Making greenways happen.

What do you suppose the young president of the Mad Dog Construction Company in Tallahassee, Florida, the owner of a string of pizzerias in Portland, Oregon, and a hard-cussing retired state legislator in Denver, Colorado, have in common? The answer is: not much, except for one thing-greenways. Or perhaps better put, the urban greenway movement, the leadership of which is as varied as it is inspired.

At a time when the plight of cities is not even on the national priority list-much less near the top, as it was only a decade ago-these leaders, along with many hundreds like them, have discovered a means to beautify harsh metropolitan landscapes, to provide a new kind of recreational amenity, to protect and enhance natural features, and in the process to rekindle pride of place by bringing citizens of all classes and cultures together to make greenways happen.

For those who are unfamiliar with the term, greenways can be simply defined as linear parks or open spaces that link existing natural and cultural features-usually, but not invariably, in or near cities, and usually, but not invariably, with a trailway running through them. The term, though dating to the 1920s, came into common use in the mid-1970s, when federal money for high-ticket open-space acquisition and recreational development projects started getting hard to come by. It was then that local leaders discovered, or rediscovered, open-space resources they had earlier overlooked: underutilized riversides, often in industrial districts; abandoned railroad rights-of-way; semi-public lands such as water-company holdings; and scenic transportation routes.

But simply defining the term can scarcely convey how diverse and imaginative the greenway movement is when seen up close. During the past year, under research grants from the Conservation Fund's Greenways for America program, I have been gathering material for a comprehensive book on greenways, which will be published by the johns Hopkins University Press. In the process, I have gotten in touch with over a hundred projects across the country. Doubtless I've hit only the high spots. My sense of it is that there are four greenways I don't know about for every one I do. But so far, I have visited 20 greenways in the course of my research, and expect to visit 20 more before I'm through. That's how I got to know Mad Dog Chuck Mitchell, among other colorful greenwayites.

A husky, athletic man, Mitchell and some counterculture friends from Florida State University decided 15 years ago to build a group of houses cooperatively (i.e., do-it-yourself) after graduation, and stay in Tallahassee rather than return to hometowns or graduate school Mitchell was bound for Yale). Their approach was so unconventional that the city building inspector started calling Mitchell and friends the "mad dog builders of Tallahassee."

As it turned out, Mitchell got good at house building and decided to go into it as a career. Hence, the Mad Dog Construction Company-now a major contractor in north Florida. He recently received an award from the National Park Service for discovering and preserving a major archaeological site associated with Hernando de Soto (1499-1542), spotted in the course of excavating for a development.

When not mad-dogging, Mitchell works on a project of the Apalachee Land Conservancy to preserve Tallahassee's famed "Canopy Roads." The roads, which radiate outward from the city into the adjoining countryside, were the original routes used in preColumbian times by various tribes of the Creek nation. They were later taken over by the Spanish, and after that by the plantation-owners.

Some of the roads are stfil dirt-surfaced and, through centuries of use, sunken several feet below the grade of surrounding fields. Lining the roads are huge live oaks whose spreading limbs, dripping with Spanish moss, create an arboreal archway green canopy over the ancient avenues. They are perfectly beautiful. And yet, because the roads are narrow, lack shoulders, and are lined with a forbidding gauntlet of stout tree trunks, they are also unforgiving to motorists and deadly to bikers.

The transportation engineer's answer to this problem, which was getting worse as Tallahassee's population increased, was to cut down the trees and widen the roads. But to Mad Dog Mitchell that idea was truly crazy. Instead, he and his colleagues urged, reduce development on the roads, establish alternate through-routes, and acquire easements 100 feet back on each side along the roads from the large landowners whose properties abut them. This would permanently protect the canopy as well as provide off-road pathways for hiking and biking.

Working in concert with the Trust for Public Land, the Historic Tallahassee Preservation Board, the engineering firm of Post, Buckley, Schuh, and Jernigan, Inc., and sympathetic public agencies (the cast of characters is abundant), Mitchell and the Conservancy got the "Canopy Roads Preservation Plan" adopted in concept by the Leon County Commission in February 1988. The Commission also established a staff position to coordinate plan implementation. It is, in fact, a remarkable idea-building parks around a road rather than building highways through a park. Mad enough to be utterly sane.

