Urban Revitalization

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Kim Mathews’ Cinderella Stories

Posted in Landscape Architecture, Public Spaces, Smart Growth, Urban Design, Urban Revitalization, Water Management on 05/06/2013 | Leave a Comment »

In a lecture at the National Building Museum (NBM), Kim Mathews, RLA, ASLA, a founding principal of Mathews Nielsen, discussed resiliency and renewal through her firm’s “Cinderella projects.” The lecture was hosted in celebration of National Landscape Architecture Month (NLAM) and as part of NBM’s Smart Growth lecture series.

“Many of our projects are, in fact, true Cinderella stories,” Mathews explained. “They are stories of perseverance, adaptation, and sometimes just plain good luck. They are landscapes that have been working all their life, often forgotten or out of view of the general public, but given the opportunity to be re-imagined.”

The presentation featured five Cinderella stories, all located in New York City riverfronts, and focus on the physical connections to the community. Here are three of the five projects:

Hunts Point Landing

Hunts Point Landing is one of twenty projects in New York City’s South Bronx Greenway master plan initiative. Mathews Nielsen is leading this major, multi-year planning and design effort. The master plan provides practical strategies for greening the Bronx, environmentally and financially. Hunts Points Landing provides new connections to the river for community residents as well as a host of waterfront activities.

Once a fully paved industrial site overlooking the river, Hunts Point Landing was transformed and now offers panoramic views (see image above). “The circulation and topography within the site were calibrated to ensure that a visitor sees the water and is led to the shoreline upon entering the park,” Mathews exlpained.

Leading to the river, the site transitions smoothly between urban and natural environments. At one end of the park, the Hunts Point extension connects to the greenway. There are sidewalks to enter into the park, the fish market, and some parking. The pathway into the park smoothly becomes more densely populated with trees, grasses, and other native plants, leading into the restored shoreline with natural wetland and tidal pools.

Weehawken Waterfront Park

Located just north of the Lincoln Tunnel in Hudson County, New Jersey, this 12-acre park is the new public centerpiece of the Weehawken restored riverfront. Previously, this area was rail yard and industrial park, a gray, desolate piece of the public esplanade around the river.

The township wanted the park to become a living environment that enables active recreation by visitors. It’s a challenge to identify locations for large play fields within waterfront settings, but Mathews explained that “through careful design, we were able to locate the large fields along the water’s edge, while keeping the sweeping views to the river.”

The fields and courts are now embedded within the landscape. Additionally, the park features a rolling terrain with high points, sloping lawns, wildflower meadows, and grassy berms. For many who live in the area, this is the only available place for play.

Shoelace Park Master Plan

In Shoelace Park, the natural line of the river was straightened due to a now inactive roadway, leaving the Bronx River more susceptible to flooding. Also, nearly 40 percent of the park flows through a 100-year flood plain. In this new master plan, the Bronx River, with both soft and armored edges, will now meander through a revitalized Shoelace Park.

Through a public design workshop, the firm and the Bronx River Alliance were able to identify what features were necessary to turn this park into a community landmark. The features desired by the community would then be combined with water management systems. Key components would include a play area, vegetated swales, and a large, 17-foot promenade with a shared pedestrian lane and two bike and skating lanes.

These case studies show how to renew communities with sustainable strategies. “These are urban edges that have come a bit unraveled, but through smart design and perseverance, they have been stitched back together.”

Listen to the full recording and see more images from Mathews’ presentation.

This guest post is by Phil Stamper, ASLA Public Relations and Communications Coordinator

Image credits: (1) Hunts Point Landing / Mathews Nielsen, (2) Weehawken Waterfront Park / Mathews Nielsen, (3) Shoelace Park / Mathews Nielsen

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Watch out High Line, Here Comes the Bloomingdale Trail

Posted in Landscape Architecture, Public Spaces, Urban Design, Urban Revitalization on 04/25/2013 | Leave a Comment »

Based on a tour and then a closer look at the nearly-finished designs for Chicago’s Bloomingdale Trail, the 3-mile elevated rail park may give the High Line park in New York City a run for its money. The $91 million project co-designed by Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates, Collins Engineers, local Chicago artist Frances Whitehead, and others will transform an abandoned freight rail line into a wonderful, green, public-art filled elevated park for both walkers and bicyclists. What makes the park really different from the High Line? It’s in a residential area on the west side of Chicago and it’s much lower to the ground (around 18 feet high on average). There will be a set of six ramps leading up to the Trail from streets and another six from nearby parks, in effect creating seamless access between the old rail-line and the greater green tissue of the four neighborhoods it transects. In contrast, the High Line is in a dense commercial area, much higher off the ground, and only accessible via stairs and elevators.

During a tour of the Trail organized by the American Planning Association (APA), Jamie Simone, who is managing the Bloomingdale Project at the Trust for Public Land (TPL), said the park will have two paths. One will be a 14-feet-wide trail with a “soft shoulder, and landscaping, water fountains, and benches.” The other will be a meandering “nature path, an informal space for exploration.” In a unique arrangement with the city of Chicago, TPL is actually coralling all the local non-profits, city agencies, donors, and railroad companies involved. The organization, which usually functions simply as a land trust, is also becoming the “agent” that manages the park over the long-term.

The story of the Bloomingdale Trail starts around 100 years ago, with the Great Fire, which is “the beginning of so many things in Chicago,” said Ben Helphand, Friends of the Bloomingdale Trail. After the fire, the city gave the Canadian Pacific Railroad permission to build a railroad, but over time the neighborhood around the line became “very dense,” so “there were lots of crashes.” Helphand said “people were losing limbs every other day,” so a coalition of groups came together to demand that “something be done.” A city ordinance was passed that forced the rail company to raise the line, with earthen embankments on the sides. The line continued to be used through the ’70s and ’80s, at least until factories began to move out with the decline of manufacturing in the Midwest. By the ’90s, the rail line was largely silent. The result: “within a couple of seasons, a dense little forest appeared.” The prairie also came back, with snakes, frogs, birds, and other animals making their home on the long path. Helphand said he stumbled upon the Trail not soon after and “fell in love with it.”

In the early ’00s, the city began an open space plan. Through input from lots of local organizations, the city discovered that Logan Square, one of the neighborhoods the Trail runs through, had the second least amount of green space of any neighborhood in Chicago. A community planning process struggled to find new opportunities. They were focused on creating community gardens or skateboard parks until someone recommended the Bloomingdale Trail. So, fast-forwarding, in 2004, the Friends of Bloomingdale Trail was formed and the City Council gave the go-ahead to turn the elevated line into a park.

At the first stop in the tour at Walsh Park, which forms the eastern-most end of the Trail, Gia Biagi, Chicago Parks District, said the Trail isn’t just a linear park, but part of a broader system. “How long it takes you to get to the Trail and access it is as important as the park itself.” Her goal is to remove impediments that will limit use. So the Trust and the city together are demolishing some nearby buildings, and totally revamping Walsh Park, taking down part of the embankment that separates the Trail from the ground plane and adding ADA-accessible paths that will slope from the ground up into the elevated park. Walsh Park will also get a new performance space and skate park to draw people in.

All of these fantastic ideas for Walsh Park and the other “access parks” came out of a preliminary comprehensive planning process, which resulted in a rich framework plan. Simone said that process wrapped up about a year ago, after lots of public feedback. Neighbors of the Trail were really concerned about “how to protect pedestrians” with all the bicyclists. The design team found that given the Trail is only 3-miles long, there won’t be people racing, but the designers still added in pit-stops at access points so people can pause before entering the main trail stream. “It’s really now just about trail etiquette,” said Simone, who said a public education campaign about how to bike with people will be launched with the park opening.

As the bus moved around the Trail, we caught glimpses of the existing infrastructure, which is crumbling in spots, but in pretty good shape and largely structurally sound. Simone said that in phase two of the planning and design process, which just wrapped up, “we decided we’re going to accept it as it is and not clean it up too much.” She asked, “who would want to see cleaned-up ruins in Rome?” The Trail is Chicago’s Roman ruin, so the cosmetic issues will be left alone, while the structural issues will be addressed, really for safety reasons.

