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Turkish Prime Minister Is Practicing Landscape Architecture Without a License

Posted in Landscape Architecture, Public Spaces, Urban Design on 06/13/2013 | 9 Comments »

I have been under stress watching the recent events taking place in my native Turkey. These events began with peaceful demonstrations on May 29 by environmentally-minded citizens who wanted to preserve one of the last remaining green spaces in Istanbul. They did not want to see a planned demolition and privatization of a public park known as Gezi (Promenade) Park in a major public open space in the District of Taksim. However, excessive use of force by the riot police — with their use of water cannons, rubber bullets, and tear gas to disperse the demonstrators — quickly brought more protesters, who then introduced an anti-government agenda. Public gatherings in support of the Gezi Park as well as anti-government demonstrations quickly spread over to other major cities and 78 of Turkey’s 81 provinces. The use of excessive force by police to disperse the protestors in Istanbul, the capital city of Ankara, and the third largest city Izmir, has been clearly documented by the international media. As a result, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and his religious-based conservative government are looking vulnerable for the first time in his ten-year administration. Despite significant economic successes under his leadership, this episode has the potential to tarnish the international image and reputation of Turkey, a majority Muslim country with a strongly secular tradition.

I believe these sad developments can be linked to the top-down planning style of the Prime Minister, who once again took center stage to explain his vision for this public square and park during these tragic events. Furthermore, instead of trying to calm the protestors and approve the requested dialog for public participation, the PM sent in his supporters in addition to riot police.

The announced plans by the Istanbul city government, which were strongly promoted by the PM, initially called for razing the park to build a shopping mall inspired by a demolished Ottoman Military Barracks. Based on initial protests, the PM backed off plans for a shopping mall on the site, but there are still plans to remove the existing park and building “something” there. For the rest of the Taksim Square, the PM calls for removing several stores to bring an existing church into the open and build a “major mosque” on the other side of the street, in a location that used to be a private theater for musical performances. This is proposed under the guise of open dialog and respect for both religions.

As for the proposed plans and designs: The overall plan, which calls for the removal of the park, calls for several underground tunnels to alleviate traffic congestion that currently plagues the square. They would add very large turf areas in the shape of tulips, which are a revered flower in Turkey and also known to have religious symbolism referring to the Prophet Muhammad. The PM’s statement suggesting that “something” will be built there proves that there is no design thought given either to the master plan or the street-level designs (see videos below):

As an educator, I would call the proposed overall plan for the square and the park sophomoric at best. This park has been the subject of many of my projects when I was an undergraduate student in late 1970s. Over the years the park has been encroached upon along its edges and has received minimal maintenance and care; an occasional bench replacement is about that seems to be done.

Despite their neglect, trees have matured and provide the only shaded area and refuge from the highly-motorized greater Taksim square. The current state of the park reminds me of Bryant Park in New York City prior to its most recent renovations. It’s true that something needs to be done to take advantage of this wonderful green oasis in the sea of cars dominating Taksim Square. However, the proposed removal of the park to establish a private shopping center or “something” is not what is needed.

The use of earlier Ottoman Military Barracks as an inspiration for the proposed shopping center (or some other type of building) is also highly questionable. These barracks were the scene of one of the bloodiest uprisings by mullahs, who wanted religious laws enacted during the last decades of the Ottoman Empire (similar to those used in Iran or by the Taliban today). Atatürk (Father of Turks), the founder of today’s modern Turkey, was the Ottoman Military commander who quashed these uprisings in the late 1800s and consequently ordered the destruction of the barracks after the establishment of Turkey in 1923. The promotion of the image of these barracks by the PM as a back drop to the proposed developments begs the question: how much respect does the current government have for the strong secular traditions of the country?

The proposed plans do not seem to give even a cursory thought to the needs of pedestrians. They do not offer any significant design elements for the human scale. Perhaps another unstated objective of the PM is to minimize and eventually remove the monument to the Independence War, which houses sculptures of Atatürk, his commanders, and the unknown soldiers during the final days of the occupied Ottoman Empire. The videos released by the metropolitan city government of the proposed development make this meaningful landmark look as insignificant as an ant.

PM Erdoğan’s government owes some of its economic successes to the privatization of many government institutions, holdings, and services. Some of these privatization efforts were perhaps necessary to encourage private financing and development. But selling national treasures is highly questionable. The government has sold parts of the first model farm in Ankara established by Ataturk to international clients to establish a private resort. At the present, there is extensive clear cutting in the Atatürk Farm.

Let me explain the significance of this: Could you imagine the U.S. Government selling President Jefferson’s Monticello? Similarly, how would the American public react if the U.S. Government or the National Parks Service were to sell some of much-cherished open fields not covered by memorials in the National Mall in Washington, D.C. for a private shopping mall development? This is exactly what is happening in Istanbul and other cities in Turkey.

All of these tragic events could have been avoided if either the PM Erdoğan or his representatives were to institute a public hearing system in their planning and design process. Instead the PM is more concerned with the demonstrators questioning his authority and calls them “çapulcu,” meaning marginal and extreme. At other times, he’s called these concerned citizens of Turkey “terrorists.” This is quite ironic considering that it’s the PM’s government who is holding talks with a convicted killer and the head of the internationally recognized terrorist group PKK (Kurdish Separatists).

Prime Minister Erdogan PM and all of his representatives must recognize they are elected to represent the people. These people have shown up in unprecedented numbers to express their opinions and represent themselves. If the PM and his government continue to ignore the voice of the people, they may not be re-elected as the peoples’ representatives. Finally, Mr. Erdoğan needs to make up his mind if he wants to be the Prime Minister of Turkey, the Mayor of City of Istanbul, or an urban designer. If the Prime Minister has no intention of going back to school, then he should let the real design professionals do their job and concentrate on managing the government in a way that will make all Turkish citizens proud.

This guest post is by Professor Sadik Artunc, FASLA, RLA, head of the department of landscape architecture, Mississippi State University. A native of Turkey, Professor Artunc has a BS and MS in forestry and forest engineering from the University of Istanbul and an MLA from the University of Michigan. Prior to arriving in the United States in 1975, he worked in Turkey as a forester for the Ministry of Forestry, as a recreation planner in the Central Planning Office, and as the planning director of the Olympus National Park for the Department of National Parks.

Image credits: (1-2) Turkish Revolution, (3) The Huffington Post, (4-5) Taksim Square / Wikipedia

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Green Infrastructure Is Becoming Mainstream

Posted in Landscape Architecture, Sustainable Design, Urban Design, Urban Revitalization, Water Management on 06/12/2013 | Leave a Comment »

Green infrastructure is now big time, given the head of water for the Environmental Protection Agency (E.P.A.) is now promoting its benefits. At the E.P.A’s Brownfields conference in Atlanta, Nancy Stoner, assistant administrator for water, said she tells people who don’t know what green infrastructure is that it’s about “spreading water out, slowing it down, and soaking it in.” Stoner; Joe Dufficy, land revitalization manager, E.P.A.; and Walt Ray, a registered landscape architect and director of visioning, Park Pride, then moved through a set of projects to illustrate how green infrastructure works, how the E.P.A. can help, and how one group in Atlanta is addressing some challenging flooding problems.

Why Green Infrastructure Now?

Stoner said increasingly powerful “wet weather events are impairing our water quality.” Combined sewage overflows (CSOs) now hit 700 municipalities in 31 states and the District of Columbia. Together, these CSOs lead to 850 billion gallons of discharge into streams, lakes, and oceans annually. All of that polluted stormwater caused nearly 11,000 beach closings and advisory days in 2011. With so many problems, clearly just adding more grey systems (pipes) isn’t the answer.

