President Jimmy Carter speaking in front of solar panels placed on the West Wing roof of the White House, announcing his solar energy policy / WKL, Library of Congress.
At 200, Frederick Law Olmsted Continues to Shape Public Space – 06/11/2022, Boston Globe
“It’s impossible to imagine Boston without its Emerald Necklace, designed by the man considered the father of landscape architecture on principles the city struggles to live up to today.”
Nelson Byrd Woltz Tapped to Lead Planning Process for South Carolina’s Angel Oak Preserve – 06/09/2022, The Architect’s Newspaper
“Angel Oak serves as the crowd-drawing centerpiece of a 9-acre namesake Johns Island park operated by the City of Charleston. In the future, Angel Oak will be further protected within a 35-acre nature preserve surrounding the park that, as announced this week, will be shaped by Nelson Byrd Woltz Landscape Architects.”
Get In. We’re Going to Save the Mall. – 06/08/22, The New York Times
“The second wave of mall building in the 1970s often targeted low-lying areas that were difficult to develop for residential or other uses, and rightly so, as they were bottoms, or stream beds prone to flooding. Meriden Hub Mall in Meriden, Conn., was one such site. In 2007 the city began working on a plan, using local, state and federal funds, to replace the mall with a 14-acre park, opening access to Harbor Creek, creating a public space that also functions as a water retention basin and building a bridge and amphitheater.”
NYC’s Union Square Gets a Colorful Reminder to Calm Down – 06/09/2022, Bloomberg CityLab
“The ‘Ripples of Peace and Calm’ street mural is meant to draw attention to newer pedestrian areas and pay homage to the city’s Asian community.”
How New Orleans Neighborhoods Are Using Nature to Reduce Flooding – 06/08/2022, Grist
“For many New Orleanians, water management isn’t about billion-dollar levees or century-old pumps. It’s about small, nature-based projects like that rain garden or pavement that allows water to soak in, new wetlands, or streets lined with trees.”
Solution or Band-Air? Carbon Capture Projects Are Moving Ahead – 06/07/2022, Yale Environment 360
“Long discussed but rarely used, carbon capture and storage projects — which bury waste CO2 underground — are on the rise globally. Some scientists see the technology as a necessary tool in reducing emissions, but others say it simply perpetuates the burning of fossil fuels.”
First Phase of OJB Landscape Architecture’s Sweeping Omaha Park Overhaul Will Open July 1 – 06/07/2022, The Architect’s Newspaper
“Downtown Omaha’s rectangular urban green space, which first debuted in 1977 with a design by Lawrence Halprin & Associates, necessitated a 21st century refresh following an extended period of underuse and neglect. As OJB put it, the park had long grappled with ‘difficult access and activation issues.’”
PRIDE: Creating Inclusive Landscapes for All to Enjoy — 06/01/2022, Luxe
“For landscape architect David A. Rubin, empathy and accessibility are core qualities of business and personal ethos. The founding principal of DAVID RUBIN Land Collective—a nationally certified LGBT small business enterprise studio with locations in Philadelphia and Indianapolis—urges designers to shed light on the challenges of others by asking a simple question: ‘How can I help you?’ Here, Rubin underscores the value in taking risks and seeking commonalities over contrasts.”
Boston’s Heat Plan — 06/01/2022, Architectural Record
“The Heat Plan follows a nearly decade-long collaboration between Sasaki and the City of Boston and is a new and critical component of the Climate Ready Boston initiative, which seeks to address the short- and long-term effects of climate change, such as sea-level rise and extreme precipitation.”
She told the in person audience of hundreds in downtown Washington, D.C. that the foundations of the landscape architecture profession feel like they are now “shaking,” but a path to a more diverse, equitable, and sustainable profession is in development. This path will be forged by continuously “cultivating the next game-changing ideas” and “removing obstacles in order to design effectively.” Over the course of a year-long research project, the six fellows, which include both emerging and established professionals, were asked to “transform themselves in order to transform others.”
Deb Guenther, FASLA, a partner with Mithun in Seattle, explained that this year’s class worked as a collective to explore ideas about transformational leadership. Guenther’s project focused on the need to create a greater sense of kinship between landscape architects and the community leaders they partner with. Sharing the thoughts of community leaders she interviewed through video clips, Guenther highlighted one key idea: “if we want to achieve the transformational, then we need to build or rebuild the relational, and then experience the transactional together.”
Over the course of her fellowship, Guenther interviewed over 300 community leader and designers on how to build trust. In videos shown to the audience, community leaders explained the need to view communities as ecosystems, how advocacy around shared goals can create a sense of solidarity, how shared values resonate, and the importance of building community wealth in the form of stronger relationships, a sense of belonging, and improved health and well-being.
Her “collective impact model” explained how community projects led by a core group, rather than a single champion, have a greater chance of success (see image at top). She called for greater investment by landscape architects in building trust through community design centers, more professors of practice in landscape architecture educational programs, and more designers in residence in non-profit organizations. In addition, other key goals include investing in community organizations that advance equity and finding opportunities to shift policy upstream.
Landscape architects building trust with communities / Deb Guenther
Olivia Bussey, a landscape designer with Curtis + Rogers Design Studio in Miami, explored the landscapes of prisons and half-way houses. She said the U.S. prison system has “systemic issues,” and new landscape design standards are needed. Her research focused on the impact of inmates being exposed to unhealthy landscapes of incarceration, which are characterized by “lots of paving, few trees, sometimes a few shrubs.”
