The world has lost 60 percent of animal populations since 1970. This staggering decline reflects the growing pressures on ecosystems, from habitat destruction to climate change. And 1 million species now face threats of extinction. As these problems continue to escalate, the importance of preserving biodiversity and restoring ecosystems becomes clearer.
Superstorm Sandy inundated Lower Manhattan, causing billions in property and infrastructure damage. To protect against future flooding, storm surges, and sea level rise, landscape architects are developing an innovative mix of green and grey solutions along the southern coast of Manhattan.
These are not nature-based solutions but forms of armor. And designers are showing how this armature can be woven into the public realm, creating new kinds of infrastructure. Smart design is resulting in retractable gates and walls, landscaped berms, and raised platforms. No concrete walls separating communities from each other or the waterfront here.
It's that time of year again: students and their families are busy preparing for the start of school, while some of us are gearing up to step in front of the classroom. While preparing to teach an intro course on climate, I'm reminded of why we use the term climate change and not global warming.
Yes, the Earth is warming from a thickening layer of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere caused by us. But climate changes range from sea level rise to increasing storms, floods, fires, and drought, which are all negatively impacting biodiversity as well. So, not just warming. Recent storms that battered the eastern U.S. coast and Bermuda remind us of this difference. While some communities face extreme heat, others brace for storms and rising waters, and many face multiple impacts.
Anyone who walks during the summer in a city like Boston knows that a significant amount of time is spent charting routes with shade. But I can’t use that as my only excuse for being off-task. Honestly, I’m distracted. The swirling headlines of the U.S. presidential election, an unprecedented UN climate conference looming, and the phrase “decade of decisive action” weighs heavy on my shoulders. While it’s easy to get caught up in current events, those of us with solutions must stay focused.
A perhaps helpful Japanese phrase to call upon is “kotsu kotsu,” essentially meaning to slow down and focus on the task at hand, and do it well. Temperatures are soaring, people are suffering. As a recent UN COP letter stated, “time lost is lives, livelihoods, and the planet lost.” Cooling our cities and communities is more important than ever.
It’s now clear that approximately 80% of emissions from landscape architecture projects come from materials. This includes the extraction of natural resources, and their manufacturing, transportation, and construction in parks, plazas, streets, campuses, and neighborhoods. A significant portion of emissions in the built environment can be traced back to two materials: concrete and metal, which includes steel and aluminum.
The challenge lies in the fact that we use a large amount of both materials, they are difficult to replace due to their strength and utility, and improving their environmental impact is a complex process. But progress is being made.
“Embodied carbon accounts for 75 to 95 percent of the greenhouse gas emissions from landscape architecture projects,” said Chris Hardy, ASLA, PLA, senior associate at Sasaki, during the third in a series of webinars organized by the ASLA Biodiversity and Climate Action Committee. But by selecting locally made low-carbon materials, landscape architects can significantly reduce the climate impacts of their work.
Embodied carbon emissions are generated from the extraction, manufacturing, transportation, and construction of landscape materials. The other share of project emissions come from operating and maintaining a landscape.
“Constitution Gardens will become a biodiversity hotspot on the National Mall,” said Adam Greenspan, FASLA, design partner at PWP Landscape Architecture. “We will create a garden, based in nature, while respecting the historic design.” Constitution Gardens in Washington, D.C. opened in 1976 to commemorate the bicentennial of the American revolution. Concepts outlined in the McMillan Plan and designs by Dan Kiley and SOM shaped the landscape.
But over the past forty years, the gardens fell into disrepair and became a pass-through site on the way to other more popular destinations on the mall. Now, the second phase of a three-phase plan to revitalize the garden has been approved by the Commission of Fine Arts and National Capital Planning Commission. The design by PWP Landscape Architecture and Rogers Partners Architects will create a “new ecological landscape” designed for people and hundreds of plant and animal species.
“The Mindfulness City will be a sustainable city. To be mindful is to be aware — to perform best,” said Giulia Frittoli, partner and head of landscape at BIG. The Kingdom of Bhutan is a landlocked Buddhist country in the eastern Himalayas, nestled between China and India. It covers 14,000 square miles and has a population of nearly 800,000.
The Royal Office of Bhutan asked BIG, Arup, and Cistri to develop a plan for a new Mindfulness City in Gelephu in southern Bhutan, near the border with India. The city will span 386 square miles and include a new international airport, railway connections, hydroelectric dam, university, spiritual center, and public spaces.
“Landscape architects have started conversations about embodied carbon. There is a realization that we can no longer ignore the grey parts,” said Stephanie Carlisle, Senior Researcher, Carbon Leadership Forum and the University of Washington, during the first in a series of webinars organized by the ASLA Biodiversity and Climate Action Committee.
