I recently learned about Rachel and Stephen Kaplan’s concept, “soft fascination.” According to the Kaplans, environmental psychologists, “Experiencing environments that encourage soft fascination provides opportunities to think through situations and make decisions; to reflect on prior experiences and make sense of them; and to develop ideas that can be implemented in the workplace or in personal life.” The environments they mention can usually be found in nature. This is precisely what artist and designer Michele Oka Doner does. She immerses herself in the natural world and comes back with questions and answers that fuel her creations. Case in point is her new design for a landmark pavilion in the recently incorporated City of Doral, in Miami-Dade County.

Pavillion Elevation. Rendering by Local Office Landscape Architecture

A Miami Beach native whose inspiration is heavily influenced by her city’s abundance of nature, be it from the ocean or the flora, Oka Doner has left her mark on her home town, in projects like “Walk on the Beach,” the mile long floor installation that greets passengers at Miami International Airport.

When Armando Codina who, with his daughter Ana, is developing the Downtown Doral project, went looking for something that would make a statement about the new independent municipality, he was searching something that “would give it a heart.” Having chosen Oka Doner, he says, “She was the natural artist to do something special in our new city, so the selection was easy,” Codina explains. “Michele is a world-renowned artist whose roots are very much a part of the history of Miami–Dade, having grown up in Miami Beach,” he adds. Read more…

I am intrigued by the human resilience angle that Eric Klinenberg uses in making the case for better urban design in his New Yorker article, Adaptation: How can cities be “climate-proofed?” In it he discusses disaster preparedness in general and describes several large-scale engineering solutions to climate change, solutions that are of necessity government backed. He also writes about the role a resilient civil society can play in increasing an individual’s chance of survival in a disaster. A professor of sociology, public policy, and media, culture, and communications at New York University, Klinenberg writes, “Whether they come from governments or from civil society, the best techniques for safeguarding our cities don’t just mitigate disaster damage; they also strengthen the networks that promote health and prosperity during ordinary times.” He mentions Robert J. Sampson, a sociologist at Harvard, who “has been measuring the strength of social ties, mutual assistance, and nonprofit organizations in Chicago communities for nearly two decades. He has found that the benefits of living in a neighborhood with a robust social infrastructure are significant during ordinary times as well as during disasters.”
He adds that “Alonzo Plough, the director of emergency preparedness and response for the County of Los Angeles, says, ‘But it’s not just engineering that matters. It’s social capital. And what this movement is bringing to the fore is that the social infrastructure matters, too.’”

Enter the urban designer and landscape architect. How social infrastructures are enhanced by landscape infrastructure and open space is the focus of studies by the Landscape and Human Health Laboratory at the University of Illinois, and the subject of an earlier social impact design blog post.

We have an opportunity here step up to the plate and play an important role in enhancing and creating the social capital that makes our communities and our society resilient. While I love and value aesthetics and believe fervently that beauty matters, our work as urban designers and landscape architects is more than a matter of creating artful places. We can, and should, learn to design to increase social connectedness. What would that look like?

For me, this brings us to questions of morality, and of shared societal values. Shared societal values are one of the ways that a group can create cohesion and a sense of mutual responsibility. The lack of a shared moral system tears down the sense of social connectedness. In the entry on morality Wikipedia says “The phenomenon of ‘reciprocity‘ in nature is seen by evolutionary biologists as one way to begin to understand human morality.” Reciprocity as in the Golden Rule; remember that “quaint” idea? Read more…

Walking down a busy street, we rarely think about the interconnected series of stormwater pipes, train tunnels, electrical conduit, water lines, and tree roots that lie just inches beneath our feet—a “web of spaghetti,” as we call it. Typically, these common infrastructure components are out of sight and out of mind, yet they play a significant role in landscape design, particularly in urban settings.

A tangled web of utilities is exposed during a recent streetscape project in Lower Manhattan.  Photo courtesy  Mathews Nielsen

In our previous post, POPS for the People…and the Developer, we described the benefits of privately owned public spaces (POPS) and the requirements associated with incorporating their designs into the city’s fabric. The New York City Department of Parks and Recreation (DPR) has published similar guidelines for streetscape plantings, including plant spacing as it relates to other built elements, infrastructure, and utilities. For example, a typical street tree pit would optimally be five feet by ten feet in size. The minimum horizontal distance from the edge of the tree pit as noted in the guidelines is four to six feet from any built obstruction (building, railing, stoop, etc.), three feet from a hydrant, five feet from a parking meter, and two feet from a gas or water valve. What happens when they prohibit any kind of planting or subsurface improvements? This was our challenge when planning future improvements for a small gathering space within Fox Square, a major crossroads in Brooklyn.