Conventional prison yard / unsplash, larry farr
According to Bussey, research by Dominique Moran finds that Nordic prisons that include forests inmates can access provide a “sense of calm, spaces for reflection, and connection with the world.” Other research has been conducted on Rikers Island, a prison complex in New York, which includes one of the oldest inmate-managed gardens in the country. One inmate who worked in the garden was quoted as saying “it is the only place I feel like a human being.” Importantly, Rikers inmates that gardened had a 40 percent lower recidivism rate than the general population of the prison.
Morten hugging a tree in a restricted area of the Nordic prison during a walked interview / Dominique Moran
The prison system doesn’t end once sentences have been completed. Bussey focused much of her research on half-way houses, which provide formerly incarcerated people with career, health, and social service support. “These spaces are like hallways, transitional spaces before re-entry into society.” Most half-way houses aren’t required to have outdoor spaces, but some do. She hopes to further research the correlation of recidivism rates with access to landscape amenities in these places, but getting information out of prison system administrators is a major challenge. “We currently design for people who we think deserve punishment, but we can instead design for public health and safety. 95 percent of people in prison will be back in society one day. What do we want them to experience?”
For Linda Chamorro, ASLA, an assistant professor of landscape architecture at Florida International University in Miami, the Cut|Fill unconference, which was organized in the wake of the murder of George Floyd in 2020, was an awakening experience. There, she met other Latin American landscape architects who were wrestling with the ideas brought out by the event: “What do we need to cut away and what do we need to add?” As part of a collective effort with other designers — including Alexandra Burgos, Carolina English, Robert Colón, Assoc. ASLA, Jason Prado, ASLA, Sofia Charro, Jessica Arias, Ishaan Kumar, and Daví Parente Schöen — Chamorro sought to broaden labels of the Latin community to represent its true “diverse, multi-cultural, and multi-lingual” character. They proposed a new term to expand beyond the limitations of terms like Latin and Hispanic: “Latine/x/a/o*.”
Tierra Media Project team
In her talk, Chamorro also explored how the term “landscape” is loaded with meanings that don’t resonate with Latin audiences. Landscape is derived from land and property and elicits ideas related to ownership, colonization, and resource extraction. In contrast, the ancient term “Tierra” brings up a whole other set of ideas. “Tierra is living, breathing, and open.” Tierra is a “palimpsest of living histories and speaks of kinship with Pachamama. Tierra is about awareness and moving forward.”
Over the course of her independent study, Chamorro recorded video interviews with Latin Americans expatriates living in the U.S. about their feelings about Tierra. Through a poetic tour of memories of displacement, food, and family, the narrators explained how “Tierra is a protagonist, a character in our stories.” As part of the project, Chamorro and her colleagues launched the Tierra Media Project. The collective’s goal is to “encourage a deeper way of being with the land — to engage both the material and the spiritual.” They believe that “healing happens in communion with each other.” Instead of seeking to “add value and redesign places, what if we led with healing and the spirit of reciprocity with Tierra?”
Frederick Law Olmsted / New York Historical Society
Frederick Law Olmsted, who is considered the founder of American landscape architecture, was also a successful journalist and author. His articles for The New York Daily Times (now The New York Times) formed the basis of his influential books, including The Cotton Kingdom. He co-founded the magazine The Nation. His reporting in the South shaped his vision of democratic spaces and his later career as a “park maker.” But as he became more absorbed in practicing landscape architecture, he eventually phased down his publishing work.
Frederick Law Olmsted National Historical Site / Daderot, CC BY-SA 3.0
In a discussion organized as part of Olmsted 200, Harold Holzer, director of the Roosevelt House Public Policy Institute at Hunter College in New York City, explained the little known history of Olmsted’s extensive writings, which had significant impact in their time, but are now largely forgotten outside of landscape architecture and American history circles.
In 1852, Olmsted published his first book, Walks and Talks of an American Farmer in England, which grew out of an article on the public parks of Liverpool, England. Two years later, he began writing for The New York Daily Times, serving as a roving reporter through the American South, in the “form of a Dickens or De Tocqueville.” His byline was simply “Yeoman,” as daily newspapers didn’t identify writers by name then and wouldn’t for many more decades.
He wrote about “American landscape and society at the same time, and focused on slavery as a cruel and corrupting system,” Holzer said. Some argue Olmsted’s writings on the South, which were eventually edited and compiled into three books in the late 1850s and later formed the Cotton Kingdom, published in 1861, were the non-fiction equivalent of Uncle Tom’s Cabin in terms of their impact on Northerners’ views of slavery.
Retracing Olmsted’s steps in the South / Sara Zewde
Geraldine Brooks, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of the novel March, then discussed Spying on the South: An Odyssey Across the American Divide by her late husband Tony Horwitz, who retraced Olmsted’s steps through Southern states for the book. She learned about Olmsted “by osmosis” through her husband’s research.
Olmsted was a “curious, open-hearted person,” who early in his career had “thrown himself into causes,” but “hadn’t found himself yet.” His reporting in the South was “very modern — not top-down, but bottom up.” He sought to put himself in the “path of adventure” and find the scenes “most liable to accidents.” His goal was to “do and go where not expected.”
Having been a semi-successful farmer earlier in his career, Olmsted was able to “glean the thoughts” of the farmers he interviewed. He understood how a plantation was managed and could ask questions that would yield insights. In his 54 dispatches for The New York Daily Times, he concealed the identities of the farmers and slaves he interviewed, while finding “evocative” stories to bring the South to life.
During his journey through the South, Olmsted also “allowed his mind to change,” Brooks said. Before his journey through the Southern states, he was moderately anti-slavery, but after what he witnessed, he became a “red hot abolitionist, with a righteous hatred for the institution of slavery.”