The grey parts are concrete, steel, and other manufactured products in projects. And the conversations happening are laying the foundation for a shift away from using these materials. The landscape architect climate leaders driving these conversations are offering practical ways to decarbonize projects and specify low-carbon materials.
"We are focused on creating a just public realm," said Chelina Odbert, Hon. ASLA, CEO and founding principal of Kounkuey Design Initiative (KDI), at the National Building Museum in Washington, D.C. And by just, "we mean free, inclusive, accessible, unbiased, and equitable". A "just public realm is open to everyone.” There is unlimited access to streets and public spaces so people can travel to school and work and be full members of their communities.
Unfortunately, the public realm is instead often “intimidating, exclusionary, inaccessible, unjust, and inequitable” for many women, LGBTQIA+ people, people with disabilities, and people of color. Landscape architects, planners, and others need to understand who feels safe and comfortable in public spaces or there is a risk of perpetuating inequalities, Odbert argued.
One of the most radical instances of public space transformation happened recently. During the early months of the Covid-19 pandemic, public space transformed into “a medical resource, a distribution hub, an overflow space, a center of protest and resistance, a gym, a senior center, a community center, a daycare center, a schoolyard, a night club, a transportation corridor, an outdoor restaurant, a shopping mall, a children’s playground, an outdoor theater, a music venue, a nature center, and a place of belonging and ‘being at home.’”
Highways, in their inanimate state, cannot be racist. However, the forces that located them and the consequences of their placement are inextricably connected to race. Deborah Archer, a law professor and civil rights lawyer, captures the central concept: “Highways were built through and around Black communities to entrench racial inequality and protect white spaces and privilege.”
In the new book, Justice and the Interstates: The Racist Truth About Urban Highways, editors Ryan Reft, Amanda Phillips du Lucas, and Rebecca Retzlaff explore racial injustice and the interstate highway system. They collect essays that address the dislocation caused by interstates. The book came out of a series of articles in Metropole, a publication of the Urban History Association.
Each year, the Trust for Public Land (TPL) issues its ParkScore, which ranks the park systems of the 100 most populated cities in the U.S. This year, the organization also explored the positive health outcomes of top-scoring cities, looking at more than 800 innovative programs and practices that integrate park and healthcare systems.
“Our fellows have shown courage, written books, founded mission-driven non-profits, created new coalitions, and disseminated new tools,” said Cindy Sanders, FASLA, CEO of OLIN, in her introduction of the Landscape Architecture Foundation (LAF) Fellowship for Innovation and Leadership program at Arena Stage in Washington, D.C.
Sanders highlighted the results of a five-year assessment of the LAF fellowship program and its efforts to grow the next generation of diverse landscape architecture leaders. The assessment shows that past fellows are shaping the future of the built environment in key public, non-profit, and private sector roles.
In midtown Manhattan, the street crossings surrounding the entrance to the Lincoln Tunnel were once some of the most challenging in the city. A mess of highway ramps, missing sidewalks, and concrete barriers made the corner of Dyer Avenue and 30th Street an area to avoid.
Now with a new $50 million elevated connector, pedestrians can safely move 30 feet above the intersections using a 600-foot-long L-shaped bridge from the High Line to Moynihan Train Hall.
The institution of slavery shaped landscapes on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean. And in turn enslaved and free Africans and their descendants created new landscapes in the United States, the Caribbean, and Sub-Saharan Africa. African people had their own intimate relationships with the land, which enabled them to carve out their own agency and culture.
At Dumbarton Oaks in Washington, D.C., a symposium — Environmental Histories of the Black Atlantic World: Landscape Histories of the African Diaspora — organized by N. D. B. Connolly, a professor at Johns Hopkins University, and Oscar de la Torre, a professor at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, sought to highlight those forgotten relationships between people and their environment.
This Earth Day, U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris highlighted the many benefits of nature-based solutions and recognized the important role of landscape architects in this work. At the University of Miami, she also announced $562 million in funding for coastal resilience projects, supporting 149 projects in 30 states, through the Climate-Ready Coasts Initiative of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Vice President Harris’ remarks build on the Biden-Harris administration’s support for planning and designing with ecological systems in an equitable way.
“Economic shocks, climate change, and COVID-19 have changed transportation systems in a fundamental way. We can’t waste a crisis. We can increase access to transportation while reducing greenhouse gas emissions. We can achieve more mobility with fewer impacts,” argued Ani Dasgupta, president of the World Resources Institute (WRI), at the 20th annual Transforming Transportation conference. For two days, global leaders reflected on the state of transportation systems worldwide at the hybrid event in Washington, D.C., which was also watched by tens of thousands online. The event was co-organized by WRI and the World Bank.
Transportation still accounts for 25 percent of greenhouse gas emissions worldwide and up to 30 percent of emissions in developed countries. Transportation is a diverse sector that includes sidewalks, bikes, cars, buses, trains, subways, ships, and planes.