On top of the trail, the two paths and soft landscape architecture will provide a vivid contrast with the public art installations. Frances Whitehead, the artist involved in the design process, created a map where “art would exist and then worked with the landscape architect and engineers” to make sure the structures and landscape would hold large pieces. From the get-go, Whitehead was integrated into the design process, not just an add-on at the end. Simone said this was also necessary because some of the art requires water and electricity so all that infrastructure had to be planned out early on.

At the western-most end point of the Trail, Angel Ysaguirre, Deputy Commissioner of the Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events, City of Chicago, said the artist commissioning process was “very fast.” Whitehead shepherded a commissioning process and a panel of artists selected the final work. There will be a whole set of permanent installations as well as some spaces for rotating outdoor galleries. One piece will leverage research done on the Trail about climate change, displaying the data collected in artful ways. Others will make use of spaces without natural light by adding in light and noise art. Materials taken from the site during reconstruction — cement and dirt — will be available to artists for reuse.

Perhaps the only dismaying parts of the tour was that many of the 100-plus murals lining the Trail infrastructure are going to go, largely because of the construction process. Some of them are really amazing. Ysaguirre said through the Bloomingdale Trail work, the city of Chicago has actually had to rethink its “mural policies.” It now views them as “temporary pieces of art” that aren’t meant to be there long-term, largely, perhaps because they are difficult to maintain in Chicago’s harsh weather. Still, efforts are being made to spare some, as they are a mark of the existing community and are really valuable in themselves.

At the end of the multi-hour tour, Simone said there has been “no community opposition to the plans or designs.” Some neighbors are concerned about privacy so trellises with vines will be set up in some areas to block views from the Trail into apartments. Rail lighting will also point down to the bottom of paths so there will be “minimal light pollution.”

One of the best things about the new park, said Kathy Dickhut, Deputy Commissioner of the Department of Housing and Economic Development, is that it will be “grounded to the earth. People on top of the Trail can have conversations with people on the ground.”

Dogs will be allowed. The park will be open from 6am to 11pm to allow bicyclists to use the trail during their daily commutes. The park’s crowd will change slowly during the day.

Before the bare-bones trail opens in fall 2014 (Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s deadline), there’s a ton of stuff to do. Parts of the site are contaminated and require environmental remediation, so soils will need to be dealt with. In one spot, the Trail structure will actually be elevated with new bridges put in in order to let trucks pass underneath (currently, the clearance is very low and our bus had to go all the way around the Trail).

A number of existing bridges and other structural components will need to be repaired. Then, all the ramps will need to be built along with the new public spaces in the access parks. Much of this work will continue over the next few years, long after the park opens next fall.

Explore the framework plan and see more designs.

Image credits:(1) Bloomingdale Trail aerial view / David Schalliol, (2-3) Bloomingdale Trail / Jared Green, ASLA, (4) Walsh Park design / Bloomingdale Trail Framework Plan, (5) Bloomingdale Trail bike and pedestrian path / Bloomingdale Trail Framework Plan, (6-7) Bloomingdale Trail / Jared Green, ASLA, (8) Bloomingdale Trail access ramp / Bloomingdale Trail Framework Plan, (9) Bloomingdale Trail nature path / Bloomingdale Trail Framework Plan, (10) Bloomingdale Trail bridge / Bloomingdale Trail Framework Plan.

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Green Infrastructure: A Landscape Approach

Posted in Ecosystem Services, Landscape Architecture, Policy and Regulation, Urban Design, Urban Revitalization, Water Management on 04/25/2013 | Leave a Comment »

Green infrastructure is starting to mean different things to different people, said David Rouse, ASLA, a landscape architect and planner at Wallace, Roberts & Todd (WRT) during a session at the American Planning Association (APA) conference in Chicago. Rouse was there with Theresa Schwarz, Kent State Cleveland Urban Design Collaborative; Karen Walz, Strategic Community Solutions; and Ignacio Bunster-Ossa, FASLA, a landscape architect with WRT, who together co-authored a new book published by APA called Green Infrastructure: A Landscape Approach.

There are really two definitions of green infrastructure. One is an inter-connected network of green open spaces that provide a range of ecosystem services — from clean air and water to wildlife habitat and carbon sinks. The other is a more limited one promoted by the E.P.A.: small-scale green systems designed to be urban stormwater management infrastructure. In either definition, green infrastructure is about bringing together “natural and built environments” and using the “landscape as infrastructure,” said Rouse.

Beyond getting the definitions right, Bunster-Ossa said the purpose of the book was to make sure these important concepts weren’t mired in the ugly debates about landscape urbanism, which has become a loaded term for many new urbanists, smart growth advocates, and others promoting increased density. He said “there’s been too much fighting over that, so here’s a way to clearly define the benefits of these systems.”

For Rouse, green infrastructure can improve our health, particularly our mental health, by making places more green and walkable. Think of green spaces and how they are much better to walk through than treeless, concrete environments. Those greener spaces are also safer. As research is proving, greener spaces have less crime, particularly domestic violence. The presence of greenery can also boost children’s education performance as well as the cognitive ability of adults.

Given the multiple benefits of green infrastructure, it should be understood using terms like “multifunctionality, connectivity, habitability, resiliency, and identity,” along with “return on investment.” Rouse said these principles can be applied at green infrastructure projects at all scales.

Here are some lessons from the experts who’ve tried to apply green infrastructure at the landscape scale (these are also case studies in the book):

Put the Green Before Grey

Schwarz said “cities in transition” sounds better than a “shrinking” city, which is what Cleveland is. Cleveland has lost half of its population so it has surplus real estate. Vacancies are everywhere “but not aggregated.” In total, Cleveland has about 20,000 vacant homes over 3,000 acres of land.

So the city has created a new plan to redevelop in strategic places, keeping density in key areas while using cleared areas for green infrastructure to handle stormwater. The city is now demolishing huge chunks of the vacant homes, adding about 120 acres of cleared land every year.

Much of these cleared surfaces can be used for infiltration, but a plan was first needed first target existing watersheds and understand the soils. Schwarz said soil surveys of Cleveland found there many types of soils, but really only the sandiest ones allow for infiltration. Other soils may appear fine but were actually heavily contaminated from industrial use.

In many cases, finding the original watershed was also tricky: So many indigenous waterways were buried underground to make way for some earlier development. Schwarz’s team worked on identifying the “headways” of rivers and culverted streams, seeing them as the best places to bring back vegetation to deal with stormwater. At the neighborhood scale, riparian corridors are planned as well.

While all of this sounds great, the E.P.A. was really forcing Cleveland to do all this work. The aging combined stormwater and sewer system in the city means there are 126 combined sewer overflows (CSOs) into Lake Erie each year, dumping some 4.5 billion gallons of runoff and waste. The E.P.A. is forcing the city to spend $3 billion as part of a “consent decree” to address the issue. While her group is pushing forward with green infrastructure mapping, Schwarz said, unfortunately, much of this money is going towards hard grey infrastructure — “seven really big deep tunnels” — with only some $42 million available for green infrastructure. “This is expected to handle around 44 million gallons of runoff, not much out of 4.5 billion gallons.”

Schwarz said the green infrastructure would have been more effective if “the green was designed first, before the grey.” Still, her group and others are pushing the city to make the best of it and add green infrastructure along the strategic reinvestment zones, the highly-trafficked corridors, making those “sustainable patterns of development” even more attractive. She’s also making sure the city applies a “green infrastructure decision making framework,” so that when land becomes vacant it can quickly be evaluated by the city to determine if it’s best used for redevelopment or green infrastructure.

Look for the Long-term and Large-scale

According to Walz, the North Texas region, which encompasses Dallas and a number of other cities, is the 4th largest metropolitan region in the U.S. The area has a “strong economy” so there’s been rapid population growth. In 2000, the area had 5.3 million. Double that is expected by 2050. Within the region, efforts are underway to let the Trinity River meander through Dallas, taking it out of its levees, and preserve and expand green infrastructure. Broader visions, including Vision North Texas, Trinity River Common Vision, and others, aim to “create regional thinking, but local implementation” on green infrastructure.

