundreds of brick sewers that were designed to dump the waste on the shores of the River Thames.  In many places, these brick “sewers” were nothing more than covered portions of the Fleet and Walbrook rivers.  By the middle of the 18th century, these tributaries of the Thames were entirely bricked over for use as sewers, flowing directly into the Thames.  Furthermore, the city was filled with some 200,000 cesspits where residents dumped their waste.

The result of such poor planning was an immense loss of human life.  London experienced three separate Cholera outbreaks from 1831-1854 that claimed the lives of over 31,000 Londoners.  Additionally, because the prevailing theory of disease was based on the presence of noxious odors, city officials dumped dangerous chemicals into the cesspits to control odor.  The resulting gases led to fires and poisoning deaths.

To begin fighting back against these deaths, the city of London established the Metropolitan Commission of Sewers (MCS). This was significant because it consolidated commissions that had been operating since the time of King Henry VIII; it also paved the way for the passage of a law that required new buildings to be connected to the sewer system.

The most significant member of the MCS began as an assistant surveyor, but eventually came to lead the organization.  Joseph Bazalgette was no stranger to London’s growing sewage problem.  By 1856 Bazalgette completed plans for a new vision of London’s sewage system; his plan was hinged upon splitting the city into two zones on either side of the Thames.  It also specified that small, local pipes that were roughly 3 feet wide would feed into larger, central pipes as large as 11 feet wide.  The plan also included a series of pumping stations throughout the city.

Once Bazalgette’s plans were revised and made official, the need was dire.  In the Summer of 1858, London experienced some of its hottest weather on record coupled with a prolonged drought.  The resulting drop in the water level turned the river into what famous novelist Charles Dickens described as “a deadly sewer”.  In fact, the smell coming from the Thames was so bad that the window curtains in the Parliament Building had to be soaked in chemicals to lessen the smell.

The onslaught of noxious fumes eventually wore the legislators down, and they quickly passed legislation to begin work on Bazalgette’s plan.  Workers and draftsmen soon began work on the over 1,100 miles of additional sewers that spanned 82 miles.  By the time London experienced its next Cholera outbreak, much of the city was connected to the new waste system.  The outbreak occurred in one of the only remaining sections of the city that had not been connected to the new system, and the spread was largely confined to that disconnected area.

In fact, Bazalgette’s completed system is still used by the population of London today after two subsequent expansions in the 20th century.  Although it is now struggling to contain the waste of London’s, Bazalgette’s system is a milestone in the history of environmental engineering, standing out as a pivotal moment where engineering rose to the challenges of rapid urbanization.

Luke Carothers is the Editor for Civil + Structural Engineer Media. If you want us to cover your project or want to feature your own article, he can be reached at lcarothers@zweiggroup.com.

For as long as there have been humans living together, there has been one form of athletic competition or another.  From the Olympics in Ancient Greece to Mesoamerican ballgame courts, there has always been a need to house these sports in structures that allow for large crowds of spectators because, after all, spectating is just as human as playing the sport.

These structures became bigger and bigger as populations increased.  In the late 19th century the rise of professionalism in sports infused more capital into building stadiums to house the public’s ever-growing fascination with spectator sports.  Another element was added in the United States, which was the invention of collegiate athletics.  The backing of large educational institutions coupled with the rise of professionalism led to some truly impressive feats of engineering.

From 1895 to 1904 the 3 oldest football stadiums in the United States were built: Penn’s Franklin Field (1895), Harvard Stadium (1903), and Texas A&M’s Kyle Field (1904).  A few short years later, professional baseball caught up to the trend with Fenway Park being built in 1912 and Wrigley Field being built two years later in 1914.

The trend of building large, concrete structures to house sporting events was firmly established by this point in the United States, and stadiums were built from coast-to-coast with emphasis on packing more and more spectators into these stadiums.  The modern history of American stadium engineering has seen its fair share of notable triumphs and failures, and our fascination and financial dedication to seeing these projects realized has not been without scrutiny.

One valid thread of criticism from this wave of building is that these large, densely-packed structures did little to provide accessibility to spectators with disabilities.  In a quest to build bigger structures, little attention was paid to obstacles that could potentially bar a fan with disabilities from enjoying the game or even entering the stadium.  Design features common in these early American stadiums–such as concrete stairs, doorknobs, elevated sinks and paper towel dispensers–stood in the way of providing a truly universal experience for spectators.

However, in 1990 President H.W. Bush signed the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), which changed the way engineers and architects designed not only stadiums, but all public places.  Along with protecting people with disabilities from discrimination, the ADA required employers to make reasonable accomodations for employees with disabilities and required public spaces to provide a decent level of accessibility to those individuals.

From the signing of the ADA onward, older stadiums began renovating to accommodate spectators with disabilities.  This process involved altering original designs to install wheelchair ramps, which posed a challenge in terms of space.  Additionally, professional organizations and colleges began replacing door knobs with easy to use handles and lowering and modifying features attached to the walls such as soap and paper towel dispensers, light switches, sinks, and toilets.

Still for much of the 90s and into the early 2000s, many in the disabled community criticized these institutions for not fully embracing the spirit of the ADA.  This led to a number of lawsuits leveled against institutions claiming they had not done enough.

Notable among these lawsuits was that of Mike Harris against the University of Michigan in 2007.  A former University of Michigan football player, Harris was paralyzed in a car accident in 1986.  Since the accident, Harris found difficulty attending games at his alma mater where his seating options were limited to 45 seats in both the North and South end zone sections.  To add to the frustration of Mike and others in the disabled community, these designated sections did not have access to the rest of the stadium.

In 2010, the University of Michigan renovated the “Big House”, adding significant upgrades to their previous accessibility design features such as: upgraded and expanded accessible seating, a shuttle service to and from an accessibility-designed parking area, and assisted listening devices.  These and similar upgrades were made to venues across the country in the decade following, but the movement for truly accessible sporting venues pushed on.

Recent additions to the movement for accessible sporting venues have also been geared towards disabilities other than physical impairment.  In Minnesota, U.S. Bank Stadium was designed with a sensory room for spectators who are on the autism spectrum.  Many stadiums are also now designed with alternate viewing methods in mind, featuring interpreters, enhanced listening devices, and flash warnings for strobe lights and pyrotechnics.

Venues and stadiums are continuing to adapt their experience to fit not only current legislation, but also the technology available.  Many stadiums, such as Ohio Stadium in Columbus, now offer interactive digital maps of the latest accessibility features.

From the earliest days of civilization until now, there is a common societal bond that forms around live sporting events.  Now, in the current time it is important to remember that bond when thinking about how stadiums and other venues are constructed.  It is vital that we think about how certain segments of the population have been isolated by designs in the past and put their humanity at the forefront of our thought when designing sporting venues.

Luke Carothers is the Editor for Civil + Structural Engineer Media. If you want us to cover your project or want to feature your own article, he can be reached at lcarothers@zweiggroup.com.