IDEAS
editing + layout + design: Charly Nelson Sarah Peck
special thanks to: Gerdo Aquino, President Kevin Shanley, CEO Scott Cooper RenĂŠ Bihan Liz Lagedrost Tom Fox
copyright Š2012 by SWA Group All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, without written permission from the publisher. SWA Group 2200 Bridgeway Boulevard Sausalito, California 94966-5904 United States press@swagroup.com 415.332.5100 Every reasonable attempt has been made to identify owners of copyright. Should unintentional mistakes or omissions have occurred, we sincerely apologize and ask for notice. Such mistakes will be corrected in the next edition of this publication.
IDEAS
landscape as catalyst praxis coastal resiliency water + wetland infrastructure making agriculture work safety + health
The world s population just reached 7 billion people and is projected to reach 8 billion within the next 14 years. Our resources and planet can only sustain this many people if we address the challenges inherent in this population increase: understanding how to use resources sustainably, how to organize ourselves and our cities, and how to reduce our footprint through innovative design practices. Our development, our designs, and our planet are looking for new ideas. Landscape architecture serves as the underpinning infrastructure that allows our complex environmental, social, and economic ecosystem fabrics work together. The work of a landscape architect touches on disciplines, themes, and ideas so broad we challenge you to find an article in a newspaper that is not related to a land-based issue. Property, real estate, development, economics, density, migration, urban morphology? These are space-based land issues. Transportation, pedestrian walkability, bicycle lanes, public funding, city planning and policy? These are transportation and policy issues related directly to the use of the land. Landscape architects integrate ecology, hydrology, and environmental sustainability through initiatives that advocate greater land stewardship and responsibility in design and development. Today, more than 70% of the US population and most of the world’s cities are at (or near) a coast or along rivers. Looking at our geography and use of space—keeping in mind the pressing issues of sea level rise, hydrological considerations, limited resources, and an increasing strain on century-old city systems that are expected to perform for doubling and tripling populations—means that solving these complex issues related to land use and planning will require leadership in landscape architecture projects and ideas. The good news is that the prowess and reach of landscape architecture as a profession is expanding. In the United States alone, there are currently 30,000 landscape architects in a country with over 370 million people. That’s one landscape architect for every 12,500 people; or, put another way, that’s only four trained landscape architects for every city of 50,000 people. Fortunately, the numbers continue to grow: the enrollment of landscape architects in graduate programs is rising, with university applications increasing by as much as 20% in the US, and a further twenty programs seeking accreditation. In 2009, US News and World Report ranked Landscape Architect as one of the top emerging professions. By multiple measures, we are seeing a need for increased leadership and an expanded role for landscape architecture from both internal and external factors.
Inside each of our offices, we are growing and building upon the needs of the practice, the call for leadership, and the ideas explored within our evolving universities. In this journal, IDEAS, we set out to examine the theories and inspirations behind our projects—the analysis, careful planning, and iterative thinking that goes into developing some of the complex, powerful constructions within the built environment. Behind each original piece are people, teams, and a set of carefully crafted and developed ideas. In this body of work we share essays, thoughts, processes, and designs to give a richer perspective on the projects we on work so closely. In each, we continue to elucidate the nuances of what landscape architecture is and what it can do. IDEAS seeks to push the boundaries of what we call landscape architecture, urbanism, and the range of work that we do. As Gerdo Aquino, current President of SWA mentions in his essay, “The Re-Representation of Urbanism,” our work explores both how we talk about what we do and the necessity to continue to build great work. Rene Bihan leads a call-to-arms in his provocative essay, “Nature is Dead: Long Live Design,” reminding designers and city dwellers that landscape is not happenstance: it is formed and shaped; it is a creation that we are proud to be a part of. It is through idea generation, innovation, and putting these ideas into the ground by building places around the world that we continue to demonstrate leadership in landscape architecture. And Kevin Shanley, current CEO, tells the story of the Mississippi landscape’s flooding river network as a design problem that stems from a narrow planning view: we need to step back and understand the hydrologic and ecologic systems underpinning our civilizations, and work with them—not against them. Landscape architects are drivers of change; this catalysis happens through the work we do in planning, urban design, with architects, and on the boards. In this compilation, we share our built work—what’s happening in our cities and landscapes today. We feature unbuilt work, fellowships, and theories behind our work—the strategies and visions for what our cities can be. These are the possibilities. This is our imagination, on paper. We are living in a time when more people are living in cities than ever before in human history and the population increase and shifting demographics are driving landscape architecture to take a leadership role in the stewardship of the built environment. Our designs and evolution as a firm reflect our embodiment of these shifting ideas and our unwavering commitment to excellence, creativity, and innovation. Welcome to our ideas. SWA | 2012
landscape as catalyst A CITY CONNECTED 10 renovated public infrastructure and open space at Katy Trail Dallas, Texas
LEVERAGING EXISTING CORRIDORS 12 The Atlanta Connector
praxis the re-representation of urbanism 36 Gerdo Aquino
Natalia Beard & Michael Robinson
STARTING A TREND 24 Shanghai Pedestrian Promenade Shanghai, China
GLOBAL PLAZA 26 A new social heart for RIT Rochester, New York
Todd Meyer
Houston, Texas
BLURRING DISCIPLINES 30 new strategies at Giant Interactive Group Headquarters Shanghai, China
nature is dead: long live design 32 René Bihan
Cover Photgraphy by Tom Fox Giant Interactive Group Headquarters Shanghai, China
COASTAL ROULETTE 59 planning resilient shoreline communities in Galveston Bay Houston, Texas
uncharted territories: 46 design, cities and landscape; ideas and theories of landscape urbanism Sarah Peck & Eliza Shaw Valk
mainland quality: 48 meaning and endurance in China s contemporary landscape Scott Melbourne
measure for measure: 49 a look at post-occupancy research as a learning tool Chris Hardy
PEDESTRIAN INTERCHANGE 28 Rosemont Bridge crossing at Buffalo Bayou
the high costs of 56 straight-jacketing a river Kevin Shanley
cultural urbanism: 41 studying local traditions to create socially relevant design
Atlanta, Georgia
skin-deep: transformative power 20 of a non-performative landscape; redefining beautification for the Atlanta Connector
coastal resiliency
design utopia 52 Liz Lagedrost
NATURE & CULTURE RE-BORN 64 re-establishing the delta in a new city Shunde, China
drawing the line: reclaiming the 70 Shenzen Bay Waterfront Peiwen Yu & Matt Baumgarten
CONTENTS water + wetland infrastructure ECOLOGY AS INFRASTRUCTURE 78 establishing a functioning Wusong river system Wusong, China
LIVING FILTERS 86 constructing wetlands for improved water quality
making urban agriculture work makeshift economy: 104 the accidental interaction between agriculture and tourism in China Charly Nelson
THE GREAT EXPERIMENT 108 a farm village comes to the big city
RETHINKING PUBLIC HOUSING 134 re-incorporating Sunnydale into the urban fabric Sunnydale, San Francisco, CA
designing for safety 142 Ashley Langworthy
Nanhu, China
Ningbo, China
MEANDERING ECOLOGIES 92 the art and science of a delta
safety + health
MOUNTAIN SPRING 116 contemporary agrarian community
health and the built environment: 144 fellowship update Josselyn Ivanov
Xi an, China
Wanmu, China
the need for place: 98 framing ecological systems on a human scale Shannon Bronson
agri-urbanism: a new approach for 118 designing sustainable cities Pamela Barger
SCENT OF ORANGE 124 designing for a produce distributor/developer Chongqing, China
farm plus: 127 fellowship update Ellen Burke
outside Publications 150 Communications & Fellowships 151 Cycle-China: 152 fellowship investigating the roll of the bicycle in China Amirah Shahid
Foothill Community College 154 One Post Plaza 156
STRENGTH OF PLACE: 128 a new model for small town America Middleton / Westport, Wisconsin
Las Ventanas 158 About 160
LEVERAGING EXISTING CORRIDORS
the Atlanta connector
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Lands associated with single use infrastructures have become more valuable and important to the Cities they connect. Systems designed with a single purpose in mind are now envisioned as mixed use lands. Freeways hold urban park systems; medians contain forests that sell carbon credits.
The freeway is an integral part of the open space of the American city, forming a series of infrastructural systems that affect the dynamics and spatial characteristics of the region s natural and cultural landscapes. Framing the Atlanta Connector in this way allows the Connector to be affected by the City, and the fabric of the City to learn from the Connector. We see the transformation of the Connector as a catalyst that will change the perception of the freeway, and in return the urban character of adjacent properties, neighborhoods, and the City as a whole. The Client-stated goal of the Atlanta Connector Transformation Project is to generate beautification and urban design strategies that will create a new front door for the City of Atlanta, and energize the margins of this neglected corridor. Atlanta Connector / Atlanta, GA Client: Midtown Alliance & Central Atlanta Progress SWA Office: Houston SWA Project Team: Kinder Baumgardner, Jessica Bacorn, Natalia Beard, Jessica Carvajal, Jenny Janis, Jiyoung Nam Additional Consultants: Ian Cion, Art Consultant; Urban Collage, Site Analysis, Public Engagement Scope of work: Creation of a vision plan and urban design guidelines for a 5 mile urban freeway through downtown Atlanta. Project size: 5 mile freeway corridor June ‒ November 2011
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Problem In its current state, the Connector creates a decidedly negative environment for the City of Atlanta, damaging both the visitor’s opinion of the City and its urban fabric. This in turn affects connectivity, transit ridership, tourism, and ultimately tax revenues and jobs in the urban core. As the Connector was built and rebuilt over the last 60 years it has slowly taken on a character that is divorced from the aspirations of the City of Atlanta. The welltended streetscapes, parks, and urban fabric of Downtown and Midtown Atlanta is absent from the visual fabric of the Connector. The academic institutions that line the Connector (Georgia Tech, Georgia State, Emory, and SCAD) have turned their backs on what could be Atlanta’s front door. A “DMZ”-like zone of parking garages, vacant lands, and service drives has sprung up between the Connector and the City it was intended to service.
Strategy The core strategy employed in the transformation of the Atlanta Connector is re-envisioning the freeway as a bold stroke of landscape infrastructure that creates a simple framework derived from movement, views, and connectivity with the urban community adjacent to and beyond the Connector. The project begins with the simple statement that the Connector will remain the City’s most significant and visible infrastructural corridor for the foreseeable future, and as such any transformation must embrace the Connector as an integral part of the City of Atlanta. The project does not seek to make the Connector disappear; instead, it uses the Connector as a transformative piece of the City’s open space network. This transformation strategy uses a melding of art, landscape, engineering and urban design to create layers of interest to the fabric of the Connector, affecting how the city is perceived and ultimately how it functions. The transformation of the Atlanta Connector will recalibrate the national conversation on the role of infrastructure in our cities and towns, putting Atlanta on the forefront of urban design issues centered on redefining infrastructure as public space.
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The phasing strategy puts an emphasis on early wins to produce civic interest in the implementation of the project. Each phase will generate maximum incremental impact from each previous intervention.
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Greening System Diagrams Greening of the Connector is the primary vehicle for integrating the infrastructural corridor and the urban zones it traverses. Urban Forest Gateways celebrate arrival into Downtown Atlanta, they are crafted from native forest, exotic species, and light installations. Vertical greening softens the impact of the concrete trench environment by introducing continuous planting along the Connector walls.
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Vision
Result
The vision is that of a freeway moving through a green and lush landscape punctuated by art and urban incursions. The Connector is embraced and cared for as an integral part of Atlanta’s open space system and people move freely along and across it. Dramatic gateways crafted from the landscape announce arrival into the City and serve as a marker of a special place along a traveler’s journey. Lighting is used to extend the effects of the transformation, creating a shift in attitude from day to night. The complete composition becomes a stately museum space full of wonder and opportunity, serving as a showcase of Atlanta’s unique place in the world.
The end result of the transformed Connector will be an Atlanta that is outwardly welcoming to freeway users; the City will see increased walkability, access to transit, and stronger neighborhoods; visitors will learn something new about the City, its aspirations, and its place in the world. The economic incentives behind this project include an increased tax base as properties along the Connector are repurposed or developed as vibrant mixed-use districts, which in turn will promote urban living and an influx of creative class residents from around the greater Atlanta region.
IDEAS Fall 2011
Urban Design System Diagrams To improve its perception, the Connector must work at a variety of scales and enhance human connectivity. Promenades, urban trails, art walks, pedestrian bridges, parks, and development parcels will cause a ripple effect spanning the length of the Connector, making it an integral part of the city fabric.
Strategies The core strategies that will be employed along the length of the Connector involve greening, light, art, and ultimately, urban design interventions that will act as a catalyst for infill projects nearby. These strategies are used to modulate and recalibrate the existing infrastructural surfaces of the freeway in a manner that adds depth and meaning to the Connector experience, and by default, the visual (and ultimately physical) experience of the City. Greening strategies form the foundation of the transformation. The permeable spaces along the Connector’s margins and within its immense interchanges
will hold a vibrant, robust, and legible urban forest canopy. Urban forests will be crafted to create gateways at the north and south entries into Atlanta’s urban core. These forests follow threads of unused open space into the heart of the City, enhancing views, hiding vacant properties, and forming a medium through which the City is viewed. Where as space or safety considerations limit the inclusion of forests, vertical greening strategies will be employed to continue the thematic greening of the Connector and the City. While these greening strategies will have nascent effect on regional sustainability and clean air initiatives, they are not seen as offsetting the intensely negative effects of the 300,000 vehicles per day that use the Connector. At best they will be a window into the regional appreciation of sustainable design practices and a point of departure for
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The freeway becomes a pioneering museum environment that showcases Atlanta s unique place in the world. Super graphic art, street art, nature inspired installations, and super slow-motion video projection are all being studied for inclusion along the margins of the Connector. (mural in the Downtown stretch of the Connector based on a painting by Kehinde Wiley)
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reducing and discussing the effect of heat island, storm water, and air quality on the City. Inserted into the verdant green fabric of the Connector are art and lighting elements purposely crafted to interact with and activate the surfaces of the Connector. The art of the Connector will transcend traditional labels with all elements – greening, lighting and art – working together to create the Atlanta Museum of Freeway Art (MOFA), a firstorder art tourism destination whose mission is to transform the Atlanta Connector and the national appreciation of art and freeway. The museum is created by co-opting the complex spatial character of the Connector as a museum space crafted with both the high-speed traveler and the neighborhood viewer in mind. Retaining walls, bridges, tunnels, and the furnishings of the Connector will become a framework of museum walls and spaces. Super graphic murals, lighting effects, slow motion video, and sculpture will be used to highlight the natural and cultural history of Atlanta. Like its sister museums and cultural foundations in Atlanta, MOFA will have a permanent collection, rotating collections, membership, a board of directors, a national level curator, and a museum shop. By refocusing the conversation about the Connector from that of a freeway to that of a museum space, a much richer, intensive and transformative design solution can be achieved. As the Connector is transformed from negative to positive, the public realm, private properties, and institutions along its margins will realize the positive attributes of the new culture growing within this new found public space. The result will be the creation of new urban spaces above and along the Connector that seek to take advantage of the new infrastructure. Urban parks, promenades, trails, pedestrian bridges, and development projects are envisioned as urban insertions that will ripple through the City fabric as new connections are made and old ones are reinvigorated.
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skin-deep: transformative power of a non-performative landscape redefining beautification for the Atlanta Connector Natalia Beard & Michael Robinson
The success of integrating the restrictive Atlanta Connector site into the city's public realm relies on surface-based modifications that extend experiential qualities of the Connector into the city. Through cultural and ecological imaging, the strategy of a "thickened surface" catalyzes the connections of the freeway to surrounding neighborhoods, art initiatives, and native forest ecosystems.
The go-to reflex when modifying our dysfunctional urban environments is to green-by-default. Greening softens harsh edges and, more fundamentally, is endowed with the power to offset carbon "footprints" and mitigate the negative side effects of a consumption-based economy. And it would seem the prettier and greener idea of a highway is a reasonably non-controversial start to a conversation about transforming the 5-mile stretch of the prominent Atlanta Connector. Two-thirds of the Connector's daily users merely pass through the city on their way to somewhere else, and a green highway would project an environmentally and culturally sound image of Atlanta to the world. However, interrogating the ambient benefits of greening as the only carrier of the transformation, in this instance, reveals broader opportunities at hand. While greening can have many different forms of performance, including producing habitat, mitigating heat islands, filtering rain water and sequestering carbon, one can employ quantitative methods for determining if the functional performance of "green" is of any significant value. According to our calculations, 13,651,000 trees are needed to carbon-offset the 5-mile project stretch of the Atlanta Connector, a figure that represents 1.65 times the area of the entire city of Atlanta. It would be naïve to think that planting the relatively few trees on the available land within the project area will do anything appreciable to offset the amount of CO2 produced by the stretch of the freeway. This would be much better handled by policy or technology changes. However, some greening is still beneficial, but for other reasons. In her essay "Sustainable Large Parks: Ecological Design
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for example) is much easier on a blank site as opposed to retrofitting these linear systems into existing networks later. The Connector, representing the opposite extreme of the tabula rasa, is highly articulated and developed with little opportunity for major structural or functional changes at the large scale, thus any organizational changes would require great cost and structural gymnastics. Outside of the scope and budget of the project a broader approach to reintegrating the Connector site into the urban fabric of Atlanta would mean re-routing the freeway around the city, removing the hardened surface, or capping it completely and opening up a new expansive linear green space. These projects certainly exist in contemporary landscape discourse, such as the Downsview Park competition on the site of a former airport, or the Hollywood Central Park that would cap the Hollywood Freeway in Los Angeles. With these projects the focus becomes integrating a void into its surrounding context, articulating and controlling the edge conditions, while simultaneously infusing and entangling cultural programs with ecological restoration. However, while speculating about what one can do given a different budget and scope, one must confront the reality of the constraints given within the project, and ultimately frame it in a productive way. The immediate reaction, then, might be one of beautification, but the project seeks to find a deeper level of organizational response that will ultimately catalyze the adjacent neighborhoods and turn the freeway itself into an amenity: a public space experienced in motion. The qualities that can inform the character of this new public space are already embedded in the formal expression of the Connector. A perpetually lighted and activated continuous "room" that modulates views of the city by elevating or depressing the road plane is a potential backdrop for a narrative unfolding. The monotonous concrete casing of the walls and overpasses are a receptive surface for projecting instances of that narrative.