Meanwhile,in Portland, Oregon, Al Edelman, architect, teacher, and former executive with the Nature Conservancy, now divides his time between the management of several small businesses in Portland (including the pizzerias) and leading the effort to complete the city's 40-mile Loop. "

One of the truly charming things about Oregonians is their way being self-effacing. They delight in telling you how bad the weather is and how poor the salmon run was this year. Accordingly, while you may suppose that something called the 40-mile Loop will be 40 miles long, you would be wrong. It turns out to be 140 miles long. The loop plan hasn't been 40 miles since 1904, when John C. Olmsted (son of Frederick Law Olmsted) proposed a greenway running along the mountainside to the west of the city, crossing the Willamette River, and then looping around again to where it started.

Actually, 40 is a kind of mystical number for this greenway. It took over 40 years for the first part of the loop to be preserved-the mountainside leg, which was the sine qua non of the project. Finally, after an inspirational mid 1940s visit by New York park-builder Robert Moses, the 7.5-mile-long Forest Park segment-was preserved in 1947.

Then another 40 years passed, or almost, without further action. At length, in 1981, Edelman and a number of other conservation leaders in Portland once again dusted off the old Olmsted dream, commissioning a major study and design plan for an expanded hiker-biker route that would link some 30 parks in the metropolitan area. It would require a cooperative effort by eight government entities, ranging from the City of Portland to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to various suburban municipalities, which were not famous for their ability to get along heretofore.

But under the new 140-mile plan the cooperation has been heartening. Today the loop is about half finished (70 miles). A key link remaining is an abandoned railroad right-of-way that in one fell swoop would add 12 miles of beautiful trail. Edelman is certain the circle will be closed by the mid1990s-as complete and perfect as the most elegant pizza.

One of the earliest and certainly one of the most inspiring greenways is in Denver, Colorado. The city was, like many cities, built alongside a river-in this case the South Platte. As the city grew, the river became a dividing line between the rich and poor sides of town, and a sewer for both.

So things stood for a century on a river once described as too thick to drink, too thin to plow. Then in 1965 a devastating flood swept through Denver, sending the Platte over its banks and foul water throughout the city. The cost of damage was a third of a billion dollars. Everybody said something should be done. Then, in 1973, another flood hit. An engineering report was prepared: the price tag for fixing up the river would be $630 million.

At that point Denver had $1.9 million to use on the river. What to do? The answer was to call in Joe Shoemaker, hardnosed Republican state legislator, a lawyer and ex-Navy man who, as he says of himself, doesn't take any crap from anybody. (I have a tape recording of a two-hour interview with Joe which is decidedly scorched around the edges. Actually, he did not ever use the word crap, but this is a family magazine.)

His idea was, instead of trying to pass a $630 million bond for flood control, which would probably be impossible anyway, why not set up a foundation and "return the river to the people"-not as a riprapped channel, but as a greenway.

And so it is today. Joe Shoemaker and a cadre of devoted young colleagues (now including his own son, also a state legislator) created the Platte river Greenway from one end of the city to the other (and nowadays beyond). They did it by creating a foundation board of directors made up of powerful figures who might have been enemies, by resolutely avoiding the accession of any government trappings whatsoever ("To have no power is to have afl power," says Shoemaker), and by piecing together from scores of public and private sources some $15 million to do the job.

The result is a greenway that provides 450 acres of riverside parks, 40 miles of interconnected hiking and biking routes, and a river that brings the city together instead of dividing it.

So there you have thumbnail accounts of just three of the hundreds of greenways developed, under way, or dreamed about in cities all across the country. There are a good many river-oriented projects, like Denver's. Others are based on converting railroad rights-of-way to hiker-biker trails, as in a part of Portland's 40-Mile Loop. Still others are meant to protect and enhance an historic amenity, like the Canopy Roads.

There are, moreover, greenways which serve as ecological corridors to foster species interchange and genetic diversity; greenways that are meant simply to protect distant scenery; and greenways that operate on a grand regional scale, such as the Ridge and Bay Trails in the San Francisco Bay Area, and the Hudson River Valley Greenway from Manhattan to Albany in New York State.

But there is one thing they all have in common: energetic, talented, and wonderful people who seek to build greenways in their cities and towns without a thought other than simply to succeed in bringing them into being. It is, withal, one of the most decent, heartwarming, constructive, small-d democratic efforts in urban improvement seen in this nation for many a year.

If you'd like to know more about the greenway movement, I'd urge you to contact Keith G. Hay, Director, Greenways for America Program, at the Conservation Fund: 1800 North Kent St., Arlington, VA 22209; (703) 5256300. He'll tell you what's going on nationally and can put you in touch with the organizations and agencies that want to be of help on local projects. As for me, I'm off to meet new greenwayites. Stay tuned.