It’s not often that a new work of landscape architecture makes it on to the front page of The New York Times, even if it isn’t described as such. In April, that paper ran a story about the successful conclusion to a major local dispute in the Bronx, which had flared up because of the closing of the many parks surrounding the old Yankee Stadium. When the city decided to build a new ballpark on top of the bones of two old public parks and close nearby parks during the construction process, Bronx residents were rightly irate that their parkland had disappeared. The city finally made amends with an ensemble of eight new or restored parks, designed and built at a cost of more than $190 million. The new 10.8-acre Heritage Field ballpark designed by Stantec and Thomas Balsley Associates, which is found across the street from the new stadium and on the site of the old, demolished stadium, cost $50 million alone, but it may be the best public ballpark ever if you are a Yankees fan.

The New York Times writes: “Nearly every inch, from the pavement stones underfoot to the three natural grass ball fields, has been elaborately designed to pay homage to the Yankees and their celebrated former home. Even the sod is the same that the Yankees, professional baseball’s biggest spender, chose for their new stadium.” That was intentional. According to Adrian Benepe, the city’s parks commissioner, “We felt an obligation to deliver superb parks to this community in particular because of the disruption they had to endure.” 

Thomas Balsley, FASLA, head of Thomas Balsley Associates, says the new public ballpark was built with ”extensive community input.” The idea was to commemorate the “history and heritage of the stadium in a vibrant space with broad appeal throughout the seasons.” Stantec’s Gary Sorge, FASLA, Practice Leader, Planning and Landscape Architecture, added: “This is sacred ground for the community and baseball fans all over the world.”

Other projects completed by the same team include Mill Pond Park along the Harlem River and Macombs Dam Park (site of the new Heritage Field), which fans out across from the new stadium. These parks bring back what was lost but also totally reconceive these spaces, making them more flexible and accomodating of multiple uses, as well as more sustainable. The cost of these projects were largely out of the hands of the designers — the numbers grew because of the clean-up challenges. According to The New York Times, the timeline was ultimately extended by a year to deal with the poor soils and left-over structures.

Thomas Balsley Associates clearly thinks the wait was worth it though. The Macombs Dam Park, an adaptive reuse of the old space, now offers ”active and passive recreation and fosters social connections and healthy lifestyles. The new park partners with Yankee stadium to bring activity and economic vibrancy to the neighborhood beyond the obvious game days.”  

Heritage Field, the community ball fields, which sits where the old Yankee Stadium once stood, now features lots of commemorative design elements that cost a bundle but tie the site to its illustrious sports history. The New York Times writes: “The city splurged for $1.2 million in commemorative touches to enhance Heritage Field, including $450,000 for a 12-ton chunk of the old Yankee Stadium frieze that has been preserved like the Berlin Wall in one corner. Another stadium relic — a 130-foot-high chimney shaped like a baseball bat — cost $120,000 to refurbish, though it no longer serves a purpose other than as a local landmark. Even the old diamond and outfield have been saved, delineated with five-foot-wide swaths of blue polymer fiber stitched into the sod by a Desso Grassmaster machine that had to be shipped over from the Netherlands.” 

In a non-scientific survey of local residents by the Times, many locals seemed thrilled with the new site. Oldanny Morillo, 18, who plays second base for the nearby Cardinal Hayes High School baseball team, said: “Usually when we run in the outfield, we have to watch for ditches and bird poop, and there’s none of that. Here it’s like a carpet.” 

Now, many want to play in the places where Babe Ruth and Mickey Mantle played so many years ago. Apparently, there’s been an explosion in applications from teams who want the “chance to swing a bat on the same site.”

Read the article.

Also, check out another landscape architect that made it into The New York Times. Melissa Potter Ix, ASLA, a principal of SiteWorks, a landscape architecture firm, is now teaching middle school students in Queens how to design the eco-playgrounds the Trust for Public Land is building in five NYC schools.

Image credits: Thomas Balsley Associates and Stantec

Terreform ONE, a think tank focused on ecological design led by innovator Mitchell Joachim, announced its call for entries for the third annual ONE Prize competition. This year’s competition, Blight to Might, seeks to “put design in the service of disenfranchised communities” by seeking out bold new design ideas that regenerate the underused post-industrial parts of our built environment and create jobs in the process. “This is a call for action to convert vacant buildings, abandoned factories and deindustrialized cities into the building blocks of creativity and entrepreneurship, and to empower the next generation of innovators to reinvigorate communities on both a local and global scale.”

