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Archive for the ‘Ecosystem Services’ Category

New Park in Singapore Shows What Rivers Can Do

Posted in Ecosystem Restoration, Ecosystem Services, Landscape Architecture, Public Spaces, Sustainable Design, Sustainable Materials, Urban Design, Urban Revitalization, Water Management, Wildlife on 07/25/2012 | Leave a Comment »


Singapore is heavily dependent on Malaysia for its water supply but is now creating new sustainable parks designed to reduce its reliance, said Herbert Dreiseitl, International ASLA, Atelier Dreiseitl, at the Greater & Greener: Reimagining Parks for 21st Century Cities, a conference in New York City. As an example, his amazing new 62-acre Bishan-Ang Mo Kio Park recreates nature, transforming a 2.7-kilometer concrete-channel lined river into a 3-kilometer natural meandering system. At the same time, the new system slows down and stores some of the rainfall that hits the city-state. The park is a model for how cities can transform outmoded, broken systems into natural systems.

Singapore has to import so much water because all its hard surfaces funnel water straight into the ocean. In the tropical heat, much is also lost to evaporation. “They can’t keep their water they have.” To address these problems, the city-state has created a new strategic master plan to reduce reliance on Malaysia and capture more of its own water for reuse. The new plan, which includes water guidelines Dreiseitl created for the Singaporean government, focuses on “collecting, slowing down, and storing rainwater.”

A central catchement — the Kallang River — is part of the larger system providing drinking water to the city-state. In the past, the river was actually set within a concrete channel in many key places so in heavy monsoons it would flood and then evaporate.

Dreiseitl convinced the government to let the river escape its concrete channel and meander through the park, turning an “old-fashioned park and canal” into green infrastructure system that teaches the community about how nature actually works. The new system is actually a lot safer — the previous concrete channel actually killed many residents who were playing soccer down there when flash flooding struck.


In Dreiseitl’s cutting-edge approach, the “blue and green are integrated.” To achieve this, he has to convince the city departments that handled water and parks to abandon their siloed approaches and better communicate with each other. “Now, territories, finances, and maintenance overlap.”

To make this seismic change happen, Dreiseitl said he had to get the Singaporean government to trust his new approach, so he actually used his own design fee to create a test site. Exploring 12 different “bioengineering techniques,” Dreiseitl commissioned a set of in-depth hydraulic and materials studies. He was floored by how “crazy” the plants grow in Singapore so he had to adjust his models based on plant growth. He figured out what kinds of soil conditions would ensure slope stability in those temperatures. Lastly, he invested heavily in training the construction workers. “We couldn’t just show them pretty drawings of the new systems because they had no experience with these systems. We had to train them.”

With the approval of the government in place, Dreiseitl moved towards creating a new stream while the river was still flowing. In a feat of sequenced engineering, Dreiseitl managed to re-engineer soils, add bio-engineered plant systems along with trees, break up the existing concrete channel and reuse the rubble to stabilize the entire system — all while the river was still running. No artificial fertilizers were added. All materials on site were reused. In fact, some of the excess rubble was used to create a new hill, a look-out point over the park.


Importantly, the new system actually works. Dreiseitl said the new river “can hold lots of capacity and cuts in half the peak floods.” The new, cleansing biotope digest pollutants and creates oxygen in millions of gallons of river water each day. Some of the cleansed river water is diverted and reused in the watery playscapes. Before the water touches people, it’s further cleansed by a UV radiation filter. “It’s not only a purification system, but also a beautiful garden.”


The German landscape architect said for the project to work Singaporean officials just needed to be “learn how to behave with risk.” They had wanted to put a fence around the meandering river to keep people out of the flood plain, but Dreiseitl threatened to quit over that, arguing that it would not only ruin the design but break the human connection to the natural system. Instead, Dreiseitl’s team worked with the government to create an “amazing” early warning system, with towers that flash lights and use loudspeakers to make announcements in 6 languages so people can still sit down there but get early warnings when the river is going to overflow.

He thinks this kind of experience with nature in Singapore, the “most artificial of cities,” is critical. In Singapore, everyone “lives in of air-conditioning. They use underground subways and go to underground shopping centers” to escape the heat. As a result, much of the population is cut-off from nature. He said kids are particularly blown away by the wildlife in Bishan. Since the park was redesigned, biodiversity is up 30 percent. There are now 59 species of birds, including sea eagles, and 23 kinds of dragonflies.


To add proof to a recent U.S. National Park Service report that being near a wildlife preserve raises property values, Dreiseitl said the nearby apartments are up 48 percent in value since the park opened. To laughter, he added, “I should have bought a place before it opened.”

Dreiseitl believes that to implement such a game-changing system landscape architects need to have a “strong, logical argument.” Designers “must convince with a narrative.” There has to be inter-disciplinary planning with engineers and architects to capture all the benefits. He also said climate change can be a “engine” for convincing clients to move forward with new models like these. “In the past, cities thought water was a problem to get rid of, but with climate change we need to focus on water security and reuse all water.”

Read an interview with Dreiseitl on designing with water.