To make the local implementation part happen, Walz worked with the local community using “green printing” and integrated stormwater management (ISWM) approaches, a kind of mapping process to gauge what the local values are, where green infrastructure opportunities are, and find the places where the values and opportunities co-join to create “triple bottom line benefits.”

For Walz, the lessons learned were that “landscape shapes development. This is a concept we used to understand.” She said her public process has helped people understand how to “combine a landscape analysis with local residents’ values, so that in the future the landscape can actually shape development patterns.” Through public input, the community could find out which areas it values the most and preserve. She said those watersheds and natural areas that the community deemed to have the highest value were also “the same assets that will them create a more sustainable and distinctive community.”

She added that planning at the regional scale creates more benefits for communities. “Green landscapes, natural systems don’t end at the city limits.” Forming those partnerships that cross city lines helps create the broader regional vision.

To craft that vision, multiple disciplines should be be involved. “While that brings challenges, there are also great rewards.”

Lastly, Walz said “look for the long-term and large-scale” opportunities. (It’s also clear that the lingo or terminology around green infrastructure may get in the way when trying to reach a community. Walz said “these green infrastructure approaches are valuable regardless of what they’re called.”)

Create Local Connections to Green Infrastructure

WRT is working on a massive project in Louisville, Kentucky — the Parklands of Floyd’s Fork. At the edge of the city, four parks, each named for a tributary to the waterway, will protect some 3,700 acres along a prime watershed, helping to create a green edge around a city sprawling out.

Bunster-Ossa said he approached the green infrastructure aspects of the project using the “principle of connectivity.” Also important were creating a real local identity for the green infrastructure systems. While the proposed designs offer lots of ecosystem service benefits (approximately $18 million worth, said Bunster-Ossa), it’s really about creating a place people that people can connect to.

Bunster-Ossa introduced another example WRT worked on with Margie Ruddick, ASLA, this time in a highly urban environment: the new 1.5-acre, $45 million Queens Plaza park, which uses plants while also protecting pedestrians in a dangerous intersection, “making green infrastructure visible.” Sidewalks were dug up to form barriers that prevent pedestrians from jaywalking, while rain gardens provide a respite from the urban jungle. The park is viewed as such a useful amenity that Jet Blue recently put its new headquarters a few blocks away.

Bunster-Ossa said nearby buildings weren’t excluded from discussion about the new park. With green infrastructure, you can “flow from the interior of buildings to parks to wateryways, all the way to the region.” Now there’s landscape-scale thinking.

Read the book.

Image credit: (1) APA Books, (2) Demolishing vacant buildings in East Cleveland / Cuyahoga Land Bank, (3) Vacant land in Cleveland / Urban Current, (4) Trinity River / Trinity River Project, (5-6) Floyd’s Fork / WRT, (7) Queens Plaza / Margie Ruddick, WRT.

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Making Sure Smart Also Means Equitable

Posted in Policy and Regulation, Urban Revitalization on 04/17/2013 | 4 Comments »

With the rise of “smart growth” approaches to urban development, which promote dense, walkable urban centers as an alternative to sprawl, there are questions about whether smart growth is actually equitable. Those compact, walkable neighborhoods are in hot demand across the country so it costs more to live there. So this also means not everyone gets to reap all the health benefits from living in a walkable community. In gentrifying neighborhoods, the issue is further compounded. People who lived in these communities and got to walk everywhere are being pushed out because they can’t afford the rising rents and property taxes. They are instead being shunted to the suburbs, the growing place for the poor in the U.S. There, many of the poor can’t afford cars so they are even more affected: they’ve lost their community, ability to walk around and get exercise, and can’t get to work easily. At the American Planning Association (APA) conference in Chicago, a group of really-smart smart growth advocates, David Dixon, Goody Clancy; Dena Belzer, Strategic Economics; and F. Kaid Benfield, Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) and The Atlantic Cities blogger, took a hard look at these issues.

Dixon painted a pretty gloomy portrait of inequality in the U.S., arguing that it’s just going to get worse given how the U.S. economy is now set up. While manufacturing’s share of the total economy has grown 50 percent over the past decades, the share of jobs in manufacturing has fallen by 30 percent. Manufacturing is becoming much more efficient, which means fewer middle class jobs. At the same time, 60 percent of employers demand educators workers, those with at least a college degree. But by 2020, only 40 percent will find those workers. More and more college students aren’t completing their programs due to rising education costs. “This is a built-in engine for greater economic fragmentation and increased inequality.” Dixon added that the middle tier of workers will be “lucky to stay in place” over the coming decades.

At the same time, demographics are also changing so that there’s a greater demand for walkable neighborhoods. Married couples with children are less than 25 percent of the population now. Singles or couples now make up 62 percent of the country. “Non-traditional households outnumber traditional families.” These different families want different places to live. “In the ’90s, it was about golf courses, escaping from work, homogeneity. In 2012, it’s about walkability, transit, diversity, and living near work. Sustainability is also important.” Moving toward 2030, there will be a “tectonic shift in values, with the majority of people in cities as opposed to suburbs.”

Where are all those people who want to live in dense, walkable environments going to go? For Dixon and the others on the panel, they are most likely going to displace the people already living in cities. “In fact, people are already being displaced at a rapid rate.”

In Brooklyn, Dixon explained how that city has two of the country’s fastest gentrifying neighborhoods. There, “the cost of a good walkscore means poverty has moved to the suburbs.” Housing nearer to transit is expensive, but housing further out that requires more transportation is even more expensive. Some 40 percent of low-income people can’t afford a car “so moving to a suburb is a catastrophe.” Beyond that, pushing these people to the suburbs is condemning them to a less healthy life.

For Belzer, who is an economist, the big issue in the ’90s was “dumb growth or suburban sprawl.” The response was to try to save farmland and preserve open space. The Congress for New Urbanism (CNU) pushed for “traditional neighborhood development,” really new cities that replicated old ones with their dense, compact, mixed-use neighborhoods. In the ’00s, the issue became how distant housing was from transit and employment centers and rising greenhouse gas emissions. To combat these trends while also improving health, advocates began to push for urban infill and “transit-oriented development.”

Now, according to a recent Brookings Institution report, for the first time in nine decades, major cities had more population growth than their combined suburbs. This means that white flight is certainly over: in fact, the opposite trend is now at work.

Belzer said gentrification is certainly happening but not uniformly everywhere. She argued that the only way to prevent widespread negative impacts of gentrification is for “smart growth advocates and equity advocates” to join forces and become “community advocates.” These community advocates can then force infill growth. So what do these community advocates need to make happen? She said they must make “social investing central to any physical planning strategy.” Healthcare, daycare, and food banks are important. “Every $1 invested in childhood education can return 4-5 times in social value.” Another priority must be preserving and even adding to the stock of affordable housing, particularly in places where high income households are coming in. If done right, affordable housing can even boost property values. She added that communities need to diversify their sources of income. “You can’t just rely on hipsters coming in to finance urban amenities.”

Benfield complained about the gloomy picture painted by Dixon, saying that many low-income communities may not be rich, but are rich in culture, leadership, possibility. Restoring or revitalization these communities is really the smartest growth strategy. To prove this, NRDC has been working with the Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC) to help disinvested communities. Applying the LEED for Neighborhood Development (ND) rating system, which Benfield co-created, communities can think through the issues. LEED-ND is unlike LEED because it focuses on the broader context of development, not just inside the building. With its point system, LEED-ND incentivizes walkability, affordability, diversity, and density. “It’s about the green management of systems, the totality of the environmental performance.”

Codman Square, Boston, is an example of one of these rich low-income places. It’s an area that has faced disinvestment, but a new transit station has brought new possibilities. The area, Benfield said, is highly walkable, even pleasant, but “if you look closely, you see elements of decay.” There are brownfields, abandoned properties; other buildings aren’t in good shape. Working with local leaders and LISC, Benfield came in and helped them apply LEED-ND as a planning tool in a two-day charrette to “see the opportunities.” He made a point of applauding two local leaders — Larry, who runs a “net-zero” car body shop that we wants to put a green roof on, and Paul, who runs the Boston Project, a faith-based ministry that aims to restore older, disinvested neighborhoods. Part of his home is a community drop-in center.

