BSLA Fieldbook BSLA 2015 Spring Fieldbook | Page 34

BSLA

/ MEMBER

TOM ENNIS, ASLA
“THREE LANES MAX:”
HOW I ENDED UP IN THE PUBLIC SECTOR.

“D

on’t drop that Bougainvillea!” my father
shouted, as I carried the heavy pots to the
customer’s car. Throughout high school, I
worked in my parents’ nursery in Florida.
The plan was for me to be the design-build
arm of the business. With that in mind, I
decided to study landscape architecture at
the University of Florida.
During a summer in
college, I grabbed my
camera and travelled
by van, doing a
photographic
essay of urban and
industrial areas
in Jacksonville,
St. Louis, New
Orleans, and Chicago.
What started out as
a summer adventure
ended up as a lifelong
interest in urban design.
Over the years, these two interests fused
into a cohesive career path. In my role as a
landscape architect, I have chosen to focus
on planning and permitting in order to
effect change through the public sector and
urban landscape.
Early in my career, I had the good fortune
to work at several high-profile design firms,
including Carol R. Johnson Associates
and Sasaki Associates, as well as several
engineering firms, which provided a solid
foundation for the work that would follow.
It was during this time that I saw how
transportation planning plays a major role
in defining the places where we live.

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During my work on the City of Boston’s
Central Artery Project, as part of The Big Dig
in the mid-nineties, I realized how critical it
is to get involved in the early planning and
permitting phases of a project. The CAT plan
called for 5-6 lanes but I didn’t want to see
the surface artery turn into a thoroughfare.
“Three lanes max!” was my rallying cry. To
this end, I helped develop a pedestrian-bicycle
plan for the surface street network and coauthored the community consensus plan that
was adopted by the City of Boston for the
surface artery development.
Early polic HX