Image credits: Atelier Dreiseitl

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Vacant Lots Can Catalyze Positive Change

Posted in Ecosystem Services, Landscape Architecture, Public Spaces, Urban Design, Water Management on 07/18/2012 | 2 Comments »


At Greater & Greener: Reimagining Parks for 21st Century Cities, a conference in New York City hosted by the City Parks Alliance, Nate Berg, a staff writer for The Atlantic Cities moderated a session that explored approaches for dealing with vacant urban land. Through sensitive design, a number of panelists who are working around the world explained, vacant sites can become catalyze positive change.

According to Tamar Shapiro, Senior Director of Urban and Social Policy at the German Marshall Fund of the United States,  Germany has undertaken a number of successful strategies for dealing with vacancies stemming from deindustrialization in Germany.

The City of Leipzig, located in eastern Germany, (seen above) experienced a complete industrial collapse after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Rapid suburbanization and migration to the west led to a drastic loss of population, resulting in massive vacancy rates across the city. In 2000, Leipzig had an overall vacancy rate of 20 percent, and many neighborhoods had vacancy rates of over 50 percent.

To address these vacancies, Leipzig employed a strategy where the city would enter into 10-year contracts with property owners to temporarily reuse vacant land as green space. Citing numerous examples, Shapiro made the point that while temporary, these green spaces were carefully designed and strategically located. She argued that in order for a park to help turn a neighborhood around, it cannot simply be a lawn. Instead, the park must be professionally designed. By heavily investing in the design of these parks, Leipzig has seen dramatic reinvestment in many of its urban neighborhoods.

Heather McMann, Executive Director of Groundwork Lawrence, spoke about her organization’s efforts to improve the City of Lawrence, Massachusetts. Vibrant but economically distressed, Lawrence has long been a gateway community. Most recently it has been a destination for immigrants from the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico. Once a thriving mill town, de-industrialization has left Lawrence with significant vacant properties. McMann described how Groundwork Lawrence led to the development of the Spicket River Greenway Plan, “helping the community achieve the dual goals of riverfront restoration and neighborhood revitalization.”


Several components of the greenway have been successfully built so far, including the redevelopment of an abandoned mill site as Dr. Nina Scarito Park. McMann explained the success of these projects depended on extensive collaboration with multiple community and governmental organizations.

Walter Meyer, Founding Principal of Local Office Landscape and Urban Design, spoke about his work on Parque del Litoral, in Mayaguez, Puerto Rico. Given the river was turned into a concrete channel and the creek buried, this urban waterfront site contained seven stormsewer outfalls that sent the city’s runoff and sewage directly into the Caribbean Sea. To address these issues, Local Office analyzed virgin rivers in undeveloped areas of northeastern Puerto Rico. Meyer described how this exercise was not about nostalgia; instead, their goal was to replicate the performance of these virgin rivers in an urban context. Local Office observed several critical river systems such as meandering curves, tree roots, and dunes. Applied to Parque del Litoral, Local Office’s design employs an extensive system of terraced plantings (filled with phytoremediating plants that remove toxins) to filter stormwater, protected by a new system of dunes. Developed as part of the preparation for Mayaguez’s hosting of the 2010 Central American Games, many elements of Parque del Litoral are designed to be repurposed and reused. For instance, parking areas for the Central American Games can be converted into a variety of uses including garden plots, sports facilities, and playgrounds.


Meyer also discussed his work on Miami Grand Central Park. Located on the old Miami Heat Arena site, the park is built on a 2 – 3 year lease and is therefore a potentially temporary use. The park is designed for maximum flexibility, allowing program to change quickly to generate revenue. Meyer described how it can contain a farmers market in the morning, accept overflow parking during the day, and host film screenings and concerts at night. Designed to be inexpensively built and maintained, the park utilizes a rainwater collection system for irrigation. Despite its temporary nature, the park has been the site of numerous concerts and social events, and is already starting to have a transformational effect on its surrounding neighborhood.


Throughout all the presentations, the benefits of temporary uses came up repeatedly. Tamar Shapiro explained that short-term leases and temporary uses allow for real flexibility, a critical quality in areas where the futures of vacant lots are unclear. As demonstrated in Leipzig and Miami, these potentially temporary parks can provide tremendous benefits to their communities, even if they are not necessarily permanent works.

This guest post is by Benjamin Wellington, Student ASLA, master’s of landscape architecture candidate, Louisiana State University, and ASLA 2012 summer intern.

Image credits: (1) City of Leipzig / Permaculture and Regenerative Design News, (2) Groundwork Lawrence / Hammer + Walsh Design Inc, (3-4) Local Office Landscape and Urban Design

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Cities Are More Than Just Buildings and Parks

Posted in Ecosystem Services, Landscape Architecture, Urban Design, Urban Revitalization on 07/03/2012 | Leave a Comment »


In Urban Composition: Developing Community through Design, Professor Mark C. Childs, who teaches architecture at the University of New Mexico, declares that “settlements are not just the sums of their parts; their poetry and vitality comes from their collective composition – the interactions among multiple designs.” In other words, it’s the way multiple individually-designed pieces work together that leads to the overall success of a place. These pieces include buildings, parks, streets, and works of public art. Each of these components is individually crafted by an architect, landscape architect, or artist.