Benfield found that the community would achieve a low-level certification as it is now. There were also a lot of “maybe” points that could be achieved. These were what intrigued Benfield the most. To get those points and also make some real gains, the community has decided to “redesign New England avenue corridor, making it much more dense and green; conduct deep energy retrofits; create a new eco-innovation district; and go for LEED-ND certification.” (see a fascinating set of posts by Benfield on Codman at NRDC’s site).

Dixon outlined some other positive examples of smart growth in depressed urban areas. He described how efforts are underway to tear down Claiborne, a freeway running through Treme, New Orleans, and replace with a boulevard. At the center of the effort is a plan to use the amazing local culture to fight gentrification and improve neighborhood cohesion. Local groups are using the deep-rooted culture of Treme to build “human capital” that can have economic benefits. In Minneapolis, Juxtaposition Arts is building social capital in an effort to rebuild the neighborhood.

Also, Baltimore is undertaking a project to avoid the harsh effects of gentrification and create more “equitable density.” There, the goal is to encourage people to stay as density rises. “Otherwise, something has got to give, and it’s usually the poor people.” Dixon said Baltimore will probably need three-times its existing density to “keep existing people.”

Image credit: Codman Square / Kaid Benfield, NRDC

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Temporary Can Still Be Valuable

Posted in Gardens, Public Spaces, Urban Design, Urban Revitalization on 04/16/2013 | Leave a Comment »

Richard Florida, the innovative thinker about cities, once said that economic development is about the hundreds and thousands of small things done at the local level. In a few examples of those small things that together have a big impact, Marisa Novara, Metropolitan Planning Council (MPC), brought out a set of fascinating temporary projects that show how to make vibrant, valuable places in the left-over spaces in between buildings, in all those vacant, abandoned lots that dot cities. At the American Planning Association (APA) conference in Chicago, winners of MPC’s “Placemaking Chicago” contest explained their approaches to DIY urbanism.

Novara learned that rehabilitating buildings “takes a long time. There are lots of professionals involved. Lots of financing is needed.” So, given all the hassle, there must be better options. Novara said that “just because there’s a vacant space, it doesn’t mean there has to be a building there.” She believes that those space in between buildings, particularly those with iffy property ownership situations, can be used as temporary public spaces. “Temporary can still be valuable.”

To find out how communities in the broader Chicagoland are using spaces in a temporary fashion, her group launched a contest. Submissions could be projects that just popped-up over a weekend, or could be semi-permanent. Some 46 entries were received, with the majority from Chicago. Navaro said the broad categories of projects sent in were vacant building transformations, “vacant concrete transformations,” programming, and community gardens / farms. A jury picked winning projects, while more than 11,000 public voters picked the people’s choice award.

One project turned a vacant Border’s store into a writers’ workshop and local gallery. Another turned vacant concrete into a parklet. Lots and lots of community gardens were created. Interestingly, Novara said some went “far beyond getting together to grow vegetables. There was a continuum of engagement.” A few examples were explored in detail, by the actual people who put together the gardens.

Avers Community Garden

Karen Trout said the Avers Community Garden (see video above), which received an honorable mention in the competition, has transformed an “impoverished neighborhood.” In a dead-end street filled with lots of “bad activities,” Trout and her group reclaimed the block with a new community space cherished by all its neighbors. The church-owned space had been vacant for more than 20 years. Exploring how to purchase the space, Trout found there was no one to be found so they “ventured out with the idea that if we turn the space into something productive, perhaps we can own it later.” This is because Chicago actually has a program that turns over vacant land to people who maintain it and use it productively. Her team found a fence on Craigslist, added flower beds, and a track for bikes for the neighborhood’s kids. Removing garbage, they also added mulch, a pavilion, and picnic tables. The space is now used for “parties, family get-togethers, and gardening.” A wall was painted with the text, “Something good grows in the ‘Hood.” Trout said the idea behind the sign, and really the garden overall, was to “reclaim the space with positive energy. This helps displace all the negative energy.”

An adorable local middle schooler, Deanna Shields, showed a photo of herself playing and said “this was me 6 years ago.” Last summer, she became one of the guidance counselors, helped in the garden, and took training classes. She took compost and planting workshops (8 hour classes). She made the point that “children don’t like to see vacant unproductive spaces either.”

Laura Michel, Lawndale Christian Health Center, another garden founder, said the community garden has gotten a lot of positive attention from other blocks in the neighborhood. “Everyone wants to know about it.” But, perhaps counter-intuitively, once the garden got into the press, including local TV, “bad activities,” including drug dealing and late-night trysts, started to happen in the garden. To fight criminals in the garden, the whole block came out and met there for an emergency meeting in “the dark and rain.” Some 30-40 people decided to take turns watching the space, day and night. A fence donated by Home Depot also helped secure the space. Slowly, over time the neighborhood reclaimed the space, once again.

Altgeld Sawyer Corner Farm

The Altgeld Sawyer Corner Farm in Logan Square won the popular vote, said Margaret Hartmann, the force of nature behind the project. She said the lot had been vacant for 30 years, but found that the owner was open to using the space for art and food (at least, until he moves to Florida, which he threatens to do every year). Hartmann said the organic food movement is great but “not everyone can afford to go to Whole Foods.” So to access to healthy foods, they decided to create a “corner” garden because they believe every community should have a corner garden like they have a corner store. Opening the garden also boosted the amount of public green space in a place with nearly the lowest per-capita green space in Chicago. Bringing in local activists and artists, Hartmann’s team created big sweeping forms — berms — along with raised planting beds to avoid the lead in the existing soils. They purposefully left it “open access,” without fences, so anyone in the neighborhood can gain entry.

The garden itself has evolved over time. Gardeners grow vegetables collectively, which are then turned over to the local food pantry. Herb gardens are available to all, because “Whole Foods charges a ridiculous prices for herbs.” There’s an educational program for kids, with treasure hunts to “find the sunflowers.” Their goal is to bridge “social, cultural, generational gaps.”

Brienne Callahan, a co-creator of Altgeld farm, said gang activity was a big problem in the neighborhood in the past, but the garden has helped end the problem, at least in their block. Citing the “broken windows” theory of crime prevention, which posits that “if something doesn’t look well cared for, people won’t care about it,” she said adding green space people do care about has made the community safer. “It’s open 24 hours a day and there are no drug dealers there.” Still, the neighborhood, which has one of the hottest real estate markets in the U.S., is gentrifying, so there are other issues: rents are rising and a growing share of the community faces daily food insecurity.

Since winning the popular vote, there’s been rapid growth in the number of volunteers, particularly among those 6-8 blocks from the garden, and the team is scaling up and starting other temporary gardens on other sites (some of which they hope will become permanent). In another garden they’ve set up, they are exploring a new model: gardeners get to grow vegetables in one plot for themselves if they also grow one for the food pantry.

Climb, Jump, Leap, Imagine

This amazing project won best in show from MPC. This is because this model really should be replicated in as many other places as possible. According to Stephanie Morris, a local high school student who was involved in putting it together, “we got to use power tools.” Smiling, she said, “we built a table.” Stephanie wasn’t alone in this work. A team of middle and high school girls were collected by Katherine Darnstadt, a Chicago architect and urban designer, and set loose on the community to gather feedback about what to do about an abandoned, derelict lot between some buildings in south side Chicago. Morris said “lots of people gave opinions. Hundreds of people gave input on slips of paper.”

Based on the community feedback, Darnstadt and the girls decided to create a playground called “Switzerland in Chicago,” a peaceful, “neutral” space where everyone can come. “It’s a place where people can relax.” In a community with a lot of drugs and violence, more neutral spaces are what’s needed. The girls used their “science and math skills” to create the playground design, with mountain peaks made of rope, and decks around the site. “Someone gave us $20 dollars so we decided to do a fundraiser.” The girls eventually brought in $250 for new benches. Morris said this was quite a feat since “people in this neighborhood have to hustle to make $2 a day.”