Green infrastructure is “one solution for many objectives.” It can be defined as an interconnected network of green systems that “reduce flooding risks, create habitat, improve water quality, and manage stormwater.” Unlike single-use infrastructure like those concrete underground water conveyance pipes, green infrastructure uses “soil, vegetation to deal with stormwater and improve our quality of life.”

She further described green infrastructure as “systems and practices that mimic natural processes.” It’s about “adapting, renaturalizing the built landscape, introducing trees and vegetation into the built environment.” These systems can include bioretention technologies (planter boxes, bioswales, rain gardens), green roofs, and permeable pavements. She said increasingly these systems are being added into our public spaces, including our streets and alleys.

To note, though, Stoner took issue with the idea of Complete Streets as they are currently defined — streets with space for all types of users, including pedestrians, bicyclists, and cars — arguing that “a street can’t be complete unless you have room for the water, too.” Complete streets then need to also be green.

There’s a lot of overlap between green infrastructure and brownfield redevelopment. “These things all mesh because it’s about revitalizing communities, improving aesthetics, creating a better quality of life, while boosting economic development.” Green infrastructure is about making “eyesores” like brownfields beautiful. In fact, one E.P.A. program started by former administrator Lisa Jackson, Urban Waters, seeks to connect brownfield redevelopment with improved access to waterfronts.

Green Infrastructure Works

Stoner pointed to the Solaire building rooftop garden in Battery Park, which was designed by Diana Balmori, FASLA, Balmori Associates, as a great example of how a building can use green infrastructure to “achieve zero water footprint” (see image above). The additional benefits of green roofs like these are they “reduce heat, improve air quality, create wildlife habitat, improve energy efficiency, and boost property values.” The E.P.A. is now conducting community-scale studies to quantify these benefits.

At the broader scale, Stoner pointed to Nashville’s Cumberland Park as a great example of a park that is using green infrastructure to deal with water. There, a 4-acre parking lot was transformed into a park with a 100,000 gallon cistern underground that stores rainwater for future irrigation use.

In Cleveland, one community even demonstrated that green infrastructure can work in very polluted areas. With the Slavic Village Union Avenue green street, liners were used to separate contaminated soils in a green street median from the new soils and vegetation added on top. “There are significant stormwater management benefits even with the liners.” A 33-acre site near the Willamette River in Portland scaled-up this approach, putting a cap on top of polluted soils and green infrastructure on top.

For these types of project, Stoner said “resources are tight, so communities have to look at all possible revenue streams, including tax credits or stormwater utility fees.” There can be funding from multiple sources. But she said spending the initial money on “cleaning water and greening communities” is truly worth it, given that “every $1 spent yields a $7 dollar boost in housing wealth.” (To help communities communities figure out where to spend their money on green infrastructure in contaminated sites, the E.P.A. will also soon release a “Brownfield and Vacant Parcel Stormwater Infiltration Decision Making” tool.)

The E.P.A. Will Help If You Turn Your Vacant Properties into Green Infrastructure

Joe Dufficy, who works on land revitalization programs at the E.P.A., said the E.P.A. can offer communities “technical support, brownfield grants, and partnerships.” Technical assistance shows “communities how to safely demolish vacant properties.” If this work is done improperly, the land become contaminated and remediation becomes even more expensive to clean up for green infrastructure. The E.P.A. has actually done “test demolitions to see what works best.”

The E.P.A. also offers brownfield area-wide planning grants. For example, Cleveland has taken advantage of this program to create a plan for an “opportunity corridor” that will transform 500-600 vacant properties into a green infrastructure system. The E.P.A. helped “assemble the environmental information, do the cost comparisons.” The city decided to merge together hundreds of smaller parcels together into larger parcels for redevelopment. Now, the sewage district is using some areas for stormwater management, while another 27-acre zone has just become a massive urban farm.

As described in an earlier session, Cincinnati’s sewage district also unearthed the 2,700 Lick Run watershed, daylighting a stream that had been covered by development. Hundreds of acres will now be used for green infrastructure for stormwater management. With this project, the E.P.A. helped produce a “strategic implementation plan.” Everyone was “assigned goals, responsibilities.”

Again, Dufficy said this was all worth it, given green infrastructure does so much, including boosting property values. One recent University of Wisconsin study showed new green infrastructure yielded a $1.7 million bump in nearby property values. Who doesn’t want to live next to clean water and parks?

Vine City’s Bottom-up Fix for Flooding

Walt Ray, Park Pride’s head of park visioning, said at Park Pride, an Atlanta non-profit that helps communities create new parks, “we don’t want to inflict a park on anyone.” The idea is to let communities figure out their own solutions and then help them make it happen. In the case of the Proctor Creek North Avenue (PNA) Watershed Vision project, Ray is working with communities in Vine City and English Avenue, two poor inner-city Atlanta neighborhoods, to deal with the atrocious flooding problems. The area used to be “the headwaters of the Proctor Creek.” More than 100 years ago, it was all paved over. Now, the water is coming back.

Ray showed how flooding is a systemic issue. The nearby World Congress center, where the Brownfields conference was held, is a source of 30 million gallons of runoff. Water moves from the World Congress Center and other huge buildings, like hotels, office buildings, and the stadium, down towards the bowl at the center of Atlanta, where Vine City and English Avenue lie. “They are downsteam, downpipe.”

Interestingly, many of the vacant properties in Vine City are right on top where streams used to be, so there’s really a reason why people didn’t want to live there. Ray said when it rains a little, it floods a lot in those houses. One family just opens their door to let the water move through their house faster.

The big watershed vision project had a small start. The PNA Coalition wanted to turn a block filled with vacant properties into a park. While this project got started, Ray asked, “Why not look at other blocks, the whole neighborhood?” Park Pride ended up doing a whole watershed analysis and then involving the community in formulating a new green infrastructure approach to solving the flooding problems. “We’ve held 12 meetings, 6 public hearings, and 9 briefings.”

Through this process, Ray said the “community had to educate itself about what green infrastructure can and should do.” Local directed the design team. They wanted to eliminate the flooding but not totally bulldoze the neighborhood. They wanted to keep the historic character while also creating new green jobs training programs. “Can we do the green infrastructure work in our own neighborhood?,” they asked.

The conceptual plan that resulted called for a new green street project along with parks that will have detention ponds to store water. Green infrastructure can then also help deal with flooding. “We are going to save the water here. We’re going to become a big sponge.”

Image credits: (1) The Solaire / Hydrotech USA, (2) Nashville Cumberland Park / Nurture Valley blog, (3) Cleveland Urban Farm / The Huffington Post, (4) Vine City, Atlanta / Atlanta History Center.

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In New Orleans, a Vietnamese Community Bounces Back with Urban Agriculture

Posted in Agriculture, Landscape Architecture, Sustainable Design on 06/10/2013 | Leave a Comment »

In 1975, there was a Vietnamese exodus after the fall of Saigon. Many of the Christian Vietnamese who supported the U.S.-allied government in the south fled. Some of them ended up in camps in the Midwest, at least until the Archdiocese of New Orleans invited some to come to the Gulf of Mexico, where the climate was more like what they were used to in Vietnam. Many of the Vietnamese were also fisherman, so the Roman Catholic church thought they’d have a better chance if they could pick up their old trade in Louisiana.

Now, almost 40 years later, there are 8,000 Vietnamese concentrated in a one-mile radius in New Orleans East. The community of fisherman was hit hard by Hurricane Katrina and then the Deepwater Horizon debacle but found ways to come together and come back with sustainable urban farming. At the E.P.A’s Brownfields conference, Tap Bui, Mary Queen of Vietnam Community Development Corporation, discussed how this unique community recovered with sustainable aquaponics.