James Barron, a metropolitan reporter and columnist with The New York Times, said Olmsted got the job with his newspaper in a “five minute interview.” Then, The New York Daily Times was a start-up and had been in existence for just two years.
Henry Jarvis Raymond, co-founder of the paper, wanted a “disinterested and reliable” reporter on conditions in the South, not someone who would overly politicize. Raymond eventually complained Olmsted included too much detail in his articles. But it was this detail that made Olmsted’s writings endure, Barron argued.
Olmsted’s articles, which were later edited to highlight stronger abolitionist views when compiled in the Cotton Kingdom, were “unquestionably influential,” Barron said. And many argue his book persuaded European countries to not recognize the Confederacy during the Civil War.
Yet, most books about the history of The New York Times fail to even mention Olmsted. His writing has also been “almost forgotten” among newspaper historians and daily journalists.
In his lifetime, Olmsted was also influential in the magazine world. Katrina vanden Heuvel, editorial director and publisher of The Nation, said initial conversations about forming a weekly magazine about culture and politics occurred at the Union League Club as early as 1863. Two years later, Olmsted and others co-founded the magazine, which Olmsted also considered calling Scrutiny or Hold Fast.
Union League Club, New York City. (1900 and 1906) Detroit Publishing Co. / Library of Congress
With The Nation‘s founding, Olmsted helped create an “entire school of American journalism” that sought to step back from “hot takes” and provide a more balanced perspective rooted in a greater sense of history and context. Avoiding “pandering to the greatest number,” he wanted to instead speak to those who cared about values and ideas.
While daily papers wrote the first draft of history, weekly magazines could “ruminate” and provide a “sense of a slower pace,” vanden Heuvel said. Olmsted wrote just 10 articles for The Nation, including pieces on the Great Fire in Chicago and the parks of Paris. But his influence, including his early focus on race and slavery, instilled a focus on equity in the magazine that vanden Heuvel argued continues today.
For Brooks, Olmsted wasn’t a “radical for most of his life. The real apogee of his radicalism is during the Civil War.” But she thinks Olmsted’s writing still had a “radical effect.” For example, in 1949, a young black inmate stumbled upon Cotton Kingdom amid the few books available in the prison library. That inmate was Malcolm X, who later wrote about the “total horror” he found in Olmsted’s book.
Brooks believes our current era of division is “uncannily parallel” to the Civil War era in which Olmsted was active. “He believed in dialogue with those with whom you disagree.” They had “their facts and demons, and we have ours. It’s a difficult dialogue then — and now.”
Barron thinks once Olmsted found his true calling in landscape architecture, he thought planning and design were better ways to create enduring, positive change than journalism. “He saw the South as opposite of what it should be.” He thought more communities in the north and south needed town squares and parks. Designing public spaces was a way to plant the seeds of democracy.
Central Park, New York City / fdastudillo, istockphoto.com
There is a through line between Olmsted’s writings and landscape architecture — both sought to promote “dialogue and an egalitarian spirit,” vanden Heuvel argued. Olmsted believed that public spaces were an “antidote to private spaces” like plantations. “He sought public space in the public spirit.” But she noted that what has long been considered his masterpiece — Central Park in New York City — involved the New York City government displacing Seneca Village, a freed Black community of landowners, a community only now being acknowledged and honored.
Map of Seneca Village / NYC Municipal Archives, via NY1
“Central Park so absorbed him. He didn’t waver from landscape architecture,” Brooks said. If he was writing his own obituary, “he wouldn’t emphasize” his writing career.
In addition to his published works, Olmsted wrote thousands of letters in his life, including to President Abraham Lincoln, Holzer added.
In one long letter, he advised Lincoln to print the Emancipation Proclamation, which freed all slaves, on linen panels that could be posted throughout Southern states. But he also recommended Lincoln publish a transcript of his White House discussion with African American leaders after the proclamation, in which he asked them to voluntarily leave the U.S. and colonize Central America and Africa. The African American leaders “declined, more politely than Lincoln deserved.” Olmsted thought Lincoln should “promote both policies in order to assuage border states afraid of integration.” He still sought to influence national policies, but through letters.
The Green New Deal Superstudio inspired thousands of planning and landscape architecture students around the world to envision better futures for underserved communities. With the goals of the Green New Deal Congressional proposal in mind, Kathleen Garcia, FASLA, a lecturer at the University of California San Diego (UC San Diego) led her undergraduate planning students through multiple studios to re-imagine the Sweetwater River corridor, just south of the city of San Diego, near the border with Mexico.
“National City is a front line community” in dealing with the combined impacts of climate change, pollution, and inequities, Garcia said. The community and river corridor gave her studio opportunities to explore the three goals of the Green New Deal — decarbonization, jobs, and justice.
According to Garcia, the community is “crisscrossed with freeways and rail lines, polluted by heavy industry along its riverfronts, and separated from most remnants of nature.”
The rich lands around the Sweetwater River were once home to the Kumeyaay indigenous people, but is now a “flood-control channel.” The floodplain and grazing lands have been “converted into strip malls, scattered housing, auto dealerships, industry, active rail lines, and at the river’s mouth, a major marine terminal,” where nearly half a million imported cars arrive annually.
Climate change promises to increase the threat of wildfires and exacerbate existing urban heat islands, flooding, and air pollution in the community. “Local jobs are few. Residents commute at least 20 miles in congestion to jobs elsewhere. Native heritage has all been but erased. The city is highly dependent on car sales for its tax base. However, what will transportation look like in a cleaner, greener future?”