Once the neighborhood saw that the girls were out there designing and building something, word got around. Harold, a local out-of-work carpenter, provided advice, while the aptly named Big Ron “helped with the muscle work.” Roy helped “because he could.”

Darnstadt said the project helped change perceptions about what youth can do. “Teenage girls with power tools can do that.” Given the sight of girls asking for feedback on a vacant lot must have seemed so wild, the project stimulated a lot of community engagement and got many participating in the design process. Darnstadt laughed and said “wherever there are girls that age, there are boys.” The boys later brought it men to help. Given “there were all sorts of egos, with people aged 13 to 80 participating, everyone became a great psychologist.” The “soft sell” from the girls worked, with the labor done by the community. The result: a fantastic space built to withstand Chicago’s winters and that can be easily moved to a new abandoned lot.

Just to note: Darnstadt actually put her girls through an intensive two-week urban design “bootcamp,” with courses in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields, public health, and design-build. Each day, a different professional came in and explained their role in the design process, starting with a researcher and moving all the way through the process. Darnstadt also recommended using IDEO’s Human centered design toolkit to teach “empathy and how to capture authentic input.”

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In Quebec City, the Rivers Return to the People

Posted in Landscape Architecture, Urban Design, Urban Revitalization on 04/15/2013 | 1 Comment »

Cities around the world with any sort of waterfront or riverfront have been revitalizing these places, which are often saddled with polluted ports and factories, creating vibrant community spaces and recreational areas in the process. But cities vary in their ability to take advantage of their water. Some cities have flush budgets while others don’t. Some cities can tap great local planning and design talent while others must import this talent, which can be expensive. At a session at the American Planning Association (APA) conference in Chicago, Peter Murphy, Ville de Quebec, explained how Quebec City has been lucky enough to use some $250 million in federal, provincial, and local funds and tap an amazing set of local planners, landscape architects, and architects to transform its riverfront for its 400th anniversary.

Murphy said Quebec City was the only walled city north of Mexico. It’s the “cradle of French culture in North America.” But perhaps it’s most defining characteristic is its rivers, which have shaped its evolution. Quebec actually means “the place where the river narrows.” In its early history, the city came into being to transport lumber, which was moved from ports down its rivers. Quebec City provided much of the wood for Britain’s warships during the “Napoleonic blockade.” The lumber economy led to vast fortunes, with the estates of lumber barons coming in, all with river views.

Beginning around 1800, industrial development took off in Quebec City, with the riverfronts playing a critical role in this move towards the machine age. Over 200 years, development was mostly centered in the Quebec City limits, but beginning in the 21st century, the city began to sprawl out. “Development could no longer be accommodated by the riverfronts.” But by the mid-20th century, the riverfront had also become a place for recreation, at least in parts. Beaches were used for swimming, at least until the water pollution got so bad people could no longer go in.

In 2002, Quebec City was swallowed up by its surrounding areas, a “forced amalgamation process” that swelled its population from around 150,000 to more than 516,000. There was also a 6-fold increase in land area. So Quebec City decided to use this as an opportunity, creating a new “integrated planning process” and a new master plan, “Green, Blue, White,” to “rethink public space and parks and trails” in the expanded city. To get funding, projects had to have widespread public support and be found in diverse neighborhoods.

Murphy went through a slew of great projects, but highlighted here are just a few. Along Parc de la Plage Jacques Cartier, a 1.5 mile-long walkway, that was previously an access road, a new contemporary art wall was put in that commemorates the colonial presence, the early French settlers. A public walkway done by a local landscape architect uses both formal and informal spaces, featuring lighting, benches, and pavilions. There are framed views at different spots.

In another part of the riverfront, the Samuel de-Champlain promenade transformed a 4-lane highway into pedestrian and bicycle-friendly parkway. The highway along the riverfront had previously cut off access to the water, like so many other riverfront highways in other cities. The existing road was narrowed by nearly 30 feet, with lanes removed, and made windy, to slow it down, turning it into a parkway. Some 1,200 trees were added along with thousands of shrubs. Picnic areas and soccer fields were added. Murphy said “the redesign was an instant success and quickly appropriated by the public.”

For the St. Michael Church, which sits on top of one of the best vantage points to see all of Quebec City, the city identified the need to revamp the sight lines so that there’s a better view of the church and river views. The terrace was redesigned with great sensitivity. The city team and designers decided to improve bicycling access, bury utility lines in some streets leading to the church (to remove visual obstacles), and open up the “visual connections.” The project “restored the views,” while updating the site and making it more accessible.

Other projects: the new Beauport Bay recreation area, one of the most ambitious projects, also had a “rocky start” but but “finished nicely,” with a new landscape that takes advantage of the site’s great winds. People visit for kite-flying and wind surfing. The St. Charles River corridor, a new 30-kilometer-long linear park, offers a network of bridges and boardwalks. Concrete walls originally added along the riverfront were removed in favor of low-maintenance native plants. “The re-naturalization has led to new wildlife habitat.” Pointe-Aux-Gerves (Hare Point) changed from a highly polluted brownfield, with contaminated soils down 13 feet deep, to a new green neighborhood. The really costly remediation and redevelopment project was done with private sector partners.

While all the redevelopment work mentioned was viewed as successes, he said there were also failures. The Old Port Agora, which is right below old Quebec, was to get a new plaza. The existing metal benches needed repair. The plaza felt isolated, underused. While the planning process, led by a 20-30 member committee, had moved forward successfully with the other sites mentioned, here it ran into the “Save the Agora from Drowning,” a local social activist group, which objected to the urban design plans put forward. He said the “vast majority of the city supported the design proposals,” yet some 100,o00 emails came in against the plan. Murphy said designs had to change midstream. The result: a “cutting-edge site from a technical point of view,” with bold native plant landscape and separate bicycling and pedestrian access, but an underused space. Apparently, this isn’t due to the design though: the port authority hasn’t been able to find an operator for the new outdoor stage they created. Murphy said this has been a “planning failure. It’s a beautifully landscaped dead space.” (To note: Cirque Du Soleil is expected to move to the area for a set of free summer shows, potentially transforming the place into the lively space it was designed to be.)

The city now has a new riverfront along its 10-kilometer-long Eastern side, with more pieces coming in along the west. With all the places to go, the city is also focused on “programming” these spaces, particularly for seniors. As Murphy noted, Canada is the second fastest aging society on Earth, behind Japan. So “we need to not only add years to our life, but life to our years.”

Explore all of Quebec City’s revitalized parks and gardens.

Image credits: (1) Walled City / Vagabond Dish, (2) Parc de la Plage Jacques Cartier / Trip Advisor, (3) Samuel de-Champlain promenade / Trekearth, (4) Samuel de-Champlain promenade / ArchDaily, (5) Old Port Agora / Agora

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M. Paul Friedberg’s Journey of Ideas

Posted in Landscape Architecture, Public Spaces, Urban Design, Urban Revitalization on 04/04/2013 | Leave a Comment »

“I didn’t enter the landscape architecture profession in the normal way,” said M. Paul Friedberg, FASLA, one of the most innovative, even “radical,” landscape architects, at a lecture at the National Building Museum. “I bypassed the traditional education. I came to it as a layperson. I have seen landscape architecture as a journey of ideas.” An interesting statement for a designer who is known for his bold, designed forms. But it turns out Friedberg thinks these forms “have no intrinsic value in themselves, it’s just about what they make us feel.” He has always been interested in the social side of design — how people use his spaces. As he explained, “everyone has a bit of a spectator and actor in them.” The key is to make spaces where these daily plays can be performed.

“Every morning I get up and look at my blank computer screen. I have no notion where ideas come from. I can’t wait to see what will manifest itself. I don’t go in with any preconceived notions.” Friedberg treats his creative process with such respect because he believes that “ideas have power, they can create beauty and content, and they can affect our lives.” The process of coming up with new ideas about how people will use spaces is “an endless and enjoyable process.”

