A Rattlesnake Transect

The notion of a transect was proposed a few years ago by New Urbanist founder Andres Duany as a way to categorize and form the variety of human settlement patterns, from dense urban cores to wilderness areas. The idea is essentially borrowed from ecology, where lines of transects have been used to describe the gradual changes in animal and plant life, and applied to the gradient of dense to sparse human environments.

It occurred to me that my area of the Rattlesnake valley in north Missoula offers a fairly linear and condensed journey from T5 (urban center) to T1 (Nature). A trip along Van Buren/Rattlesnake drive is very satisfying because of the measured flow from one transect to another while still maintaining distinct borders between them.


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This is yesterday's journey in pictures from T1 to T5.

T1: Rattlesnake Wilderness



T2: Rural Rattlesnake



T3: Upper Rattlesnake Neighborhood



T4: Lower Rattlesnake Neighborhood



T5: Downtown