Childs argues that good urban design occurs through a concinnity of these components. He defines concinnity as “the skillful and harmonious adaptation or fitting together of parts to craft a whole.” He writes “great places emerge from the concinnity of incremental acts of design. Existing work frames new projects, which in turn inspire future works.” Each designed element should innovate while still drawing from the existing cultural, environmental, and physical context. In this way, the components of a city can be individually interesting and part of a coherent larger whole.

Childs describes these individual acts of design as falling within a design hierarchy. He gives the example of a building, which is located on a lot, which is part of a block, which is part of a larger pattern of blocks and streets, which is in turn influenced by the topography of the city. Each of these layers becomes progressively permanent: a building is more likely to change than the lot boundaries, which are less permanent than the underlying topography. Additionally, a building creates new spaces for interior design, from the division of rooms to the arrangement of furniture. These layers of design define how different design professions interact with each other. The interactions between multiple designers operating at different scales leads to a rich urban composition. However, the precise distinctions within this design hierarchy aren’t always clear. Childs writes, “when do architects place buildings in landscapes versus landscape architects place designs around buildings?”

Childs mentions public works, projects that “have a principal goal of providing a collective good or service to a catchment or district.” These projects, frequently known as urban infrastructure, influence the built form that falls within them. “By providing a public utility and structuring a district,” Childs writes, “public works create a pattern of niches for various built species.” As an example, ecological systems that provide services – including biodiversity, flood control, and stormwater filtration — can be considered collective goods. Because these goods are delivered to us through landscape design, our landscapes can be viewed as infrastructure. In the same way that a road layout influences how buildings are shaped, landscape infrastructure frames and guides our built forms. 

The growing awareness of the importance of urban ecology and the increasingly blurred distinction between the natural and built environments raise questions on landscape architecture’s position within the hierarchy of urban design. Isn’t ecological infrastructure now playing a larger role in making our cities more unique, boosting the role of landscape architects in the process?

While Urban Composition tends to be architecturally oriented, it’s an interesting read for any urban designer. Childs effectively communicates the ways designers need to consider the context of their designs, as well as their professional roles, in order to contribute to a successful urban composition. After all, the greatness of a city doesn’t depend on its individual buildings or parks, but on how those components work together.

Read the book.

This guest post is by Benjamin Wellington, Student ASLA, master’s of landscape architecture candidate, Louisiana State University, and ASLA 2012 summer intern.

Image credit: Princeton Architectural Press

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Designing the Sustainable Site

Posted in Ecosystem Restoration, Ecosystem Services, Landscape Architecture, Policy and Regulation, Residential Design, Sustainable Design on 06/26/2012 | 2 Comments »


Designing the Sustainable Site: Integrated Design Strategies for Small-Scale Sites and Residential Landscapes by Heather Venhaus, who worked on the Sustainable Sites Initiative (SITES) guidelines and benchmarks at the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center at the University of Texas at Austin, provides a broad overview of sustainable landscapes from concept to implementation.

Venhaus cites the common definition of sustainability as “development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs” (Brundtland 1987). She further describes sustainability as a recognition of the interdependency of the environment, human health, and the economy. Venhaus argues that sustainable landscapes need to be regenerative, not only easing environmental damage but actively reversing it. In order for a design to be regenerative, we cannot simply add sustainable elements to the end of a conventional design. Instead, ecological systems must be integrated into every step of the design process. For this reason, Venhaus has written a book that is aimed not only at landscape architects but also planners, architects, contractors, and home gardeners.

Designing the Sustainable Site is a broad introduction to a variety of concepts and tools, most of which will be quite familiar to landscape architects. The book discusses, among other things, how to assemble multi-disciplinary design teams, write construction documents, conduct site analysis, and formulate maintenance plans. The remaining bulk of the book is devoted to “Sustainable Solutions,” which mostly reads as an overview of current sustainable design technologies. These chapters cover techniques for addressing air pollution, water pollution, flooding, water conservation, invasive species, and loss of biodiversity.

Experienced landscape architects are not necessarily Venhaus’s target audience. Instead, Designing the Sustainable Site could be an introductory textbook for students of planning, architecture, or landscape architecture. In many ways, this book looks and reads like a textbook: it’s full of diagrams that are clear, legible, but uninspiring. More successful than the diagrams are the extensive, photographically-documented case studies of residential sustainable design. These case studies begin to communicate the aesthetic potential of sustainable design, lending the book a bit of graphic interest.

By stressing the importance of integrative design – working sustainability into all aspects of a project – Venhaus makes it clear that sustainability falls across multiple disciplines. While the concepts presented in this book may be obvious to landscape architects, unfortunately they may be news to other design professionals and much of the public. By specifically addressing residential landscapes and small-scale sites, Venhaus moves sustainability out of the exclusive domain of landscape architects and into the hands of anyone involved in the design and building process, including all those prospective clients.  

Read the book.

This guest post is by Benjamin Wellington, Student ASLA, master’s of landscape architecture candidate, Louisiana State University, and ASLA 2012 summer intern.