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In her book "Kissing Architecture," Sylvia Lavin conceptualizes the role of aesthetic experience of the surface in creating the state of multiplicity as the main sensation of contemporary urbanity. The state of multiplicity or interestedness, supported by a functional public realm, is greatly enhanced by entanglements of the exterior architectural surface with confounding mediums, or "kissing", as Lavin calls it. "Architecture's new confounds are not just making buildings visible but are encouraging them to make perception enter the realm of experience rather than vision, to make images that produce material impressions, to make experience that is vivid."6
The viewer must see the material of the building surface and the images simultaneously, face and facade are superimposed but desynchronized, confounding the viewer's perceptual capacity to distinguish between the material and representational strata of the facade, legibility gives way to the experience of perception itself, just as meaning as primary value converts into the production of new urban affects."7
If the surface operations can be the vehicle for achieving urban affects and the state of multiplicity, the Connector has a potential to engage the disinterested commuter on an unprecedented scale. The raw walls of the trench are the perfect site for engaging, unearthing, and projecting meanings in the application of colorfulness, luminescence, pattern, as well as through material invasiveness. As a departure from the primacy of greening, the transformative power should be granted to the artistic practices and the power of the images. In that context, even greening is treated as a surface medium that legibly expresses its alien origins in the context of the freeway- "the obscene green". It only makes sense that at the scale of the Connector, the confounding mediums want to expand beyond the individual sites to become a new programmatic entity, The Connector Museum of Art. Comprehensive and strategic integration of art, nature, and urban infrastructure under the patronage of the new museum radically expands the notion of surface application. Regardless of the medium, each generated instance of affect is a snapshot of a larger system that shocks, mends, and excites on the scale of the city.¬¬ Eventually, the momentum generated by the museum's resurfacing of the Connector corridor would carry over into some functional restructuring, densification and physical reorientation of the surrounding urban fabric towards the freeway, the first step of structural thickening in a surface-based strategy.
While image construction is central to the concept of transforming the Connector, it is also a critical tool in addressing expectations and combating limitations of the indeterminate budget and program throughout the design process. Visualization of the project is suspended between the idealized, synchronized master plan, driven by the client's desire for fixity of tangible elements, and the piecemeal indeterminancy of process matrices. Depending upon localized site attributes, collaborators, and budgets, numerous variations of design interventions can result from each matrix. Thus, the product delivered to the client in the form of a process is a pathway that charts the paradoxically uncontaminated rendering of the "vision master plan" as a single permutation of the actual vision. While decisions made through the framework of the design matrix preserve the designer's intent , there's enough flexibility built in to account for the unexpected in the implementation phase of the project. In addition to process matrices, composite layering is employed to communicate the legibility of design intent, which also supports the open-ended nature of the project. In his essay, "Eidetic Operations and New Landscapes," James Corner ascribes a higher level of landscape formation to the hybridized and composite diagram techniques: "Composite techniques focus on the instrumental function of
In this manner a core attribute of the landscape architecture profession is retained, that of change over time, even though the project presents few opportunities for extensive “greening”. Ultimately it will be up to the city and public policy to find “green” ways to offset the negative attributes of the Connector elsewhere, but focusing on the cultural and experiential aspects of the freeway produces an Atlantaspecific version of a generic globalized structure that synthesizes movement, experience, and visuality with the singularity of the city beyond infrastructural delineation. For the city itself, the edge that densifies entanglements of social, cultural and natural ecologies, could potentially resolve the dichotomies of speed and contemplation, tradition and aspirations, substance and projection, operational and non-performative landscapes.
drawing with regard to production: they are efficacious rather than representational. In other words, through utilizing a variety of analytic and analogous imaging techniques, otherwise disparate parts can be brought into productive relationship, less as parts of a visual composition,
References:
and more as means or agents." 8 1. http://www.carbonify.com/carbon-calculator.htm
The shift from a closed “design” to a flexible process through which the designer still has control over intentionality provides an appropriate counterpoint to a master plan, something that is connotatively fixed in time. With the Connector proposal, time, change and the unforeseen are built into the “product”, such that the form of the Connector evolves as the milieu that surrounds it evolves, and yet each site intervention still retains a semblance of intentionality endowed by the designer. To draw parallels to the contemporary art practice theorized by Umberto Eco in the "Open Work": Every performance explains the composition but does not exhaust
2. http://www.treesatlanta.org/HistoryOfTreesAtlanta.aspx 3. See Table 6 :http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/hep/climate/carbon_ sequestration/index.htm 4. Nina-Marie Lister, "Sustainable Large Parks: Ecological Design or Designer Ecology?", in Large Parks, eds. Julia Czerniak and George Hargraves (Princeton Architectural Press, New York, NY, 2007),35. 5. Stan Allen, "Infrastructural Urbanism" in Points + Lines: Diagrams and Projects for the City (Princeton Architectural Press, New York, NY, 1999), 55. 6. Sylvia Lavin, Kissing Architecture (Princeton University Press, Princeton, N.J., 2011), 11. 7. Ibid., 47
it. Every performance makes the work an actuality, but is itself only
8. James Corner, "Eidetic Operations and New Landscapes" in
complementary to all other possible performances of the work. In short,
Recovering Landscape: Essays in Contemporary Landscape Architecture,
we can say that every performance offers us a complete and satisfying
ed. James Corner (Princeton Architectural Press, New York, NY, 1999),
version of the work, but at the same time makes it incomplete for us,
166.
because it cannot simultaneously give all the other artistic solutions
9. Umberto Eco, The Open Work, trans. Anna Cancogni (Harvard
which the work may admit. 9
University Press, Cambridge, MA, 1989), 15.
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The Shanghai Pedestrian Promenade is a rare example in which a city chose to rezone a vehicular road into a 700-meter long pedestrian-only sanctuary. The sheer scale of the project serves as an inspiration for those who believe in the impossible - balancing the “development frenzy” (characterized by rampant disregard for a sustainable urban fabric) with public open spaces that reduce the urban heatisland effect, allow for flexible around the clock activities, and promote healthy living through outdoor exercise, stress- relieving activities and social interaction. Providing a contiguous pedestrian open space that is safe, multi-functional, sustainable, fun and exciting for all ages involved the layering and integration of 5 distinct considerations: cultural infrastructure, environmental sustainability, healthy living, interpretive nature, and inventive design. Shanghai Pedestrian Promenade has the potential to become a catalyst for the greater whole. The success of the project can inspire other developers and public agencies to see the value of such pedestrian infrastructure that benefits the public while elevating the real estate value of the entire district. Contrary to the common trend in Shanghai, in which handfuls of small pocket parks have become quickly appropriated and replaced with programs catered to the needs of private development, this project serves as a successful case study for cities undergoing rapid modernization- setting aside public open space as a counterpoint to continually increasing urban building density, and steering the future of city planning and urban restructuring into a new direction. Shanghai Pedestrian Promenade / Shanghai, China Owner/Client: Shanghai Gubei (Group) Co. LTD. No. 56 Shuicheng Road Shanghai, China 201103 SWA Office: Los Angeles SWA Project Team: Ying-Yu Hung, Gerdo Aquino, Hyun-Min Kim, Leah Broder, Kui-Chi Ma, Dawn Dyer, Yoonju Chang, Shuang Yu, Ryan Hsu, John Loomis, Jack Wu, Al Dewitt, Tom Fox (photography) Scope of work: Mixed Use, Conceptual Design, Schematic Design, Design Development, Landscape Construction Document Review, Construction Observation Site: 31.82 hectares/Landscape: 4.6 hectares Design: July 2005 ‒ 2008 Construction: February 2006 ‒ 2009
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STARTING A TREND
Shanghai pedestrian promenade
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Primordial nature is dead, at least for most of the inhabited world.
nature is dead: long live design by René Bihan
In recent months, landscape architecture has gained a good bit of attention from an ongoing debate over the notion of landscape urbanism between a vocal critic, Andrés Duany, and its promoters at Harvard University. So the design world is publicly acknowledging the increasing value of landscape architects. But step for a moment outside our design bubble and take stock in the low awareness of landscape architecture among consumers. Perhaps this is partially because of the West’s philosophical view of nature as primordial. But primordial nature is dead, at least for most of the inhabited world. Nature—as consumers imagine it to be—is a controlled environment influenced by generations of politicians, landscape architects, and planners. The average visitor to Yellowstone doesn’t recognize the role that landscape architects have played in their experience—they assume it was providential. If we seek recognition and political capital, then there is a responsibility for greater legibility in landscape design work. To secure political capital, landscape architects need to articulate clear, contemporary, and relevant design ideas.
Reprinted from Landscape Architecture Magazine (LAM) January 2011.
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Our situation is not helped by the mass retailers that supply the majority of landscape materials to consumers. Regardless of where you are in this country, I guarantee your “neighborhood” Home Depot has a full stock of boxwood, roses, and sod—even in Santa Fe, New Mexico. As a result, consumers place little value on locally native plant species and are confused about what constitutes nature. Indeed, the local Earth Day festival near my home in Reno, Nevada, is held in a rose garden. How can we expect laypersons spending the afternoon at Crissy Field in San Francisco to recognize the talent that went into imagining that space and not to assume it has been this way for eternity, especially when the only expression they relate with designed outdoor spaces originates from European designs of boxwood, roses, and sod? It’s not just the consumer model that is broken. The cultural preference for lush lawns influences public and commercial landscapes as well. We can no longer make excuses for contributing to the expansive panoramas of water-hogging landscapes. It is our responsibility to educate clients and provide artful solutions that meet their needs in ways that do no further harm to our environment. My firm, SWA Group, recently redesigned the campus for a university in a major Mexican city. After persuading the client of the appropriateness of a native planting palette and a design that incorporated the natural systems of the site, we found there were no local wholesale plant suppliers who could provide native species.
When our work is so relevant to contemporary culture, what excuse do we have for being invisible?
To be recognized among elite designers, we owe it to our profession to step above the clichés.
Last year, several ASLA award-winning projects were expertly rooted in context. Most notably, the Shanghai Houtan Park and the High Line plainly reveal themselves as products of the design elite. However, in the same Landscape Architecture issue that featured the best work among us— with all of these projects’ staggering imagery—the magazine cover depicted an ambiguous reflected hillside in a pond of water with the silly metaphor for the 2010 award winners as a “Watershed of Innovation.” To be recognized among elite designers, we owe it to our profession to step above the clichés. The residential project profiled in the same issue in “Under the Texan Sun” is skillfully crafted, but Tuscan gardens in Texas do not represent our profession’s culture of ideas. Are these the impressions we want to project to the public? Will we recruit the best and brightest design talent when our leading publication is giving off such mixed messages? Landscape urbanism proponents are making clear the opportunity for our greater role in designing urban environments. But let’s not lose sight of the opportunity we have neglected, namely, building a recognizable brand for our profession. There is a new wave of public interest in environmental responsibility, in outdoor living spaces, in community, in recreation and alternative transportation, in gardening and growing in general. We need to advocate for a greater appreciation of our natural and designed landscapes and the differences between them. We need to educate our clients and the public about the functions of natural systems and the importance of indigenous materials. We need to lobby young people to consider landscape architecture as a career path. We are all responsible for our profession’s status. When our work is so relevant to contemporary culture, what excuse do we have for being invisible?
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the re-representation of urbanism
by Gerdo Aquino
Cities have extraordinary urban densities that require both strategic and sensitive systems for resource use, transit, food production, water quality, and waste management. With over half the world’s population living in urbanized areas, cities like London, Shanghai, New York City, and Los Angeles burst at the seams with an average of 10,000 to 30,000 people per square mile1. In comparison to population densities across the United States, this number diminishes to eighty-seven people2. The difference between eighty-seven and 30,000 people per square mile has major ramifications for the quality of life and the quality of the environment.
Land use & landscape open space, XinYang Suo River Comprehensive Plan
The study of cities needs to include many points of view in order to move beyond outmoded planning diagrams that no longer describe how to improve our cities.
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Early in his career, world-renowned scientist and ecologist H.T. Odum developed theories on the carrying capacity of land—the ability of land to sustain human populations over time—and laid out quantifiable standards, still in use today, for how city planners and landscape architects design for urban growth. Los Angeles’ true carrying capacity, for instance, not including aqueducts and other imported resources, equates to 200,000 people for the entire city—roughly 1% of its current population3. With this stark discrepancy in mind, how we design and plan urban areas—now holding the majority of the world’s population—needs to be re-evaluated.
1 http://www.city-data.com/city/New-York-New-York.html, http:// www.city-data.com/city/Los-Angeles-California.html, http://www. demographia.com/db-dense-nhd.htm 2 http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/00000.html 3 Remi Nadeau,The Water Seekers. Santa Barbara. Crest Publishers. 1997. 11-15
Because many of our projects are often without precedent we rely on visual representation to communicate our ideas of a better urbanism. Words A key consideration lies in how these ideas and strategies for urbanism are communicated—verbally and graphically. Defining what urbanism means is a good start. Urbanism and its many derivatives—new urbanism (Duany), ecological urbanism (Mohstaven) everyday urbanism (Chase), and Mayne’s recent entry, combinatory urbanism—while all slightly different in focus, each share a common goal of addressing the challenges of urban densities. (Please see, for instance, 60 modifiers to urbanism.) Among these terms, of course, is landscape urbanism: an idea that landscape and urban processes are inseparable; that we must look at the landscapes in our cities and the landscapes of our cities. Purely semantics? Maybe. Conjecture? Possibly. Worth talking about? Absolutely. The study of cities needs to include many points of view in order to move beyond outmoded planning diagrams that no longer describe how to improve our cities. Despite so many variables, each of these terms argues for an ideas-rich platform for public debate, competition, and academic research in which the specificity of a particular factor can be magnified, examined, and explored in context.
Images Understanding urbanism goes beyond theory and words, however. The collective visualization of our world— through imagery and visual representation of built and unbuilt projects in our everyday environments—is even more important in influencing how we understand and think about urbanism and landscape. Due to the recent urban population explosions, we must begin to re-see our cities and systems and contextualize them within the larger landscape and its dynamics. At the same time, we are challenged to communicate our ideas in such a way that accurately represents proposals that offer adaptation and refinement to these volatile social and ecological conditions. Because many of our projects are often without precedent— building entirely new stormwater retention systems; utilizing processes of bioremediation; re-programming existing infrastructure—we rely on visual representation to communicate our ideas of a better urbanism. The ability of landscape architects to communicate a set of design intentions is critical to gaining public acceptance, client approval, and, ultimately, building new places and inserting new ideas into our existing urban fabrics. Furthermore, the issues addressed by urban designers and planners are so complex that the process of communicating ideas to the general public, city agencies, and stakeholders requires much more than a drawing. To this end, many landscape architects and planners are pulled to the rerepresentation model of visual reasoning.
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Places I want to argue, however, that there exists something more important than just words and visuals —that is, actual places. The collective images of the city and its components are created by the experience of real places in the real world. When communicating with the general public, we reference built projects and places as case studies to explain and bolster our visions. For example, when a planner presents an image of “Main Street, USA” to a community group, everyone immediately draws upon their collective memory of what that is—small scale retail shops, promenading, benches, shade trees, festive banners, intimate street lights, dogs, and vibrant sidewalk activity. An image of Main Street is the basis of many new towns built around the world in the past twenty years. Landscape architecture, however, suffers from a poor collective visual vocabulary. The absence of prevalent and progressive design precedents hinders our ability to communicate our ideals for a better urbanism to a broader audience. While it was once suitable to show an image of Central Park in New York City to communicate the program of a park, we are now in search of examples that can represent and meet the new challenges our cities are facing. Certainly, a few of these kinds of landscapes exist, but they are not as widespread as picturesque parks and gardens and, therefore, not as common to the general public for reference.
Landscape architects, planners, and urbanists need built precedents to demonstrate that a more integrated approach to landscape and urbanism is possible.
A more challenging example than “Main Street” is one that attempts to address ecological systems within the city. How does one visualize nature in the city? How does one convince the public that ecological cycles are needed in the urban context? What is the sales pitch? Are there examples for dynamic (and hidden or invisible) landscapes and ecological processes within urban life? Using associative thinking is natural to how we represent and interpret a new situation, allowing for new ideas to step forward and grow4. Yet, if new possibilities for landscape in the urban context remain unfamiliar or cognitively impenetrable, how are communities expected to endorse plans proposing integrated ecologies within busy streets and dense housing? How do we convince the public to do what has not yet been done before? The answer: build them. Educate through practice. Landscape architects, planners, and urbanists need built precedents to demonstrate that a more integrated approach to landscape and urbanism is possible. Policy and planning does not spark a collective re-imagination of our future in the way that tangible, built work does.