New Orleans East, where the Vietnamese community of New Orleans lives, has 60 percent of the land mass of New Orleans but only 20 percent of the population. Before the storm there was lots of poverty, high unemployment. Post-storm, the community was left without a hospital and other basic services. As the community fled in the wake of the storm, many wondered what they would come back to, said Bui. Still, by the end of October after the storm, more than 2,000 people had returned, and then the majority came back.

Meanwhile, implementing an “emergency master plan,” then-Mayor Ray Nagin had turned a green space near their community into a landfill. The debris from the damaged homes and commercial buildings across New Orleans had to be dumped somewhere. But soon pesticides and other chemicals were being dumped there, too, right near a wetland and nature preserve. Bui said this spurred one of the first “cross-racial” collaborations ever in New Orleans East, a mass protest to shut down the landfill.

“We rallied outside City Hall,” said Bui. The group also bused in protestors to Baton Rouge, the state capitol. She said this was the first time “we Vietnamese actually felt like real Americans. Before, we had just paid our taxes. Our community had become more engaged.”

Their efforts paid off: The landfill was closed, and more than 200,000 cubic yards of debris was removed. But still more needs to go. Bui said “the landfill is slowly sinking into the ground. The dump site is affecting the wetlands.” Environmental remediation work is ongoing.

Then, Deepwater Horizon, the BP offshore oilspill, struck, which was a fishing disaster. Bui said 40,000 Vietnamese work in the Gulf of Mexico, and a third of those are in the seafood industry. “With the loss of livelihood, mental and physical health issues increased.” Bui said particularly for the older Vietnamese, it’s really a case of “I fish, therefore I am.” More Vietnamese were suffering from depression and drinking too much.

In a sign of the truly resilient nature of the Vietnamese community in New Orleans East, the community once again rallied. “We did power mapping to determine how we going to make BP pay for what they did to the Gulf.” The Vietnamese joined together once again with a broader coalition of seafood industry groups to pressure the oil company. But while the Gulf was being restored, the fisherman had to find new jobs, immediately.

The development corporation found a trainer who could teach aquaculture, the practice of raising fish on land. A two-day session brought up new ways to create more sustainable systems. In a pilot phase, workshop attendees tested out growing koi, bluefish, and catfish. Some then experimented with “aquaponics,” which uses the waste from fish as fertilizer to grow produce. “This is more sustainable growth,” as the fish byproduct isn’t simply dumped into waterways.

Now, the VEGGI Farmer’s Cooperative, a massively scaled-up aquaponics operation for the community, sells fresh produce to local restaurants and stores.

Amazingly, the fisherman who lost their livelihoods with the oil spill have “supplemented 100 percent of their earlier incomes,” said Bui. Taking out marketing and transportation costs, some “80 cents of each dollar goes back to the cooperative members.” While there are a few aquaponics plots at around an acre, the group has finally been able to purchase a 8-acre urban farm site. Bui said “4 acres are under development now.”

This project has been a long time coming. Working with Elizabeth Mossop, FASLA, and Wes Michaels, ASLA, at Spackman, Mossop + Michaels, they created a wonderful masterplan for an urban farm back in 2007, which won an ASLA professional design award.

Unfortunately, Bui said, “we couldn’t acquire the land” to make that project work until now. The 8-acre urban farm is expected to be finished in the next few years, once they finish raising the money needed.

Image credits: (1) Vietnamese urban farmers / Mary Queen of Vietnam Development Corporation, (2) Mary Queen of Vietnam community meeting/ NOLA, (3) Mary Queen of Vietnam community aquaponics / USDA, (4) Mary Queen of Vietnam community aquaponics / WYES New Orleans, (5) ASLA Profesional Analysis and Planning Award, 2008. Viet Village. Mossop + Michaels / Image credit: Mossop + Michaels

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Landscape Architecture in the News Highlights (May 19 – June 1)

Posted in Gardens, Landscape Architecture, Urban Design on 06/05/2013 | Leave a Comment »

The Dirt has initiated a new bi-weekly feature highlighting news stories from around the Web on landscape architecture. For more LA in the News, check out LAND, ASLA’s newsletter. If you see others you’d like included, please email us at info@asla.org.

Public Gardens: A New Model Blossoms – Architectural Record, 5/19/13
“In the 1970s, it was a profession gripped with the ideals of modernism and the issues of postwar suburbanization. At best, plants were thought of more as architectural elements than organisms that could form ecosystems; landscape architects viewed themselves as design professionals, not gardeners.”

Open Season – New York Post, 5/22/13
“So you’re one of those Manhattanites fortunate enough to have outdoor space — a nice-size terrace, say, or maybe even a sprawling roof deck — but you haven’t had the time to turn it into that lush oasis you’ve always wanted. Yes, it’s a big job — and an expensive one — but considering that, say, 1,000 square feet of outdoor space can easily add hundreds of thousands of dollars of value to your home, it’s worth investing to make it look good.”

City Shaping VI: In 21st Century Toronto, There is Momentum – HuffPost Arts & Culture, 5/29/13
“Moreover, landscape architecture, often the last and frequently underfunded component in development projects, is leading the charge in places like the city’s Waterfront district with innovative and inspiring new work by Claude Cormier + Associés, West 8, Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates and others.”

Urbanism and the Landscape Architect – Planetizen, 5/30/13
“Landscape architects are not given nearly enough recognition for being urbanists. This is not because we don’t get enough work in cities but, rather, it is the types of projects we get or, more importantly, don’t get.”

Re-Cultivating the Forest City – World Landscape Architecture, 5/31/13
“The interior of this territory is organized by defining nine overlapping land-use categories. Each landscape type is not singularly contiguous, but collectively represents an overall approach to defining use, form and character within the lower valley. The intention is to create a highly varied set of adjacencies within the territory that not only produce a compelling landscape experience within the valley, but that also catalyzes investment in existing areas at the valley’s perimeter.”

These articles were compiled by Phil Stamper, ASLA Public Relations and Communications Coordinator

Image credit: PORT via World Landscape Architecture

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With the Beltline, Atlanta Wants to Become a New City

Posted in Landscape Architecture, Public Spaces, Real Estate Development, Smart Growth, Sustainable Design, Urban Design, Urban Revitalization on 06/04/2013 | 9 Comments »

A bit more than 10 years ago, Ryan Gravel, a Georgia Tech architecture and urban planning master’s student, delivered a whopper of a thesis. His vision was to transform the mostly abandoned railroad lines that circle Atlanta into a new network of transit, parks, and pedestrian and bike trails. While that vision would have died in other cities, it actually took root in Atlanta and is now becoming a reality. Seven years into the wildly ambitious Atlanta Beltline, a 25-year, $3 billion project, more than 640 acres of land have been acquired and tens of millions raised. By the end of the project, more than 22 miles of modern streetcars, 1,300 acres of new parkland, and 33 miles of bike and pedestrian trails will make Atlanta a far more sustainable, livable, and inclusive place. That streetcar will connect some pretty down-on-their-heels neighborhoods to wealthy ones, creating access to new opportunities for poorer Atlantans. The new infrastructure, parks, and trails will hopefully be the tipping point that will get Atlantans out of all those cars. To make this transformation happen, some $1.8 billion will be spent on the transit, $500 million on parks, and $250 million on trails.

In a bus tour of the Beltline as part of the E.P.A.’s Brownfield conference, Heather Hussey-Coker and Lee Harrop explained how the unique industrial history of Atlanta laid the foundation for the Beltline and how a wide-ranging coalition of organizations, government agencies, and private sector firms have made the project happen.