Image credit: Wiley & Sons

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The Easily Ignored Plants of Daily Life

Posted in Ecosystem Services, Landscape Architecture, Urban Design, Water Management on 06/13/2012 | 5 Comments »


Peter Del Tredici’s Wild Urban Plants of the Northeast serves not only as an absorbing field guide to spontaneous urban plants but also as a razor-sharp critique of how we value urban plants in general. In clear, jargon-free language, Del Tredici lays out his challenge to our ecological assumptions in the book’s introduction. He describes how we have a tendency to negatively judge plants that grow without human intention. Indeed, most of the plants described in this book are traditionally dismissed as weeds. Furthermore, we negatively judge plants based on their place of origin, labeling non-native species as “invasive.” Del Tredici argues that by automatically tagging these spontaneous urban plants as ecologically harmful, we ignore their potential benefits.

The entire concept of native and non-native becomes complicated when we consider the reality of urban conditions. Del Tredici challenges the notion that native plants can always be restored in urban landscapes, writing “(1) most urban land has been totally transformed from what it once was; (2) the climate conditions that the original flora was adapted to no longer exist; and (3) most urban habitats are strictly human creations with no natural analogs and no indigenous flora.” Cities represent entirely new conditions that native species are not necessarily adapted to. For this reason, native plants often require extensive human management to survive. Accordingly, Del Tredici dismisses the concept of urban ecological restoration as “really just gardening dressed up to look like ecology.” Instead, the plants that thrive in cities are already evolutionarily adapted for harsh conditions. Because they grow in cities without human input, they are, in a sense, the natural urban flora. These species can deliver significant benefits to urban ecosystems and should not be disregarded. For example, these species reduce the urban heat island effect, protect against erosion, stabilize stream banks, manage stormwater, create wildlife habitat, produce oxygen, and store carbon.

By challenging the way we value urban plans, the book forces us to reconsider how we design our urban landscapes. For this reason, the book is of particular relevance to landscape architects, though it is not specifically written for them. Discussions of sustainability frequently involve the use of native species, but how sustainable is a landscape that requires frequent maintenance? After all, plants that grow and flourish without human intervention are, by definition, sustainable.

Del Tredici touches on some landscape strategies that utilize spontaneous vegetation. These strategies involve the employment of selective editing – the targeted removal of certain undesirable species – to guide spontaneous plant growth to a desired result. He brings up the possibility of the spontaneously generated green roofs, high-performance urban meadows, and ecologically beneficial lawn alternatives. The design implications for spontaneous vegetation are vast and far beyond the scope of this book. For instance, spontaneous vegetation could be a tool for inexpensively transforming vacant urban areas into ecologically and socially beneficial spaces. Old industrial cities such as Detroit and Buffalo already grapple with the phenomenon of the “urban prairie.” Can these maligned spaces be turned into assets? Of course, any strategy utilizing spontaneous vegetation would need to fully address issues of safety, health and aesthetics. In New Orleans’s Lower Ninth Ward, a post-Katrina proliferation of spontaneous vegetation is generally seen as a threat to the neighborhood’s viability. Is there a way we can selectively edit this vegetation to benefit, instead of threaten, the neighborhood?

Del Tredici follows his eloquent 30-page introduction with the bulk of the book: a 300-page field guide to spontaneous urban plants. Each species gets a full page of text and a full page of images; by giving these plants visibility, he makes them impossible to ignore. Significantly, in addition to basic identification and habitat preference, each plant is described in terms of its positive ecological and cultural significance. These descriptions make the field guide an entertaining read and elevate it far beyond a simple tool for plant identification. Del Tredici deliberately omits any negative ecological qualities that these plants may have; the book aims to challenge our perceptions of these plants, not necessarily provide a balanced perspective.

By refusing to address any negative ecological consequences of these species, the book does lose some of its utility to landscape designers. While hinting at the potential of spontaneous urban species in landscape design, it does not work as a guide to their use. Similarly, while the book does bring up the strategy of selectively editing plant species, it does not describe how to kill them. While this information is useful and necessary, it is beyond the scope of the book. Written for a general audience, Wild Urban Plants of the Northeast is not intended as a guide to designing with spontaneous vegetation. Instead, it serves both as an eye-opening guide to plants often overlooked, and as a challenge to our notions of nature and the way we determine the value of plants.

In a culture where any alternative to the lawn can be controversial, we need to change the perception of wild greenery before we can design with it. Del Tredici strives “to teach people how to identify the plants that are growing in urban areas, and to counter the widespread perception that these plants are ecologically harmful or useless and should be eliminated.” In this aim, he resoundingly succeeds.

Read the book.

This guest post is by Benjamin Wellington, Student ASLA, master’s of landscape architecture candidate, Louisiana State University, and ASLA 2012 summer intern.