The students in her class range from third- to fourth-year students and major in diverse subjects such as planning, psychology, data sciences, and engineering. They are “looking for ways to make a difference,” and the Green New Deal inspired them to envision a much different National City and Sweetwater River.
Much of National City Maritime Terminal is built on fill, which is “not friends with sea level rise,” said Juli Beth Hinds, an instructor of planning at UC San Diego, who participated in the tour. The mouth of the Sweetwater River, which is along one edge of the Maritime Terminal, can only be seen from the tiny Pepper Park, one of the few public green spaces along the waterfront.
Here, Ethan Olson, a third-year student who is majoring in planning and urban studies and hopes to pursue a master’s degree in landscape architecture, brought out his boards to show his ideas. He proposed a new open space corridor through the industrial area surrounding the port, but on the inland edge to provide space to retreat from sea level rise.
REPRISAL: A Proposal for the Future of the National City Marine Terminal / Ethan Olson
The new corridor would serve as a green spine for mixed-use development, including housing and retail, and local job creation that isn’t dependent on transporting cars out of the port. Olson also envisioned weaving in bike infrastructure and properly connecting the Bayshore Bikeway, along with boosting local healthy food production.
Olson noted that the Port of San Diego and nearby Naval facilities are already planning for sea level rise, with some projections indicating a potential of 9 feet by 2100. Much of this critical coastal infrastructure is under threat.
REPRISAL: A Proposal for the Future of the National City Marine Terminal / Ethan Olson
“The big scope of the Green New Deal Superstudio appealed to me. Climate change isn’t an environmental issue alone, but also an economic, social, planning, and political one. The Green New Deal doesn’t ignore that. I like it as a concept,” Olson said.
Nine students presented their ideas over the next three hours at locations throughout National City. The bus stopped at a strip mall and big-box store district; a desolate riparian green space at the outer edge of a parking lot; the location of a major swap meet; next to a solar power installation alongside the freeway; and in a deserted dealership along the Mile of Cars, a string of automobile showrooms.
Renewable power plant next to freeway in National City, San Diego county / Jared Green
At the Gateway Marketplace strip mall, Rashma Saini, a third-year student majoring in developmental psychology, walked us through her planning ideas, crafted with the perspective of a typical National City high school student in mind.
Envisioning a new direct connection to the high school across the Sweetwater River, riverfront promenade, and shopping and entertainment district, Saini wants a high-quality space for the many Mexican students who study in San Diego, a place for them to hang out with friends before returning by bus to Tijuana. “It’s important that students feel welcome. We need to focus on their mental health and well-being.”
National City Sweetwater River Corridor Plan / Rashma Saini
A later stop in a parking lot near a Burlington Coat Factory offered a close-up view of the channelized river. Here, Mitchell Kadowaki, who recently graduated from UC San Diego with a bachelor’s degree in environmental systems, showcased his plans for improving the urban tree canopy of National City. The now concrete-lined river is ripe for restoration as a riparian corridor, providing habitat benefits.
Sweetwater River Corridor Plan: Bolstering the Urban Canopy in National City / Mitchell Kadowaki
Through his research, he found that only six percent of National City is park land, much lower than the San Diego county average. But he noted that significantly expanding the tree canopy with the wrong tree species, improperly sited, could also further contribute to the drought by taxing already low water reserves.
Hinds noted that “tree selection is a live issue” in San Diego county. Until recently, palm trees, which offer few ecological benefits, have been specified as part of city plans. Eucalyptus trees, which are also not native and can be a wildfire hazard, can’t be removed from UC San Diego’s campus “unless they are diseased.” One way to increase tree and shrub diversity in the county could be to restore habitat for birds, including the endangered California gnatcatcher.
Stricken with drought in 2015, the San Diego Housing Authority shut off irrigation to street trees, killing them in the process. This impacted underserved residents that already have fewer street trees, amplifying the effects of heat islands and air pollution. San Diego is now exploring greywater re-use for irrigation, and there are a growing number of contractors who can do these kinds of projects, Hinds said.
Through the Green New Deal Superstudio projects, Garcia sought to show there is a “lot of overlap” between planning, landscape architecture, and urban design disciplines.
What she learned working as a landscape architect at WRT and planning director for the City of Del Mar is that “you get better solutions when you get people outside their boxes and comfort zones.” Landscape architecture and planning, in particular, use the “exact same problem solving but just at different scales.”
Her undergraduate students learned the stages of planning, explored different disciplinary lenses, and some are even inspired to become landscape architects.
The program, which launched in February 2022, is designed to support women of color in their pursuit of landscape architecture licensure and provide mentorship opportunities that position women for success. The program aims to increase racial and gender diversity within the profession and was inspired by ASLA’s Racial Equity Plan of Action, which was released in 2020.
The first class of the program includes 10 women who are among the most statistically underrepresented groups in the profession of landscape architecture. The class includes women based in Hawai‘i, California, Washington, Texas, Tennessee, Ohio, and Florida who are involved in private and public practice and landscape architectural education.
The first class includes:
Diana Alcantara Ortiz, ASLA, Landscape Architectural Assistant 1,
San Francisco Public Works, Bureau of Landscape Architecture, San Francisco, CA
Jessica Colvin, Assoc. ASLA, Assistant Campus Landscape Architect,
University of California, Davis, Davis, CA
Alexandria Dial, Designer, Studio Outside, Dallas, TX
Ana Cristina Garcia, ASLA, Associate, GGN, Seattle, WA
Adriana Garcia, ASLA, Senior Designer, SALT Landscape Architects, Long Beach, CA
The program will provide each of the 10 women with a personalized experience that provides up to $3,500 to cover the cost of sections of the Landscape Architectural Registration Exam (LARE), along with exam preparation courses, resources, and mentorship from a licensed landscape architect.