The organizers write: “In the U.S., years of deindustrialization have accompanied increased incidences of unemployment and a decline in innovative capacity; 42,400 factories have closed since 2001, 425,000 industrial sites have been abandoned and 5,500,000 manufacturing jobs have been lost.” In their mind, repurposing all this aging industrial infrastructure left over by the mass exodus of manufacturing jobs could help pave the way for a new wave of “domestic job creation.”

U.S. and international landscape architects, architects, urban designers, planners, engineers, scientists, artists, students and individuals of all backgrounds are invited to submit concepts. Over the past two years, the competition has drawn 1,200 contestants from 25 countries. 

This year’s high-profile jury includes Julie Bargmann, ASLA, founder of D.I.R.T Studio; Robert Hammond, Co-Founder of the High Line; and William Moggridge, Director, Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum, among others.

The winner will get $5,000 and coverage by ONE Prize media sponsors. The winning designs will be presented in lectures and exhibititions, and featured on the awards Web site.

Register by June 30 (Registration costs $150).

In other news, for those in the D.C. area this weekend, be sure to check out The Cultural Landscape Foundation’s series of free tours:What’s Out There. This year’s D.C. What’s Out There offers a ”spotlight on Italian Design,” with tours of Tregaron; Hillwood Estate, Museum & Garden; the National Cathedral; Franciscan Monastery of the Holy Land, and others.

Image credit: Terraform ONE

At the same time, Blumenauer said design professionals may need to work on their language. Talking about “densifying neighborhoods” doesn’t really cut it with policymakers. “I don’t want to be densified.” Instead, designers should talk about “developing amenities” and “restoring communities to their historic population size.” Also, with aging baby boomers, it’s important to talk about the needs of the growing group of seniors. “Seniors want to be able to walk down nice streetscapes” (really, so does everyone).

While localities must forge their own visions for more livable communities, the federal government also has some impact, largely through funds for local bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure made available through the transportation bills. While the Senate recently passed a transportation bill with some 74 votes, “the House still doesn’t have a bill.” A comprehensive transportation bill that provided more “funding certainty” for bicycle and pedestrian projects would be a great way to create “thousands of jobs.” Blumenauer added that “landscape architects, architects, engineers, and planners collectively represent millions of people, and thousands of small and medium businesses, all people with visions for how communities can be better.”

Blumenauer thinks the design professions should also push the federal government to be greener. If the federal government actually became a model for what it wanted to accomplish, think of the possible positive impact. As an example, green infrastructure systems can save the government lots of money. Just basic things like taking out lawns that need to be mowed in favor of native wildflower gardens cuts down expenses.

He also called for a bolder program of retrofits. The many post offices going into retirement could be transformed into exciting new public spaces. Cutting the military budget by 20 percent over 10 years and directing some of that funds to cleaning up some 4,000 military Superfund and brownfield sites could really help revitalize many communities. All those cleaned-up sites and new open spaces could help increase local property values (and taxes). “Think about all the opportunities that would create for landscape architects, too.”

Blumenauer really wants to expand farmer’s markets across the U.S., arguing that adding 1,000 over the next few years would have a “transformative effect” in our communities, changing interactions at the street level. The Congressman took aim at the Farm Bill, which he said fails to incentivize local food production, simply providing more subsidies for big agriculture.

Speaking to the crowd of ASLA leaders, Blumenauer said that “people like you, like what you do. It’s not ideological or partisan. The U.S. needs to be more sustainable and you are at the center of it all.” Furthermore, landscape architects can help push ”bike-partisanship.”

In a separate speech, Congressman Russ Carnahan, Democratic Representative from Missouri’s 3rd District, who is chair of the High Performance Building Caucus, said “green infrastructure starts from the ground-up, actually under ground.” Focusing on rural areas, he said the green infrastructure legislation ASLA has been promoting on Capitol Hill could “help alleviate water pollution in rural communities.” Understanding that water is a precious, finite resource, Carnahan said “water we use comes back to us again and again.” More green spaces are also “vital to the well-being of our citizens.”

Echoing Blumenauer, Carnahan said “the government is divided and dysfunctional now,” but there are “necessary things like transportation that must come together.” Infrastructure, though, perhaps can become more bottom-up, coming from the communities themselves. Telling the ASLA representatives, he said “think about what you can do in your community.”