4 Giovanni Gavetti, The New Psychology of Strategic Leadership. Harvard Business Review. Volume 89, July-August 2011, 118-127.
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Bualo Bayou Photograph by Bill Tatham
Designers have steadily been working towards a better urbanism.
Even in the midst of a global economic downturn, designers have steadily been working towards a better urbanism, pushing forward a collection of new projects that are starting to gain public recognition. Cities like Detroit spark intense debate in the possibilities that landscape urbanism offers; the High Line and Academy of Sciences are two glamour projects that add to our collective vocabulary. Perhaps the recently built Buffalo Bayou, the Anning River master plan, or the future London post-Olympic legacy landscape afford fresh views for how people, ecology, transit, and open space can co-exist. Over the next decade, as the work communicated in words and pictures transforms into real places in the world, the public understanding of both urbanism and landscape architecture will expand, while new challenges and opportunities emerge for designers to tackle.
Reprinted from Landscape Urbanism [dot] com, September 8, 2011
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cultural urbanism studying local traditions to create socially relevant design essay and photography by Todd Meyer
Do you remember the criteria that you used when selecting the neighborhood you live in? Was it the proximity to your family or workplace? Perhaps it was access to good schools, shopping or transportation? Was part of the decision attributed to the physical appearance of the buildings, streets and open spaces? Or was it simply the best place you could afford? All of these are common and logical reasons for choosing a place to call home, and chances are it was a combination of these that led to the final selection. However, there are some other less obvious – perhaps even subconscious – factors that may also play a role in making decisions like this. Understanding some of these criteria can not only help us understand our own values better, but also contribute to our success as designers. As landscape architects and planners based in the U.S., many of us have spent decades working locally, while also travelling to different parts of the country and the world working with clients who have chosen to hire ‘out of town’ designers to help them conceptualize new communities, neighborhoods, mixed-use districts, resorts, campuses and many other environments. Whether the work is across town from our office or on the other side of the planet, we are often asked to help determine the highest and best use for the land as well as create meaningful and memorable destinations through distinctive and thoughtful design. Our clients hire use because they want the best and most innovative ideas to be incorporated into their projects. As most of us are aware - clear, understated and austere design
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is celebrated amongst our peers. However, when we are delivering these design services, how much of our work is in response to the cultural context? Are we in touch with the subtleties of the local community? Do we really understand the needs and desires of the ultimate users of the space? There are many common intersections in the work of contemporary practitioners. For example, now that sustainability is a mainstream topic, almost every organization is addressing it in one way or another - or at least trying to figure out how to change their business practices to be more efficient and remain competitive in the market. Many of our colleagues in the design professions have been referencing the ‘triple bottom line’ – creating solutions that establish great places for people to use, improving the way we interface with and respect natural systems as well as maintaining healthy economic conditions – i.e. ‘people, planet + profit’. While it is relatively easy to focus on one of these three aspects in our work, it is far more difficult to simultaneously achieve a balance of all three. There is no question that we must continue to focus on what is attractive, as well as what is best for the planet and making a profit in our work. However, we should also not forget what elements are best for the people that will ultimately use the spaces we design. That is one way that we can help to sustain vibrant communities – it is the social interaction that promotes strong community participation and in turn a common goal to preserve the local assets and improve the deficits. Many times the social, cultural or ‘people’ part of the equation is where the planning and landscape architecture
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profession falls short. For example, think of all the new residential development in the suburban U.S., or in Asia where displaced villagers have been relocated into antiseptic neighborhoods with high-rise towers and no real or authentic street life. In contrast, while the design of Bryant Park in Manhattan is traditional and fairly simple – i.e. a turf panel surrounded by mature London Plane trees (planted in 1934), the abundance of people casually sitting together and the numerous programmed events have transformed it from an undesirable place that drug dealers used to loiter in, and made it one of the hottest outdoor urban spaces in the city in terms of recreation, entertainment and social interaction. With the pace of globalization and construction at a frenetic pace in developing countries, we can expect that our clients here at home and abroad will want to maximize the density of the land and ultimately their profits, particularly in the case of private developers. This makes it even more important for us to all continue to work hard to create high-quality open spaces. Providing modern and contemporary solutions for these spaces is usually as much about art and image as it is about functionality. While historic and cultural references are sometimes used as the basis and rationale of our proposed design concepts, at times we often miss an important component – creating places that genuinely respond to the people who will actually use the spaces in the manner in which they are accustomed to interacting with each other. We can create beautiful and memorable spaces that are within budget and accommodate the needs of the people that use them. Historically, landscape architects have often been asked to propose ideas to make places accessible, enjoyable, educational and aesthetically pleasing. In recent years, an important focus of many of our projects has also been to authenticate the ‘science’ of our practice – not only designing pleasant spaces that look attractive, but also
enhancing and measuring their ecological performance. This move toward landscape infrastructure has been important in terms of providing more environmentally sustainable landscapes, minimizing hazards, and educating the public in some ways in which we can all be better stewards of the planet. We also often work in collaboration with progressive engineers and scientists to help us make sure that our proposed design solutions will function as best as they can in the context of the local ecology. After many decades of ignoring ecological functions by filling in wetlands, channelizing streams and rivers, paving open spaces and degrading topography, it is imperative that we continue to include a more sensitive approach in the design process. The ultimate goal is to have the site function ecologically as well (or better) in its post-development state as it did in the natural or pre-development condition, although it will appear differently of course. Highlighting landscape performance as an integral part of our work will produce better design and implementation, and there is much work to be done to retrofit our urban environments to increase their ecological functions, reduce maintenance costs and make more enjoyable places for people. In addition to designing what is appropriate to help create a profit and what is best for the planet, how are we incorporating the elements that are best for people? How do we work to create environments that encourage social interaction? Are we creating places that respect the cultural traditions and are unique because of the history of the place? Once we have created and implemented these spaces, what metrics do we have to evaluate if they are successful from a social and cultural point of view? We can elevate our design work by engaging with experts such as historians, anthropologists, researchers and local residents who can help us to understand the full picture of the place we are designing. This can also help us to more fully consider the opportunities and constraints of the site. This part of our practice is subjective and difficult to quantify, but most people intuitively pick up on these subtle differences. If you asked a random selection of people if they value art and design, most would say that they do. The same would be true for our natural and constructed landscapes. There is inherent value in these components of the physical world. However, we should also remember that beyond function and recreation, it is social interaction that tends to
highly motivate most people’s daily choices. It’s the desire to connect with people we like and enjoy spending time with. It’s being with people who understand your point of view and those you might debate ideas with. It’s the people you trust and the ones you have fun with. As different as customs and traditions are from region to region and from country to country, similarities do exist among different cultures. Most people enjoy spending time with other people – whether with family, old friends or new, young or old. This gravitation of friends and family of all ages choosing to gather together in outdoor spaces suggests a reprieve from the daily home and work routine. In my travels, I have witnessed that a significant amount of social interaction in urban areas happens between the street and the building. These are the sidewalks, plazas and other areas that belong to everyone - and where people gather for all sorts of reasons. But beyond the facilities and activities that surround these spaces, how does the design of these places affect their success? Many of us are familiar with the work of the nonprofit organization ‘Project for Public Spaces’. Best known for their “Placemaking” approach, their work builds on the study of William Whyte, author of The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces 1, published in 1980. Whyte studied a series of urban spaces in New York city and discussed why some of them are successful and why others are not. The research that PPS does today includes recommendations and action items for components of successful public spaces that ultimately seek to improve communities by fostering more social interaction. In April, 2007, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, based in the city of York in the UK, published research on social interaction2 in public spaces. The research involved 200 1 Whyte, William. The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces, (Project for Public Spaces), 1980. 2 Caroline Holland, Andrew Clark, Jeanne Katz and Sheila M. Peace. Social interactions in urban public places, (Foundation by The Policy Press), 23 April 2007.
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hours of observation conducted over a year (October 2004 – September 2005), included 28 interviews with local stakeholders, and 179 street surveys / interviews with people using the spaces. The conclusions of the study included the following: 1. Many people were deterred by the stark newness of 'cleaned up' spaces devoid of features and activity, and these spaces drew in 'alternative' uses to those intended; 2. Sterile and over-regulated environments may help people of all ages to feel secure, but are not the most conducive to urban vibrancy and integration; 3. Everyday good management, for example attention to seating, lighting, and accessibility, made a large difference to the usability of space; 4. Providing entertainment and attractions, such as street musicians, market stalls, or something 'different' to look at, brought them to life; 5. The vitality of the urban scene requires some degree of human unpredictability. Indeed it is often the offer of chaos, chance, or coincidence that makes many want to celebrate the potential of public space. So, how do we plan and design places that promote cultural identity as well as foster more frequent and higher quality social interaction? First, we need to celebrate our regional differences and emphasize the characteristics of the local environments in which we work. In the same way we would not propose a similar design solution in Santa Fe as we would in downtown LA, we should not assume that people are the same everywhere, or like to use the public realm in the same way. Some of these choices are driven by climate, but we also need to pay attention to the habits of how people walk, sit, rest and interact in the various places we practice. Examples include the heavy use of transit in San Francisco, the grand lake-front park in Chicago, the urban plazas in New York, the bicycle culture in Amsterdam, the sidewalk cafes in Paris, the public markets in Istanbul and the street vendors in Shanghai.
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In the same way that product designers look in-depth at the target market they are designing for, we too should research these aspects of our user group in detail. Second, we should learn as much as possible in the communities in which we work. We can do this by taking more time to become as familiar as possible with the history and the physical characteristics of the sites we are designing. Doing as much research as we are able to will provide a good foundation. In the same way that product designers look in-depth at the target market they are designing for, we too should research these aspects of our ‘user group’ in detail. This is similar to the work that Apple has done to really consider what people want and need as the basis of the design of their devices. At IDEO, there are people that only study the ‘Human Factor’ in order to discover needs, behaviors, and desires of potential users, and use that insight to help designers conceive products, services, spaces, and interactive experiences. Along with research, we should also spend as much time as we can in the community that surrounds the site to get to know it in as personal a way as we can. Careful observation is one way to learn, but also by speaking to the people that live there and understanding what their daily routines are as well as their aspirations for the future. What do they enjoy about their neighborhood? How do they like to use the existing public spaces? What’s missing or could be improved? In the U.S., we generally have some sort of public engagement process. However, while this can bring to light certain issues, the participants may not be able to fully articulate the essence of how a new place will be used. Whether it is in the U.S. or abroad, directly engaging stakeholders and residents to carefully listen is one of the best ways to learn what the important considerations are. Finally, we should work with other professionals and local partners. We should think of ourselves as only half of the equation – we bring global experience, a strong point of view about the proposed design, and fresh ideas to the process. Our clients are one source of information and usually have clear opinions about how they would like to see a project evolve. However, we may want to engage some additional partners who can bring certain historical and cultural aspects of a site to light that we may not have the time to find, or may not know to look for. For example, I recently spent some time with a friend from Germany named Uta
Berkmayer. Based in San Luis Obispo, California, she has a very interesting consulting practice that includes work in Asia, Europe and North America. The focus of her company, ‘Xsense’, is to connect designers and owners to the authentic roots of a place. By doing this, she dives deeper than we normally do (or have time for), and helps to provide a more informed design concepts that translate to more provocative and transformative experiences in the built environment. For more information, visit the Xsense web site here: http://xsenseauthenticplaces.com/ Local partners are the other part of the equation. We will never know as much about the place as they do, unless we have lived there as long as they have. These resources could include people that live on or near the project site, or whose family lived on the land previously. It could be the facilities director at a corporation or university who understands how people use the campus. It might also be a librarian or history teacher in the local school. It can also be local architects and engineers who are more familiar with the place than we are. These local partners can help us understand more than just zoning and building codes, materials or methods of implementation. They can educate us as to the culture, traditions and unique peculiarities that make our regional differences interesting. We should be humble enough to listen to what they have to say and consider these characteristics in our work. Next time you are in the market for a new apartment or home, sitting down at the drawing board, or even when you choose a place to eat lunch, consider what is important to you in terms of the people you interact with as you make your choice. We all think about money daily in the form of our personal finances, project budgets and the economy. Most of us consider the environmental impact of our daily choice of transportation, energy, food, water, etc. We should also take the time to think about how we are creating spaces that draw people together and encourage them to stay in places longer in order to interact with other people, either familiar or new acquaintances.
We might be surprised to find that small, compact spaces like the miles and miles of sidewalk between the street and the building in every city - are sometimes the most interesting and engaging. Think of the bike messengers that hang out at Sutter and Market Streets in San Francisco. The people strolling on Third Street in Santa Monica. Having a beer on 17th Street in Denver. Shopping on north Michigan Avenue in Chicago. Riding a bike down S. Broad street in Philadelphia. Having dinner in a sidewalk café in Boston. These North American examples are different from each other, as well as from the way that people might enjoy a waterfront park in Istanbul, dine in a café in Paris or play Mahjong in Shenzhen. In the same way, perhaps we can all work smarter in order to create high-quality urban open space environments that are unique and seek to maximize opportunities for social interaction of people of all ages and races - toward a more cultural urbanism…
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uncharted territories: design, cities and landscape ideas and theories of landscape urbanism by Sarah Peck and Eliza Shaw Valk
What is landscape architecture? What is landscape urbanism? What do we envision̶we, who design in cities, who create landscapes, and who imagine the possibilities and potential of future urban environments? What do you want to see and do̶you, who create work and live in cities and the surrounding regions? What are our goals and objectives, and do they cohere, conflict, or cohabitate? Landscape architects—designers, urbanists—are never involved in simple projects that fall neatly between property lines; that deal with one type of paving or planting or material. When people ask—confused—if I do the shrubbery in little tiny spaces around buildings, I take them on a walk and point out the nuances of the world we live in; the guides and codes that make steps a particular height and curbs a particular width; and I explain, pointing back and forth across the street, that we do everything between the buildings… and I watch their eyes take it all in for a moment, look up and down the city streets.
I go on: it’s not just the space between the buildings. We are involved in deciding where the buildings go, in the density and configuration of space, of the arrangement of physical components in our landscape environment. I can see their minds map backwards to a time when they played with trains and blocks, arranging houses and cities and buildings as young children; they look around, again, and see the world as a series of buildings that aren’t permanent, but that can change over time. If landscape architecture is the construction of built, outdoor spaces and places, landscape urbanism is the construction of cities and all of the urban and landscape arenas within it. It’s the intersection and overlapping of design with policy and planning in a collaborative effort to make better urban environments, particularly after too many decades of separation and distinction between disciplines. The mapping of more than 60 adjectives onto the word “urbanism” (think: ecological urbanism, landscape urbanism, new urbanism, etc)—tells us that the simple ‘urbanism,’ doesn’t quite suffice. We need alternatives. Yet the definitions and ideas of landscape urbanism have created confusion as quickly as they are gaining ground. Are landscape urbanists intentionally avoiding concrete answers, side-stepping specifications and detailing because we cannot articulate or formulate our visions from broad regional plans to the grained materiality of a specific site? Are we charismatic chimeras who spin tales and pretty pictures that evaporate as we slip away at the first sign of hammers and nails, contracts and bluebooks?
photography by Sarah Peck
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We believe that we are trying to do something different. We are in uncharted territory because we are spinning new narratives. We are taking on new responsibilities, and we are approaching challenges with faceted lenses, recognizing and incorporating—with sense and sensibilities—the vast variety of interests, concerns, investments, and collisions that are the landscape of cities. Beyond the beautiful and place-making goals of landscape design, we look at the ecological, environmental, and economic considerations. Cities are built on land. Land that lives, breathes, flows, changes, shakes, drips—it’s full of process. And we’ve seen that some of our current systems of designing cities are overtaxed: massive flooding along the Mississippi River; infrastructure failures across America; excessive commuting; vacancies and economic declines in cities like Detroit—these are just a few of the examples of ways in which cities need new visioning, understanding and design. We live in a complex society and world with complex situations—and unfortunately, there are not predetermined answers for how to live, or how to answer problems and challenges within the larger environment or our cities. We’re still figuring it out. There are many answers and outcomes for what are intricate urban issues. Landscape architecture and landscape urbanism are not prescriptive tools. We don’t answer design problems by suggesting “if this, then that.” The scenarios that can happen in any one place at any one time are numerous. The approach of landscape urbanism accepts this unknown, this ambiguity, while still making decisions—while still being able to act. As Martha Schwartz mentioned at the ASLA National Convention in the keynote presentation this year, cities are never finished: “Cities aren’t done. We are always building, expanding, and re-creating them. We take stuff down and we put better things in their place.” As long as we have cities, we’ll be working to create them. Laurie
bottom photograph by Tom Fox
Olin described landscape architects as change agents who deal with the form and physicality of a problem. Behind each complex cultural movement, political issue, and philanthropic inspiration, there needs to be a resolution of an idea in a space and place that lends itself to executing these ideas. The toolkit of a landscape designer—that of representation, of communication, of engineering, and of facility with interlaced infrastructural and ecological systems—gives us a way to work on projects that seem far beyond the work of a traditional landscape architect. We build websites, publish journals, write stories, host meetings, and present our ideas in broad forums. We build new infrastructures, engineer constructed wetlands, design ecosystems, and augment city metabolisms. Each project expands our scope of work into new, uncharted territories; into innovative thinking, towards continuously improving our ideas. But the ultimate goal—beyond facilitating understanding, cultivating conversation, expanding our horizons? Really, we’re trying to create great places. Great cities. Each person in this field is doing something to create places that last beyond our human lifetimes. And it is with this drive, this curiosity, this need to create, and re-create that we ask, what’s next? How can we carve out new territories? What can we do next?