Friedberg studied ornamental horticulture at Cornell University (because his dad made him). Moving to NYC in the late 1950s for a “romantic attachment,” he had no idea what landscape architecture was but heard that was a way to get a job. “Being uneducated, uninitiated, un-introduced to any profession was a great opportunity.” This is because a “massive redefinition of urban America” was about to happen in the early ’60s. That era was the “perfect platform for change.” After World War II, people had “lots of money, mobility with the car, free time. People had choice.” Manufacturing was leaving cities, and urban cores were transforming into service centers. Young people were moving into the cities because “they couldn’t take the passivity of the countryside.”

Having “no predispositions,” Friedberg took his slim portfolio, which featured a tennis court, around with him to potential employers. “They must have thought I had dementia,” he laughed. He was eventually hired over the phone, sight unseen, by a landscape architecture firm in Hartford, Connecticut. The best work around then was with the New York city housing authority, but there were many rules about getting gigs so he eventually partnered with an architect to bid and win some early social housing projects. That work tee-ed him up for his Riis Plaza project, where he really made his name. The project, which made it on to the cover of Time magazine in the mid-60s, was financed by the Astors’ foundation. Brooke Astor wanted to break the mold on public housing projects by creating spaces for the community. Financing this city housing authority project, she told the city the designers had to have total free reign to experiment.

Friedberg said prior to Riis plaza, social housing developments were characterized by their fences. “People living there were treated like criminals. They had to stay within their boundaries.” He treated his plaza as a “self-education project.” Fences were taken down in favor of a series of human-scale areas where both old and young could hang out.

A new playground was created as a “whole environment,” not just “a set of swings.” He put benches near the playground so parents and caretakers could watch the kids playing, “creating an audience” for their antics. Play was transformed into an “interconnected series of events.”

Looking back on the Riis playground, Friedberg said it was “static,” given “the most enjoyable environments for kids are the ones they can shape,” but it was a crucial learning experience for the landscape architect who basically invented play environments and went on to found one of the first play set companies. “There, I discovered that linkages to play are key. Going to play spaces is as important as being there.” For example, an igloo form was accessible via tunnels underneath, which were special for kids because they were their “own domain.” (Unfortunately, that igloo was later closed because older teens were using it for “trysts.” Riis plaza was eventually demolished).

Following this project, Friedberg created the Central Park playground, another wondrous play environment, and, much later, a new play space on top of the Moscone Convention Center in San Francisco. He said the key lessons from that project was to “expand play beyond segregated areas” and to really incorporate play into all aspects of design. A hand rail is also a sound tube. Sundials are built into benches. Walls display the metric system. “There are tons of opportunities to teach through the environment.”

Friedberg is also know for his urban park plazas, hybrid spaces that are both park and plaza. One well-known example is Peavey Plaza in Minneapolis, which is still under threat — despite a recent lawsuit to prevent its destruction by Minneapolis city and the nearby symphony and the fact it just made it on to the National Register of Historic Places. “The city didn’t want a traditional European plaza,” so Friedberg created a “bowl, with the exterior lip of the bowl green space.” It’s both a park and plaza because the center pool of water was designed to be drainable. The space can then easily transform into a hard plaza space.

In a similar way, Pershing Park in Washington, D.C., has bold forms, stair-step patterns that lead down to a central pool, with surrounding trees, but that central pool also becomes an ice-rink in the winter. A fountain hides the “Zamboni’s inner sanctum.” There are also underground changing rooms accessible via a pavilion. While Friedberg admitted that the park isn’t in great shape these days, it’s one of the more memorable spaces in D.C. (and hopefully someone will form that “Friends of Pershing Park” group and get the restoration going).

Moving through other projects like Battery Park City Park, which was the first “urban plaza in New York City,” a fascinating canal project in Arizona, and a sculpture park and amphitheatre for the employees at Honeywell in Minneapolis, Friedberg came to his recent work at the Yards Park in Washington, D.C., which has gotten all-around great reviews. In fact, it kick-started a total transformation of a derelict area around D.C.’s Navy Yard. There, his firm “packed as many activities as we could” into four acres without “being chaotic.” The bridge that is one of the signature elements of the space is the result of a “collaboration with engineers.” Under the bridge, Friedberg symbolically brought the Anacostia River into the park, creating another vibrant watery play space in the process.

Brad McKee, editor of Landscape Architecture Magazine then ably drew Friedberg out with a set of questions about his life and career that show how many things have changed since the ’50s, but some issues remain. Asked why he started the landscape architecture program at City College in NYC and eventually ran it for 20 years, Friedberg said in the ’60s, the landscape architecture profession was “very white. There were a few Asians, no blacks.” At the time, ASLA wanted to boost diversity so they formed a committee focusing on the issue. Friedberg thought that the field lacked diversity because “there were no landscape architecture schools in major cities.” City College was basically a “free school” then, so he asked to start a program and got it through. Though he soon wondered, “Why would African Americans want to become landscape architects when they could become lawyers or doctors?” The program attracted some diverse students but mostly “second-degree women.” Friedberg ended up making it a dual-degree program. Now, landscape architecture is a profession that basically requires a “graduate degree,” so the issue perhaps remains the same. “Why would minorities do this — spend four years and then two years in a graduate degree program — only to make $30,000 when they graduate, when they could be a lawyer or doctor? We’re down there with social work. We’re at the bottom of the ladder.”

On all the controversy surrounding Peavey Plaza — whether it should stay or replaced with something new — Friedberg complained that “we don’t have a mechanism for determining the value of a landscape. We don’t have an intelligent mechanism.” The Cultural Landscape Foundation (TCLF), which has done an “amazing job,” is one of the few groups that step in and defend Modern landscapes from the wrecking ball. If not them, “we’ve left it up to functionaries to make decisions.” Friedberg argued that he wasn’t being self-serving and just focusing on his legacy — “that’s the farthest thing from my mind” — but believes that “elements of Peavey have value.” These elements “serve as reference points. They have educational value. Students can see and observe how people use them. They are markers for the future, for progress.” Peavey Plaza isn’t “the greatest thing that ever happened,” but “new isn’t always better. Let’s save what’s left.” McKee added that the National Register of Historic Places has a “dismally low number of landscapes,” so it’s a major win that Peavey made it. Efforts by Friedberg and Charles Birnbaum, FASLA, head of TCLF, to prevent the destruction of the site through a lawsuit and presenting options for updating the design, continue.

On the future? Friedberg is worried about “our increasingly conservative culture.” The landscape architecture profession is “paying homage to marketability, sellability.” Landscape architects are “losing some of the values of the ’60s.” In the same vein, Friedberg said his Yards Park, which was financed with a $20 million grant by the District of Columbia and created a key amenity that spurred hundreds of millions in residential and commercial development, wasn’t an example of this. There, “the developer had a willingness to experiment with the economics of the space and improve use instead of income.” Still, he believes that “landscape has no intrinsic economic value. Its social value accrues over time.”

Technology is also something he’s really interested in, despite the fact that he “can barely use a cell phone.” Social media is “reconfiguring our relationships. No one talks anymore. It’s all text messages.” How to design for social interaction in public spaces in an era when park-goers are all sitting there with their iPhones or iPads is “the next big challenge.” Friedberg, wisely, said, “it will take more than one generation” of technology-enabled designers to find a solution. This progressive, open-minded designer says he wants to leave that one for the next generation.

Image credits: (1) M. Paul Friedberg / M. Paul Friedberg and Partners, (2) Riis Plaza / The Cultural Landscape Foundation (TCLF), (3-4) Riis Plaza / James Trainor, (5) Peavey Plaza / M. Paul Friedberg Partners, (6) Peavey Plaza / TCLF, (7-8) Pershing Square Park / TCLF, (9-10) Yards Park / Carol Joynter

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Grown in Detroit

Posted in Active Design, Agriculture, Urban Design, Urban Revitalization on 03/28/2013 | 3 Comments »

On a modest site downtown, Lafayette Greens yields a good deal more than just food.

By Linda McIntyre

Detroit is having quite a moment in the media at a time of renewed interest in the trials and tribulations of cities, but it’s still kind of surprising to find a small, trapezoid-shaped edible garden thriving among the towers of its downtown. This is Lafayette Greens, designed by Kenneth Weikal Landscape Architecture, on a block that, until now, was best known for its homegrown fast food rivals American Coney Island and Lafayette Coney Island (“Coney Island” is Detroitspeak for chili dog). Now the Coneys are improbably sharing the neighborhood with vegetables, herbs, fruit, and flowers, all grown on a scant half-acre at a busy intersection across from the historic Book Cadillac Hotel (now part of the Westin chain) and the city’s federal office building and courthouse.