Join ASLA’s campaign and tell your Congressional representative and Senator about green infrastructure.

Image credit: Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse by Durer / Simon Fraser University

Historically, the Pearl River Delta has been a “very rich agricultural landscape,” enabling up to three crop harvests per year. There has also been a diversity of crops, with the area being a major zone for producing rice, fruit (some tropical), sweet potatoes, peanuts, and safflower oils. Until 1985, the Delta was made up of small agricultural villages defined by a unique social structure. Often entire villages shared the same surname, demonstrating their same lineage. Villagers left these compact settlements by boat for market towns. Given Cantonese food is all about the freshest ingredients, markets were busy trading produce constantly. Now, the cities of the urbanizing Guangzhou have engulfed the villages of the Delta, and there are reasons for this based in the political economy of China. 

When the Communists took over in China in the late 1940s, the “social order was inverted.” Landlords became “bad elements,” while the poor, landless underclasses rose to the top. Land was redistributed via People’s Communes. Later, the Communes, which proved to be too unwieldly due to their size, were then broken apart, becoming smaller “production bridages” about the size of the old villages. By 1985, the central government has de-collectivized the land, and 90 percent of all agricultural land became marketized.

With the marketization of land (which is still all owned by the state and only leased out), the municipal governments in Guangzhou (and really everywhere else in China) saw buying cheap farm land and selling it as development land as a key way to raise funds. Given localities receive so little from the provincial and central governments in China, this system quickly became a way to raise city revenue. The effect: explosive development everywhere. Crawford said municipal leaders also all need a “mega-project in order to get promoted,” which only further contributed to the push to grow bigger and faster. 

At the same time, the old “Hukou” residency permit system, which had been established in the 1950s and gave each citizen a pass card that provided them with rights to education, healthcare, and other services in the community where they have received a permit alone, was having an impact on development patterns. The Hukou system, which created a two-class system with people having either rural or urban Hukous, created opportunities for some in Guangzhou and not others. ”The system is still in existence,” said Crawford. 

Basically, the marketization of land opened up lots of opportunities for those lucky few who had urban Hukous. They had “negotiated positions” that enabled them to re-categorize their agricultural land as development land. At the same time, since the economic opening in the late 70s, Guangzhou has been growing 60 percent annually, with much of the influx coming from more poorer provinces. In this new Guangzhou, there were now many different categories of people mixing — those native residents with urban hukous, people with residency permits from other poorer cities, and migrants with rural residency permits. Migrants have very limited access to schools or healthcare in their new homes. They often open stores that cater to other migrants. Interestingly, in many of the old Guangzhou villages, the residents have all made land deals and have left, leaving only migrants.

Examining Panyu, one part of Guangzhou, Crawford and her students found an incredible mix of new types of development reflecting all these development deals and changing demographics: high-rises, restaurants with live seafood, California-style villa subdivisions, and gaming industry buildings. Leftover parcels of agricultural land dot the new urban landscape. In a “messy” process of redevelopment, these parcels are often simply left vacant or rented by incoming migrants to “farm so they can augment their own diets.” They found that if Panyu’s communities actually put these leftover urban farms to productive use, some 220 families could be fed annually. Given the incredible water pollution, there may still be food safety issues in using what could be contaminated semi-urban plots to grow food.

The Chinese government is increasingly focused on “complete food security” for all its citizens. The general public is now more interested in organic, safe food products. But Crawford thinks that industrial farming will entirely take over agriculture in the area, leading to even more water pollution.

While “urban agriculture has to be rebranded in a cultural context” given it’s viewed as “something you stop doing as soon as you can,” some agriculture and design universities are starting to see the opportunities. New values brought in from Chinese who have studied overseas means the cultural understanding of urban farming may be slowly changing.

Crawford also thought these dense environments with their incredibly high land values would be the perfect locations for vertical farms.

This is the third in a series of posts about Food & The City, a symposium at Dumbarton Oaks.

Image credit: Urban development at the edge of Guangzhou / Pop colcha

The sushi best known in the U.S. is actually Nigirizushi or “grasped sushi,” given it’s often cupped by the sushi chef and crafted into bite-sized pieces. Invented in Tokyo in the beginning of the 19th century, Nigirizushi came out of the “broad, ancient category of sushi foods,” which describe any with salted, vinegared, slightly fermented rice. Sushi, in fact, just means “pickled rice” and really describes a cooking process.