“ASLA is committed to achieving a diverse profession that is welcoming and accessible to all. We are proud to take this first step to lift up women of color in our landscape architecture community, by providing them with the support network they need to achieve licensure,” said Eugenia Martin, FASLA, President of ASLA.
“We are honored to partner with these 10 dynamic women who seek to overcome obstacles, advance their own careers, and contribute to the communities they serve,” said Torey Carter-Conneen, ASLA CEO. “We look forward to learning from them how to best grow our equity programs and resources and make our community even more inclusive.”
ASLA supports and defends licensure for several important reasons. Licensure protects public health, safety, and welfare and signifies a level of professional competency that oftentimes leads to achieving greater career and business success.
A recent report by The Alliance for Responsible Professional Licensing found that among highly complex, technical fields, such as landscape architecture, a license narrows the gender-driven wage gap by about a third and the race-driven wage gap by about half.
The ASLA Women of Color Licensure Advancement Program was initiated with a generous $100,000 donation by former ASLA President Wendy Miller, FASLA, and James Barefoot; Marq Truscott, FASLA; Rachel Ragatz Truscott, ASLA; and CLARB.
Fighting Flooding in Houston and New York — 05/31/2022, Architectural Record
“‘These types of projects are often deployed opportunistically, connecting to existing trails, open space—or leveraging adjacent infrastructure projects,’ explains Scott McCready, principal at landscape architecture firm SWA Group’s Houston office. That approach can result in already well-served areas’ seeing greater investment, but leaving needier neighborhoods behind, which McCready says ‘is an ongoing challenge to all involved.'”
How the ‘Queen of Slag’ Is Transforming Industrial Sites — 05/30/2022, The New York Times
“For more than 30 years, Julie Bargmann, a landscape architect and founder of D.I.R.T. Studio (Dump It Right There) in Charlottesville, Va., has focused on contaminated and forgotten urban and postindustrial sites, dedicating her practice to addressing social and environmental justice.”
21 Questions with Landscape Architect Signe Nielsen — 05/30/2022, Curbed
“New York’s ‘21 Questions’ is back with an eye on creative New Yorkers. Signe Nielsen is a landscape architect who has practiced in New York for over 40 years. Her firm, MNLA, designed Hudson River Park; Little Island, in collaboration with Heatherwick Studio; and the Governor Island master plan, in collaboration with West 8. Nielsen is the president of the city’s Public Design Commission.”
Yes, You Can Save Lives by Planting Trees, a New Study Says — 05/27/2022, Grist
“For a study published earlier this month in Frontiers in Public Health, researchers looked at 35 metropolitan areas within the U.S. They compared satellite data showing changes in how much greenery a city had with mortality data for people aged 65 and older from 2000 to 2019. Using these measures, they estimated that even small increases in greenery could have saved over 34,000 lives over the past two decades.”
The Social and Economic Benefits of Green Schoolyards — 05/24/2022, Trust for Public Land
“While gray schoolyards had a moderately lower initial renovation cost ($2.3 million compared to $2.6 million for green schoolyards), they yielded no benefits over time, with schools continuing to sink money into resealing asphalt. After the initial investment, green schoolyards brought in almost $600,000 in net benefits.”
COVID-19 Relaxed Red Tape in Cities. Then the Bureaucracy Returned — 05/23/2022, Fast Company
“The fight over a parking lot in Cambridge, Massachusetts, is a microcosm of a bigger problem that’s playing out across the country: Cities are designed for cars, not people, and not even a global pandemic has changed that.”
How Countries Weaponize Landscape Design in War — 05/16/2022, Fast Company
“Landscape design presents itself as a tool capable of influencing the health and well-being and, therefore, the hearts and minds of local populations. Ultimately it can achieve military objectives through the planning and planting of green space.”
Pepper Canyon West at UC San Diego / Perkins & Will, courtesy UC San Diego
Like other state universities in California, the University of California at San Diego (UC San Diego) must develop to meet the needs of a rapidly increasing student body. The university, a designated growth campus in the UC system, currently educates 42,000 students and plans to accommodate thousands more by 2030. Approximately 30 percent of the 1,150-acre campus is an open space preserve that includes a fragile coastal zone. To protect the campus’ critically important ecosystems and cultural character, campus planners and landscape architects are weaving in transit-oriented development and dramatically increasing density in key areas, with up to 23-story student residential towers.
During a tour of the campus as part of the American Planning Association‘s National Planning Conference, Robert Clossin, director of planning, and Todd Pitman, ASLA, campus landscape architect at UC San Diego, explained that dense new “living and learning neighborhoods” were central to the long-term strategy of balancing growth and nature preservation.
In a campus where parking spaces for cars were largely hidden from view, but hundreds of racks for bicycles were in plain sight, it’s clear the campus planners and landscape architects are trying to move past vehicle dependence and plan for a denser light rail-, bike- and scooter-centric future.
After five years of construction and decades of planning, the expansive university is now connected to greater San Diego through two light rail stops. At the first stop on our tour, the Central Campus Trolley station, Clossin and Pitman, along with Raeanon Hartigan, principal planner for the campus, walked us through a vibrant new “front door” to the campus, which is now under construction.
A new “front door” to UC San Diego at a light rail station / Jared Green
There, landscape architects with the Office of James Burnett (OJB) designed an accessible urban landscape that weaves together an amphitheater that can hold 3,000, and a Design and Innovation Building, designed by architects with EHDD, which will serve as an entrepreneurial hub bringing together students and faculty with community inventors and firms.
