“This used to be real estate/ Now it's only fields and trees/ . . . Once there were parking lots/ Now it's a peaceful oasis,” sings David Byrne in the Talking Heads' song “(Nothing But) Flowers.” These lines came to mind recently as I watched the flowering of not one, but three ambitious schemes for turning chunks of industrialized land in Southern California into open green space.

First, there's
Orange County Great Park, a huge new park that residents have voted to create on 1,350 acres of the 4,700-acre former Marine Corps Air Station at El Toro. The designer, Ken Smith, together with the Mexican architect
Enrique Norten, the artist
Mary Miss, and restoration ecologist Steven Handel, plan to turn the flat barren site into a lush, manmade canyon with a meandering two-mile stream with expanses of green, as well as cultural buildings and sports areas.
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Perpetual Motion: Vol. 4In the final segment of our four-part series, Robert Sullivan travels west to seek out transportation’s future. Photos by Matthew Monteith
The Melbourne SupremacyPhotographer Peter Bennetts cuts out the middleman, photographing his favorite spots in his home base, Melbourne, Australia. Story by Helen Kaiser / Photos by Peter Bennetts
December 7–December 10, 2006
Miami Beach, FL
December 7, 2006
Los Angeles, CA
December 8, 2006–July 29, 2007
Cooper-Hewitt / New York, NY
December 10, 2006
Yale Art Gallery / New Haven, CT