Before Tokyo was called Tokyo, it was Edo, the capital of the Tokugawa Shogunate, a feudal militaristic regime ruled by Shoguns with their armies of Samurai warriors. Edo was a military encampment that grew rapidly into a city of about a million by 1700. At the time, said Sand, it was probably the biggest city in the world (and today it’s still very near the top). Samurai, who could be rich or poor, made up about half of the city’s population and consumed a lot, driving the growth of agriculture and demand for fresh fish. Given the city was basically a military base, women and children were left at home in the countryside so there were lots of single men. Prostitutes appeared for the soldiers, and sushi as the West knows it came into being.

Fresh fish used to be cut for the ruling classes in special rituals where nothing but the blades touched fish flesh (always white flesh). Carefully arranged, the dishes were incredibly fresh, elegant constructions. With the need for “fast food,” usually eaten on the run by Samurai and their short-term mates out on the town, new variations of sushi came into being. To fit the need, “restauranteurs first made street food fancy and then they made it fast,” said Sand. By the 1820s, these early innovators stopped the pickling process and Nigirizushi (or sushi as we know it in the West) became a “hit” among the Samurai and commoners alike. What made sushi interesting, and perhaps transgressive, was that it combined elite foods of the Samurai and street foods of the common classes, creating a new form. On the same plate, the white-fleshed fish that the ruling class preferred was mixed with “vulgar” common fishes like tuna, anything red in color. Another thing that made the food common: it could be eaten with your fingers.

Tokyo Bay itself had always been central to sushi. Fishermen, in contrast to farmers, were seen as “buckaneers,” adventurers. Watching the fire-lit boats trawling at night became a major tourist attraction. ”The waterscape of the bay also captured the imagination of artists” like Hiroshige (see image above). But beyond being beautiful, this waterscape was highly productive. Agricultural runoff into the bay actually attracted more fish, making it easier for the fishermen. In addition, human waste was almost always recycled into urban farms so little of it polluted these key waterways. “The bay was a cultivated landscape,” said Sand. Then, with the application of paper manufacturing processes to making Nori, the seaweed wrap we all know was invented. Tokyo Bay itself became home to a flotilla of Nori farms, with the farms at their highpoint taking up more of the bay than reclaimed land would years later.

To facilitate the trade in fresh fish, Tokyo’s main fish market was established, interestingly at the exact center point of Japan. Fish merchants became increasingly wealthy, with their wives dressed in the latest fashions. Until 1939, street stalls served sushi, then the regime shut them down due to health concerns. 

By the 1840s, tuna had become so popular that Japanese fishermen had to leave Tokyo Bay and head to the South Sea to find more. Then, in the 20th century, Japanese fisherman entered the Pacific Ocean, freezing fish in hulls to bring back to the mainland. By the early 1980s, prize tuna caught around the world were being FedEx-ed back to Japan at a cost of up to $100,000 a fish. Today, because of the ever-increasing demand for sushi, many of the world’s natural fisheries, even in the Atlantic, are under incredible stress. Sadly, the Western Atlantic Bluefin tuna, one of the grandest fishes, is down to about 25,000 in the wild, estimates one international group. Perhaps sushi needs to become less common again.

This is the second in a series of posts about Food & The City, a symposium at Dumbarton Oaks. Read the third A City Among the Villages.

Image credit: Fishing Boats at Tsukuda Island  by Ichiyusai Hiroshige II (1826-1869) / Richard Ukiyo-e

Here are snippets of presentations that covered aspects of urban agricultural history in Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and the U.S.:

David Haney, Kent University School of Architecture, said London in the 1880s was the first “global, industrial city,” in part defined by its massive slums. Public parks were an early “instrument of social reform,” an effort to bring green space to the poor masses but urban agriculture soon became another tool for improving the conditions of the urban masses. As the Salvation Army got its start, one of its first programs were “farm colonies” designed to help urbanites “take care of themselves.” In fact, urban agriculture was viewed as a way for “everyone to become self-sufficient.” Haney explained the early role of anarchist thinkers like Russian Prince Peter Kropotkin, who had been imprisoned for pushing for social reforms in Tsarist Russia and eventually became an influential social reformer in the UK, informing the ideas of Ebenezer Howard, who created the “Garden City” concept. Haney explained how early London urban agriculture communities rooted in anarchist beliefs went on to influence the growth of utopian urban farming communities in Germany. One called Eden, an early vegetarian community, is actually still a “well-known brand” in Germany.