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mainland quality meaning and endurance in China s contemporary landscape a fellowship overview by Scott Melbourne
It s a love/hate thing. With blistering growth and an insatiable appetite for outside expertise, designers continue to be rewarded with projects of remarkable breadth and scale in Mainland China. These same conditions that open up such opportunities also set the stage for disappointment, with low-quality implementation too often not meeting the designers’ original vision or standards. Research explorations regarding the potential and pitfalls of engagement with this rapidly developing region are being compiled as a short documentary set for release Winter 2011.
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measure for measure a look at post-occupancy research as a learning tool by Chris Hardy
`Was I any better?' I tried to prove to him that he was `tall,' as well as long and broad, although he did not know it. But what was his reply? `You say I am "tall"; measure my tallness" and I will believe you.' What could I do? How could I meet his challenge? I was crushed; and he left the room triumphant. (From Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions, Edwin A. Abbott)
What if we could prove a design works – not just from a constructible or case study basis – but from a long term performance perspective? We learn continuously from projects, which detail is beautiful, which plants thrive in particular habitats, even strategies for managing clients and subconsultants. But typically, the design profession as a whole does not systematically measure post-occupancy success. With this knowledge, designers could generate knowledge that builds on successful elements and strategies. Designers could also add a new depth to marketing that shows potential clients the quantifiable results of particular precedent projects. This could remove uncertainty from clients’ decisions to award projects. More importantly, the elements of design could be continuously improved, creating ever greater places and communities.
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How do we measure success in design? In Flatland, Edwin Abbott writes from the perspective of a square, who exists in a 2 dimensional universe. One day he is lifted above into the realm of cubes and spheres, and looks down on his geometric brethren below. When he returns, he tries to enlighten his people about depth, and yet cannot measure this extra dimension. There are a host of challenges to measure the social functionality, habitat benefit, or public perception of aesthetics of a design. There is also the necessary fourth dimension to these metrics charting the success of places over time. Other challenges include prioritization of variables, data collection methods, and most importantly, cost. The benefit of metrics has huge potential for design firms, just as they have for other professions. There is a great cost in time and money for private enterprise to collect performance metrics – and yet many businesses do so. Manufacturing and industry have kept score of production since the inception of the modern factory; medicine has used empirical observation to influence treatment since classical Greece; businesses and economists have relied predominately on metrics since the concept of profit was grunted in a cave. There is a strong undercurrent in history that supports taking on the extra burden of quantification to increase competitiveness, discovery, innovation, and the simple ability to build on success. Today, the design professions are in the full grip of metricmania. There are passionate proponents and opponents for data collection and analysis. The roots of today’s metrics in landscape architecture are in William Whyte’s assessments of usage in 1969, and Karl-Henrik Robèrt’s first attempt to define and measure sustainability in 1989. Whyte’s work among others led cities to develop form-based codes and public space requirements that had been previously left to the discretion of designers and developers. The impacts of these rules on design are far reaching, both in terms of benefits and difficulties, and are continually evolving as their effectiveness or popularity is evaluated. Robèrt’s work
What is surprising about this history is how relatively new this movement is.
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This is still the time when the profession should be critical of metrics and where assessment is headed ‒ there are problems still unresolved, benefits still not actualized.
led in direct succession to William McDonough’s Hanover Principles, and eventually to the United States Green Building Council (USGBC) and Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED). What is surprising about this history is how relatively new this movement is. Architecture and landscape architecture have been around for centuries – and yet assessment (other than aesthetic critique, structural or material) is only 40 years old as a concept – and little over a decade old as formal program. This is still the time when the profession should be critical of metrics and where assessment is headed – there are problems still unresolved, benefits still not actualized. This is an exciting time to reflect on how we work as landscape architects, and ask what more can we do. Scientific inquiry is not new to landscape architecture. Designs of landscape architects have built on the cutting edge of scientific knowledge since the inception of the profession. Fredrick Law Olmsted used the latest technology to control the hydrology of ponds in Central Park; William Hall used the recently articulated theory of plant succession to stabilize the dunes of Golden Gate Park. These places were the greatest land-use experiments of their time, and were left to the caretakers for ongoing maintenance and operations. Any data collected from this period (from both firms and conservancies) was often heavy in the front end, quantifying the material and costs of the projects, and light on the post construction – often focusing on numbers of visitors and maintenance and operations. Meanwhile, the designers had to move quickly from project to project, engaged in the constant act of creation which was the definition of this new profession, without the time or money for a period of analysis and reflection. Design was, and is, about continuous innovation. The problem with this model of a youthful profession was the lack of institutional
knowledge. The only failures they were able to learn from were fast and catastrophic, the only strengths they knew to build on were based on personal informal observation. The success of each of these projects was largely unstudied until later by observers looking back at history. Today the profession has matured, diversified, and developed its own theory and research. The Sustainable Sites Initiative is the first formal program to attempt to comprehensively assess landscape design in a unified manner. While still in the evaluation period, Sites has compiled a huge amount of information across the many disciplines to determine what it means to design a landscape for sustainability. LEED for Neighborhood Development ( LEED ND), just approved in 2009, is the first LEED product to address efficiency in Urban Design. Not only do these certifications involve standards, but also provide some incentive for monitoring performance. But certifications are not enough. Certifications are not post-occupancy evaluation. They are guidelines that have been developed based on a combination of post-occupancy evaluation and research borrowed from relevant disciplines. These certifications have collected a body of knowledge based on metrics, and test how well a particular design meets their criteria. So what are we as designers to do? Simple empirical data and analysis can forward the profession, but at a cost, and rules can also constrain creativity. The fashion of marketing design services through metrics has turned into a movement, while the most progressive and competitive strategy for private practice has yet to be identified. Each designer wants to create sustainable, regenerative, and important places, and to have honest confidence in our work we need to evaluate it afterwards. This is not a call for an in house version of LEED or Sites, rather an extension of a discussion on formulating a coherent private practice stance on metrics in the landscape. Currently this issue is
Should there be a mandate to seek out opportunities to collect data and learn from built work, and can this be done without adding prohibitive cost?
resolved project by project – taking opportunities where they arise; but should there be a company-wide mandate to seek out opportunities to collect data and learn from built work, and can this be done without adding prohibitive cost? There is no clear solution, but many possibilities could be explored. For example, a methodology for project kickoff could include contacting local extension services or governing bodies to see if they have an interest in collecting post-occupancy data, perhaps at little to no actual cost. Perhaps there could be a way to sell clients on the potential benefits for them if they added post-occupancy evaluation and analysis into a post construction administration phase in a project’s contract. Maybe there is a university partnership that can mentor volunteer student teams in a project assessment and evaluation program. Or simply, perhaps a standard project hand-off strategy could be developed and documented to create a basis for future communication with the operators of the new landscape. This discussion is ongoing, both for our firm and the profession at large. SWA already has massive information resources that most firms do not have the benefit of; postoccupancy assessment could potentially be another layer to our current system. Let’s keep talking, and perhaps we can find a comprehensive strategy that will once more set once more set SWA apart.
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No Place Place: an indication of the found, a location No: an expression of dissent or denial, a void
No Place: Void Location
design utopia by Liz Lagedrost
I think it was my second year in graduate school, while roaming the aisles of the library looking for inspiration, that I happened upon the book Exit Utopia 1. The metallic silver cover and bright orange letters would have been enough for me to pull it out, however it was the words which were of particular interest. Exit, Utopia, implying the departure of an idyllic fantasy, in favor of, or leaving behind what? My mind leapt (almost immediately) to a current obsession with forgotten abandoned spaces and derelict landscapes– perhaps the places remaining when utopia takes stage left. I checked the book out, with no intent on actually reading its contents, but rather with new found enthusiasm for defining the landscapes of my own fantasy. At the time I was working through my thesis research and struggling to conceptualize what I was defining as the “anti-heroic landscape”. Today, some two years later, I am still working on my contribution to the discourse, and I find myself returning to the ideas of utopia. It’s worth noting that the word actually translates to mean “no place” or “no where” 2, hardly the same associations made with the generally accepted meaning, “good place”. In an apparent contradiction, the applied idealism of utopia is more accurately defined as, a place of nothing.
1
Information obtained from a 2009 lecture at the Knowlton School of
Architecture entitled Claim Jumping presented by John McMorrough
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“Sol LeWitt, American conceptual artist, believes in superiority of idea over object. In 1987, he sold an intangible concept [an idea for an artwork that doesn’t actually exist] at auction – for the concrete sum of $26,400. Legal ownership was indicated by a typed certificate, which specified that the artwork [10,000 lines about 10 inches long, covering the wall evenly] should be executed in black pencil. The owner has the right to reproduce this piece as many times as he likes. If you reproduce it you’d only have a fake – despite the fact that LeWitt would not have picked up his brush in either case.” 3 The superiority of idea over object. Is this design utopia? If the idea supersedes the place, then a landscape of no place is dependant only on the idea; and without, the place is lost and becomes void. If we momentarily return to the meaning of utopia as “good place”, there is an innate desire for designers to aspire to this notion. There is of course an irony found in the miss-representation of the word. And in this attempt towards the ideal of perceived utopia, the designer often seems to merely overlay the original site (conceptually in need of change, a “no place”) with a designed “no place” There occurs a transformation of site, but simultaneously a loss of authenticity. The void is covered up with a more aesthetic one. The idea is lost (or never existed) and we are left with only the object.
Exit Utopia Architectural Provocations, 1956-76 Schaik, Martin Van
and Macel, Otakar (editor). Prestel Publishing, 2005 2
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3
The Art of Looking Sideways, Fletcher, Alan. Phaidon Press, 2001
image courtesy of flickr.com
A few years ago, this observation was not as evident. The experience of site was more reliant on physical visitation and thus a personal sense of authenticity was established through the experiential. Today, as we shift continually into a more digital and virtual world, our experience of place is reliant on the re-presentation of the landscape through the devices of satellites, live camera feeds, and iphones. I can “fly over” the Grand Canyon or take a tour of the Louvre from google earth. Thus the framing of place through representation must not only convey the idea but the authenticity of place, which without, leaves the design with nothing: no place. Let’s take the High Line for example; the widely popular design transformed an abandoned railway in New York into a recreational amenity and tourist destination. There is no doubt that the project has helped to revitalize and re-envision that portion of the city, while also providing a model for the reuse of infrastructure. And yet the problem lies in a loss of authenticity which is heightened through representation. The first image shows the High Line prior to its re-conceptualization. The image is almost haunting, evoking what might be termed an apocalyptic fantasy or a modern day sublime. The second image shows the High Line today, and while the image seems nice enough, the feeling is lost...there is no longer a sense of authenticity, for this park could belong anywhere.
image courtesy of flickr.com
This is not to suggest that we shouldn’t redesign places or presume that feeling is enough to justify a landscape. But perhaps the solution to the loss of authenticity lies in the anti-heroic landscape. Literature’s anti-hero is morally complex but who’s identity is clear. He/She is not the hero but we find ourselves drawn to their character and rooting for their survival. Such is the landscape of the anti-hero; the character may not be “beautiful” or “pure” but there lies an embedded authenticity and a desire for its preservation. I began defining the anti-heroic landscape as those places abandoned and forgotten, but it is perhaps more encompassing– those landscapes in conflict, in which the idea embodies an authenticity of place that is able to transcend the void. Design Utopia. And now the research really begins.
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The Mississippi floodplain after the floods, May 4, 2011.
The floodplain on April 29, 2011.
The floodplain last year, on April 29, 2010. NASA images courtesy MODIS Rapid Response Team, Goddard Space Flight Center.
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To the river, this spring s flood was not a remarkable event; it is simply part of the river s natural lifecycle.
the high costs of straight-jacketing a river by Kevin Shanley
While the Mississippi River was flooding this spring and as the news coverage heated up, I tried to match the satellite before-and-after images to all the hyperbole I saw on TV. It quickly became clear to me that there is a mismatch in what people are experiencing as individuals and what the river is experiencing. Take a look at the satellite images. Observe the channels the river has carved back and forth on its natural floodplain. And remember that the flooding today is well within the limits of the river’s historical bounds. To the river, this spring’s flood was not a remarkable event; it is simply part of the river’s natural lifecycle. Yes, this season’s high levels of runoff have been impacted by all our tinkering with the river’s basin through the years, but it has become clear, to everyone who cares to look, that in our diligence to change the contours of the river, we have cut it off from the floodplain that it needs to spread its copious waters.
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Our historic approach for developing the river’s floodplain has been defined by short term goals. We’ve built levees so we can farm its rich fertile soils; but these levees now prevent the river from replenishing that very fertility. We moan about the farmers’ losses without considering the decades of gain the farmers have received from the fertile soil. We’ve built small communities and large cities in this same floodplain because the river provided an important transportation corridor, yet we aren’t willing to spend the money to relocate or harden critical infrastructure. Even those unaware of the science of fluvial geomorphology know, intuitively, that rivers flood over their banks on a regular basis. So why does this well-documented, regularlyexperienced event catch us by surprise every time? Each spring the river will rise and wants to claim the floodplain that has been its own for millennia. This floodplain was, in fact, created and shaped by the river itself. This spring, once again, we witnessed a failure of public policy which has lead to crowding and constraining the river at enormous cost and through great effort. With memories of the recent floods, and for public policy to be effective, it’s time to look beyond the short-term needs of a community and to evaluate options that are going to be sustainable over the long haul. Generally, our land-use policies do not acknowledge the room the river needs to store its water in its floodplain. We seem blind to the vast sums that will be needed to keep the river from claiming what –over the long run–it will take back. Rather than recognizing the extreme costs that straight-jacketing the river imposes on our environment as well as on our economy, our public policy demands the ongoing expenditure of billions of dollars to maintain the status quo of farms, communities and cities deep in the river’s floodplain, behind walls that are clearly inadequate to protect us against rising waters.
We moan about the farmers losses without considering the decades of gain the farmers have received from the fertile soil.
The economic value of large cities in low lying floodplains may justify the large costs of flood walls and pump systems. Certainly the dynamiting of a levee to save Cairo, Illinois, and the opening of the Morganza Spillway to save Baton Rouge and New Orleans should be seen as just the beginning of what needs to be a regular system that allows the river to reconnect with its floodplains. Every agricultural levee should have gates to allow regular flows out onto the floodplains. Why, we must ask ourselves, do we maintain a policy of sluicing all that valuable silt and topsoil out to the Gulf of Mexico and over the edge of the continental shelf? Why are we not permanently removing a substantial percentage of the river levees and finding ways to creatively work with the river’s hydrologic cycles instead of fighting them? Yes, there will be years when there is high water and crops will be impacted by it. But let’s also understand that these periodic floods are the river’s way of replenishing the floodplains – and the fertility of the farmland. When working with our rivers, let’s remember that what is a long haul for us is just a blink of the eye for the river. Reprinted from MetropolisMag.com, Point of View September 8, 2011
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COASTAL ROULETTE planning resilient shoreline communities in Galveston Bay Coastal communities worldwide are playing a dangerous game. Experiencing severe coastal storms has always been part of living near the sea; however, current planning models are putting residents in positions equivalent to placing their heads in the sand. A recent proposal by a multidisciplinary research partnership proposes new land uses, innovative protection systems and creative ways of thinking about the coast that can reconnect us to the natural flows of these iconic landscapes and provide new opportunities for coastal development and habitation.
Coastal Resilience Planning / Galveston Bay, TX Owner/Client: SSPEED Center, Rice University (Severe Storm Prediction, Education and Evacuation from Natural Disasters) SWA OďŹƒce: Houston SWA Project Team: Kevin Shanley, Matt Baumgarten, Alex Lahti Additional Consultants: Louisiana State University, Rice University, Texas A&M Galveston, Texas A&M Sea Grant, Texas Southern University, University of Houston, University of Texas-Austin Scope of work: Regional Planning Site: Galveston Bay, TX and surrounding coastal areas Design (phase 1): July 1, 2009 Design (phase 2): July 1, 2011
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Prelude On September 13, 2008 Hurricane Ike struck the upper Texas coast, wreaking havoc on infrastructure and washing away entire communities. Yet the storm still narrowly missed the modeled “worst case scenario,” where storm waters would track up the densely populated west shore of Galveston Bay and into the heavily industrialized Houston Ship Channel. Labeled only as a category two storm by wind speed, Ike surpassed all inundation damage predictions for its designation and changed the lives of millions of people. This one event, in a region populated by 6.5 million residents and frequented by hurricanes, sparked a sorely needed reassessment of historic storm preparedness and called for new approaches to effectively and sustainably protect and develop our modern coastlines.
Without warning the Galveston storm of 1900 washed the city away in the dark of night.
As part of a multi-disciplinary team, funded by the Houston Endowment, SWA Group aims to reduce storm damage along Galveston Bay by establishing a system of land-based structural and non-structural solutions.