A 750-foot-long pathway, a tactile artwork by artist Anne Hamilton, further stitches the new development together. “This is true transit-oriented development,” said Bryan Macias, with capital management projects on campus.
Concordance by Ann Hamilton at UC San Diego / Jared Green
Adjacent to the new trolley station is Pepper Canyon West, which includes two 23-story student housing towers designed by Perkins & Will that will soon house 1,300 students (see image at top). At the base of the towers, which will offer retail, there is a new stormwater management basin also designed by OJB. “The Office of James Burnett is really the glue between projects,” said Pitman.
As we walked further into the interior of the campus, Pitman said the university has increasingly recognized the value of landscape architecture over the past decades. Campus leaders realize that the walking and biking experience is central to a successful learning environment. “It’s about focusing on the user experience and connecting the public realm,” Pitman said.
UC San Diego bike racks / Jared Green
Partnering with the Stuart Collection Foundation, UC San Diego has also woven in public art throughout the campus. And this art isn’t just plopped down, but integrated into the landscape and architecture. Through the Stuart Collection program, artists take the lead on finding locations on campus where their art is best suited and then create site-specific works. A triangle park that was once a left-over space between buildings was transformed into a charming community space. Artist Tim Hawkinson partnered with Spurlock Landscape Architects to site his impressive 180-ton Bear sculpture and create a lush park to frame the work.
Bear sculpture and park at UC San Diego / Jared Green
At the Franklin Antonio Hall, a collaborative research and engineering laboratory, the campus planning and design team highlighted their efforts to balance protection of coastal ecosystems with the need to densify. The building offers views of the enveloping 300-acre preserve.
Franklin Antonio Hall and Open Space Preserve, UC San Diego / Jared GreenOpen Space Preserve, UC San Diego / Jared Green
Here, OJB built benches into low walls, but instead of facing the courtyard around the building, they are positioned to provide views over the rugged landscape. It’s one of those subtle, thoughtful touches that highlights the user experience Pitman mentioned.
The landscape immediately surrounding the laboratory, which includes wide fire truck lanes, is designed to be resilient to fire and support the adjacent preserve. In addition to managing all stormwater, the landscape includes 100 percent native plants, which is much higher than the 30-50 percent the campus usually aims for in their projects. “It was really hard to do,” Pitman said. “We pushed the boundaries much farther and made this as sustainable and resilient as possible,” Clossin added.
A winding path in the form of a snake by artist Alexis Smith brings us through coastal shrubs to the Geisel Library, the iconic Brutalist building designed by architect William Pereira in 1970.
Snake Path by Alexis Smith / Jared GreenGeisel Library at UC San Diego / Jared Green
Underground levels added in the early 90s increase density. Deep caverns and surface skylights, designed to stream daylight to the subterranean stacks, add depth to the library plaza.
Library plaza surrounding Geisel Library at UC San Diego / Jared Green
And landscape architect Peter Walker’s Library Walk, also designed in the early 90s, terminates in the lower level of the library.
Library walk at UC San Diego / Jared Green
Continuing down Ridge Walk, a central spine on the campus that offers views of the Sun God sculpture by artist Niki de Saint Phalle, the bike infrastructure of the campus becomes more apparent. Designed with Spurlock Landscape Architects, Ridge Walk is actually a collection of landscape projects including parks, plazas, paths, irrigation and lighting systems, and bike lanes that cost $19 million, Pitman said. “It has been the university’s single largest investment in landscape architecture.” To fix previously unsafe conditions, the project separated bike and scooter traffic from pedestrians.
Ridge Walk at UC San Diego / Jared GreenRidge Walk adjacent bike lane at UC San Diego / Jared GreenRidge Walk adjacent bike lane at UC San Diego / Jared Green
The walkable, bikeable DNA of the campus enabled planners and landscape architects to densify through additional mixed-use development. This future is being realized in the North Torrey Pines Living and Learning Neighborhood. Designed by HKS, Safdie Rabines Architects, and OJB, the project came out of a tough three-month design-build competition.
Tiered student residential, educational, and retail spaces frame a central plaza and views of the Pacific Ocean, providing that indoor-outdoor experience so characteristic of Southern California.
“The sunset is a must-see celebration from these buildings,” said architect Ricardo Rabines. “And students only pay $14,000 in annual tuition and $1,300 a month for rent,” Clossin said. A pretty good deal for La Jolla.
Imagine Austin Growth Concept Map / City of Austin
“The planning practices of the past are inadequate for today’s challenges,” said David Rouse, ASLA, a landscape architect and planner, at the American Planning Association‘s National Planning Conference in San Diego. Rapid technological change, socio-economic inequities, natural resource depletion, and climate change are forcing planning and design professionals to adapt. “How can the practice of planning evolve to be more sustainable and equitable?”
In the 1920s, the Standard Zoning Enabling Act and the Standard City Enabling Act were passed. In the 1960s, the conventional 20th century planning model, which focused on land use policy and planning, came into being. In the 1980s, there was a shift to smart growth and “visionary, values-based planning.” In 2010, the American Planning Association began a process of rethinking past planning approaches through its Sustaining Places Initiative, which provided models and standards for how to prioritize sustainability through local planning.
According to Rouse, today’s comprehensive plans require a new 21st century model rooted in four key aspects. First, sustainability, resilience, and equity need to be at the center of all planning decisions. Second, a systems-thinking approach is needed. “A community is a system made up of sub-systems.” Third, any planning effort requires “authentic participation” and true community engagement that can answer the questions: “Where are we headed? Where do we want to go? How do we get there?” And lastly, there must be “accountable implementation,” including priorities for action, funding streams, policies that can guide decision-making, and specified responsibilities.