After he completed his thesis, Gravel formed the Friends of the Beltline and started shopping the idea around Atlanta. Many presentations later, support started to build. The Trust for Public Land came in and did a research study that showed how the Beltline could become Atlanta’s Emerald Necklace. Soon thereafter, then Atlanta Mayor Shirley Franklin commissioned a study to determine whether the Beltline could be financed with a tax allocation district (TAD). The city found that it would raise more than 60 percent of the total cost so decided to move forward with that approach.

A TAD is basically “tax increment financing.” As Kevin Burke, ASLA, senior landscape architect for the Beltline, explained, imagine the tax value of a property goes up with rising property values. That incremental tax revenue is set aside for specific projects like the Beltline. The problem that came later was that the real estate market in Atlanta crashed, “skewing market projections of how much money the TAD would provide the Beltline.” Burke said this is the main reason “we have only delivered 60 acres” of parkland out of the planned 1,300-acre system of greenways and parks.

On top of that, the use of a TAD for the Beltline was delayed because a local resident sued, arguing that the public school portion of local taxes couldn’t be used to finance the Beltline. The case went all the way to the state supreme court, which just recently sided with the Beltline. Then, in a state-wide referendum, the voters of Georgia decided that school districts could opt in to TADs.

The Beltline is back on track though, largely because of an “aggressive fundraising campaign,” said Burke, which has brought in more than $40 million. Now in year six of the TAD, that measure will deliver money to the Beltline over the next 19 years. In reality, Burke said this will mean about “53-55 acres of parkland should be built each year.”

Hussey-Coker said the original railroad tracks that the Beltline follows were used to circulate industrial goods from manufacturing facilities on the outskirts of Atlanta to the city’s downtown, where they were then moved to other parts of the country. Residential areas then grew up around those industrial centers. “Beltlines were created to avoid the industrial downtown,” which was viewed as not a great place to live. The circular Beltline around the city served to “pause development for a long time.” Within its boundaries, “trolley suburbs” were created.

The parkland that has been added already is pretty spectacular. As the bus drove past, everyone oohed and aahed over the new historic 4th ward park, a Sustainable Sites Initiative (SITES) pilot project that has spurred $400 million in development around it. In a clever landscape architecture design, the Beltline team created a new basin that doubles as a park. An example of smart multi-use infrastructure, the new park, which cost $50 million, is designed to flood in severe storm events. When not flooding, there are ledges for exercise, with a theatre in the center. “We built a 17 acre park and a new piece of infrastructure for $50 million.”

The park also leaps and bounds through the neighborhood, with additional smaller pieces dotted through the community. The nearby skatepark, which legendary skater Tony Hawk helped finance to the tune of $25,000, looked like a skater’s paradise. Burke said a new space for beginning skaters will be added soon, given what’s there now is for pretty advanced stuff.

Design work has already begun on a number of other parks. James Corner Field Operations, designers of the High Line, and Perkins + Will, originally created the “25 percent-level designs,” said Harrop, creating the basic language of the greenways, parks, and trails. While Perkins + Will is doing more design work, Field Operations is no longer involved. Request for qualifications are going out for each individual park. While Burke said some $75 million has been spent so far – on parks and trails, there’s a long ways to go over the next 10-15 years. He said he’s already working 10-12 hours days getting new parks online.

One exciting park will be appearing soon at the Bellwood Quarry, an old quarry that the city bought in 2006. There will rise a new reservoir, the focal point of the new Westside Reservoir Park. In a unique partnership with the city’s department of watershed management and parks department, the Beltline will develop the park around the reservoir while the city will ensure the security and safety of the water supply. Harrop also told us that a herd of American bison, which are actually native to the area, may be imported and be used to organically amend the soils. The Beltline crew likes to set herbivores on their plant problems: goats were recently let loose on kudzu in some spots and sheep on poison ivy in others.

Still other areas near the Beltline targeted to become parks are currently brownfields. Just west of University Avenue, in the southwest segment of the Beltline, a property next to the former State Farmer’s Market, which is now a wreck, will rise like a phoenix from the ashes and become a new 5-6-acre urban farm. To make way for this transformation, several layers of asphalt were removed, along with old gas tanks, axles, and transmission tanks. Harrop said the area will be restored from an abandoned industrial site to its original use as an agricultural resource for the neighborhood. He remarked on the “poetry” of that transformation.

The transit corridor itself will rise and fall through the city. Burke said it will look much like the St. Charles street car line in New Orleans. There will be grass below and on the sides of the tracks. Like in New Orleans, Atlantans will be able to walk or jog near the tracks. “It will be a porous transit line.” The big challenge, though, is that much of the Beltline isn’t at grade; much of the network will be above or below street level. Every street that crosses the line will offer an access point. The transit line itself will stop every half to quarter mile. While there are 10 at-grade access points, there will be lots of walking up and down stairs and ramps to get to the line. Burke said “it’s an extreme challenge to design access so that people don’t feel like they a deserve a piece of cheese when they reach the end of the ramp.”

Once people find their way to the streetcar corridor, they will find a 14-foot concrete bike and pedestrian trail, said Hussey-Coker. The walking trail will run alongside the streetcar. In most places, there will be enough room between the two networks so that no physical divider between them will be needed. In the case where they are just 7-feet apart, the design team plans to add in low shrubs or fences.

In some parts, interestingly, the trail actually diverges from the streetcar line. “The trail will be nearby but it’s not always side by side.” The trails are in fact designed to meander a bit to “connect isolated green spaces” near the light rail line. To ensure bicyclists can also easily access the trail, entrepreneurs in the city are looking at opening bicycle rental shops at key points. There is a feasibility study underway for a bike share program as well. “Before we can build the bicycle infrastructure, we need to build a bicycle culture,” said Hussey-Coker.

A lighting scheme is being designed to enable access at night and enhance security. The team decided against security call boxes along the trail, but they will be in the transit stations. Harrop said the cost of adding security call boxes along the entire 22-mile line would have been prohibitive, plus “everyone has cell phones these days.” The Atlanta Police department is already putting together the Path Force, a team dedicated to patrolling the parks, trails, and nearby neighborhoods. In the beginning of the planning process, there were some fears that the Beltline could be used as a “criminal corridor, used for bad stuff.” But the market is saying something different. Harrop noted a marked improvement in the housing market in Beltline neighborhoods and said bidding wars for residences right off the line are becoming more frequent. In fact, speculators are buying up vacant properties along the Beltline in some areas, seeing opportunities to make lots of money.

The landscape design itself, which was informed by the work of Perkins + Will and James Corner Field Operations, will be built out in parts by Trees Atlanta, a local tree-planting organization. Some sections will be like an arboretum, while others will be a more straight-forward greenway. In many areas, the landscape itself needs to be cleaned up, with invasive plants removed and basic environmental remediation. Groups in the 45 neighborhoods the line transects are able to Adopt the Beltline and organize clean-up crews. The Beltline seems to have done an excellent job at involving the many diverse local communities in both planning and upkeep. “There have been no protests about the Beltline.”

But the big question may be: Can this new streetcar and set of trails really get Atlantans to move around the city in ways the existing infrastructure has not? The Beltline team is serious about providing other forms of mobility, but will they succeed in uprooting the car culture? Can they get Atlantans to think it’s cool to bike to work, walk trails every day, or take the streetcar to connect to a subway or bus?