Left at risk Worldwide, 634 million people live at an elevation of 30 feet or less above sea level. This elevation is known for being highly susceptible to damaging flooding caused by severe storms and two thirds of the world’s largest cities fall within this danger zone. The risk is only amplified as urbanization increases across the globe and populations seek the waterfront ideal, neglecting the underlying dangers. When seas inevitably revolt, death tolls rise and generations of culture vanish. Toxic industries seep into valuable estuaries, economies collapse, and social services quickly become obsolete. Post storm, we are left piecing together a puzzle that no longer fits. Historically, the threat of severe storms and inundation has been mitigated through intensive structural solutions – single-purpose engineered barriers designed to protect against inadequately modeled storms. With each engineering feat taking physical form, the public develops an attitude of complacency and invincibility against nature. A condition the team referrers to as the “moral hazard”. This was certainly the case on Galveston Island. Few structures were built to withstand hurricane surge. Regulations have not changed.
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Proposed structural solutions around Galveston Island protect existing cultural and economic assets and position the city as a gateway to an extensive coastal preserve.
After the devastating storm of 1900, residents constructed a 10 mile long seawall and elevated large swaths of the island by as much 10 feet. However, this show of human force proved ineffective when Hurricane Ike’s floodwaters simply rose behind the island and rushed into the unprotected city. As might be expected shortly after the storm, a proposal for a much longer, 100 mile long dike surfaced. Spanning across the entire length of Galveston Island and the Bolivar Peninsula, it garnered intense media attention and some political traction. Its infrastructural simplicity ignored financial and environmental costs providing only a tenuous defense against unpredictable regional hurricanes. Debate for alternatives became valid and essential.
Houston/Galveston Model: A land-based approach In consideration of storm surge protection, land-based protection strategies equally consider structural and nonstructural components as part of a layered network of coastal protection systems. Structural components utilize constructed levees, walls, barriers and gates to block floodwaters. Non-structural components rely on existing and restored ecosystems to absorb flooding, regulation to discourage development in high risk areas and economic tools for long-term sustainability. This layered approach protects people and preserves ecosystems.
With each engineering feat taking physical form, the public develops an attitude of complacency and invincibility against nature, a moral hazard .
Sustainable economies Low elevation areas at greatest risk from storm surge should not be developed for housing; instead, using the land for value-added farming and ranching or carbon sequestration would be the best way to take advantage of regions the USDA designates as prime farmlands. Rehabilitated wetlands act as sponges for severe inundation events while they provide new opportunities for economic development in the form of ecotourism and recreation. Galveston Bay is one of the most diverse ecological systems along the US coast. A precedent analysis of successful coastal parks and preserves along the U.S. coast quantifies the recreational and economic opportunities of preserves that can be adapted to Galveston Bay. Currently, outdoor recreation alone accounts for 289 billion dollars in the US economy. Maps that identify lands available for protection have sparked an effort to establish a National Recreation Area (NRA). The collaborative management structure of NRAs ensures that existing communities will be involved in its development and can profit from its formation.
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An unfortunate outgrowth of China s rapid urbanization has been the large scale loss of its natural systems and cultural heritage. These systems served as a buffer against disaster; the flooding of entire regions and the destruction of property, lives, and a way of life. A new model of city making is necessary, weaving man-made and natural systems into one. Living on the Water The channeling and consolidation of river systems throughout Southern China has destroyed both nature and local culture. Throughout its history, the Shunde region has been widely known as a water-based society, one where daily life revolved around the water’s edge. Transportation, food, and daily gossip originated along the canals. Families congregated and socialized under the cool shade and broad welcoming branches of the village ficus trees. The loss of these canals led to the loss of much more. Thus, the restoration of both natural and cultural systems has become the central objective of Shunde’s new city design. What was once a healthy delta with countless braided river ecologies has been constrained into a 3 channelized river system. The Shunde City government issued a staged competition to design a 72 square-kilometer new city; expanding upon the old one, growing the local economy, and helping to alleviate recurrent flooding through the creation of a new reservoir. SWA took this challenge one step further creating a proposal unlike any other in the competition. Our idea is to put the delta back – restoring 72-square kilometers of constructed wetlands as the armature for a multimodal city and restore bird and wildlife habitat for the larger Pearl River Delta, while simultaneously expanding flood storage Shunde New City / Shunde, China Owner/Client: Shunde Planning Bureau SWA Office: Laguna Beach SWA Project Team: Sean O Malley, Xiao Zheng, Scott Melbourne Additional Consultants: Gamble Associates; Guangzhou Scenery Urban Design Ltd. Scope of work: conceptual master plan, waterfront park landscape concept plan Project size: 72 sq.km May 2009 ‒ December 2010
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capacity and a lost water-based culture. The plan develops individual islands as pedestrian scaled mixed-use villages that are linked by a proposed environmental infrastructure of greenbelts, water corridors, rail, trials and a multilayered transportation system.
In addition, increased edge conditions and accompanying wetland areas increase opportunity for habitat. The Pearl River Delta is home to the second largest bird migratory route in China, though much of their habitat has been lost. The plan proposes large areas of wetland revegetation and protected river islands as a resting place for migratory birds.
The Architecture of Nature Water-based Approach From ecological processes we learn that maximizing edge surface area increases the opportunity for the exchange of nutrients; for example in healthy wetlands, edges increase the transfer of oxygen. However, in China, the channelization of the delta has reduced edge surface conditions; in turn reducing the health and habitat potential of its rivers. The opportunity exists to exploit these correlations between edge intensity and water-not only ecologically, but economically as well. Thus, a braided system of finegrained waterways is proposed to increase filtering capacity and reconnect the new planned City of Shunde to the river network. Through the increased water edge condition, more opportunities are developed for the citizens of Shunde to walk, work, and recreate along the river edges. Real estate values increase by weaving residential and office development into the same braided system that benefits the river ecologically. Improved land values in turn attract creative industry and an educated workforce.
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Shunde utilizes a water-based approach, maximizing the social and economic value of the site by emphasizing and expanding its inherent qualities of place. A variety of waterways are proposed; wide waterways with opportunities for use as major recreation corridors with trails and parks, and narrow canals provide human-scaled urban corridors. The waterways provide high volume flood storage capacity, increasing protection and safety for inhabitants. Rapid urbanization has had an adverse affect upon the once thriving ecosystem of the Pearl River Delta, polluting waterways and destroying habitat. Green belts run parallel to the waterways and incorporate wetlands and a comprehensive bioswale system along its edges. The bioswales serve to filter urban water runoff. The Greenbelt edges are planted with a dense new urban forest, providing both a place of refuge and carbon sequestration. A wide variety of recreational amenities are planned for the open space system, including urban promenades and plazas, wetland parks, educational interpretive centers, sports parks and urban forests.
The City Engine Shunde’s current economy is based upon labor intensive, high-polluting manufacturers. As industry departs Southern China, the opportunity exists for Shunde to grow a new local economy; one based on education and environment. Utilizing a similar approach, Irvine, California built its foundation upon high-quality landscapes, open space systems, and a university that ultimately attracted hightech employers. Likewise, an existing college in Shunde is expanded as a basis for new research and development initiatives, while the reconstruction of the delta and resultant open space will attract industry based on a highlyeducated workforce. The City Engine is anchored by two transit-oriented multimodal centers. A vertically layered public transportation system with two multimodal stations (North and South Stations) bring together regional high-speed rail, local monorail, water taxis, buses, and cars. The high-speed regional rail connects New Shunde to the major Pearl River industrial and financial centers: Hong Kong, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, and Macao. A local water taxi and a monorail network enhance the connectivity between the neighborhood centers. A north/south axial canal links the two intermodal stations at opposite ends, while an existing village is integrated as part of a central mixed-use district.
The Shunde expansion is comprised of multiple urban centers, each a self-contained unit of residential, retail, office, educational, or civic uses. A civic and cultural center, financial center, office campus, academic campus, and resort provide distinct districts with specific use concentrations. Yet these centers are ultimately designed around people. Unlike existing 400 meter square blocks currently planned and built in China, a fine-grained 100 meter square system of small blocks is proposed. Neighborhoods with small blocks and small streets contribute to a human-scaled, walkable environment. Buildings are built to the street edge, reducing or eliminating setbacks to create intimate and comfortable space shaded by trees and framed by canals.
Water Village Culture The Shunde region is known for its water village culture, where everyday life revolved around ponds and canals. Preservation of the local culture is a key aspect of maintaining the unique character of place. Envisioned as a mixed-use residential, retail and shopping center, an existing village is redeveloped and incorporated into North Shunde. The historic preservation of the existing village adds a valuable link to Shunde’s past. New gathering spaces are planned along canal edges, becoming focal points of neighborhood activity. Tea rooms, plazas, and quiet strolling gardens frame riverside
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drawing the line reclaiming the Shenzhen Bay Waterfront by Peiwen Yu & Matt Baumgarten
Natural Resource:
Regional change
Something . . . found in nature that is necessary or useful to humans.
The City of Shenzhen is located in the Pearl River Delta in a region known for its complex network of rivers meeting at the bay. The name, “Shenzhen”, is based on this landscape typology and is translated to mean “deep drains.” Started as a small fishing settlement along the Shenzhen River, the former village has quickly grown into one of China’s major economic centers and the largest manufacturing base in the world. Such successes are not without consequence, and the landscape of deep drains has become shallow, if not extinct.
By any definition, Shenzhen Bay is a significant natural resource on multiple levels. Once on the path to extinction; its new waterfront park defines the bay as a necessary celebration of Southern China culture and ecology.
In 1980, spurred by its establishment as a Special Chinese Economic Zone, Shenzhen entered into a thirty year period defined by an uncompromising pursuit of “modernization”. A seemingly irreversible process ensued where developing urban environments unsympathetically clashed with the region’s historic mountain and oceanside identity.
Shenzhen Bay Coastline Park / Shenzhen, China Owner/Client: Shenzhen Municipal Planning Bureau SWA Office: Houston SWA Project Team: Kevin Shanley, Peiwen Yu, Ying Hu, Matt Baumgarten, Yan Wang, Shaobo Du, Bing Gu Additional Consultants: China Academy of Urban Planning & Design, Shenzhen Scope of work: Master Plan through DD Project size: 96 ha September 2006 ‒ 2009
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New financial initiatives took hold and the need to find more developable land became paramount. Shenzhen’s Bay was a quick and easy target. Huge monetary wealth was brought to the city by mining entire mountains and using them as landfill to transform the bay’s waters into the new urban frontier. As mountain horizons disappeared, a new glass skyline reached upward with a reverberating sense of pride. Meanwhile, ecologic jewels were quickly exchanged for the riches of a modern economy. Consequently, generations of citizens who had defined their sense of place by a connection to the bay were left wondering how the water and mountains had so quickly vanished.
photograph from www.sznews.com
coastal park, viewing from north to south photograph from BLY Landscape Inc.
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Environmental consequence During the three decades of filling the bay, Shenzhen Bay offered its millenniums of environmental and cultural assets only to be compensated with holistic and dramatic ecological imbalance. Pearl River estuaries were now an exotic species and the 83 km long coastline had become a sterilized moving target. Planning studies indicated that from 1980 to 2010, landfilling of the bay was equal to 65 square kilometers or roughly 4% of the mainland. Historically, the coastline was a complex, intertwined system of Mangroves dotting the base of mountain top vistas. By the third decade, only one small Mangrove estuary of significance remained and the others were replaced by turbid waters wrought with severe pollution and siltation. Watershed hydrologic connections to the bay were reinterpreted as impervious coffins and their waters meet the bay in a frightening confluence of concrete. The final straw was the observation of the bay’s seemingly infinite terrestrial and aquatic flora and fauna vanishing one dump truck at a time.
Drawing the line Shenzhen has become an internationally recognized city through bold ambitions, much persistence, and a singular focus on the hard edges of modernity. However, the price of this all in approach reached a crescendo louder than the cranes, dump trucks, and construction crews enveloping the city. City and planning visionaries recognized the increasing disconnect from their heritage and waterfront and called for a stop to the bay construction destruction. Collective voices ceased landfilling practices and sought a permanent edge that would provide pedestrian access to the bay, restore its rich ecology, and provide regional education opportunities and recreation; a world class park defining the final landfill edge.
Edges, connections, cycles The new Shenzhen Bay Waterfront Park is 15 kilometers long and 60 hectares, seamlesly reconnecting the city back to its bay while also serving as an important gateway from Hong Kong. Given the park’s scale, location between converging interests, and long term aspirations, the design team synthesized its fundamental needs into a park concept of “Edges, Connections, and Cycles”.
Edges The “Edge” is an essential principle to guide waterfront development. Edges manifest themselves in many ways and at many scales. The edge is what provides the complex richness that attracts so many species to the water’s edge, including the human species. It is manifested in the physical, biological and social realms. In the Shenzhen Bay project, edge development promotes the interaction and extension of multiple ecosystems, cultural system and social spaces: mangrove, seashore, wetland, forest, continuous slow-movement systems, residential development, Port functions, energetic urban core and innumerable other waterfront elements.
Connections Connections describe the relationships between all the different elements of the edge condition. These links happen at all different scales and between all different systems. The connections that guide the design of the Shenzhen waterfront focus on the following aspects: »
Hydrologic connection from city to nature;
»
Biological connections from city to nature;
»
Human activity connections from city to nature;
»
Cultural and traditional connections;
»
Visual corridor connections; and
»
Connections between people and temporal cycles
photograph from www.sznews.com
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left: tidal garden and wetland the portal building to Wedding garden
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Cycles The edge is rich because of the complexity of connections between the parts, but the connections are only meaningful if understood through the fabric of time. Time is a way of understanding change and most changes in nature occur in cycles. Geologic, biological, and social processes are only understood relevant to their place in a cycle of time Cycles are also manifested in the physical, biological, and social realms such as tides, seasonal changes, daylight, wind direction, vegetation changes, bird migration, and human society’s unique activities including entertainment, holiday, festival events, etc.
Park design summary
wetland planting terrace along the shoreline
The interface between edges, connections, and cycles results in a meandering green ribbon of mangrove edges, wetland fringes, and reforested landforms that once thrived along the Shenzhen coastline. An 11 kilometer long promontory and extensive pedestrian paths form an ecotone of man and nature, rising and falling, twisting and turning, passing through and along the various restored landscape ecologies. Fifteen programmed park spaces are seamlessly imbedded into the landscape affording a diversity of activities. Included are recreational sports, tidal wetland education, a wedding chapel, two large amphitheater sites, fishing docks, perennial gardens, cultural display areas, and multi-generational pocket parks. Where appropriate urban energies have been captured in dynamic urban plazas, but also thoughtfully dissipated through serene spaces of contemplation and relaxation. Climate is considered by providing deep shade throughout the park and affording vibrant night life opportunities along the promontory. By adhering to the principles of a strong design concept, the new park draws a finite line honoring Shenzhen’s historic waterfront connection while also celebrating an intertwined future for the bay and its people.
multiple use pathway all the way along the costal line photographs by BLY Landscape Inc.
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ECOLOGY AS INFRASTRUCTURE
establishing a functioning Wusong River system
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The pilot project significantly increased the value of the future development parcels in the area, where true accessible waterfront properties are hard to find.
This project seeks to achieve synergy between development and environmental conservation, balancing these two often conflicting values in a rapidly changing region. Through strategic phasing, the design team proposed an integrated approach of hydrological design and land planning with a pilot water treatment system upstream of where the future development will be located. The vision is to set up an exemplary model for responsible development, provide habitat for flora and fauna, and reconnect and nurture the relationship between people and water.
Zeng Yuxiang ‒ Director of Planning Bureau
Building upon a water system Kunshan City is known historically as the birthplace of traditional opera and for its unique canal townships along the Wusong River. In the past few decades, due to its proximity to Shanghai, the city has experienced unprecedented population and business growth, which has resulted in environmental degradation and the need for the city to remake its identity.
Wusong Riverfront / Kunshan, China Owner/Client: Huaqiao Economical Development Zone Programme Building Bureau SWA Office: Sausalito SWA Project Team: Hui-Li Lee, Roy Imamura, Bob Jacob, Minhui Li, Chih-Wei Chang, Zachary Davis, Yoonju Chang, Mandana Parvinian Additional Consultants: Architects: Ojanen_Chiou Architects; Environmental Consultants: Herrera Environmental Consultants; Local Design Institute: Suzhou Hezhan Scope of work: Master Plan / Landscape Design SD-DD 95 hector Site area Design: November 2008 ‒ 2010 Construction Phase I: 2010 ‒ early 2012
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The municipality hosted a competition and called for ideas for a new 95-hectare riverfront business district at the key oxbow portion of the river, which will support the area’s bustling economy while creating public amenities and open space. This proposal therefore aimed for a combined solution- creating both people-oriented amenities and water-quality improvements. By establishing the development as a water-cleansing sequence, the project not only met growth objectives, but also surpassed innovative sustainability goals. A year-long thorough analysis was conducted by SWA and affiliated consultants, including water-quality scientists, wetland experts, hydrology engineers, and architects. Central to this study was an understanding of the site’s landscape structure, defined largely by the Wusong River, its watershed, and the changing infrastructure of nearby future developments. The site’s polluted river water is unsuitable for most waterfront programs and is further complicated by excavation pits left along the river banks by a former brick factory and untreated surface runoff from adjacent parcels. Accordingly, this design proposes a bottom-up approach in which the new water treatment system is designed to fit into the existing context without compromising marketable parcels.
Treatment wetland park the pilot project The goal is to improve the existing water quality from Class 5—the lowest rating, which signifies that the water is completely unsafe—to Class 3, which is non-potable but safe for water recreation. A pilot treatment system will be situated upstream from the future development, where the polluted water is introduced to the site for experimental treatment. Several pools and channels in a sequence are designed to remove targeted pollutants by settling, filtrating, aerating, and bio-processing in alternating oxic and anoxic environments. The system mimics a wide variety of natural process and acts as the “kidney” for the river, cleaning the sludge and industrial effluents being produced and discharged into the river upstream, thus extending the benefits downstream throughout a larger region.