Planning processes must now include an engagement and communications strategy rooted in the issues and values of a community and be designed to reach all segments of a population. Any planning effort in 2022 also needs to be based in an understanding of the “impact of the past on the present.”
A vision statement is needed to kick-start these comprehensive planning efforts — “one with brevity, clarity, and the ability to inspire,” Piro said.
Land-use maps are still an important component of any comprehensive plan but they need to be smarter. In its plan adopted in 2012, Austin, Texas, created a “growth concept map” that includes places and their aspects (see image at top). Aurora, Colorado, included a “place typology” that includes a “sophisticated matrix” and a “place-based approach” in its plan.
Placetype plan / City of Aurora, Colorado
All communities are systems that include natural, built environment, social, economic, health, and regional connection sub-systems.
“Planning for natural systems has come out of the landscape architecture field,” Rouse argued. “Ecosystem planning should now happen in communities and in context with other planning elements instead of piecemeal.”
ASLA 2021 Professional Analysis and Planning Honor Award. Parsons Island Conservation and Regeneration Plan. Queen Anne’s County, Maryland, United States. Mahan Rykiel Associates
Planners and landscape architects need to increasingly plan for land, water, atmospheric, and biodiversity change within communities. And instead of planning for water use and quality alone, an entire watershed approach should also be integrated into comprehensive planning efforts.
The ecosystem component that landscape architects focus on can be integrated with the built environment components that planners focus on. Through the involvement of multiple disciplines, plans can address “land use, character, ecology, mobility, community design, and civic spaces, and public art.”
Other important systems that need to be included in any new comprehensive plan are social systems that improve equity — “the social infrastructure” of communities, including housing and education.
Economic systems also need to be re-thought for the 21st century. “Economic resilience is about creating opportunities for all in a fair and sustainable way. We can move to a circular economy and rely on local assets and regional resources. We need to move away from a linear, throw-away society.”
Health systems need to be factored into any planning effort, and this is not just “about disease prevention, but about healthy transportation and food systems. How we move and interface with the built environment impacts our health.”
There are now many lens — a “climate lens, equity lens, health lens. Can we bring the lenses together?”
Both Rouse and Piro returned to the idea that any planning effort can only happen with real community engagement.
Once the voice of the community in its totality has been considered, then a plan can be developed that results in the revision of regulations, codes, and ordinances to help achieve that plan. The next steps are to shift public and private investments to meet goals, align interests and decision-making processes within communities, and form public, private, and non-profit sector partnerships that can lead implementation.
In the 21st century, planners need to be “prepare communities for change, be proactive, and take an integrated approach instead of just reacting,” Rouse said.
The challenge is that planners are also operating within a “cone of uncertainty.” In the short term, there are tactics that can be used to manage community change, which may be foreseen or unforeseen and therefore disruptive. In the medium term, planners can set strategies and plans. But over the long-term, they will need durable visions. “All of this planning must happen sequentially and simultaneously.”
In their book, Rouse and Piro outline five core themes, including equity and engagement, climate change mitigation and adaptation, systems thinking, people-centered technology, and effective implementation.
“Equity must be interwoven, and an equity lens must be brought to all goals. Climate resilience must be a guiding principle of all planning work. Technology must be harnessed to serve communities. Planning participation is about co-creation with the community,” Rouse said.
“Planning is an art and a science. Our jobs are to anticipate the unanticipated. How can we do it better?” Out of the hundreds of plans that Rouse and Piro reviewed, “we couldn’t find one that did this well. It’s a journey society — and planners — must take. It’s the future of comprehensive planning.”
During the Q&A, one audience member asked whether “top-down, paternalistic comprehensive plans” are a thing of the past. A city comprehensive plan assumes there is one community in agreement, whereas there are many communities with different interests. The antithesis of a comprehensive plan is a neighborhood plan.
Community engagement is critical to forging consensus as is transparency about budgets and timelines, Piro argued. Ensuring grassroots buy-in is the “path to success.” But neighborhood plans need to be integrated with comprehensive plans and implemented in tandem. “You need consistency and coordination.” Ecological, social, and other systems “can’t be addressed in isolation.”
Another audience member wondered how comprehensive plans can address the communities who have been displaced due to gentrification. “How do we plan for who is not there?”
Rouse argued that it’s critical to retain populations by helping them create their own visions. “We can account for the past and systemic racism,” and planners and other design professions’ roles in creating those inequities.
MUSK SEE: Three Reasons Why Congestion Decreases When Cities ‘Delete’ Road Lanes — 05/13/2022, Streetsblog USA
“A wildly inaccurate comment from Elon Musk about the traffic impacts of deleting lanes for drivers is prompting a conversation about the little-known phenomenon of ‘reduced demand’ — and how advocates can better debunk common congestion myths that powerful, but often ill-informed, people continue to promulgate.”
Security Features For Outdoor Living Trend In Latest Houzz Survey — 05/10/22, Forbes
“It’s no secret that outdoor living has become a huge trend. ‘It has exploded over the past five years with homeowners desiring to have resort-like backyards,’ declares Reno-based landscape architect and franchisor Ron DuHamel, president of FireSky.
Justice Department Unveils New Environmental Justice Moves (2) — 05/05/2022, Bloomberg Law
“The Department of Justice announced a trio of major environmental justice actions on Thursday, including the launch of a new office and the resurrection of a popular enforcement tool scrapped during the Trump administration.”