The relatively new MARTA subway system (at least in comparison with NYC and Chicago) seemed barely used when this blogger rode it about 10 times, with stations and trains largely empty. Local riders looked like they were among those unlucky enough to not own a car. There were some tourists and business travelers coming to and from the airport. The reality is that the 10-county Atlanta region has some 4.2 million people, yet just 200,000 use the MARTA subway each day, despite the billions that have been spent on the project. Another 200,000 use the bus system, which this carless blogger waited almost an hour for one day. When I went into a store and asked one shop owner how to get back downtown on the bus, she just laughed, saying that “nobody rides the bus.”

As the new infrastructure comes in, the Beltline team, Atlanta city government, non-profits, and private sector firms, will need to work together to change the culture of the city, so that this beautiful re-envisioning of Atlanta’s historic infrastructure is actually put to good use.

Learn more about the Beltline master plan and next steps and see more photos.

Image credits: (1) Beltline map / Atlanta Beltline, (2) Beltline / A is for Atlanta, (3-4) Historic 4th Ward Park / Steve Carrell, (5) Historic 4th Ward Skatepark / Steve Carrell (6) Bellwood Quarry / Tumblr, State Farmers Market / SwatsMatt blog, (7) Irwin Promenade / Atlanta Beltline, (8) North Highland Overpass / Atlanta Beltline, (9) Gateway to the Eastside Trail at 10 street and Monroe Drive, (10) Adopt the Beltline / Atlanta Beltline

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New Webinars on Sustainable Landscapes

Posted in Landscape Architecture, Opportunities, Sustainable Design on 05/30/2013 | 1 Comment »

The Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center’s Ecosystem Design Group, has put together a new webinar series called “Principles of Successful Sustainable Landscapes: Specification, Installation, and Maintenance.” The goal of this series is to train professionals and contractors in the “efficient and successful specification, installation, and maintenance of projects with sustainable features.”

According to the center, the webinar series will teach landscape architects and designers how to successfully design sustainable landscapes, “starting with the foundational aspects of the process and culminating with techniques used to quantify the success of the design.”

The series is based on standards developed by the Sustainable Sites Initiative™ (SITES™), a rating system and guide for sustainable land design, construction, and maintenance practices, created through a joint partnership with ASLA, the Lady Bird Wildflower Center, and U.S. Botanic Garden.

Here are details on the webinars:

Webinar 1: Soils for Sustainable Landscapes (10 a.m. CST, June 18th)
“This webinar will cover the concepts of plant-soil relationships and the characteristics of soil that need to be examined for sustainable design, including: compaction, texture, soil biology, types and role of organic matter and soil chemistry. It will also discuss how to interpret soil test results and quantify specifications for soils and soil amendments (fertilizer, compost, etc.) for restoration, plant establishment and growth.” Duration: 50 minutes.

Webinar 2: Site Preparation + Installation (10 a.m. CST, July 9th)
“This webinar session will discuss soil preparation and protection strategies, compost testing and amendments, compaction testing, BMP’s, and developing a preparation schedule. The course also highlights installation timing,
irrigation schedules and site hygiene techniques.” Duration: 50 minutes.

Webinar 3: Maintenance for Sustainable Landscapes (10 a.m. CST, July 23rd)
“This webinar session will highlight maintenance strategies and benchmarks aimed at establishing and maintaining sustainable landscapes. Techniques discussed in this course include irrigation and mowing frequency, plant
succession, monitoring of plant health, and monitoring and treatment of problematic species.” Duration: 50 minutes.

Webinar 4: Master Planning + Stakeholder Engagement (10 a.m. CST, August 6th)
“This webinar will cover one of the foundational aspects of sustainable landscape practices, planning and public facilitation. The session will discuss basic concepts and processes of facilitation, such as how to prepare and run a stakeholder meeting. Additionally, these concepts and processes will be reinforced by providing Master Plan examples which use site assessment information to develop a project vision, measurable objectives, landscape performance goals, and interpretive themes.”

To take one webinar, it costs $90 per person or $115 per group. For the entire series, each is a bit cheaper: $300 per person, or $400 per group. The center says it’s recommended that participants attend all sessions, as “content builds across the series.” Course certificates will also issued to those who finish all four.

Also, ASLA members and other landscape architects can take advantage of a new online learning series hosted by ASLA’s professional practice networks (PPNs). Nine online recordings of webinars are now available, covering topics ranging from 3D modeling to ecological restoration to sustainable water management strategies, all presented by experts in the field. Webinars are either 60 or 90 minutes. They are free to view for ASLA members; non-members must pay $75. To take the test to earn professional development hours, ASLA members can pay $40 and non-members can pay $60. Coming in June are two new live webinars on therapeutic gardens and outdoor learning for school-age children. Another comprehensive set of recorded webinars is also coming in the fall.

Image credit: Sustainable Sites Initiative (SITES) Pilot Project. BWP Eco Campus / Heliophoto

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Camden: “We Can’t Widen Our Way Out of This Problem”

Posted in Ecosystem Restoration, Gardens, Landscape Architecture, Public Spaces, Urban Design, Urban Revitalization, Water Management on 05/29/2013 | Leave a Comment »

By that statement, Camden, New Jersey, officials mean that the city can’t widen its underground stormwater management pipes enough to carry more water and sewage. Instead, the city is taking a new approach, using green infrastructure to manage stormwater while also dealing with its many toxic brownfield sites. According to Frank McLaughlin, New Jersey Department of the Environment, who spoke at the E.P.A.’s Brownfields conference in Atlanta, Camden has found a new way to work, “greening brownfields” for stormwater management. Their brownfield redevelopment projects are all about capturing and using water to grow and maintain green infrastructure. This is a smart way to take advantage of clean water, because once it hits the built environment in Camden, it basically becomes toxic.

Camden, a small city of 77,000, has two Superfund sites (the places the E.P.A. deems the most dangerous to humans and wildlife) and more than 100 toxic brownfields, making it one of the most polluted places in the U.S. Camden became an industrial hub in the early 1900s, but it has lost much of its industrial base by the 1970s. With that loss, population fell. On top of that, the combined stormwater and sewer infrastructure is aging.

Nearby Philadelphia has shown a new way to do things, though, with its bold green infrastructure program. McLaughlin said Camden has taken up some of those ideas but also made their local green infrastructure initiative, Camden Smart, a “collaborative community benefits program.” The program seeks to reduce flooding in residential areas, but really involve the community in the solutions.

Working with the community, Camden Smart has given out 90 water conservation kits, created 19 rain gardens, two rainwater harvesting systems, and planted more than 230 trees. There are also new rain garden and rain barrel installation training sessions. An old gas station that the community really wanted to see gone has become the Waterfront South Rain Garden Park (see image above). About 12 underground storage tanks were taken out along with thousands of tons of contaminated soils. “The diesel sheen on the groundwater was also addressed.” The new park that has gone in with the help of Rutgers Cooperative Extension Water Resources Program is now filled with native plants and also mitigates street-level flooding and stores 800,000 of stormwater annually. McLaughlin said “landscape architecture is all about integrating stormwater management practices these days.”

Already, this bottom-up-style program has led to the capture of 1.5 million gallons of stormwater annually.

Beyond this program, the city government is also taking on some of the most polluted sites, spending quite a bit of money to turn toxic waterfront drains into environmental resources. Another major project is cleaning up and capping a landfill with “clean, permeable fill.” By the contained vegetation-covered landfill, there will be a new constructed wetland, which together are expected to capture some 25 million gallons of stormwater runoff annually. The city and federal governments, foundations, and the polluters, who have been found and fined, will spend upwards of $100 million to clean up some abandoned toxic sites and restore riparian corridors.

