Category: sustainability
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Living Shorelines
Amidst the political crazy we like to call our United States government, and specifically what seems like a daily dismantling of environmental policies, there’s at least some folks at work on alternatives. Per a recent ASLA Advocacy brief: “On December 1, 2017, Congressman Frank Pallone Jr. (NJ) introduced H.R. 4525, the Living Shorelines Act of 2017.…
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Urban Ecology Reading List 2: Landscape Ecology
URBAN ECOLOGY READING LIST – 2 Beyond some of the specific books focusing on the science of Urban Ecology, there are subsets of literature that support this study. This is the first of three posts to expand the reading list that investigate these other, related disciplinary alignments, including landscape ecology, the hybrid books on planning…
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Why Cities Need More Green Roofs
Nice video from NPR on Why Cities Need More Green Roofs. From the summary. “We took a field trip to the largest green roof in New York City. Then we imagined what the city could be like if all of its roof space was green.”
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Water and Cities
Interesting exploration from Architect’s Newspaper from October covering a range of water specific projects and proposals in the urban realm. A short description: “For landscape architects today, urbanism and water go hand in hand. Whether dealing with issues of sea level rise, groundwater retention, or just plain old water supply infrastructure, landscape architects are working…
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Hemp to the Rescue
We’ve heard of many plants that have phytoremediative qualities, that is, the properties that can absorb and neutralize toxic substances in soils. For all the versatility of hemp, I hadn’t thought of it as possessing that ability until I read recent post on Roads and Kingdoms entitled Hemp and Change. The crux of the…
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LA+ Journal
A fine addition to the ranks of landscape architecture journals that recently emerged is LA+, The Interdisciplinary Journal of Landscape Architecture, from the Penn. From the website, the journal is billed as the “…the first truly interdisciplinary journal of landscape architecture. Within its pages you will hear not only from designers, but also from historians,…
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Ecology & Landscape Architecture
A great post on the The Dirt from a couple of months back delves into a topic near and dear to my thoughts on landscape architecture and urbanism – particularly how do we blend science and design in meaningful ways. The article “Teaching Ecological Restoration (Not Restoration Ecology) includes the new Temple University concentration in…
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A Bit on Biomimicry
Since reading Janine Benyus’ book Biomimicry back in 1997, I’ve been simultaneously fascinated and frustrated by the conceptual positioning and posturing of the proponents of biomimicry. Don’t get me wrong, i think the idea of biomimicry has much potential in design, particularly product invention, industrial design, and architecture. What i have a hard time wrapping…
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Anne Whiston Spirn Lecture in Portland
An upcoming lecture by Anne Whiston Spirn entitled Restoring an Urban Watershed: Ecology, Equity, and Design will be happening on Monday, January 23rd, from Noon to 1pm at the Portland Building, 1120 SW Fifth Avenue – Second Floor, Room C. The brownbag is free and open to all. Here’s a synopsis. The West Philadelphia Landscape…
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Siftings: 01.11.12
““All great art is born of the metropolis.” – Ezra Pound :: image via NY Times A great little snapshot on urban serendipity from the NY Times that looks at the accidental ‘curation’ of spaces that the urban environment yields, such as the framed view from the subway to the Brooklyn Bridge. Perhaps the uniformity…