A little more than a decade ago, the notion of a neat, well-designed garden here at the paved epicenter of car culture—the General Motors headquarters is a few blocks away—would have seemed like a hallucination. The site’s previous occupant, the Lafayette Building, was a 14-story V-shaped Italian Renaissance tower built in 1923. It was demolished in late 2009, having been vacant since 1997. It had become one of the beautiful ruins for which Detroit has become ghoulishly famous, with broken windows, graffiti tags, squatting hipster artists, and weedy trees growing out of the roof.

But although abandoned buildings and vacant lots are still vexing issues in many parts of the city, this section of the downtown core has been transformed. The waterfront along the Detroit River is slowly developing into a series of linked green spaces and public plazas. Sports venues, even the home of the hard-luck Lions pro football team, draw hordes of loyal fans downtown. New cafés and pop-up retail spaces lure shoppers from suburban malls. Companies such as Compuware and Quicken Loans have opened big offices here and brought in employees from outside the city.

Compuware was one of the first companies to come back downtown, and one of its founders, Peter Karmanos Jr., has been a steady force in efforts to revitalize downtown Detroit. Karmanos, who stepped down as CEO in 2011 (he’s currently the company’s executive chairman), was one of the leaders of a group of businesspeople and philanthropists who raised $20 million to design, build, and maintain Campus Martius Park across the street from the company’s headquarters and just up Michigan Avenue from Lafayette Greens (see “Miracle on Woodward Avenue,” LAM, November 2006).

Lafayette Greens is a Compuware project too. Meg Heeres, the company’s art and community programs manager and the project director for the garden, says that Karmanos (who’s a Master Gardener) originally wanted to start an urban farm somewhere in the business district.

That’s not as weird as it might sound: Detroit is huge—almost 140 square miles—and by some estimates there are as many as 40 square miles of vacant land. There’s a long history of farming here, starting with French settlers’ early-18th-century “ribbon farms” along the Detroit River. Grassroots gardeners have started community gardens all over the low-density city, which has an abundance of single-family houses with yards. Detroit’s historic Eastern Market wholesale and retail food complex has a lot of local fruit and vegetable vendors. And in December, the city planning commission approved a new urban agriculture ordinance that updates the zoning code to allow land uses such as farms, tree farms, and orchards.

Compuware wanted the project done fast, but it also needed a design firm with the right kind of sensibility. “We knew this was not a straight-ahead landscape architecture project,” Heeres told me. “The designers had to understand the community here, how to engage a lot of different stakeholders and create a welcoming space for all, while meeting our demands for a strong aesthetic and innovation. My involvement as the client would be very, very hands on, and they had to be okay with that.”

Ken Weikal, ASLA, who started his firm in the Detroit suburbs in 1989, and Beth Hagenbuch, Associate ASLA, a partner in the firm and the project’s lead designer, were already involved in GrowTown, a nonprofit group formed to help improve derelict urban sites with easy and inexpensive design interventions and technology. They had recently worked on a community project in the north central part of the city.

The design quickly evolved from the simple kitchen garden concept that Heeres pitched to Weikal and Hagenbuch—raised planting beds divided by mulch paths—into a modern riff on the French potager. Corrugated steel clads the raised beds and plays off the concrete and high-rise buildings that surround the space, as well as the dramatic weathered brick wall of an adjacent building that serves as a backdrop to the greenery. The shiny metal and the reclaimed wood used to build a trio of wacky storage sheds were inexpensive and manufactured locally. They also give the space an industrial vibe that suits Motown quite well.

Compuware loved the design and wanted it built as soon as possible. But the city owns the site, and Mayor Dave Bing’s administration has been looking at creative ways to use vacant land, including larger-scale urban agriculture. A lot of consultation and negotiation by Heeres was required to hammer out the year-to-year lease agreement in a short time. The design was made final by January 2011, the city’s blessing was secured in time to start work in June, and most of the work was done by the end of July.

The prep work for the garden was not as hard as you might expect. Weikal says that after the Lafayette Building was demolished, the site was excavated about 15 feet down, and soil was hauled in to bring it up to grade. The team replaced the top few feet of that soil but didn’t have to deal with a huge contamination legacy.

The designers manipulated the site in subtle ways to give the garden a spatial charge. Two gravel paths radiate out from a paved terrace and gradually diverge from each other, widening for a forced perspective. This arrangement makes Shelby Street, to the west, look farther away than it is from the terrace. They integrated the site’s four-foot grade change into the design. It helps the hardscape drain into a swale edged with gabions and planted with redtwig dogwoods and other water-tolerant plants. It also varies the height of the raised beds for comfortable and accessible gardening. The tops of the planters all rise to the same flat level, but the bases follow the slope, resulting in a range of bed heights, from eight to 40 inches, and an intriguing sense of depth across the whole garden.

A small, circular children’s garden, 38 feet in diameter, sits at the southeast corner. It is edged with fruiting shrubs and sunflowers, and its planters are filled with colorful flowers, sweet-smelling herbs, fuzzy lamb’s ears, and spiky succulents. Made from recycled 55-gallon steel juice barrels, they repeat, in a smaller size, the children’s garden’s circular shape. These geometric shapes, and the strong lines of the rest of the garden, bring order to all of the lushly planted raised beds and help the small space hold its own in the tall and dense urban streetscape.

All of the planting in the 2,000 square feet of raised beds was done on one sweltering and labor-intensive day in July 2011, during which the landscape contractor, the WH Canon Landscape Company, executed what Weikal describes as a “military-style operation.” Plants were grown from seed off-site in the nearby town of Howell by Motave Meadows, a small organic grower, in 12-inch pots that could be slotted in to the raised beds without much root disturbance. “The challenge that day was to plant several thousand tender transplants into more than 30 beds according to a very detailed planting scheme,” says Hagenbuch. “Getting the plants into the right beds, the specified patterns, watered in, and drip irrigation in place and properly adjusted on a very hot day required dedicated teamwork.”

Apple and pear trees, and swaths of lawn, were installed separately. Weikal says the lawns, planted with fescue that doesn’t require a lot of irrigation, help the garden look good all winter and open up more space for programming. Along with gravel paths, they also contribute to the site’s mostly (70 percent) porous surface. As in most cities, stormwater management is a problem in Detroit: According to a 2012 report by the Alliance for the Great Lakes, in 2011 the city sent 7 billion gallons of stormwater and untreated sewage into the Detroit and Rouge Rivers. The city government is trying to use more green infrastructure, but its dire financial situation has slowed progress.

Since its official opening in late August 2011, Lafayette Greens has been a big success. In 2012, its first full growing season, the garden produced almost 1,800 pounds of fresh produce according to Gwen Meyer, who manages the garden for Compuware full-time. The food, which is grown organically, is donated to Gleaners, a local food bank, and other community groups (volunteers can take small amounts with them). Kids from Compuware’s in-house day-care center and other nearby programs come to learn and play. Volunteers from Compuware, the federal building, and other nearby offices show up regularly to pull weeds (the raised beds and overall tidiness make it easy for people in work clothes to do a bit of gardening at lunchtime) or hear talks on beekeeping, vermicomposting, and other garden topics.

And some people come just to hang out, which is fine with Meyer. “Our whole purpose is to be available for people to sit and relax, take a break,” she told me. “They can get involved if they want to.” The garden is open year-round, and so are volunteer hours, from 11:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. Tuesday through Thursday. In the winter, fewer volunteers show up, but the ones who do shovel snow, keep an eye on the covered hoop houses Meyer is trying as an experiment, and plan for the next growing season.

Some concessions to the reality of urban parks had to be made. Heeres says that Compuware would have preferred to leave the site open, but the city insisted on a fence. The garden is locked up at night and on most weekends, and a camera allows Compuware security staff to monitor the site, which is well lit at night.