The Metropolitan Sewage District of Cincinnati serves another community that can’t widen its way out of the problem of combined sewage overflows (CSOs). While more than 700 communities have to deal with CSOs each year, Cincinnati has one of the worst problems, spewing 1.5 billion gallons of combined stormwater and sewage overflows into its rivers in just this one area. “This is one of the biggest CSOs in the U.S.,” said Mary Lynn Lodor, Metropolitan Sewage District.

To comply with an E.P.A. consent decree that it clean up its act, the sewage district is creating an ambitious $193 million green infrastructure program in the Lick Run watershed. Just a 5-7-minute car ride from downtown, some 2,700 acres, much of which are brownfields, will become the site of a “designed waterway” and park that will “daylight” the buried Lick Run creek.

The sewage district approached the community with a bunch of different ideas, offering up 150 different photos of all different kinds of green features, asking the community what kind of amenity they wanted. People wanted to see the creek again in a park-like setting. The community “influenced the look and feel of the project.”

The district then worked with a team of landscape architects (local firm Human Nature), and engineers (Strand) to develop a master plan that will create green infrastructure that is attractive and user-friendly and also mitigate the stormwater management problem. “We didn’t want to spend millions on a green infrastructure system that didn’t work, like Milwaukee did,” so the team really did their research. Plans for the newly green area are also expected to lead to additional redevelopment and infill, new trails, and a cultural and recreation center.

The district will use a rate payment increase to pay for the project, but Lodor said the green infrastructure is a lot cheaper than the conventional grey approach. The new functional landscape, which will handle more than 600 million gallons of runoff, is more than $200 million cheaper than the alternative: 30-ft wide pipes running more than one mile underground. To maintain the green infrastructure, the sewage district is partnering with the parks department. “They are doing some of the maintenance work on this because it’s really a park-like amenity.”

Image credit: (1) Waterfront South Rain Garden / Camden Smart, (2) Lick Run Watershed Master Plan / Metropolitan Sewage District of Cincinnati

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Shaping the City with Horticulture: Parks and Plazas

Posted in Landscape Architecture, Public Spaces on 05/29/2013 | Leave a Comment »

The Cultural Landscape Foundation and Pennsylvania Horticultural Society just organized a conference on Civic Horticulture in Philadelphia. Three panels of leading landscape architects discussed the organizational, aesthetic, and productive potential of horticulture. They explained how it is shaping contemporary civic spaces. They presented on three major topics: The Street, Productive Gardens, and Parks and Plazas. Through their own projects, these design leaders showed how these types of places are evolving to meet the needs of cities today.

Urban parks were originally conceived to provide an escape from the city. Today, urbanites generally consider the city an attractive and livable place. Green infrastructure is no longer developed in opposition to the urban landscape, but rather as an integrated and meaningful component of it. Panelists discussed how recent projects are rejuvenating existing parks and plazas and creating new ones for the contemporary city. Horticulture is critical to defining the function and experience of these civic spaces.

A New Civic Horticulture

Creating civic spaces for urban residents today may be a more elusive task than it was before. As Keith McPeters, principal at landscape architecture firm Gustafson Guthrie Nichol (GGN), pointed out, previous movements for civic improvement, like the City Beautiful movement, “had centralized definitions that could inform what ‘civic’, ‘beautiful’ or ‘improved nature’ might mean.” Today’s sustainability movement is less definitive. It has taken on many “different meanings expressed through confusing terminologies about nature, landscape, ecology, and habitat.” What then are the standards of a new civic horticulture?

GGN has based their civic projects on a design approach McPeters calls “contemporary picturesque.” This approach respects both the historic principles of the picturesque that are rooted in the creation of scenic spaces and the contemporary need for sustainable, functional, flexible, and community-oriented places. Horticulture is essential to realizing this vision. In their civic projects, GGN explores how plants can both define and organize a space while providing a unique experience, asking “can horticulture create (civic) spaces in the city and be more than pragmatic, like a simple flat green roof?”

GGN incorporates horticulture into civic spaces both as a device to frame and organize space, and as a way to enhance the visitor experience. For Lurie Garden in Chicago, GGN partnered with planting designer Piet Oudolf to create a perennial garden on the waterfront downtown (see image above). An abundance of planting lines the walkways and frames views of both the city and the water. These plantings create a tapestry of color and texture that provides year-round interest. Due to its spectacular quality, the park has become one of the most popular components of the larger Millennium Park.

GGN also employs horticulture in civic spaces as an organizational device for accommodating multiple competing programs within a single site. Centennial Park in Nashville is on the former site of the 1897 Centennial Exposition. In order to account for both historical and contemporary uses of the site as well as new requirements, GGN created a design that would “lend clarity while maintaining complexity.” The space had to be exceptionally scenic as well in order to showcase Nashville’s horticultural heritage. A variety of plantings throughout the site both distinguish and activate various areas and contribute to the park’s overall aesthetic.

Everything Olde is Nouveau Again

In answer to her own question, “Who’s to say what’s civic horticulture?,” Susan Weiler, FASLA, principal at OLIN, said one important manifestation is the rejuvenation of existing major parks and plazas. In Philadelphia, a rich heritage of civic horticulture dates back to William Penn’s Greene Country Towne, which carved five great squares out of the wilderness. The City Beautiful movement and other efforts subsequently led to the creation of several large civic spaces. This existing landscape and horticultural infrastructure has allowed for a “civic renaissance” over the past decade.

Since 2003, OLIN has been working on a redevelopment plan of the Benjamin Franklin Parkway. Originally conceived as a grand public boulevard in the early 20th century, the iconic parkway devolved into a highway dividing the city after the mid-century. Today, OLIN, in various partnerships with the city and private entities, is realizing a plan that has transformed the parkway into a linear park and sculpture garden that forms the spine of the Museum District and connects to the larger Fairmount Park system. The plan includes several components with a strategy aimed at “transforming a big place a project at a time.”

OLIN has created gardens for the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Rodin Museum, and Barnes Foundation. Horticulture plays a major role in integrating these museums into one continuous attractive system. Maintaining and supplementing the old growth trees lining the parkway provides shade and emphasizes the linearity and continuity of the park. Plantings in the adjacent public gardens tie into the parkway’s landscape and provide year-round interest.

Two other manifestations of civic horticulture are the improvement of disadvantaged and decaying areas, and the protection and replenishment of natural resources. Since 2009, OLIN has supported a volunteer effort at the Richard Allen Prep Charter School, helping students express their individual idea of what a garden is. This project creates access to green space and garden cultivation for those who lack it. OLIN also participated in Infill Philadelphia: Soak It Up!, a design competition to re-envision stormwater management throughout the city. Their winning proposal demonstrates how green stormwater infrastructure can conserve resources while transforming neighborhoods.

Civic Horticulture in the World of Wirtz

Peter Wirtz, Director of Wirtz International Landscape Architects, explained why it is still important to know about horticulture despite the fact that European design culture predominantly considers it “old fashioned.” Whereas horticulture used to constitute half of a landscape architect’s education, the majority of schools no longer emphasize training students in the basic knowledge of plants. Landscape architects in Europe are consequently not equipped to address warming climate demands, weakened habitats, and declining bird and insect populations. Nor do they have the knowledge of drought- and salt- resistant plants necessary for designing effectively in cities.

Wirtz himself was inspired decades ago by a trip to the Soviet Union in 1970 where he observed an appreciation for urban green space evident in the abundant plantings in street medians and the mixed use of fruiting and ornamental trees. He subsequently created a design-build practice defined by the “absolute dominance of softscape over hardscape.” Advanced construction knowledge and a respect for horticulture informs creative design at Wirtz International. Planting defines the quality of civic spaces that are created to be escapes from the “bombardment” of city life. These oases deny the orthogonal urban grid and transform bodily space in microcosms or “rooms” secluded with plantings.