A Smarter Urban Design Concept for a Town Decimated by Wildfires— 05/03/2022, Fast Company
“SWA Group—a winner of Fast Company’s 2022 World Changing Ideas Awards—is helping Paradise, California, imagine a safer and more sustainable future with a design that buffers the town with parks, athletic fields, and orchards—areas less likely to burn than forests.”
New Park Brings Residents of Los Angeles’ Chinatown Together— 05/01/2022, Parks and Recreation Business
“Designed by the landscape architecture and planning firm, AHBE/MIG, Ord and Yale Street Park represents the transformation of a once-vacant, one-acre hillside into a new pocket neighborhood park for the community.”
Across red, blue, and purple states, the impacts of climate change are increasingly real. The number of natural disasters that have caused a billion or more in damages has only increased. Since 2015, there have been 100 of them, said Marissa Aho, Chief Resilience Officer for Washington State Department of Natural Resources, during a session at the American Planning Association (APA)‘s National Planning Conference in San Diego. “Last year, weather-related disasters caused $145 billion in damages.”
While more Americans are aware of the increasingly expensive impacts of climate change and believe they are being impacted, planners, landscape architects, and other designers continue to face a host of challenges planning climate solutions with communities. In some places, the words “climate change” can’t even be said for fear of turning off the communities meant to be helped. Aho said many planners and designers need “resilience therapy on how to navigate political issues.” But beyond red, blue, or purple distinctions, the key is to avoid politics all together and focus on how to build local resilience.
Prior to joining the Washington state government, Aho was Chief Resilience Officer of Houston. She said while being a red state, Texas has a considerable amount of climate resilience planning. El Paso, Dallas, Houston, and Austin all have Chief Resilience Officers.
In 2019, the Texas state legislature created the Texas Infrastructure Resilience Fund, which directed billions to flood management. And in 2020, Houston created its Resilient Houston plan, controversially, with a $1.8 million grant from oil giant Shell. The plan was created out of a “community-driven process and includes 62 actions,” Aho said. The goal of the plan is to ensure “resilience at all scales — because if one scale isn’t resilient, than none of them are.”
In Washington State, Aho has been working on a watershed resilience adaptation plan, a “tree to sea plan for landscape scale restoration and salmon recovery,” which also has an interactive dashboard. Washington has been in the news for its increasingly severe climate impacts, including wildfires, drought, and heatwaves. The state is now trying to “tie climate change planning into everything.”
Wildfire in Yakima County, Washington / istockphoto.com, lightasafeather
Anna Friedman, with the Resilient Cities Catalyst, said red state Florida is increasing its focus on climate resilience, with a state-wide $400 million resilience grant program. There’s a state-level Chief Resilience Officer, and “every country and city has one, too.” Her organization partnered with Tampa to create a resilience plan with 58 initiatives, and a significant equity focus.
To get around the politics of climate action, Friedman advised focusing on issues at the neighborhood level, conducting workshops, and using a community-driven process. “Climate change is triggering in some communities. It’s important to find out what people need in their neighborhood and meet people where they are.”
But she added that there are new opportunities to advance climate planning beyond what was possible a few years ago. COVID-19 has helped more communities realize that “equity and climate are connected.” More communities now know “what cascading impacts of vulnerability and resilience feel like.” Friedman thinks anyone planning climate solutions “needs to leverage this key moment.”
Jacksonville, Florida, on the Atlantic Ocean, is embedded in a “web of water,” said Anne Coglianese, Chief Resilience Officer for the city. The largest city governed by a Republican Mayor, Jacksonville faces extreme flood risks. In addition the ocean, “there are 54 tributaries of the St. John’s River” that flow through the city. Extreme heat is also a danger, and the city is undertaking an urban heat study as part of a resilience strategy that is now in development. “Any politician in Florida is aware of the financial risks of climate change.”
Coglianese noted that Louisiana, another red state, developed the Louisiana Coastal Masterplan in 2017, which includes 124 projects to be completed over a 50-year period. The state plans to spend $50 billion on resilience and build 800 square miles of land in order to combat accelerated coastal erosion and save an estimated $150 billion in climate change-related damages. “There was universal bipartisan legislative support for the plan,” she said.
Land loss in coastal Louisiana, 1932-2013, NOAA / Public domain
And just a few months ago, the state government announced it was developing the first climate action plan in the Gulf South. The goal is to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050 through deep cuts in oil and gas infrastructure emissions. A 23 member task force, which includes oil and gas and environmental justice representatives, unanimously approved the plan.
Throughout the session, the speakers used Mentimeter to poll the hundreds of session attendees in real time about how they are approaching climate action in their communities.
Asked about the relationship between equity and climate change, 52 percent of the audience stated that “equity is at the core of climate change planning,” while 24 percent stated that “climate change is at the core of equity planning,” and another 24 percent argued that equity and climate are separate issues. For Friedman, this means that “76 percent find that climate and equity are interconnected; we can’t disentangle the two.”
Aho argued that given underserved communities have “underlying vulnerabilities,” they are impacted by “climate change in the most severe way.” The question is: “Who can rebound faster?” Coglianese added that “everyone may face the same storm, but not everyone is in the same boat; some are in a yacht, and some are in a row boat.”
Another poll to the audience asked: how often planners are encountering politics when planning for climate change? 55 percent of the audience said “more frequently,” 36 percent said “about the same,” while 9 percent said “less frequently.”
This is a sign that the “country is polarized around national issues” like climate change, Aho said. The solution is to “keep it local, which is less polarizing. Keep politics out of the conversation.”