Haney thought that the idea of self-sufficiency and urban agriculture has come full-circle again, gaining traction through today’s “eco-villages.” These “intentional, small” communities may have a lineage based in ”anarchist” beliefs, but are now more widespread. However, Haney doubted whether these are actually “models for urban growth,” given they aren’t planned to be part of broader urban developments.

In Israel, the early Zionist settlers in the 1920s saw small urban farms as critical to the development of a new Israeli society. By 1942, there were more than 4,600 urban farms, most of which were between 1,000 and 1,999 square meters, said professor Tal Alon-Mozes, a professor at Technion, the Israeli Institute of Technology. She described how many of these communities were comprised of women’s settlers associations that were key to “women’s empowerment.” Out farming in virgin territory, the women experienced “a sense of self-fulfillment, personal regeneration, and new hope.”

Early on, then, urban farms were ideological and connected with the goals of the Zionist movement. In the first master plan of Israel in 1951, urban farms had a “protected” place. However, Alon-Mozes said, eventually the Kibbutzim, rural farms separate from urban areas, dominated, becoming more prosperous and closely associated with Zionism. “They overshadowed small urban farms.” Kibuttzim were essentially the winners, and “history is written by the winners.”

Jumping time and space, professor David Rifkind, a professor at Florida International University, zoomed in on Italy’s fascist government in the 1930′s and the role of reclamation and urban agriculture projects in their African colonies, particularly Ethiopia. The government of Mussolini was interested in the “neat organization of landscape, its segregation into districts,” which also mirrored its efforts to create a system of “hierarchy and control” between Italians and the native Ethiopians and other nationalities. Urban plans in Italy’s colonies included “symbolically-rich spatial organizations” that reinforced the idea that Italians were at the top of the heap. Ordered landscapes moved parade routes from ancient Ethiopian sites to modern Italian ones. There were separate markets for Italians and Ethiopians, with linear parks serving as barriers. The Italians saw reclaiming Ethiopian swamps — unusable yet fertile soils — as central to their effort of taming and controlling alien lands. “Tilling soils” was also viewed as an activity of the empire.

Back in Italy, consuming a range of agriculture products from the colonies was viewed as a patriotic act. Rifkind showed funny images of children eating bananas from Ethiopia, being told that they were supporting the homeland through their daily breakfast. “By eating grains, fruits, oils, salts from the colonies, Italians were participating in the empire.” The Italians pushed food production in the colonies to boost self-sufficiency among the colonies as well though. With the onset of world war, Ethiopia needed to be able to stand on its own and not drain Italy of resources. Overall, urban agriculture was seen as a way to “cultivate the territories, control the local population, earn foreign capital through exports, and resettle and reform unemployed Italians sent over from the home country.” Still, Ethiopia never ended up serving the role Egypt did for ancient Rome, becoming the breadbasket for the empire. It just wasn’t a great place to grow many types of grains.

Back to Europe: In France, in a little known episode, great Modern architect Le Corbusier attempted to bring rational, scientific approaches to the typical French farm. Professor Mary Mcleod, Columbia University, said in contrast to the common understanding of Le Corbusier, he was for “increased density.” Upon visiting New York City, he was quoted as saying the “skyscrapers are much too small.” In the 1930s and 1940s, agricultural reform also became an interest of his. Some of his early urban concepts offered individual garden plots, with a professional gardener responsible for plowing and fertilizing 100 plots each. In contrast to the romantic visions of farming in Israel and the totalitarian ones among the fascists in Ethiopia, Le Corbusier wasn’t deluded, calling “the whole thing ridiculous and too much work.” He thought the last thing an urban worker would want to do coming home from work would be to engage in back-breaking gardening work to yield a few tomatoes. “Growing food is a job, not pleasure.”

In an effort to bring his rational, scientific approach to the countryside, he started corresponding with a local French farmer who also wanted to make farming Modern. Translating his Radiant City concept to the countryside, Corbu came up with the little-known and ultimately untested Radiant Farm model, which offered distinct zones with small pastures, woodlands, fields, and detailed community plans. No one would finance the project. McLeod seemed to say Le Corbusier’s “futile utopianism” was just another variant of ideological forms of agriculture that never really took off.  