The structure of the plantings reflects two main ideas used throughout Wirtz International’s work. The first is that a “simple (planting) palette can create and brand the identity of a park.” This is evident on Albert II laan, a boulevard in Brussels, Belgium, where two different species of evenly spaced trees line the the linear park’s diagonal path system.

The second is that an “organic composition with a robust planting palette can survive time.” This is evident at the Camillo Torres student housing complex in Leuven, Belgium, where a low maintenance scheme with dense plantings is still thriving more than ten years later.

This is part three of a three part series on the Civic Horticulture conference. Read part one, The Street, and part two, Productive Gardens.

This guest post is by Shannon Leahy, former ASLA summer intern and recent Master’s of Landscape Architecture graduate, University of Pennsylvania.

Image credits: (1) ASLA 2008 Professional Design Award. Lurie Garden at Millennium Park. Gustafson Guthrie Nichol / Gustafson Guthrie Nichol, (2) Centennial Park / Gustafson Guthrie Nichol, (3) Barnes Foundation / Design Philadelphia, (4) Infill Design Competition / OLIN Studio, (5) Albert II laan / Wirtz International (6) Camillo Torres / Wirtz International

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Shaping the City with Horticulture: Productive Gardens

Posted in Gardens, Landscape Architecture, Public Spaces, Residential Design on 05/28/2013 | Leave a Comment »

Productive gardens have become increasingly popular components of the urban landscape. Unused green space and vacant land are often repurposed to grow fresh food for urban dwellers. Panelists discussed ways to enhance these efforts and foster other productive uses of civic spaces. New partnerships provide opportunities to examine larger-scale food production, community-based development, and ecological services. The performative qualities of plants make horticulture an essential part of these explorations.

The Productive Garden

Landscape architect Elena Brescia, ASLA, partner at SCAPE/Landscape Architecture, described cities as “environmental and cultural systems where landscape, beyond formal, economic, and aesthetic interests, can generate a critical participatory effect among citizens.” Landscape offers new ways of intervening in city fabric at the local level using stewardship, grassroots participation, and neighborhood identity as generators of community-based change. SCAPE has experimented with projects both imagined and real that explore this dynamic and the broader potential of what it means to be “productive.” For Brescia, productivity stems not only from a horticultural basis but from a participatory and programatic standpoint as well.

SCAPE’s project, Oyster-tecture, part of the MoMA’s Rising Currents exhibition in 2010, proposed a self-generative, multi-layered, and multi-functional system rooted in oyster production for Brooklyn’s Gowanus Canal (see image above). Oysters are native to the canal and were once an important food source in the community. They filter water and naturally agglomerate into reefs. They have the potential to clean the canal’s polluted waters and attenuate waves, addressing issues with water quality and rising tides.

With Oyster-tecture, SCAPE proposed to transform a historically relevant food source into a tool for generating ecological resilience and community-based development. The project argues that the reef armature fabricated from a series of piles supporting woven ropes can provide the oysters with an initial place to grow and propagate. They will eventually form a series of new reef islands that will provide food and habitat for other animals as well as areas for work, research, and recreation for the surrounding community.

SCAPE’s work on the 103rd Street Community Garden in East Harlem also expands on notions of productivity. Completed in partnership with the Bette Midler’s New York Restoration Project, it’s a positive model for a community garden. The project is both a small-scale agricultural system supported by cultivation plots and rainwater capture and a series of play spaces that accommodate a variety of age groups and activities within a small site. It was a productive catalyst for block revitalization and community participation and has become a neighborhood asset. SCAPE also conceptualized and designed the project so it could be built mostly by local volunteers.

Re-imagining Victory Gardens

Mia Lehrer, FASLA, landscape planner and principal at Mia Lehrer + Associates, provided a definition of “civic horticulture” as “community gardening.” For Lehrer, who focuses much of her work on food production, horticulture is about education and empowerment. Productive gardens and their related systems and infrastructure have the potential to rectify the disconnect between disadvantaged urban communities and their food sources.

The prevalence of food deserts in urban environments has been growing. These food deserts have contributed to the escalating obesity epidemic. Unsettling statistics show the rate of U.S. children contracting chronic health conditions related to obesity more than doubling, from 12.8 percent in 1994 to 26.6 percent in 2006. A majority of these children are located in impoverished parts of the inner city, which lack access to fresh food. Many of them do not know where their food comes from or how it is made. Lehrer believes that education and empowerment are imperative to addressing this “Does ketchup grow on trees?” scenario. Landscape architects can play an important role in designing places and systems that help people better connect to their personal health because their “work is about many things, including place, making, healing, beauty, people, cities.”

Lehrer’s practice is experimenting with the “S, M, L, XL” scales of productive gardens, from residential to commercial farming, in Los Angeles. Urban agriculture in the city is moving beyond the scale of the traditional victory garden to consider the larger urban environment and regional food distribution systems. Though the vast surrounding agricultural region produces 50 percent of the fresh fruit and vegetables for the United States and Canada, the city keeps only 1 percent of it and imports the rest. Transforming this “outside-in” strategy to an “inside-out” one requires a reevaluation of the policies that currently structure food distribution, including everything from large-scale agricultural systems to zoning regulations for residential productive gardens and provisions for bartering and selling homegrown food. Lehrer’s “Small” projects include a community garden for the Jordan Downs Housing Project with enough acreage to successfully meet the needs of the entire neighborhood. MAS (“more”), an “extra large” project, is a non-profit food distribution service that designs farmers markets with a focus on providing equal access to fresh local food.

Regardless of the scale and intention, horticulture is an important feature of each project. Fresh food production brings people into contact with the plants that support their basic health. However, not all of Lehrer’s interest in civic horticulture is explicitly about food production. Unique and performative aspects of plants are utilized in other projects. A five-acre “outdoor collection” for the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles features a growing wall and an abundance of both native and non-native plants chosen to attract the most species possible. At Orange County Great Park, lima bean fields are remediating a disturbed portion of land. These “medium” and “large” projects demonstrate some of the other productive potential of plants in civic spaces.

From City Beautiful to City Functional

Thomas Woltz, FASLA, landscape architect and principal at Nelson Byrd Woltz Landscape Architects (NBW), believes that “horticultural acts are civic acts.” Attitudes toward gardening and plant cultivation vary dramatically and the methodologies used can have significant implications, both positive and negative, for communities, wildlife, and public health. It’s critical to the contemporary practice of landscape architecture to cultivate responsible management strategies, plant choices, and design goals. These can help establish new definitions of productivity that can in turn create “hybridized concepts of gardens, agriculture, and restoration ecology.”

The projects of NBW reflect a desire to respect aesthetic quality while establishing valuable habitat in order to engender a public sense of stewardship and investment in the landscape. Projects are developed with the purpose of fostering a “new form of civic horticulture combining pleasure with responsibility.” Woltz sees civic horticulture as having developed from the City Beautiful to the “City Functional.” He posits that “the next step might focus on productive gardens that operate at the scale of performative urban landscape systems.” NBW has been working with scientists, ornithologists, and conservation biologists to develop rigorous designs that are not only beautiful but also “envisioned with an idea of productivity with an ecological resonance.”