Image credit: Comstock Pub Assoc

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Wildlife Refuges Are Economic Engines

Posted in Ecosystem Services, Wildlife on 06/11/2012 | 2 Comments »


Who knew that wildlife refuges are actually “economic engines” in disguise? A recent study by North Carolina State University researchers for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service found that metro-area homes near wildlife refuges are worth more than those farther away from these havens. The report surveyed homes in urban areas near refuges in the Northeast, Southeast, and California-Nevada region. The report didn’t include the Southwest because reserves there tend to be too far from dense, urban cores.

While many developers have known for some time that being near to open space somewhat improves property values – with natural parks and woodlands providing the most value – perhaps it’s less known that wildlife refuges have a greater impact. According to The New York Times’ Green blog, ”for homes that are less than a half-mile from a wildlife refuge and within eight miles of an urban center, property values were 7 to 9 percent higher on average in the Southeast and 4 to 5 percent higher in the Northeast. In the California-Nevada area, such homes were worth 3 to 6 percent more.” This is far higher than the average 2.8 percent increase in property value associated with simply being near open space. 

In many neighborhoods, this isn’t chump change. The 36 refuges the researchers examined were found to increase local property values by a whopping $300 million, meaning benefits for both homeowners and local communities’ tax offices. So, really, the case may be made that wildlife refuges actually pay for themselves.

The New York Times writes that this report may be defense against House Republicans who ”would like to see federal lands sold off to raise money and to encourage development.” Perhaps it’s just a matter of better making the case with real data to everyone.

As part of the effort, the Fish and Wildlife Service will update its analysis of the economic impacts of refuges in terms of tourist spending. One of their studies found that “34.8 million visits to American wildlife refuges in fiscal 2006 generated $1.7 billion in sales, nearly 27,000 jobs and $542.8 million in employment income in regional economies.” 

Trust-worthy data can help establish the understanding that wildlife refuges not only provide critical value for migrating and often endangered species but also help people and communities. While landscape architects and other working in environmental design and ecological restoration understand the inherent biological value of wildlife reserves, in many communities facing huge budget crunches, the economic case must also be made for investing in places just for wildlife, whether they are natural sites, restored ones, or even designed from scratch.

Read the report.

Image credit: ASLA 2008 General Design Honor Award. Gannett/USA Today Headquarters, McLean, Virginia / Michael Vergason Landscape Architects, Ltd., Alexandria, Virginia

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New Rankings on Environmental Performance

Posted in Climate Change, Ecosystem Restoration, Ecosystem Services, Environment on 06/05/2012 | 2 Comments »

Since 2000, Yale University and Columbia University have been ranking countries’ environmental performance, releasing their comprehensive results and trend reports every two years. Responding to the need for “rigorous, data-driven” measurements, the index is meant to “add to the foundation of empirical support for sound policymaking.” The universities, which have collaborated with the World Economic Forum, also wanted to create an independent report that could aid government reformers who must show “tangible” results for all their environmental investments. Preserving and even enhancing the environment costs money these days, but, as a recent UN report argues, can also pay off big-time in terms of improved human health, ecosystem function, and green job growth, providing net (and long-term) gains for any economy. Moving to a more sustainable economy could mean millions of new local jobs each year, particularly in low-income countries. 

The Environmental Performance Index (EPI) ranks 132 countries on 22 performance indicators spanning ten policy categories, which track performance and progress on two broad objectives: environmental health and ecosystem vitality. The index is heavily weighted towards indicators of ecosystem vitality (70 percent), with the rest of a country’s performance determined by numbers from environmental health indicators. Categories include environmental burden of disease; water (effects on human health); air pollution (effects on human health); air pollution (ecosystem effects); water resources (ecosystem effects); biodiversity and habitat; forestry; fisheries; agriculture; and climate change.

As to be expected, the top ten is taken up by European countries with high per-capita income levels, with the incredible exception of Costa Rica (#5), a middle-income country that has made significant investments in sustainable development, preserving its natural resources, and reducing pollution. Switzerland topped the charts because it “leads the world in addressing pollution control and natural resource management challenges.” Major European economies, such as France, the UK, and Sweden, also made it into the top 10.

The U.S., which ranked a sad 61st place in 2010, is now 49th, which is still much lower than it should be. Despite progress on reducing emissions from cars in the past few years under President Obama, U.S. rankings were further dragged down by its near-bottom-of the list performance on climate change, at 121st place. Interestingly, the U.S. ranks #1 in the world though for air pollution control for human health. On ecosystem vitality, which covers agriculture, air’s impact on ecosystem performance, water resources, and biodiversity, the U.S. averages out at 100, pretty low on the list. On water resources alone, the U.S. ranks a poor 104 out of 132.

The report authors acknowledge that “wealth matters” so comparing developed and developing countries may be a bit unfair. Performance within the index is clearly linked to GDP per capita, although there is a “diversity of performance within every level.” As an example, there are high income countries with pretty poor performance like the U.S. and middle-income countries with amazing results like forward-thinking Costa Rica. 

While the quality of ecosystems may have a slightly looser connection with GDP, ”the environmental health scores reveal a significant relationship with GDP per capita.” This makes sense given many developing countries are, well, developing, undergoing significant programs of industrialization that reduce air and water quality, create waste, and negatively impact human health. According to the report, developing countries also face major challenges “associated with poverty and underinvestment in basic environmental amenities, such as access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation.” These countries are under immense pressure to deliver increased standards of living to populations that demand them, while also moving towards more sustainable production processes and consumption patterns.