In the Netherlands, the rational, scientific approach actually worked though. Zef Hemel, University of Amsterdam, described how the 20th century “polders,” low-lying, man-made tracts of land formed with protective barriers or dykes, were created to create urban agriculture opportunities in expanded cities. Polders can be land reclaimed from water, land purposely-flooded and then reclaimed, or drained marshes.  Hemel said the Dutch “love planning and don’t need to have any ideology to do it. We are just very practical.” In the Netherlands, the demand for polders came from an expanding Amsterdam, seeking out more agricultural lands around the city. Then, before World War I, the country started a campaign of “food self-sufficiency,” which led to the development a 30-km long dyke that yielded a 180,000 hectare plot for agriculture. A second polder created just before World War II was almost stymied by the Nazis but the Dutch managed to complete their work, creating a “livable, beautiful place with 40,000 acres of new nature.”

Today, Holland’s polders, which are productive farm landscapes, communities, and woods, are threatened by climate change given they are about 10 feet below sea level. Some Dutch policymakers are already worried about increased salinization as rising seal levels pour saltwater into protected freshwater bodies. Others are thinking about whether floating barge farms will be feasible. The Dutch are worried.

For professor Laura Lawson, ASLA, Rutgers University, people garden for “food and a whole lot of other reasons” in the U.S. Community is an important element, or as Lawson laughed, “drinking goes hand and hand with community gardening.” In the early 20th century, there were “vacant lot cultivation associations” designed to put unemployed workers to work. Hundreds of families were given plots as a loan, with the goal of making them self-supporting. By 1934, some 36 percent of relief food was grown in these gardens. With World War I and II, the U.S. saw the rise of war or victory gardens. In 1918, there were more than 5 million war gardens and by 1943, there were 20 million victory gardens. As an example, in Chicago, there were 2,200 acres of land donated to cultivate produce. For WW II, there were 33,000 gardens covering nearly 1,800 acres.

Today, Lawson said many cities are now revising local codes to allow for urban agriculture. Land trusts sometimes purchase land, enabling communities to commit to growing things. However, even in food deserts, not everyone wants to become an urban farmer: One Detroit focus group said “not everyone has the intent or capacity to participate.” At the local level, community organizations often take the lead, given most urban farms are non-profit. Lawson argued that in these local instances, there is often a divide between the landscape architects (experts) and community organizations (grassroots). Landscape architects have been ambivalent about urban farms in the past. During WW II, many were concerned about these pop-up gardens ruining their landscape designs.

In a later conversation, questions were raised about the role landscape architects should actually play in urban agriculture. One attendee implied that a systems-scale approach may be the most appropriate perspective for landscape architects. Lawson said that may end up being the right role, but “many landscape architects don’t teach gardening and perhaps need to or they will become unrealistic about what it entails.” Still, urban agriculture is expected to present “aesthetic” challenges for landscape architects. Can these designers make the spaces for the messy growing process and the equipment of a working farm seem more functional, beautiful, and integrated into communities? Lawson thinks that more landscape architects need to go to community groups to “learn their issues.”

This is the first in a series of posts about Food & The City, a symposium at Dumbarton Oaks. Read the second post, How Tokyo Invented Sushi.

Image credit: WWII Victory Garden, San Francisco / San Francisco Chronicle

In a presentation, ASLA CEO / Executive VP Nancy Somerville, Hon. ASLA, will be covering the economic and environmental benefits of green roofs and green infrastructure. Somerville will explain how green infrastructure is a less expensive solution for controlling stormwater runoff, conserves water and improves water quality, reduces the urban heat island effect, lowers building energy use, improves air quality, stores carbon, and creates biohabitat.

The event is part of an annual set of discussions and tours organized by the High-Performance Buildings Caucus Coalition, a private sector group that works with the High-Performance Buildings Caucus of the U.S. Congress to showcase best practices in building and site design. The Congressional Caucus is focused on increasing awareness among policymakers about the “major impact buildings have on our health, safety and welfare and the opportunities to design, construct and operate high-performance buildings.”

