Best of Tucson 1996: Best Roadway Landscaping

Best Roadway Landscaping

I-10 Murals
I-10 and Miracle Mile

READERS' AND STAFF PICK: Bright, colorful and gigantic, the murals on the new I-10 overpass can perk up the weariest of commuters. The simple figures and cheerful landscapes pack a punch even at 55 m.p.h., and best of all, they're made of tile. Don't you just want to pull over and take a shower? Completed last year as part of landscape architects Wheat-Gallaher Associates' contract for roadway landscaping, the designs were hand-painted by local artist (and The Mollys drummer) Gary Mackender, and sealed on 18,000 pre-fab, 3-by-3 inch ceramic wall tiles. And let's not forget the xeriscape, which will provide lush, drought-tolerant greenery in the coming years. Since we can't give up our cars, the least we can do is replant some of the beauty mowed down on the road to progress.

READERS' POLL RUNNER-UP: A few decades after it first earned the dubious accolade of Ugliest Street In America, things have changed a bit on Speedway Boulevard. Oh, we still have the billboards, the illuminated signs, the power lines and the absence of any architectural cues other than disposable garishness. These things are all still there, and now they lack even the virtues of newness and cleanliness they had then. But the trees running down the middle have since matured to their full, leafy growth, and the city has invested in a few bricks to make the medians more presentable. So as you're sweltering your way through a three-light-wait at Craycroft Road, muttering, "I can stand this for one more minute...I can stand this for one more minute," take your eyes off the rear bumper of the car in front of you and rest them for a moment on the friendly greenery overhead. Then perhaps you can stand it for two more minutes....

A PERFECT 10: We could go on and on about how beautiful the plantings are, how effective the circles have been in slowing down traffic, how cool the sculptures made by two neighborhood artists are (especially that hell-bent bicyclist made out of rusty scrap metal). But what's just as great about the Keeling Neighborhood Roundabouts (in the Grant/Stone area) is what you don't see: That a scrappy group of neighbors, with help from the Christmas in April volunteers, banded together to create something beautiful and functional that the whole city gets to enjoy.