Through monitoring and test feedbacks, the design and construction team can adjust and fine tune the strategy and treatment.
The goal-oriented hydraulic design/engineering further explores the concepts and techniques in achieving target treatment results, which include estimating residence time and flow rates, manipulating velocity and volume through grading, and avoiding short-circuiting and stagnation. The differences of flow layouts and treatment sequences ultimately contribute to different land management and maintenance requirements. Earthwork and grading are designed to conserve onsite soil and carefully shape the interior of the treatment system to optimize its efficiency and capacity. For example, the sediment pond was sized for desired flow rate and velocity, excavation pits were mostly preserved and utilized for the aeration process, and treatment channels were graded to let water filter through wetland plants evenly over the longest paths. While the purification process was precisely calculated, the system was designed to be flexible to accommodate flood and drought conditions. The importance of the pilot projects is that they evolve and adapt with site conditions that were not foreseen in the design phase. Through monitoring and test feedbacks, the design and construction team can adjust and fine tune the strategy and treatment. It is especially critical for determining real water budgets, necessary pump controls, plant establishment and seasonal changes.
Hydraulic aspect of shaping: To optimize the treatment effect, fine tune the treatment channels and pools according to target desirable flow rate.
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Synergy between environment and development The design of the new water-treatment system also considers the aesthetic experience of the user and emphasizes public education. In the Treatment Wetland Park, ponds and channels are transformed into a series of gardens and open spaces according to the function of each. For example, a sediment pond becomes a reflection pool, a treatment channel becomes a stone garden and bird-watching lounge, and the aeration process is artistically expressed as a ripple pool and a bubbling pool. A special path runs the length of the Wetland Treatment Park, connecting the variety of programmed spaces and distinct landscapes and weaving the story of the water-purification journey.
SWA s visionary scheme showcased the solution for the regional issue, and triggered the awareness and action of wetland sites along Wusong River. We re proud to be part of the movement. Xu Ting ‒ Chief Engineer
After the water is purified in the Treatment Wetland Park, it flows into the future inner bay campus and the waterfront business and retail development. The inner bay provides a diverse habitat, maximizing the enjoyment of the water edge and integrating numerous layers of waterfront activities. By using less than one-third of the site land for water infrastructure, the project allows 100 percent of its buildings direct access to the cleaned water, greatly increasing the value of the overall development for both aesthetics and ancillary benefits. The Wusong Riverfront Business District will begin its next-phase construction in 2012, with a ten year overall build-out.
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LIVING FILTERS
constructing wetlands for improved water quality
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The master plan for the 3.3 km long, 250-acre metropolitan Ningbo EcoCorridor Park transforms a former agricultural plain that had been taken over by industrial use into urban green infrastructure. Acting as a living filter, the design utilizes ecological strategies of hydrology, vegetation and topography. It is envisioned as a Green Lung, which provides recreational, educational and cultural facilities for the new Ningbo Eastern New City and creates a network of open spaces where human, wildlife and plants can co-exist, migrate, inhabit and thrive. Located in the heart of the Yangtze River Delta on China’s coastline, Ningbo is one of China’s oldest cities. With an area of 3,616 square miles and a population of 5.43 million, Ningbo, which translates to “tranquil waters,” has been a well-known key port for foreign trade since ancient times. Bordered by Shanghai to the north and Hangzhou to the east, Ningbo is an important industrial city, foreign trade port, and economic center for Eastern China. In 2002, in order to support the growth of the Old City and upgrade infrastructure, the government called for a master plan for an “Eastern New City” to add 6 square miles to the urban area. The development of this area inspired a strategy to establish Ningbo as a larger metropolitan area of economic and environmental importance and set the stage for an ecological approach to development.
Ningbo Eco-Corridor Landscape Design / Ningbo Eastern New town, Zhejian Province, China Owner/Client: Ningbo Planning Bureau - East New Town Development Committee SWA Office: Sausalito SWA Project Team: Huili Lee, Roy Imamura, Scott Chuang, Jack Wu, Chih-Wei Lin, Kathy Sun, Chih-Wei Chang, Huiqing Kuang, Nancy Coutler, Amity Winters, Luis Kao, Xun Li Additional Consultants: OJANEN_CHIOU architects LLP Herrera Environmental Consultants. Organic Water Scope of work: Master Plan, SD, DD, CR, CO Project size: site: 250 acres; buildings: 10 acres; landscape: 240 acres 2006-2012 (est)
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Particular attention was paid to the hydrological design of the corridor, since this city is more than a place of human habitation, but also a living filter that actively improves the condition of the city’s water resources. Existing canal water quality at site is classified as level IV-V by Chinese water quality classification, restricted to industrial and agricultural uses and not fit for human habitation. The project improves the condition of the water to Class III or better by use of innovative technologies that mimic ecological processes that filter and treat canal and storm water, resulting in much improved water quality able to support aquatic functions and recreation. Wetlands, riparian plantings, bioswales and water bodies provide water filtration, aeration and retention for aquifer recharge. The project offers recreational and educational opportunities for the urban development, fosters an increased community relationship to water, and supports natural habitat and ecological systems for wildlife and fauna. In contrast to the typical flat topography in this region, the design creates undulating contours that buffer the urban environment and provide vista points and biodiversity. The soil will come from nearby excessive construction excavation; which is a common problem of rapidly developing cities. This proposal utilizes excess fill generated from adjacent development excavation to create topography reminiscent of the peripheral mountain range, extending the spatial quality of the larger environment into Ningbo
The result is a more dramatic spatial experience, a more challenging open-space exercise network and ecologically varied terrain.
itself. The result is a more dramatic spatial experience, a more challenging open-space exercise network and ecologically varied terrain. In addition, a variety of vegetation is planned to encourage biological diversity and habitat establishment. The emphasis on native vegetation will encourage native wildlife to inhabit the space and help to develop plant communities along the length of the corridor. All plants seeds were picked locally, matching the existing ecological system from nearby the national park.. Integration with the urban fabric. Ningbo’s Eco-Corridor serves as the spine of the city’s open space system, connecting and creating a variety of land uses for the city. Extending 3.3 km long, the Eco-Corridor connects seamlessly with the adjacent urban fabric, creating a mutually beneficial and symbiotic relationship between the corridor and the surrounding land uses. The cultural history of Ningbo is also closely affiliated with water, as it weaves through the city in irrigation canals and rivers. The hydrological flow pattern for the Eco-Corridor is designed to be meandering and slow, as what would historically have been seen in a lowland floodplain. This slow moving water catalyzes the eco-corridor to act as a filter.
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Urban Development
Density
Circulation System
Recreation Network
Pedestrian System
Orchards
Wetlands
Water
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Rivers are transporting machines; they erode sediment from one location and deposit it to another—a process of releasing energy and slowing down that results in the river creating sweeping arcs through the landscape. These arcs, or meanders, create increased edge conditions, providing a greater potential for rich ecological habitat. As rivers meander, slow down and diverge into smaller streams a fractal pattern is created that forms a natural wetland, cleaning and rejuvenating the site. This pattern informs the basic structure of Wanmu Orchard Wetland Park, organizing village development, orchard, and wetland park into a cohesive ecological system. Ecotones are the physical transitions between landscape typologies. In the Wanmu Orchard Wetland Park, the transition from the city center to village to orchard to wetland park creates a series of ecotones that transition from a dense urban condition to an ecologically sensitive open space. For the Wanmu Orchard Wetland Park, water is the key element that connects these ecotones together. Each layer of the ecotone should respond to their ecological position through the development of appropriately configured open space typologies. Urban wetlands in the urban core move water efficiently from dense development to the outer edges of the city, providing the first stage of water filtration through
small scale natural conditions. Working wetlands do the heavy lifting of filtering the majority of contaminants from the urban run-off, providing clean water to the wildlife wetlands located in the most environmentally sensitive areas of the site. Habitat fragmentation threatens to decrease the ecological viability of the Wanmu Orchard Wetland Park. Transportation and development areas are carefully chosen to maximize the availability of connections between sensitive ecological areas, allowing for the movement of both local and migratory species throughout the park. An urban growth boundary will decrease development impacts on the most sensitive ecological areas by protecting them in perpetuity. This protection will allow the landscape to regenerate and mature to a vibrant riverine wetland system. Coupled with new and updated infrastructure to collect and treat wastewater within the villages, a natural healing process is enabled to occur within the wetland. Increased ecological habitats create a wider spectrum of ecological variety that makes these systems more resilient. A healthy riparian/wetland ecosystem will act as a magnet to a multitude of wildlife species creating a user experience unlike any city in China. The health of the wetland will
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the need for place framing ecological systems on a human scale by Shannon Bronson
We abuse the land because we regard it as a commodity belonging to us. When we see land as a community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect. There is no other way for land to survive the impact of mechanized man, nor for us to reap from it the esthetic harvest it is capable, under science, of contributing to culture. -Aldo Leopold. A Sand County Almanac with Essays on Conservation. Oxford University, New York. 2001.
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Landscape Urbanism and Ecological Design both utilize natural processes as the fundamental regulating systems to organize city building. They provide frameworks for designing resilient futures by weaving human purpose with natures systems and patterns. Contemporary landscape architecture integrates these ideas into practice through a systems-based, multi-scalar, and multi-disciplinary effort with ambitions to create environments that encourage and manage human and biological health. Designers such as Patrick Geddes, Benton McKaye, Andrew Downing, Lewis Mumford, Frederick Law Olmsted, and Ian McHarg have elevated the profession from an aesthetic practice to one that creates solutions by synthesizing environmental sciences and open systems thinking. These practitioners expanded the discipline’s scope to be realized at regional scales to effectively capture the necessary level of intervention for major ecological challenges. They also advocated that urbanization be integrated with natural conditions to the create cities with strong regional identities while improving ecological health. Each considered urban and natural conditions more productive when woven together, and the “landscape as a cultural product that underlies urban order” (Levy, 2007). So to, do Charles Waldheim and James Corner argue that in the context complex environments, post industrial sites and public infrastructure, cities should be organized through the horizontal surfaces of the landscape rather than architecture so that the built environment is more flexible to social, political, environmental and economic futures (Waldheim, 2003, pp.16).
The advancement of these theories are a step in the right direction, yet their systems based approach provides insufficient tactics to create “places” that amplify natural infrastructures on a human scale to become vivid contributors to culture. Wetland systems, riparian corridors, and multi-layered ecosystems are necessarily “messy” when compared to the highly managed landscapes such as plaza, garden, and turfs that we usually consider to be cultural symbols. Civilization usually discards its waste into natural systems that occur within city because unkempt appearance does not demonstrate care or reflect its value to society. Yet city governments recognize more and more the value of the ecosystems services natural systems provide. They need to find ways integrate their aesthetically chaotic structure into vivid human-scale experiences. If civilization can experience nodes of human-scaled places that are integrated with complex environmental structures, society can begin to care for the place as a part of the whole, thereby increasing the systems resilience. A lack of attention to the components of ecological placemaking risks skillfully stitching together complex sociobiophysical interactions to find in the end a design which has no soul, and becomes vulnerable to the detritus of urbanization. Designers have the responsibility to examine which formal and programmatic constraints can be implemented within ecological infrastructure, because the bound geometries of places can be the vivid counterpoints to frame the messy make up of natural systems. The aim is to ultimately frame the ecosystem within a culturally desired aesthetic of neatness to create conditions of care. This care is a necessary link to a designs’ sustainability because if it is not given, a sites’ ecology becomes vulnerable to disturbances that damage landscape functions beyond a point of recognition. This essay examines three case studies to show how landscape architects have begun to frame ecological systems within a cultural context, and in so doing ensure the continued resilience of the designed natural systems because they are meaningful places that contribute to culture.
The aim is to ultimately frame the ecosystem within a culturally desired aesthetic of neatness to create conditions of care.
Case study: the floating gardens at Yongning River Park, Taizhou City, China In 2002 the city of Taizhou asked Turenscape Landscape Architects to design a 21 ha flood and stormwater control system as an alternative to the concrete embankments and dams that existed along the banks of the Yongning River. The city wanted the park to become a model of an ecological flood and storm water management system that also created wildlife habitat, delighted local residents, and attracted tourism. Their approach is critical to the health of China’s river systems and cultural preservation. The speed of channelization due to development is highly accelerated in China and rapidly destroys the fragile ecology at the river’s edge. Concretization is also culturally and historically insensitive to the deep symbolism rivers have in local lore, so the park aims to be a place that celebrates the river, culture, and local stories. The park is composed of two layers: the environmental matrix overlapped with the human matrix. The environmental matrix is composed of wetland and native vegetation designed to flood and create native habitats. Above this float the gardens of humanity composed of a designed tree matrix, a path network, and a matrix of story boxes (ASLA website, 2010). The designers studied the regulating hydrology, including storm water process analysis at the 5, 20 and 50 flood year levels. With this data, they were able to construct a wetland flood control system to capture heavy rains, and also created space for the park to accommodate many natural and human systems. The natural systems layer is a matrix of a restored riparian zone along the flood plain and an outer wetland lake planted extensively with native communities. Turenscape uses large swaths of monoculture natives to create vivid zones of experience, while not compromising the integrity of the site ecology.
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During rain events in the wet season, both the riparian zone and lake are flooded. In the dry season, only the lake retains water. The park is ¬designed to give users year round access to water, yet seasonal changes in water access within the park provides a specialness to the place. The upper layer for humanity is raised above the flooded natural matrix. Its multi-path system connects the river to the urban core. Groves of native trees combined with sculptural art and “story boxes” anchor moments of pause along the river edge. The story boxes speak to local culture: “among them are a box of rice, a box of fish, a box of hardwood crafts, a box of Taoism, a box of stone, a box of mountain and water, a box of martial arts”(ASLA, 2010). The boxes bring a human scale to the site, giving the river a geometrical frame whose counterpoint to the river makes the experience of both all the more evocative.
Case study: Shanghai Chemical Industry Park, Shanghai, China AECOM’s Shanghai Chemical Industry Park is a 30 ha park that sits within a 3,000 ha wastewater treatment system, constructed to capture and treat effluent from a major petrochemical region. The systems in the park purify and recycle water before it is released into Hangzhou Bay. Most of the site was “formerly abandoned aquaculture, which was hydraulically isolated from the drainage and irrigation canals throughout the site” (Asselin, 2010, pp. 60). A trickling filter mechanism was chosen to best meet water quality performance measures, space and capital investment constraints, operational and maintenance costs, visual impacts, and its capacity for wetland treatment.
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The treatment system processes over 22,000 cubic meters of partially treated industrial wastewater each day, and remediates a wasteland patch into a biodiverse sanctuary as part of larger ecological corridor. In this way, it is sensitive to the environmental systems that flow through the site, while increasing biodiversity. But the critical success of this project is how it allows humans to occupy the site. The design “incorporates aesthetic features and wildlife habitat to create a recreational hub for the park’s employees and visitors. The visitor center includes a water observation room which is sunken into the ground where the soil, water, wetland plants, and water column can be observed” (Asselin, 2010, pp. 61). The park also offers a wetland research center for university groups to visit, a bird observation tower, and opportunities for the public to better understand the effluent treatment process. These nodes around the park magnify the authentic character of this environment—it is a degraded site with the human intention to improve conditions. Images show two visitors walking above a wetland on an elevated platform. It reveals a planting aesthetic that does not conform to conventions of neatness—the ecological structure of a wetland is “messy” and not framed by clear boundaries and geometry. Normally this vast stretch of land would be inaccessible to humans yet the designers have framed the ecosystem with an elevated platform. Because of this path, the wetland has a bound, geometric system that accentuates the sites’ character and allows access to its details (which could be a closer look at the variety of grasses, a longer glimpse at a migratory bird species, etc.) Both program and path reveal the Shanghai Chemical Industry Park as human-made and natural environment. Interventions of program and form elevate the place into one that we can imagine will be loved and embraced by the community. As the community continues to care for the 30 ha of park, awareness and ownership of the 3,000 ha wastewater system increases, and thus becomes more resilient.
Case study: Crissy Field, San Francisco, California Crissy Field was originally a salt marsh with a rich history as a gathering ground for the Ohlone Indians and later a landing site for various international traders entering the port of San Francisco. In 1915 the majority of the site was paved to become an airfield for the U.S. Army post office that serviced the adjacent Presidio base as well as a dump and landfill site. The airfield closed in 1974, then lay dormant for 20 years until identified for redesign and development. From 1994 to 2001 the park was designed and rebuilt under the direction of Hargreaves Associates. “To create the new park, 87,000 tons of hazardous materials were removed and seventy acres of asphalt and concrete were pulled up, crushed and recycled for use beneath the pathways and as base support for new parking lots.”(Reed, 2005, 132). The site balances cut and fill to recreate a tidal marsh system from what was the army dump, hearkening back to pre-Western influence along the site, while creating mounds with distinct geometries to create boundary, enhance awareness of the windy site, and accentuate the movement oriented spirit of the place. Native plants were chosen because of their silvery green and gray colors and distinct textures. They flank the waterways and offer an attractive contrast in color and texture and ecological function to the lawn that occupies much of the site. Hargreaves Associates transformation of the early 20th century U.S. Army airstrip into a one-hundred acre urban park is an example of a elegant transformation of a neglected post-industrial piece of waterfront into a beloved place within a city. The site is scaled to appropriately borrow 360 degree views of the Golden Gate Bridge, the bay’s islands, the well preserved buildings of the Presidio, and the hills beyond. The firms’ restrained use of form and program uses path and simple nodes of gathering to connect walkers, bikers, joggers, and water sportspeople in a system whose
main attraction is the rejoining of the wetland system to the San Francisco Bay. The firm chose to use linear geometries of gentle curves and strong axis to echo the long and narrow site, while not competing with the spectacular views. The geometry becomes the promenade that accommodates movement while framing the city and the ocean. It also allows moments of direct contact with the water as it flows into the bay, making the water system itself become the dynamic play element. City children, families, and dogs can enjoy the rare experience of ambling into the creek, ready to make sand castles and splash in the cold water while the city whirs in the background.