When: Monday, May 14, 2012, 6:00 pm – 8:00 pm

Where: ASLA Headquarters’ Rooftop, 636 Eye Street, NW, Washington, D.C. 20001

RSVP at governmentaffairs@asla.org by Friday, May 11th.

For questions or more information, please contact Roxanne Blackwell, Director, Federal Goverment Affairs, ASLA, at rblackwell@asla.org or 202-216-2334

This is a widely-attended event so attendance is permissible under both the U.S. House of Representatives and U.S. Senate rules.

Image credit: ASLA Green Roof / ASLA

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

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

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

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

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

Read the book.

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

Image credit: Wiley & Sons

A number of winners have already done beautiful work in D.C. OLIN redesigned the Washington Monument grounds, a project defined by its subtle and elegant approach to security, and the National Gallery of Art Sculpture Garden, one of D.C.’s most beloved spaces. Gustafson Guthrie Nichol, which won the National Design Award for landscape design last year, recently broke ground on the new landscape design for the National Museum of African American History and Culture, expected to open on the Mall in 2015. They also created one of the most unique public spaces in the city: the Kogod Courtyard at the National Portrait Gallery.

Former First Lady Laura Bush, Honor Chair of the Campaign for the National Mall (and lead fundraiser for the new landscapes and buildings, which are expected to cost hundreds of millions), said: “The design competition produced beautiful, thoughtful solutions to improve this iconic space.” Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar, Hon. ASLA, added: “The National Mall Design Competition concepts are grand, respectful, sustainable, and beautiful; in short, they are worthy to be a part of this important and iconic space.” Caroline Cunningham, President of the Trust for the National Mall, sees these projects as not only best practices in urban park design but also “models of sustainability.”

Indeed, the mall needs some models of sustainability. It has taken a long time for sustainable landscape design to come to the nation’s capital, but the National Park Service, which runs these sites, now seems committed to using Sustainable Sites Initiative (SITES) best practices to revitalize the landscapes in the federal zone. In fact, right now, much of the National Mall is being dug up and restructured with highly sustainable soils, grasses, and water management systems that will not only better cope with the 25 million visitors and thousands of events that occur there each year, but also provide the foundation for a more ecological system. We hope the three winning design teams will also use SITES best practices in these high-profile projects.

The next step: raise the money. Half of the $700 million will need to come from the private sector. For this big job, the Trust for the National Mall will continue to host fundraisers, which all philanthropists interested in the built environment and the shape of the capital should attend. The Trust will then starting working with the designers and the National Park Service to implement the designs for Constitution Gardens and the Sylvan Theatre at the Washington Monument Grounds. We can only assume that the Architect of the Capitol is also moving forward with the Union Square redesign as there have been no public announcements taking that piece out of contention.  

Explore the winning designs by OLIN + Weiss/Manfredi, Gustafson Guthrie Nichol + David Brody Bond, and Rogers Marvel Architects + PWP Landscape Architecture

Other news for landscape architects: Boston-based Stoss Landscape Urbanism, led by Chris Reed, ASLA, won the National Design Award in landscape design this year. The Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum said: “Stoss has distinguished itself for a hybridized approach rooted in infrastructure, functionality, and ecology.” Stoss’ projects include the CityDeck in Green Bay, WI; Erie Street Plaza in Milwaukee, WI; The Plaza at Harvard University in Cambridge, MA; and Bass River Park on Cape Cod. Also worth noting: Janine Benyus, author of Biomimicry: Innovation Inspired by Nature, and co-founder of the Biomimicry Guild, won the “design mind” award.  

Image credits: (1) OLIN + Weiss / Manfredi, (2) Gustafson Guthrie Nichol + Davis Brody Bond, (3) Rogers Marvel Architects + Peter Walker and Partners

Carrot City: Creating Places for Urban Agriculture

The book presents nearly fifty case studies that examine food production, processing, distribution, and marketing. These proposals, some visionary and others built or underway, explore how food production works — from the small components for growing, like raised beds and greenhouses, to city-scale systems of urban agriculture. The book came out of a symposium held at Ryerson University in Toronto, Canada, in May 2008 that was followed by a traveling exhibition begun in Toronto in early 2009. The three authors of the book are all on the design school faculty at Ryerson, each interested in food systems and the impact of urban agriculture on building design and the built environment.