For the first time, the group of universities also created a trend report designed to show whether countries are moving forward or backward over time. While most countries are trending upwards, there are some that fell during 2000 to 2010. ”Estonia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Russia were countries with the worst negative trends. Russia, at the very bottom of the Trend EPI ranking, has suffered a severe breakdown in environmental health as well as performance declines related to over-fishing and forest loss. It shows declines in every category except for slight improvements in sulfur dioxide emissions, though levels are still far below target.” (In fact, it’s so bad IKEA was just accused of taking advantage of Russia’s lax environmental regulation to harvest Russia’s old-growth forests for their cabinets and desks). Iraq also continues to rank dead last as air quality spirals downward and water becomes increasingly scarce.

For the one-third of the planet who live in China and India, the rankings don’t offer any good news either. Already, in China, which comes in at 116th place, health experts see air pollution as the greatest threat to public health. The Guardian highlights some scary data demonstrating the poor air quality in China’s cities: ”Lung cancer rates are two or three times higher in cities than in the countryside, even though smoking rates are the same.” Unfortunately, India’s air pollution may be even worse; that country comes in at 125th. The OECD estimates that bad air will now kill 3.6 million each year by 2050, with most of those deaths in China and India. Unless those countries’ governments begin to take reports like these more seriously and finance a real shift to sustainable development, the number of pollution-induced deaths will only increase.

Explore the rankings for 2012 and read the full report.

In other bad news, there are now 400 parts per million (ppm) of carbon dioxide in the world’s atmosphere, at least in the Arctic. For years, scientists have said 350ppm is really the safe upper-most limit. According to NASA scientists, the planet has not reached 400ppm for at least 800,000 years. The connection with current unsustainable development practices is pretty clear to all: The International Energy Agency just reported that global carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels hit a record high of 34.8 billion tonnes in 2011, up 3.2 percent.

Image credit: Costa Rica Rainforest / Jet Guer. Flickr

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It’s Definitely Time to Rethink the Parking Lot

Posted in Ecosystem Services, Landscape Architecture, Public Spaces, Sustainable Design, Sustainable Transportation, Water Management on 05/24/2012 | 4 Comments »


In a fascinating new book, Rethinking a Lot, M.I.T landscape architecture and planning professor Eran Ben-Joseph tells us there are now 600 million cars worldwide, and more than 500 million surface parking lots in the U.S. alone. In some cities, parking lots take up one-third of all land area, “becoming the single most salient landscape feature of our built environment.” Given cars are immobile 95 percent of the time, Ben-Joseph argues that it doesn’t matter whether you have a Prius or a Hummer, you have the same environmental impact, taking up the same 9-by-18 foot paved rectangle. All of those paved spaces “increase runoff and affect watersheds,” create heat islands, increase glare and light pollution, and impact the “character” of our cities. But, to this day, Ben-Joseph writes, “parking lots are considered a necessary evil; unsightly, but essential to the market success of most developments.” Unfortunately, the story goes that the parking lot hasn’t really changed much since the 1950s. So, the time is definitely ripe to redesign the lot and turn it into multi-use infrastructure that offers communities both environmental and social benefits.

Ben-Joseph’s book is so clearly written and designed and includes such great photos you find yourself interested in what could be a really dull subject. In a bit more than 130 pages, he explores the “planning and design approaches to the parking lot” along with commentary on “cultural and artistic attitudes and uses,” the actual history of the lot (how it formed, developed, and evolved), and “lots of excellence,” paradigm-changing examples that demonstrate how ecologically-sustainable and flexible a parking lot can be if it’s well-designed.

To start, he argues that too little attention is paid to how parking lots are designed and their impact upon the land. “They influence the way we drive, the destinations we chose, and the way we behave while looking for a parking space. They can breed feelings of both danger and dependency.” Communities fail to spend much time designing their parking infrastructure. The result is many places must now contend with oceans of these ”generic, ordinary spaces.”

Still, these unexciting spaces aren’t ”no-places;” they are actually imbued with social, cultural values, no matter if the primary value is “mediocrity.” The idea that a parking lot could win design awards, as Peter Walker, FASLA, predicted in a planning magazine in the early 90s, just hasn’t taken off. Only one parking lot by Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates for the Herman Miller furniture and manufacturing plant in Georgia has won an ASLA design award since 1990. Parking lots reflect a culture that doesn’t take one its central public spaces seriously, yet there’s something still there and they do serve a crucial function.

Back in 705 BC, Assyrian King Sennacherib posted signs on his highway to ensure it was cleared of parked chariots. The signs read: “Royal Road — let no man decrease it.” Whereas nowadays, you’d just get a ticket, then an improperly parked chariot could result in death by beheading. Later, the Romans actually implemented parking laws. Julius Caesar instituted rules preventing chariots from entering busy commercial zones during peak hours to limit congestion. Two millennia later, as cars, the “horseless chariots,” overtook horse-drawn carriages, they started to consume too much road space so needed to be stored somewhere. To “ease this ever-growing need,” municipalities and entrepreneurs started to offer off-street parking.