For Woltz, ecological services are a critical part of any landscape’s productivity, regardless of scale. NBW designed a small biodiversity garden for a Manhattan residence that emphasized the creation of bird habitat. Planted with pollinator attractors and nesting and feeding niches, the garden at the Carnegie Hill House is a haven for several species of birds and butterflies. It meets the family’s needs as well with features like a secluded seating area, a sandbox for children, and a green wall for herbs. The design won an ASLA Professional Design Honor Award for successfully creating “a tiny outpost of a much bigger adjacent landscape.”

A larger project at the Medlock Aimes Winery and Tasting Room in Sonoma, California combines ecological services with larger-scale food production. For the biodynamic, organic, solar-powered winery’s outdoor tasting room, NBW designed a productive garden tailored to pairings for tastings. It’s coupled with a stormwater management system. The variety of plantings include native rushes in the swales and an old-growth olive grove transplanted to the site for conservation.

NBW also designed a more traditional productive garden for a public housing complex in Charlottesville, Virginia. The Urban Farm engages residents in growing organic vegetables in the underutilized green space in their community. Residents work by the hour in exchange for tickets they can trade in for fresh produce. The surplus is sold at farmers markets. One extraordinary feature is that the plots are maintained entirely through rain harvested water capture.

This is part two of a three part series on the Civic Horticulture conference. Read part three, Parks and Plazas.

This guest post is by Shannon Leahy, former ASLA summer intern and recent Master’s of Landscape Architecture graduate, University of Pennsylvania.

Image credits: (1) Oyster-tecture / SCAPE/Landscape Architecture, (2) 103rd Street Community Garden in East Harlem / Melissa C. Morris blog, (3) Jordan Downs Housing Project Community Garden / Mia Lehrer + Associates, (4) Orange County Great Park Urban Farm / Mia Lehrer + Associates, (5) Carnegie Hill House by Nelson Byrd Woltz Landscape Architects / Eric Piasecki, (6) Medlock Aimes Winery and Tasting Room / Nelson Byrd Woltz Landscape Architects

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Shaping the City with Horticulture: The Street

Posted in Landscape Architecture, Public Spaces, Sustainable Transportation on 05/28/2013 | Leave a Comment »

The Street

For decades, decentralized development resulted in automobile-centric streets, but today, cities are re-purposing their streetscapes in a variety of ways, converting them into multi-functional civic spaces. Panelists discussed how these underused or marginal areas can become integral parts of urban infrastructure, providing pedestrian mobility, valuable habitat, and other amenities. Horticulture is an important element in defining the spatial and programmatic quality of streetscapes. Planting mitigates scale, provides continuity and structure, and creates the aesthetic experience.

1111 Lincoln Road, Miami Beach

Landscape architect Raymond Jungles, FASLA, founding principal of Raymond Jungles, Inc., demonstrated how pedestrian malls can use horticulture to reintegrate nature into the built environment. Jungles helped reclaim one of America’s first pedestrian malls, historic Lincoln Road Mall in Miami Beach (see image above). He partnered with developer Robert Wennett and architects Herzog & de Meuron to convert a four-lane road back into a pedestrian space and “bring nature into the human environment.”

The main idea for Lincoln Road was to bring the Everglades back into the city. The design achieves this with an abundance of local fauna and a water system that provides both aesthetic and practical functions. Horticulture is the centerpiece of the project. The planting palette displays a variety of shade tree species including native Live Oak, Bald Cypress, and Pond Apple. Placid biofiltration pools reflect light and shadow, creating a pleasant atmosphere while performing maintenance functions with minimal energy. The planting lends a wild and casual appearance to the mall while supporting a space for retail and both planned and unplanned programs. It also provides habitat for birds and turtles. Locals have nicknamed it the “Urban Glade.”

A Street is a Landscape is a Park is a Trail

Lincoln Road may owe some of its success to contemporary attitudes toward urban space. As another landscape architect, Matthew Urbanski, principal at Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates (MVVA), pointed out, pedestrian malls were not as popular a few decades ago. When Lawrence Halprin designed Charlottesville’s Downtown Mall in the mid 1970s, retail was at that time moving out of the city centers and into the surrounding suburbs. Decentralized development did not emphasize pairing pedestrian mobility with attractive amenities. Today, as more people move back into cities and with space at a premium, developers understand the importance of grouping multiple amenities together in one place. Changing attitudes are allowing for experimentation, with hybrid streetscapes combining pedestrian paths and parks into a variety of public spaces. Horticulture is playing a significant role in defining the quality and program of these spaces.

Cities increasingly lack access to the land or economic resources to create public space in the model of Central Park. Green space is more commonly developing out of the imaginative reuse of abandoned land in former industrial areas and along major roadways and waterfronts. Streets, often solely used for vehicular traffic, have become an underutilized resource. Re-imagined to provide economic and ecological services, these “marginal spaces become critical parts of the city’s civic infrastructure or connective tissue,” argued Urbanski. They present an opportunity to develop “synergistic relationships between streetscapes, trails, plazas, and linear parks.”

In addition to providing better mobility for pedestrians and bikers, hybrid streetscapes can accommodate multiple programs, such as the farmer’s market and children’s play areas. An example is the shared space in MVVA’s design for Union Square Park in New York City. These spaces can become virtual oases and perform vital ecological functions. Plantings provide structure and continuity while lending character and interest. MVVA’s Allegheny Riverfront Park in Pittsburgh successfully transformed a highway “hellscape” into a two-tiered waterfront park. An abundance of native species fill the lower tier closest to the water. The upper tier is a transitional space planted with orderly rows of trees along paths for pedestrians and bikers. It serves as a linear plaza that bridges the city and the waterfront.

MVVA is currently developing Hudson Park and Boulevard in New York, a mid-block boulevard that is both significantly wider than the average sidewalk but narrower than a traditional park. Plantings define various programmatic spaces fragmented into islands and scattered throughout the length of the park. Connected via the continuous linear path system spanning the block, they provide shady, flexible green spaces. The park will be an important spine of pedestrian mobility and connectivity downtown. It is expected to serve as both a public amenity and a catalyst for economic development.

The Biophilic Street

Henry White, FASLA, a landscape architect and principal at HM White Site Architecture, also believes horticulture is critical to constructing civic spaces. White subscribes to the biophilia hypothesis: humans have a biological need for nature and that they are attracted to certain habitats and settings in the natural world. The structure and order of natural communities evident in, for instance, the monocultures of northeast woodlands, have an appealing and comforting visual clarity. These elements provide important clues for structuring built spaces like streetscapes.

For White, streets are the primary influence in establishing a sense of place in cities. Successful streetscapes are memorable because they provide the right combination of public amenities within a spatial framework that people can comfortably navigate. Significant streets and boulevards such as the Champs-Elysees in Paris and Las Rambles in Barcelona are notable because they successfully manage the monumentality of their expanse and create desirable civic spaces. Colonnades of trees and other organizational planting strategies emphasize the linear nature of these streets and create transitional spaces between buildings, pedestrian paths, parking, and vehicular traffic. These allees support the gridded condition of cities and are the “park of the parkway.”

White’s practice focuses on extending this design sensibility to streetscapes and other civic spaces. Trees, the “lungs of the city,” and other plantings are primary elements in these designs. When systematically laid out, trees structure spaces and calm the inherent urban visual chaos of their surroundings. Plantings provide ecological and functional services. For HM White’s design of Oriole Park at Camden Yards, double, triple, and quadruple rows of trees organize space and direct circulation. The variety of species provide shade and interest for visitors. For the upgrade of the Mosholu Parkway in the Bronx, planted bio-filtration areas function like sponges in the unused parts of the road’s shoulder. They perform a critical maintenance function while providing habitat for various species.

This is part one in a three part series on the Civic Horticulture conference. Read part two: Productive Gardens.