Many of the case studies presented are based in Canada and the U.S., as well as a few in the Netherlands, the U.K., and Argentina. They demonstrate the success of a growing movement of smaller, community-based initiatives generating productive food spaces throughout cities such as Toronto and New York where local governments are increasing support for these efforts.

Concern over how to feed a growing urban population in cities where many neighborhoods are becoming food deserts has put urban agriculture on the political agenda. There is also increasing recognition that dependence on agribusiness and commercial food systems has caused extensive damage to the environment while producing food with low nutritional quality that requires high energy consumption to transport long distances. Urban agriculture is consequently now part of the larger conversation about climate change, pollution, food, energy security, and health issues such as obesity. 

A majority of the case studies show how urban agriculture can help alleviate environmental impact and provide food security while bolstering communities with venues for social interaction and education. Small city farms, community gardens, and edible schoolyards and campuses provide healthy food for residents as well as opportunities for them to interact in meaningful ways. These gardens can “activate” a variety of urban spaces, making productive use of otherwise abandoned lots, former industrial sites, and empty rooftops. They can even be mobile, as the Science Barge in Yonkers, NY, demonstrates. The 400-square-foot barge on the Hudson River relies entirely on renewable energy for food production. Solar panels, wind turbines, and biofuels generate the energy needed to power the barge. Food is produced without chemicals in hydroponic systems and greenhouses irrigated with collected rainwater and purified river water, reducing land and water use.

Other case studies demonstrate that outlying areas in suburban and peri-urban neighborhoods can also provide spaces for food production. Advocates for rethinking the residential landscape, like Los Angeles-based designer Fritz Haeg, want to increase awareness about the viability of producing food in residential spaces. Over the past several years through his Edible Estates project, Haeg has developed regional prototypes for productive gardens and installing them on suburban lawns in U.S. cites like Baltimore, Austin, and Kansas City, as well as in London, Rome, and Istanbul. The gardens are living examples of how suburban lawns can be transformed into attractive and productive spaces that improve the residents’ quality of life and help combat issues related to commercial food production.

As innovative and inspiring as these small-scale case studies are, the book’s larger message is that there is potential to fold these smaller initiatives into a broader design agenda focused on developing higher density, multi-functional, and well-integrated communities that address food security issues as well as broader issues of sustainability. Evidence has shown that spaces for food production can eventually be connected to form larger networks of integrated systems. With a coordinated strategy rooted in analyses of the urban patterns that influence how and where urban residents produce, acquire, and consume food, designers can work with communities and city governments to establish new networks. Based on closed-loop, zero waste, and energy-efficient systems that support food production, designers can connect communities across the urban fabric, using otherwise vacant spaces in meaningful ways to combat social and environmental problems.

These Continuous Productive Urban Landscapes (CPULs) take advantage of waste spaces: gaps in the urban fabric that isolate communities, such as abandoned, underused, or overlooked land parcels like riverbanks, rail corridors, former industrial zones, and even residential plots sitting idle. Consider, for example, Ravine City, a city-scale proposal to use Toronto’s natural ravine system to connect the sprawling city to the natural infrastructure of its continuous watersheds. By daylighting certain ravines and connecting them to existing ravines, a series of green corridors could run through the heart of the city supporting a system of collective housing and productive gardens. An infrastructure of energy, water, and waste systems would support this structure. All of the buildings would have overlapping functions, generating solar power and wind energy, producing food on roofs and terraces, treating wastewater, and collecting stormwater. They would also provide recreational space. Additional food production and recreational activity would occur on open land.

Ravine City and similar proposals may sound idyllic to the point of seeming impossible to actually achieve, but the authors of Carrot City have reason to believe that the climate is right for making such dreams a reality. Pressing environmental concerns will continue to push cities to adopt more sustainable patterns of living to address issues like food security. The case studies demonstrate that urban agriculture can be used to establish such patterns, and that there is already considerable energy behind efforts to do so.

For the authors, the challenge now is to continue spreading the message to the broader public by generating inspirational ideas for how to use urban agriculture more effectively: “the challenge for designers today is to develop exciting and innovative proposals for a future Productive City that will capture the imagination of the public. Designers are uniquely positioned to make a difference in how urban agriculture is perceived in this regard, and this book features designs that are visually striking and artistically engaging by way of example.”

Read the book.

This guest post is by Shannon Leahy, Masters of Landscape Architecture candidate, University of Pennsylvania.

Image credit: Monacelli Press