Conclusion If designers can frame ecological infrastructure with program and formal placemaking strategies, the larger environmental agenda of increased biodiversity and socioecological resilience is strengthened. These places can alter cultural perceptions of messy ecological structures by encouraging people to engage with them directly or framing open systems with bound geometries to create unique experiences. These places contribute to users a relationship to the region and are authentic cultural experience of the environment. Once the ecological infrastructure is seen as intrinsic to cultural meaning, its resilience is greatly increased because society has self-interest in preserving its “placeness” while also maintaining a high level of systems function. As stewards of the environment landscape architects have responsibility to design to frame the landscape to reveal biodiverse and resilient ecosystems as the foundation of the place, culture and meaning.
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makeshift economy the accidental interaction between agriculture and tourism in China words and photography by Charly Nelson
Agriculture and tourism work hand in hand in the Li Valley of China. This is due in part to the other-worldly limestone karst landscape. But as China opens up to tourism, this area provides an intriguing case study highlighting a conuence of family agriculture, international and domestic tourism, and a changing way of life.
Water irrigation Small aqueducts are an important means of supplying water to a maze of family fields. Family farmers will dam and un-dam irrigation to increase water flow to their fields while limiting access to water by others during critical harvest, drought, and other times.
Family farm disbursement Under communist policies, and carrying through today, family farms are comprised of disparate pieces forming a whole and are often located a mile or more apart from each other. This discontinuity decreases the productivity and yield of each family farm and is ultimately less efficient than having all plots connected. Plots are on 50-year leases from the government.
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Financial opportunity The scenery in this region lends itself to tourism. Many farm families work the land and take part in tourism as tour guides, performers, and souvenir sellers. The tourist route is well known, and signing up for an activity such as a river rafting trip inevitably leads to a makeshift marketplace.
Rivers In this region, the river lends itself to crop irrigation, opportunistic tourist initiatives, and the everyday livelihood of residents. Low concrete dams serve as a means to cross the river branches, are places for makeshift market opportunities, and in the early light of day are a place where residents can do their laundry.
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Tourism opportunity There are many ways for tourists to explore this region: hot air balloon rides, cooking classes, bike tours through the farm networks that end in a farm feast, and cultural shows highlighting the traditional way of life through artistic means. Tourism is a growing economy in China as it opens up to the West and domestic residents earn more expendable income.
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Agri-urbanism a new approach for designing sustainable cities by Pamela Berger
As golf course community projects are becoming increasingly abandoned, especially with China's recent 2011 Notice 1 prohibiting them, development projects are seeking new directions. This comes at a time juxtaposed to agriculture emerging within landscape architecture ‒ evident at the last principals' meeting when several of the SWA offices could contribute to discussion of agriculture in their work. Why agriculture is becoming commonplace in our projects is not a mystery - the human population continues to grow exponentially as do food costs. The fact that food travels an average of 1500km from its source to the supermarket in North America is no longer shocking (Pollan, 2006). Moreover, as the consolidated agri-business sector (large scale suppliers) grows, the small-business farmers are aging, and concern for food security and safety is on the rise. All of these factors are creating a new consciousness about where our food comes from and how that effects the global environment – hence, the need for change. This call for action opens a significant opportunity for Agri-Urbanism – a strategy that merges green urban development with agriculture – to become the new growth lynchpin within the landscape architecture profession. This has increasing potential as a solution in rapidly developing countries where sprawl continues to gobble-up aerable, productive land. 1 On April 11, 2011, the Chinese government issued the Notice on Starting the Comprehensive Nationwide Compliance and Corrective Measures for Golf Courses (the 2011 Notice ) ,which reinforces the 2004 ban on golf courses.
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DeďŹ nitions Before one can recognize the intention behind the AgriUrbanism development strategy, it is first helpful to understand the evolution of its predecessors:
New urbanism New Urbanism is an urban design movement, which arose in the US in the early 1980s, promoting walkable, mixeduse neighborhoods and transit-oriented development, seeking to end suburban sprawl and promote community. Characteristics include narrow streets, wide sidewalks, and higher densities. (Lehmann, 2010)
Green urbanism Green Urbanism is a conceptual model for zero-emission and zero-waste urban design, which arose in the 1990s, promoting compact energy-efficient urban development, seeking to transform and re-engineer existing city districts and regenerate the post-industrial city centre. It promotes the development of socially and environmentally sustainable city districts. (Lehmann, 2010)
The Agricultural Urbanism Founders Group coined this term in 2008 and describe the movement as the full integration of the agri-food system within the planning, design, development and function of cities. It is a mechanism to connect urban dwellers to their environment and to the food system, reduce their dependence on an ecologically unsound and increasingly vulnerable globalscale agri-food system, and create a significant regional economic sector.
Urban agriculture
What s the dierence?
Urban Agriculture is the increasingly present practice of growing of plants and raising animals for food and other uses within and around cities and towns, and related activities such as the production and delivery of inputs and the processing and marketing of products. (Veenhuizen, 2006)
The primary difference between Urban Agriculture and Agricultural Urbanism is that the latter is a fully integrated planning, design, and development strategy whereas Urban Agriculture tends to concentrate on the infiltration of agriculture into an existing community. Agri-Urbanism is effectively an extension of Green Urbanism, but offers an alternative to the practice of separating places where people live and where agricultural activities occur. It shares the goals of zero-carbon and zero-emissions through compact energy-efficient urban development and provides the framework for socially and environmentally sustainable towns and cities. Agri-Urbanism includes walkability factors and social components of New Urbanism that frown upon urban sprawl, however prioritizes the Green Urbanism infrastructure framework as the spine of the developed area.
Agricultural urbanism Agricultural Urbanism (Agri-Urbanism) is a design approach for integrating growth and development while preserving agricultural resources and enhancing elements of the food system within a site. (Mullinix, 2008)
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Design strategies Agri-Urbanism design strategies apply at all levels of the community from productive landscapes to industrial site design considerations. The following are a few examples of potential design elements and strategies:
Principles Four key principles frame Agri-Urbanism (Duany, 2009): 1. Transitions not buffers: It is important to overlap different land uses such as commercial with agricultural, residential to cultural etc. to create an integrated community. 2. Reconnect the people to the land: Provide opportunities for residents and visitors to connect with the land and agriculture that can happen through education programs, classes, and hands-on harvesting events. 3. Sustainable agriculture practices: Critical to the longterm success of the site, the ecosystem it surrounds, and the health of those living there, are low-input, sustainable agriculture practices that inevitably contribute to the economics required for the system to function. 4. Smart growth: Density must match the inputs required for creating a new community. These inputs need to balance the outputs/benefits for the site to be economically viable.
Street: green streets, productive edible landscapes, "back of house is front of house" to show food being made and processed, habitat creation for pollinators and beneficial insects, stormwater management for agricultural irrigation Edible Productive Landscapes: soft-fruit trees in the public realm available for harvesting, educational signage, arbors and pergolas with fruiting vines, vertical green walls with edible fruit Parks and Plazas: community gardens, programming such as farmers' markets and food events, integration with school grounds, composting, outdoor classrooms and cooking opportunities Residential: Âť Single family: yard sharing programs, back-yard, front yard gardening, production and surplus collection system - connection to food banks, harmonious interface with farms Âť Multi-family: built-in composting facility, CSA investment, container and rooftop gardening, food events, architectural character that reflects food and farming, community kitchens, green infrastructure water re-use, mixed-use including food, retail and commercial Commercial: food retail/market with local priority restaurant, kitchen gardens, community industrial kitchen and retail outlet, rooftop green houses, recycling composting center, organic waste management infrastructure Industrial: food cluster: industrial clusters that focus on the food industry, shared infrastructure facilities such as kitchens, storage etc., wholesale direct/retail, workers cafes, organic waste conversion to bio-fuels Food Precinct/Town Center: facilities and activities of creation and production, retail, institutional, educational and office presence, and community event facilities
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Infrastructure: prioritizing and preserving existing natural conditions, using the grid network of streets for permeability and ease of circulation, providing a variety of building densities surrounded by an urban core, mixing residential with commercial, retail and open space, providing all urban center amenities preventing the need to drive to other areas for goods and services Hospitality and Tourism: preserved agriculture and the culture of agriculture become the tourism attraction, experiential and educational activities are agriculture based, pick your own food, work the farm, food and beverage outlets use only locally grown products, you live on the farm. The Moku Moku approach is gaining popularity in Japan and other Asian countries.
Potential benefits Agri-Urbanism has the potential to affect lives in a multitude of environmental, social, and economic ways. By minimizing processing packaging, transportation, waste, and energy use on a site, we can significantly reduce the ecological footprint of new developments. Another ecological benefit is that enhanced biodiversity is possible on a site through the preservation of open space and natural areas, along with creating specific pollinator gardens beneficial to the urban harvest. When planning ahead for waste treatment, nutrient and resource cycles can be closed by composting and re-using waste instead of putting pressure on landfills. On an Agri-Urbanism site, people will be re-connected to food and its sources. Because organic products are more viable at a local scale, health benefits for people are also possible in a more connected source to plate system. By connecting people to the land through agricultural practices, inherently, people become more closely linked to each other, enriching the social fabric of a neighborhood. Costs associated with processing, packaging and transporting food are reduced, therefore providing more economic vitality for the residents and businesses. AgriUrbanism strives to achieve more holistic, livable urban centers that focus on the agri-food system, which may be exactly what the framework of future sustainable cities should be.
Agri-Urbanism strives to achieve more holistic, livable urban centers that focus on the agri-food system, which may be exactly what the framework of future sustainable cities should be.
Precedents Great successes exist in the ‘Urban Agriculture’ realm at the Intervale Center in Burlington, Vermont, and in Goleta, California at the Center for Urban Agriculture at Fairview Gardens. Agricultural hubs in both projects have greatly improved the nearby communities’ quality of life through a series of improvements and agricultural interventions to the land over time. SWA’s Bishops Bay project in Middleton, Wisconsin is an exceptional example of a rural agricultural planned community, but by definition would more likely be considered Agricultural Sub-Urbanism due to the location, density, framework, and amenities.
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Challenges Several challenges surround the future of Agri-Urbanism. To begin, the idea is new and success is un-documented. Municipalities are often times reluctant to introduce design applications which are not proven or even widely built. Another challenge acquiring initial buy-off from developers is that even the architecture takes a land-based approach – an idea that is still too new for many developers who are primarily interested in reaching Floor Area Ratio numbers and meeting government approvals to move the project forward.
Conceptual rendering of the Town Center at the Xi an Mountain Spring Agricultural Community project.
As Agri-Urbanism is an emerging school of thought, it is believed that only planned projects exist at this time. Andres Duany of Duany Plater-Zyberk & Company (DPZ) has been advancing this agenda through his work and various lectures over the last several years. However, skepticism follows DPZ’s work as ‘New Urbanism’ was ever present in the firm’s portfolio up until recently, which includes the Craig Ranch project on the outskirts of Dallas, a project that integrates the Cooper Institute – and their focus on human wellness and longevity. Planned AgriUrbanism projects of DPZ include Sky in Calhoun County, Florida, Hertfordshire County in England, and perhaps the most comprehensive is the Southlands plan for Tsawassen, British Columbia, Canada. These projects, along with SWA’s Preserve project in Stockton, California and Nanhu in Jiaxing, China, follow a similar set of design guidelines, principles, and strategies, while the SWA Mountain Spring Agricultural Community planned for Xian, China, attempts to apply a much more urban characteristic to the site with increased densities appropriate for the needs of a developing country.
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Marketability of property with an Agri-Urbanism framework is another challenge. Design strategies must be developed that deal with simple questions like image, pest control, long term farm management, who is responsible for assuring that the farm does not go to seed and how is that funded, safe integration of working farm circulation, and function from other community functions. Even if the municipality or developer does support the ideals of the project, many times zoning prohibits agriculture and historically and intentionally separates it from commercial and residential areas – a direct conflict with the ideals of Agri-Urbanism. Common in every project, especially introducing a trend in the profession, one must question the genuine intent of the client. Understanding whether the municipality or developer truly cares about creating a sustainable, innovative community and if they are willing pay the cost and put forth the effort to establish and maintain an agriculturally-focused community is critical to success. In addition to approval difficulties, accepting agriculture into our communities requires an acceptance of all that goes with it. The side effects of agriculture can include additional noise, smells, and to some, unkempt, informal landscapes – elements that urban dwellers might not expect or appreciate in a new community. Lastly, and perhaps this is only an internal professional challenge for Agri-Urbanism, but as landscape architects and planners, a question of our role in this approach comes to mind. Are we suited to plan and propose this kind of development or should technical agricultural advisors be brought onto the team? As a new development strategy, do Agri-Urbanists exist for consultation?
The historic patchwork framework of agricultural urban centers in Xi an, China.
Conclusion: rationale for viability The foundation of implementing Agri-Urbanism is creating an urban environment that values, encourages, activates, and sustains agricultural enterprise through integration of people, the places they live, work, and play. In a world where we are greatly disconnected from our food sources, it invites agriculture back into our settlement areas, taking into consideration the abundance of food system activities and contributions that might be viable for a range of spaces and environments. There is a definite need for prioritization of food security within our cities, from both economic and safety perspectives. If Agri-Urbanism can rise to the challenges it faces as a development strategy, it has the potential to improve the way we design cities and meaningfully advance the quality of human life.
Are we suited to plan and propose this kind of development or should technical agricultural advisors be brought onto the team?
References 1. Duany Platter-Zyberk & Company (2007, Revised 2009). Southlands, Tsawwassen, British Columbia, Canada. 2. Lehmann, Steen (2010). Green Urbanism: Formulating a Series of Holistic Principles. Institut Veolia Environment. France. 3. Mullinix, Kent (2008). Agricultural Urbanism and Municipal Supported Agriculture. Surrey Regional Economic Summit, British Columbia, Canada. 4. Pollan, Michael (2006). The Omnivores Dilemma. Penguin: London, England. 5. Veenhuizen, Rene van Ed. (2006). Cities Farming for the Future: Urban Agriculture for Green and Productive Cities. IDRC, RUAF Foundation, IIRR: Phillipines.
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Scent of Orange Owner/Client: CHIC Capital SWA Office: Sausalito SWA Project Team: John Wong, Joe Runco, Ellen Burke, Minhui Li, Don Xu Additional Consultants: Natural Systems International Scope of work: Master Planning Project size: 3200 HA Design: Oct 2010/April 2011 (planning)
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SCENT OF ORANGE designing for a produce distributor/developer
Scent of Orange is a mixed-use development 60 km southwest of Chongqing with an aggressive agricultural mandate that preserves 80% of farm land in productive uses on a 3,200 hectare site. As a model project for the central government s Integrated Rural Urbanization program, Scent Of Orange addresses the government goals of promoting balanced urban and rural development, strengthening rural economies, protecting arable lands, addressing employment and living problems of rural migrant workers in cities, and improving working and living conditions in rural areas. The Scent of Orange Master Plan was prepared for a major produce distributor-cum-developer, which created the unique opportunity of working with a developer invested in the agricultural plan as much as the development plan. By focusing on agriculture as a driver for development, the design team was able to formulate strategies for land use that address both the government and client objectives. It is a strategy that flips the traditional relationship between farming and cities on its head. For centuries farms have enabled cities to grow and cultures to flourish, by freeing people to pursue business, arts and education, but at Scent of Orange, it is the city — in the form of a strategic development strategy that supports agriculture — that allows traditional farms to be preserved and introduces modern methods. However, it may be more useful to understand the agriculture and development as a set of symbiotic programs that each strengthen and catalyze the other.
The first key strategy of the plan is found in the physical relationship between development and agriculture. The design objective was to integrate the two as much as possible and the resulting plan can be read as a series of ‘villages’ surrounded by farm fields. This approach enhances real estate values, and provides a unique and real identity to the development. Collector roads meander through fields, new homes overlook valleys of agriculture and orchards come right up and into the two town centers. Farmed for centuries, the dramatic topography has been carved by generations of farmers into a terraced landscape. The master plan suggests minimal grading and a strategy that retains the unique physical trace of the past by fitting development into the contours of the land. Studying the traditional response to the land, a clear pattern emerged in relationship to the topography, in which buildings are placed on slopes and high points, and valleys are used for agriculture. The unique relationship between present homes and the site inspired a strategy which identifies farm home sites to be retained, and transformed into villa sites, boutique hotels, restaurants or even relocated farmer housing. This again reinforces a physical relationship between development and the land, between old and new, and defines the agricultural park as a primary identity. The project mandate to describe modern agriculture and how it might support a better standard of living for farmers and encourage real economic growth in rural areas led the team to develop a strategy that can be described as diversified agriculture. Diversified agriculture primarily focuses on values beyond production, such as education, tourism and markets. It also seeks to balance smaller market farms with more efficient means of production; the bulk of the agriculture program is large scale citrus orchards, selected for the suitability of the crop to the regional climate.