Vegetable theft hasn’t been a big problem, Meyer says, but it happens. “We’d rather engage people than reprimand them,” she told me. “I might ask them to pick more so I can take it to Gleaners. Honestly, I’d rather train thieves to harvest properly so the plants continue to grow. It doesn’t occupy much of my time.”

Lafayette Greens doesn’t exist in a vacuum. Urban farming has become something of a class-based flash point here. The concept was mocked by some residents in the recent documentary Detropia, and the city council’s December approval of the sale of about 1,500 city-owned lots to a local businessman, John Hantz, who wants to start a tree farm, was controversial.

Compuware has been careful not to fan any flames. Heeres and Meyer stress that Lafayette Greens is by no means the first or only edible effort in the city. “The media attention is positive, but it doesn’t always fully represent how deeply spread out growing is here,” Meyer says. At the dedication in 2011, Heeres focused on the park aspect of the project. “It’s like Campus Martius with vegetables,” she told the Detroit Free Press.

Heeres says that the ecofriendly aspect of Lafayette Greens is nice, but it wasn’t what drove the project—it was about building relationships in the community. The project offers some timely lessons. Green spaces are part of Detroit Future City, a long-awaited strategic plan released by the Bing administration in January. The product of a two-year process led by local government, business, academic, and nonprofit leaders, the plan is a broad blueprint for improving the city’s economy and making better, more efficient use of its vast amount of land over the next 50 years. Among other things, it envisions more walkable, high-density neighborhoods with inviting parks and gardens. Kind of like what Compuware has done on a smaller scale.

Other companies, whose willingness to deeply engage has the potential to make or break the strategic plan, might be paying attention to the company’s success. Heeres says she’s had “probably a half-dozen calls” about the process. “None of those have come to fruition yet, but we would love for that to happen.”

The city, and the people who live and work there, will benefit if it does. “Lafayette Greens has created a real amenity in downtown Detroit,” John Gallagher, a business and development reporter for the Free Press, told me. “The design of the park is very much advanced over the usual community garden in a neighborhood setting. The organization of the garden, with Compuware volunteers tending the plants, maintains the quality level.” Few places need that kind of amenity as urgently as this one.

Linda McIntyre, a Detroit-area native, is a former staff writer and frequent contributor to LAM.

In honor of National Landscape Architecture Month (NLAM), the entire April issue of LAM is available for free.

Image credits: (1-2) Lafayette Greens / Beth Hagenbuch, Associate ASLA

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In Philadelphia, More Landscape Innovations

Posted in Landscape Architecture, Urban Design, Urban Revitalization on 03/20/2013 | 2 Comments »

Last year in Philadelphia, Amtrak started tearing things up as part of new work on the west plaza of their 30th street station, replacing the underground parking garage roof. The only problem was it was right next to a new public space called the Porch, which had been created by the University City District, a non-profit in Philadelphia. So the team with the district decided to create an innovative green wall to block the views of the construction, providing a new model for how to camouflage the unsightly. According to Nate Hommel, ASLA, capital projects manager with the district, an average of 1,000 people walk past the popular Porch each hour. See a brief video about it below:

Hommel tells us that his team worked with local industrial designer Mario Gentile, Shift_Design, to create a “modular system” that can be used by the Porch and other public spaces once the Amtrak project is completed. “Shift_Design came up with a modular planter wall that sits in front of the construction fence and is stabilized with ballast comprised of construction debris from the Amtrak West Plaza project.”

But hiding a construction site isn’t as easy as it looks. The Porch is “essentially a bridge” so they couldn’t exceed the weight of 300 pounds per square foot. The area is also a really windy thoroughfare, so it needed to withstand gusts of 40 miles per hour or more.

Once the stainless steel form was in place, Hommel worked with Shift_Design landscape architect, Kate Farquhar, to come up with a “plant palette that would develop into a lush vertical planting wall as quickly as possible.” Hommel tells us that “several species of sedum (Angelina, blue spruce, hispanicum, acre) Eastern Wood Fern and Liriope were used to give us some late winter color. Plants like helleboris, Clematis lonecera Magnifica and Carex morriwii will be giving us some spring and summer textural varieties. Additionally we will add plants as part of our late spring planting change-outs at The Porch.”

All twelve modules were installed in just a couple of days.

Philadelphia is also pushing it in terms of incorporating green stormwater management infrastructure into urban revitalization efforts. The city’s ambitious $2 billion, 25-year program aims to bring green roofs, streets, rain gardens, and enhanced tree pit systems to urban neighborhoods. As part of this effort, Infill Philadelphia: Soak It Up!, a national, interdisciplinary design competition organized by the Philadelphia Water Department, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (E.P.A.) and Community Design Collaborative just announced that teams led by Roofmeadow, OLIN, and Urban Engineers, Inc. won the $10,000 prizes. A total of 28 teams representing more than 100 firms participated.Explore the presentations by the winners.

Image credits: University City District

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For Students: Seoul Urban Design Competition

Posted in Landscape Architecture, Opportunities, Urban Design, Urban Revitalization on 03/14/2013 | Leave a Comment »

The Seoul government has launched an international design competition for students, “Toward Urban Integration.” The organizers seek a bold new vision for the Jemulpo-gil expressway, which would involve building underground tunnels for cars and creating new sustainable spaces on the surface. Then, Seoul seeks to re-integrate the adjacent blocks with the new public spaces, resulting in a “eco-friendly” regeneration of the entire area. This is kind of a “Big Dig” / Rose Kennedy Greenway project for Seoul, a city of more than 10 million and one of the world’s most dynamic metropolises.

According to the organizers, Jemulpo-gil is an expressway that runs in an east-west direction from Youido, an island on Han river, to Shinwol IC (interchange) on the western edge of the city. The 55-meter wide 10-lane dual carriageway stretches some 8.4 kilometers. The competition site is any piece of Jemulpo-gil and the adjacent blocks east or west of the first section of the expressway between Shinwol IC and Mok-dong bridge.

The organizers write that the city is actually contemplating a bold revamp of the competition site: “The expressway has deepened the separation between the north and south sides and further deteriorated the living condition of the area. The Seoul Metropolitan Government has considered the idea of converting the surface of Jemulpo-gil to public space.” The city wants to do this to “reduce the heavy traffic,” enhance city life, and re-weave the frayed urban fabric.

The new public spaces could be parks, recreational spaces, or public buildings. Ideal solutions would “reconcile the public spaces with the local transportation.” The proposal, which could be conceptual or more practically-minded, would need to provide truly sustainable solutions for all components.

Submissions can come from any student or team of students in the world (the team can have a maximum of 3 people). Register by April 26 and submit by July 5.

Another competition worth checking out is the One Prize, an international open competition for building resilient cities. “This year’s competition is set in the context of severe climate dynamism. How can cities adapt to the future challenges of extreme weather? The ONE Prize is a call to deploy sophisticated design to alleviate storm impact through various urban interventions such as: protective green spaces, barrier shorelines, alternative housing, waterproofing technology, and public space solutions.” The folks behind the prize directly ask landscape architects to submit proposals by August 31. First prize winners will take home $5,000. Check out the winners from last year.

Lastly, our friends at The Architect’s Newspaper have created City Terrain, a new newsletter on the innovations in landscape architecture and urban design. “Each week, City Terrain will compile our top stories in landscape architecture and urban design, coverage ranging from waterfronts and innovative streetscapes to water retention systems and green roofs. Game changing projects, green products, urban agriculture, ground-breaking parks–City Terrain will harvest our award winning coverage and serve it directly to our readers.” Sign up for the newsletter.

Image credits: Seoul Urban Design Competition

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Uniting the Built & Natural Environments

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Kim Mathews’ Cinderella Stories

Watch out High Line, Here Comes the Bloomingdale Trail

Green Infrastructure: A Landscape Approach

Making Sure Smart Also Means Equitable

Temporary Can Still Be Valuable

In Quebec City, the Rivers Return to the People

M. Paul Friedberg’s Journey of Ideas

Grown in Detroit

In Philadelphia, More Landscape Innovations

For Students: Seoul Urban Design Competition

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