Beginning in the 1930s, off-street parking began to appear in planning and urban zoning strategies. Guidelines were produced over the years, culminating in the Institute for Transportation Engineer’s handbooks Trip Generation and Parking Generation in the 1980s, which Ben-Joseph says are still the go-to guidelines for many transportation and community planners. The guides helps communities estimate the number of parking spaces needed for a particular development. The only problem: a simplistic use of these guides alone has resulted in masses of under-utilized parking lots.

The aesthetics of a parking lot were considered important back in the 1920s to 1940s, but over the years, the design of these spaces was increasingly left up to developers. Even very progressive cities like Cambridge, Massachusetts offer over 30 pages of regulations on parking lots size and organization, but no rules about how they should look. The result was that many developers simply cut corners, creating the most basic parking lot possible. Many communities now treat these spaces as something to be mitigated as opposed to using them as opportunities to create something attractive that improves the quality of life.

Much of the rest of the world has simply followed the very poor model created by the U.S. While this country still leads with the highest numbers of cars per capita (814 per 1,000), Qatar and Australia are close behind. The Netherlands has the highest density of cars per square kilometer, with 246 vehicles per kilometer, followed by Japan and Belgium. China is the biggest concern, though. It’s estimated that in 2010 China had some 60 million cars occupying parking lots. 

All of those parking lots are not only expensive but represent an opportunity lost. The average per-space parking lot cost is $4,000, with a lot in an above-grade structure costing $20,000 and a lot in an underground garage, $30,000-$40,000. To give us some sense of the opportunity lost, Ben-Joseph says 1,713 square miles (the estimated size of all surface parking lots in the U.S. put together) could instead be used for spaces that generate one billion KWH of solar power. With just 50 percent of that space covered with trees, this space could handle 2 billion cubic meters of stormwater runoff, generate 822,264 tons of oxygen, and remove 1.2 million tons of carbon dioxide annually.

Still, so few communities impose even basic landscape requirements to make these places just a bit more green and permeable. He points to many well-designed examples created by landscape architects and architects but, unfortunately, they remain very rare birds. In Turin, Renzo Piano created a beautiful parking lot without parking islands and curbs, just rows of trees in dense grids inter-mingled among the spaces. Other high-performing parking lots incorporate solar panels or wind turbines, add new trees or even preserve old ones, and incorporate bioswales and permeable pavement. One parking lot in Duck, North Carolina, is even designed to serve as a detention pond during minor flooding. Ben-Joseph says a well-designed parking lot can accomodate a changing environment. To make this happen, more communities need to redevelop their parking regulations so that more creative landscape design is allowed, even required, and these spaces can become more flexible. In the future, he wonders whether parking lots could even become regenerative. Imagine phytoremediation used to turn a brownfield into a living, restorative parking space.

Beyond the environmental benefits, more flexible parking spaces help communities build social connections. Already, as Ben-Joseph notes, in parking lots, children learn how to ride bicycles, teenagers learn how to drive cars, and high school students hang out after school “where the drama of youth plays out.” In many communities, farmer’s markets and flea markets take over lots on weekends. In Manhattan’s Lower East Side, there’s Shakespeare in a Parking Lot. Outside of stadiums, there are tailgaiting parties. In Wal-Mart lots, you can find RVs ”boon-docking.” In a number of cities, festivals of food trucks turn a sad parking lot into a space for food, beer, and bands. What’s important is that community leaders and planners actually enable these activities and remake regulations so that parking areas can provide multiple social functions.

Parking lots can also become sites for activism. One landscape architect, John Bela, ASLA, created REBAR and launched their annual Park(ing) Day, which has become a global movement. In 2009, some 700 parking spaces were designed as mini-parks in 21 countries and 140 cities. Some have even been made permanent in San Francisco, Vancouver, and other cities. These spaces can also become sites for art. Martha Schwartz, FASLA, created a funky parking lot for an amusement park, while artist Toshihiro Katayama and landscape architecture firm Halvorson Design created a stunning shared space for cars and pedestrians in Boston. Ben-Joseph seems to love the parking lot for the Dia art center. For him, it may be a work of art in itself.

Read the book.

Image credit: MIT Press

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A Robust, Sustainable Reference

Posted in Climate Change, Ecosystem Restoration, Ecosystem Services, Landscape Architecture, Sustainable Design, Sustainable Materials, Waste, Water Management, Wildlife on 05/07/2012 | Leave a Comment »


The Sustainable Sites Handbook: A Complete Guide to the Principles, Strategies, and Best Practices for Sustainable Landscapes by Meg Calkins, ASLA, elucidates strategic design approaches, measures for site performance, and provides an intelligent framework to discuss sustainability and understand technical issues. The handbook is extremely clear and well-structured, synthesizing a wealth of specific information into a useable form. The book embodies the very significant achievement of the Sustainable Sites initiative (SITES), in its broad-based collaborative approach to the subject.