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STRENGTH OF PLACE
a new model for small town America
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Across Middle America, the march of suburbanization has threatened and compromised attempts at farmland preservation. A subdivision is built neighboring a conventional agricultural preservation area, and after a few seasons of plowing, fertilization, and dust, the inevitable happens; the farmer is forced farther and farther away from the incompatible adjacency of cul-desacs and tract homes. Consequently, a hopscotch of homes and agricultural preserves expands ever outward. So, how can we strengthen neighborhood connections to the farm and instil a sense of ownership? How can we allow for responsible development, and at the same time preserve a way of life upon which the foundation of our country rests? Bishop s Bay / Town of Westport and City of Middleton, Wisconsin Owner/Client: T. Wall Properties (Owner), Vierbicher Associates (Client) SWA Office: Laguna Beach SWA Project Team: Sean O Malley (design and photography), Koichiro Nagamatsu, Worasak Luangsuwan, Jie Bai Additional Consultants: Monica Simpson ASLA, Knothe & Bruce Architects, Bouril Design Studio Scope of work: Master Planning Project size: 717 acres Design: May 2008 ‒ February 2009 2011 Gold Award for On-the-Boards Community of the Year, National Association of Homebuilders (NAHB)
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The answer may lie on the outskirts of Madison, Wisconsin, where a visionary developer and team of designers are creating a new Midwestern tapestry. Challenging conventional farmland preservation, Bishop’s Bay integrates both natural woodlands and manmade agricultural landscape systems which respect both indigenous landscape and local housing needs into a 787-acre patchwork quilt of development for 6,000 future residents. Situated within the rolling Wisconsin landscape of grassland, wetland, and forest, the master plan for Bishop’s Bay weaves together important tenets of agriculture, urban design and neighborhood development into a new prototype for the Midwestern Prairie. The strength of this place is defined by rolling hills, wooded hilltops, drainage swales, two existing farmsteads, and corn fields. Preserving and amplifying these elements as the organizing principle was defined by SWA as the strategy for development. So, a series of wooded hilltops and connecting drainage swales are preserved and expanded as the backbone for future growth. Along the forested ridge and revegetated creeks, a system of biking trails connects various neighborhoods together. A lake and wetland area is created to capture runoff and improve the site’s ecological relationship to an adjoining river. Designed to be pedestrian-friendly, a new town center, community center, working farmstead, elementary school, church, apartments, senior housing, family housing, a unique approach to farm housing, and golf-oriented neighborhoods are linked by this natural framework. Agriculture is woven into the history and culture of Wisconsin; therefore preserving this lifestyle was seen as an essential element to strengthening the uniqueness of place. A series of community workshops helped to guide the decision-making process and reinforced the need for a new development model. Thus, a new kind of neighborhood was envisioned, called “The Farm”. The Farm offers a prime example of agricultural urbanism, in which sensitivelydesigned homes and structures are woven with farming uses. Homes are clustered into groups of six to eight, and surrounded by orchard and annual crop belts. Residents take part in planting, maintenance, and harvest, while a full-time ‘resident farmer’ does the heavy lifting required out of one of the existing preserved farmsteads. In this way, residents become ‘owners’ of the farm, eliminating the possibility of rejecting it as an adjacent land use, personally tied to its maintenance and success.
The idea of agricultural urbanism appeals to a growing segment of the population seeking healthy foods cultivated within a few miles or even within one’s own back yard. The farms on site are productive, and the produce harvested onsite and by local residents can be sold at Bishop’s Bay Farmers’ Market, the proceeds of which will benefit the Bishop’s Bay Homeowner’s Association. Winner of the 2011 Gold Award for On-the-Boards Community of the Year by the National Association of Homebuilders, the project is expected to break ground in 2012 following all local approvals. In February of 2010 the Capital Area Regional Planning Commission (CARPC) approved an amendment to the Central Urban Service Area (CUSA) boundary to include the entire Bishops Bay development. This vital approval will allow municipal water, and sewer, and other urban services to be extended to the property to support the dense mix of uses envisioned for the Community Bishops Bay. The staff analysis from CARPC stated the project “presents a well-planned, well-integrated, balanced neighborhood” which “allows a comprehensive development not only serving a wide range of housing needs, but also provides the opportunity for inclusion of innovative concepts for urban living that addresses future needs through sustainability features.”
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designing for public safety By Ashley Langworthy
How does physical form affect conditions of safety? As landscape architects how can we design for public safety? I have been contemplating these questions for the past three years while I have been working on the redesign for Sunnydale, a public housing project in San Francisco built in the late 1930s that has become a distressed and very unsafe neighborhood. Stemming from this project’s particular set of circumstances, I have been compelled to think critically about a different set of design principles in the hope of making Sunnydale a less violent and dangerous neighborhood. While trying to answer the aforementioned questions I have read up on the topic, interviewed those with a perspective, and reflected on the questions myself. From my exploration I have found that concepts such as defensible space, physical and social integration, and visibility of the street and open spaces are all fundamental to transforming a neighborhood like Sunnydale into a safer, more desirable place to live.
Socio-economic environment Although we have less influence over the socioeconomic environment, it is clearly a leading factor in the safety of a neighborhood and therefore needs to be mentioned. Through the years, city governments have learned that creating housing areas composed of 100% public housing do not benefit the residents or the neighborhood. In revitalizing the worst public housing projects, the Department of Housing and Urban Development no longer exclusively clusters public housing residents. All revitalization communities are now of mixed income and mixed housing types (public, affordable, market rate, etc). With a mix of people, low income residents are integrated into the larger community and crime is less concentrated.
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Physical environment Although socio-economic factors are central to a neighborhood’s composition, we have less influence over this realm. Clearly, as landscape architects we have the most control and authority over the physical environment, and in particular as it relates to the public space. Defensible space is an important concept that emphasizes a clear transition from public to semi-public to semi-private to private space around residences. This transition from public to private space is crucial so that residents can identify intruders early on before they are in the private realm. Public space consists of the streets and parks; semipublic space includes front yards and walks-up; semiprivate space includes stoops, hallways, backyards, and courtyards; and private space is the interior of a unit. As intruders make their way out of the public space and into the transitions spaces, they are identified as a trespasser prior to entering the private space. All spaces associated with a residential building need to be defined and given ownership. Residents maintain and control areas that are clearly defined as their own, but the less ownership a space has the harder it is to agree on what kind of behavior is acceptable in that space, and therefore that space can become dangerous. If a space feels unsafe, neighbors will stay away and consequently make unoccupied spaces even more dangerous.
Public spaces such as streets and parks perform the important function of giving neighbors the chance for social interaction and creating a community. Lighting is essential in these spaces, as well as having walks that are visible from buildings. Shared spaces need to be intensively programmed with activities for a variety of ages and desired users so they are full of the right kind of activity. Like the private and semi-private spaces, it is important that residents feel a sense of ownership for public space. Spaces that are well designed and beautiful create pride for a community, and this helps to keep them up and alleviates vandalism. During the design phase it is also critical that residents feel part of the process and are involved enough to buy into and support revitalization efforts. It is even better if residents have a space such as a community garden or backyard that gives them an opportunity to be involved with the improvement and upkeep of that space, and reinforces their identity with that environment. Again, with increased proprietorship, residents are much more likely to protect and care for their new environment.
Concluding remarks ‘Eyes on the street’ is well known concept first conceived by Jane Jacobs that puts security in the hands of the residents. Orienting residences toward the street and bringing them up close to the street edge allows people to look out their windows and watch the activity below. Building fronts should be activated with porches, shops, and restaurants. Residents can then perform the function of security guards for their own community, bringing the street under their control. Streets should provide ample connections to the surrounding area to integrate the neighborhoods. This is not only important from the perspective of unifying neighborhoods, it is also essential for security reasons in terms of police being able to easily and quickly access all locales.
By using these principles, is it possible to transform a neighborhood like Sunnydale into a safe and vibrant place to live? The issues that affect such a community are deep rooted and complex, and certainly there is no quick fix. As landscape architects we do not have the capacity to address all the social problems that affect this type of community, but what we do have is the power to shape physical form and influence the transformation of streets and public spaces. We have the ability to give residents better control over their neighborhood, and make people feel safer with well lit, programmed streets and public spaces. We can create spaces that are dignified and beautiful, and which engenders pride and encourages positive and healthful activity. When combined with other measures of social change, using these tools to alter physical environments are powerful actions that help lead the way to the positive transformation of individuals lives and collective communities.
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health & the built environment A fellowship by Josselyn Ivanov
Health is a vast and far-reaching topic, so for the purposes of my research, I focused on the emerging public health disaster of our time ‒ the sedentary lifestyle that leads to obesity, heart disease, diabetes, and spans the gamut of so-called firstworld diseases. Related to these is the growing body of research on lifestylerelated mental health problems, such as ADHD and depression.
Pedestrian-friendly downtown Reykjavik
Delft bike storage and bike ramps
My 2011 Patrick Curran Fellowship led me through more than 20 books, to Montreal for the Eco-Cities World Conference, and to Iceland, the Netherlands, and Denmark. I talked to city planners, trolled the internet for sources, and interviewed 84 European park users to learn about how they were using the spaces they were in, what they liked about them, and whether or not they thought these spaces helped keep them healthy. What I’ve found, over and over, written in every book on the topic and in the minds of each person I spoke with, is that designing for health is a fairly straight-forward topic. Make it easier and more pleasant to walk, bike and take public transit, and make it harder to drive. That’s it. That’s the best rule of thumb. Almost every design that facilitates driving has negative implications for public health. Almost any design that makes walking, biking and taking transit easier has positive implications for public health. Some people will always exercise and spend time outdoors. Some people never will. But the vast swath of in-betweeners should be the focus of healthy design, and numerous studies show just how dramatically the habits of these swayable people can be changed with subtle changes to the world they live in.
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One of the key concepts of this field is utilitarian versus recreational exercise. Utilitarian exercise refers to activity done in the course of doing something else, such as walking to the grocery store, climbing a staircase, or biking to work. Recreational exercise refers to activity for the sake of itself, be it biking, running, going to the gym, or taking a walk. Health-positive design can positively impact both of these areas. In a small sampling of some of the data I collected over the course of this fellowship, one can see how design decisions could easily be extrapolated. For instance, the U.S. Women’s Determinants Study of 2000 showed that having enjoyable scenery was a predictor of recreational physical activity, as was “frequently seeing others exercise.” Other studies have measured high-walkability versus lowwalkability neighborhoods, and have found that people in highly walkable neighborhoods walk more than others, sometimes by factors of four and five, and mainly for utilitarian trips. Preliminary results of my own research indicate that 65% of the park users interviewed traveled less than 10 minutes to arrive at the park they were in, reflecting existing research conducted in Georgia showing that among people who reported a place to walk within 10 minutes of home, 41.5% were getting their daily recommended physical activity, while only 27.4 percent without that amenity were getting that activity. Copenhagen is perhaps the best example of a city that has turned itself around from a car-clogged, low-movement city into a metropolis of activity. Over the past 30 years, they have systematically made it easier to walk and bike and more difficult to drive, resulting in dramatic activity gains: 36% of traffic to workplaces in Copenhagen is bicyclists, and 60% of residents cycle daily. This has been paired with a gradual reduction in city center parking spaces at a rate of 2-3% every year. Copenhagen is an excellent model of what can be accomplished with far-reaching planning vision. This is merely a brief introduction to the relationship between health and the built environment: for more on this topic, please see my completed fellowship work or contact me directly!
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Publications
Landscape Infrastructure: Case Studies by SWA Ying-Yu Hung, Gerdo Aquino, Charles Waldheim, Julia Czerniak,
Master-Planned Communities: Lessons from the
Adriaan Geuze and Matthew
Developments of Chuck Cobb
Skjonsberg, Alexander Robinson
by Kalvin Platt (author); Tom Fox (photography)
Infrastructure, as we know it, no longer belongs to the exclusive realm of engineers and transportation planners. In the context of our rapidly changing cities and towns, infrastructure is experiencing a paradigm shift where multiple-use programming and the integration of latent ecologies is a primary consideration. Defining contemporary infrastructure requires a multi-disciplinary team of landscape architects, engineers, architects, and planners to fully realize the benefits to our cultural and natural systems. This book examines the potential of landscape as infrastructure via essays by notable authors and supporting case studies by SWA landscape architects and urban designers, among them the technologically innovative roof domes for Renzo Piano’s California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco, the restoration of the Buffalo Bayou in Houston, and several master plans for ecological corridors in China and Korea. Case studies are described extensively with technical diagrams and plan for repositioning infrastructure as a viable medium for addressing issues of ecology, transit, urbanism, performance and habitat.
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Kalvin Platt’s new book was published with the Urban Land Institute: Master Planned Communities: Lessons from the Developments of Chuck Cobb. With case studies of some of the most successful master-planned communities in the United States, Kalvin Platt shares design techniques and lessons learned from development over the last 50 years. Illustrated with 200 great Tom Fox photographs and detailed with drawings and maps, Master Planned Communities covers projects from the 1960's onward and compares these built communities to the Smart Growth Principles that came 30 years later. The book details nine categories of lessons learned, both positive and shortcomings, for present day planners, designers, developers and local governments.
Communications & Fellowships
SWA Production Manual 2008 Fellowship Update
Plant Databases
Leah Hales
2008 Fellowship Update Sergio Lima
What is a Park: video series René Bihan, Alec Hawley, Andrew Callaway, Gloria Lau, Bill Tatham
In this first of a five part You Tube series, René Bihan, Acting Principal of SWA Group’s San Francisco office visits a kindergarten class to discuss public open spaces, specifically public parks. Most of these precocious youngsters know full well what a park is, but it is more interesting to see them discover what exactly MAKES it a park. Their naiveté concerning the origins of parks (that they are designed and built by people) is eye-opening; as they learn about parks, so do we. Following their lesson, the group heads to nearby Washington Square Park to visualize what they have learned. Following that, they are given a homework assignment in which they are asked to design their own park. This video project will be followed by others designed to draw the general public’s attention to parks and public spaces and the roles they play in our quality of life.
In June of 2008, I was awarded the fellowship project to update the SWA Production system manual from 1973 to today. The purpose was not only to bring the manual up to date in terms of plan graphics and protocols, but also to bring stylistically different offices back to a group style of practice. In order to do this, a committee of representatives from each SWA office came together to produce a set of standards and guidelines to use firm-wide. The result was the SWA Production Manual. It is a booklet, about 120 pages in length, that is a guideline for how to produce working drawings, what questions to ask, and what coordination needs to take place during each phase of work. It is meant to be a flexible tool that adapts to the ways and thinking of how we produce our work. The manual may also be a starting point of discussion that prompts further thinking on ways to better our practice and make our work more efficient and complete. Ultimately, I hope this document will get people to think and talk about the day-to-day practice of landscape architecture.
My fellowship began in the fall of 2008 after working on the Burj Khalifa and Jabel Ali projects in Dubai earlier that year. While working on the planting designs, I realized how unfamiliar I was with local flora and with what was available at local nurseries. I spent 10 days in Dubai visiting local nurseries (Proscape, Desert Landscape, Oriental Irrigation) and established landscape sites (Creek Park, Emirates Towers, Streetscapes in Abu Dhabi, Atlantis Hotel, etc) to collect data on different plant species. At the end of this process, I compiled a planting list with information about growth habits, sun exposure, and salt tolerance, and created 110 planting cards about the most useful species. This fellowship set the base to continue my research on planting material for both foreign and domestic work. While working on the Log Mu Bay project I visited Hai Nan to research local planting material and native species, and compiled a planting list for this region. I am currently compiling a plant and image list of ornamental grasses, with particular emphasis on drought tolerant species and California natives.
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Fellowship
Cycle-China a fellowship investigating the role of the bicycle in China by Amirah Shahid
Amirah Shahid documented her fellowship en-route through her blog, cycle-china.com, and in a 5-part series on dwell.com. Now back in California, Amirah is compiling her research to present to interested groups including schools, cycle groups, and planning/ urban research associations I biked 1250 kilometers from Beijing to Shanghai in September, 2011. The objective of the ride was to gain a firsthand understanding of the role of the bicycle in China and to investigate how cycling culture and bike infrastructure can be integrated into efficient and sustainable transportation design. I travelled through a spectrum of different urban conditions ranging from the dense municipalities of Beijing, Tianjin, and Shanghai, through industrial regions saturated with smog, to wide expanses of agricultural fields supporting rice, corn, and cows. The most notable part of the ride is how feasible it is to bike this transect. Even with months of planning and research before leaving the states, I was nervous about getting stuck in frustrating and dire situations I could not get out of. However, as soon as I began riding out of Beijing I realized that China is made for bicycles. Its rich history with heavy emphasis on bikes as a primary mode of transportation is still evident in China’s automobile age. Bike lanes, separated from the highway by railing or a planted median, were present in even the smallest of towns. National roads, one level down from the main freeways, had limited traffic and wide shoulders. Roads were, for the most part, well maintained and I saw lots of new roads being constructed. It was not uncommon to see other bikes on these roads at all hours of the day. The prominence of bikes can be seen in the frequency and range of bike stores and mechanics set up in everything from a high end retail store to a roadside stand. The high density of bikes made other bikers and pedestrians crossing bike lanes the biggest hazard I encountered.
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