The book begins by discussing the conceptual underpinnings of sustainable design and then moves through a comprehensive project development framework; from planning and site selection, through water, vegetation, soils and materials, to a discussion of human health and well-being and the issues of management and stewardship.

The broad disciplinary base of the SITES program, with its numerous expert contributors and reviewers, has allowed a surprisingly detailed and nuanced approach to the subject areas covered. The value of the book is as a guide to practitioners who are finding their way through the SITES system but also as a general reference to issues of sustainable site development more generally.

Perhaps even more than its professional use, I believe the book will be an invaluable resource for educators and students as a guide to sustainable design practice. Its comprehensiveness and synthetic approach to issues of site development and management provide a framework that can be broadly applied. The book brings together sound technical and procedural information placed within a well-reasoned intellectual context.

The book’s layout is clear and legible but the book design and production exhibit the limitations of quality in both materials and images so ubiquitous in contemporary textbooks. Given the density of the material, significantly more attention to a more dynamic graphic design and layout would have made a profound difference to the reader experience. The photographic images, which are vital in the elaboration of the text, suffer from being uniformly low contrast black and white images as a result of paper quality, and a more varied and lively design approach to typography, illustrations, and color would enhance both the ability to absorb the information and relay how much fun it is. Given the quality of the content and its broad market appeal, this would have been an opportunity for the publisher to invest in what should be a classic text and reference work, and one can only hope that will happen for subsequent editions.

Given the scope of this book, Meg Calkins has done a superb job in providing intellectual direction and expert content and guiding her excellent collaborators in the creation of what is destined to become a key reference work for the profession.

Read the book.

This guest review is by Elizabeth Mossop, FASLA, Professor, Robert Reich School of Landscape Architecture, Louisiana State University

Image credit: Wiley & Sons

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Green Infrastructure Goes Large in New York

Posted in Ecosystem Services, Landscape Architecture, Urban Revitalization, Waste, Water Management on 04/04/2012 | 1 Comment »

In 2010, New York City released an ambitious green infrastructure plan to spur investment in green roofs and streets, bioswales, and other natural systems to manage stormwater. Just last month, New York State and city officials announced a broad-reaching financing agreement was reached that will commit more than $2.4 billion in public and private investment towards the plan over the next 18 years, with $187 million to be spent over the next three years, reports The New York Times’ Green blog. New York City now joins Philadelphia, Toronto, D.C., and a few other cities now making serious financial investments in applying nature to solve expensive infrastructural challenges.

Green infrastructure can help cities shore-up outdated combined stormwater and sewer systems, which tend to overflow in heavy storm events. In heavy rain, sewage overwhelms these systems and excrement enters water supplies. Because stormwater then can’t enter the drains, contaminant-laden water just sits on streets, funneling towards waterways as well. These overflows are a big problem in New York and one reason so many waterways don’t meet federal standards for fishing, swimming, and healthy habits for wildlife, writes The New York Times. With green infrastructure, water is captured onsite so it doesn’t overload those old pipe systems, which are prohibitively expensive to replace in major cities.

While the Enviromental Protection Agency (E.P.A.) has been re-evaluating its national rules on green infrastructure (and even asked for ASLA’s help in evaluating the benefits of these systems), few states have gotten behind these approaches yet. So the fact that New York State has supported New York City is a major win for using green infrastructure to meet federal water quality standards. According to the state and city, the new green infrastructure investments will eliminate 1.5 billion gallons of sewer overflow annually by 2030, while 12 billion gallons will be kept out of New York’s waterways through combined green and grey infrastructure systems, saving the state and city loads of money in the process.

A significant portion of the $187 million near-term investment will go to bioswales, targeting the areas of heavy “outfalls.” These bioswales are effectively trees set in extra-deep pits and surrounded by vegetation and low curbs to encourage water absorption. As Capital New York reports, more than 100 are in the works for 2012, using an approved “Right-of-way Bioswale” standard model settled on by the city government’s many departments. That model came out of some 20 test sites established throughout the city.


Of course, landscape architects, who will design and implement these systems, are fans. Nette Compton, ASLA, a landscape architect who runs the green infrastructure department in the NYC Parks and Recreation department, said: “I love bioswales. Bioswales are as close to a natural system as we can get on a New York City street.” Compton told Capital New York that each of the new bioswales will cost $13,000 but “costs may go down” as the city scales up the standard model.

Some of those first bioswales were put in Gowanus Canal last November. The four there now are expected to keep 7,200 gallons out of the canal, one of the worst polluted waterways in the U.S. The city also seems to be smart about tree placement and diversity in order to protect against bugs and disease. And the benefits may go beyond simply environmental value: the bioswales alone are expected to bring in $400 million in new taxes by improving property value. Still, others think the city still needs to work on the standard bioswale model, arguing that the soil volumes used just aren’t enough.

Learn more about NYC’s progress in implementing its green infrastructure plans.

Also, check out ASLA’s animations on green infrastructure and urban forests, a resource guide, along with 450+ green infrastructure case studies, designed to provide the E.P.A. with data on the many environmental and economic benefits of these systems.

Image credit: Bioswale / NYC Environmental Protection

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