Existing conditions of Fox Square. Photo courtesy Mathews Nielsen

Fox Square proves the point we like to make: Some of the smallest sites can be the most challenging. At a mere 10,000 square feet, the site was selected for redevelopment as a part of the New York City Department of Transportation’s (NYCDOT) public plaza program in conjunction with the Downtown Brooklyn Partnership. Through community outreach and conversations with the New York City Economic Development Corporation (NYCEDC) and city agencies, it was determined that the primary goals of the redesign were to create a safe pedestrian environment by buffering them from existing traffic on Flatbush Avenue, discouraging jaywalking, and providing places to sit and gather. Read more…

The public’s role in the long-term success of any landscape project cannot be overstated. After all, it’s people who use these spaces; they are the true arbiters of a well-designed space over time. To create a successful open public space requires a strategic framework that is mutually beneficial for both developers and the public. To help this effort along, the New York City Department of City Planning (DCP) has established a zoning incentive program: Privately Owned Public Spaces, or POPS.

The primary goal of POPS is to unite function with aesthetics—to create public spaces that provide respite in the city’s dense urban fabric. In exchange for additional floor area or relief from setback restrictions the program requires a developer to provide user-friendly amenities to increase the experiential qualities of the open spaces adjacent to their properties. These spaces must meet stringent design standards to create public plazas that are open, inviting, accessible and safe.

Setting the standard for POPS, though not one itself, Manhattan’s 1967 Paley Park is a timeless landscape rich with public amenities like moveable seating, canopy trees for shade, green walls/planted areas, and water features (as permitted obstructions). Today’s zoning regulations encourage developers to build on these successes and provide public spaces that offer a variety of seating, vegetation, lighting, artwork, cafes, and other amenities. While typically located outdoors like the iconic Paley Park, POPS can sometimes be found in unique settings like lobbies, subway entrances, atriums, and building arcades.

I recently worked with fellow Green Team member Terrie Brightman on a POPS recertification permit for 2 Gold Street (Mathews Nielsen was the original designer in 2008). This time, the new process asked us to meet POPS requirements while pursuing strong and unique designs for these spaces.

The pavement extends to the street, uniting the the plaza with what would become a sidewalk.  Photo: Mathews Nielsen Landscape Architctects

Circulation is a key aspect of POPS design. The stipulations for clear paths are stringent, with limited walkway obstructions that are meant to ease the pedestrian right of way. At 2 Gold Street, several circulation patterns are integral to the plaza’s design. The pavement extends to the street curbs and facilitates pedestrian movement into it, without hindering circulation at the site’s edges.

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The planning profession has reached something of a critical juncture. This is not, of itself, a particularly interesting revelation; to hear planners talk about it, our profession is pretty much always reaching some sort of critical juncture, crossroads, etc. This time, however, we might be onto something.

I recently finished plodding my way through editor Roger Elwood’s Future City, an early-seventies anthology of “new wave” science fiction takes on (wait for it…) the “Future City.” The contributions were unerringly pessimistic, forecasting a future of out-of-control urbanism roughly on the model of the South Bronx circa 1977, but With Added Fancy Computers. The contributions were also, and again unerringly, wrong. The archetypal City of 2012 hardly resembles the nightmares they envisioned, and the attitudes towards urbanism held by many of the stories’ characters are, if anything, even more distant from the current re-awakening of interest in all things urban.

In previous posts on Landscape Urbanism, I’ve argued that the narrative of urbanism—the one accepted by both the mass media and highbrow magazine monthlies—is up for grabs at the moment. It’s changing, to be sure, but through an international, multi-media conversation the results of which nobody can yet foresee. For as long as this conversation is ongoing, it’s perhaps not beyond reason to propose that we’ve all got a certain moral duty to flag both its best and worst contributors for either praise or derision.

With that said, then: three cheers for Mark C. Childs, and a chorus of raspberries for Boyd Cohen.

Urban Composition: Developing Community through Design is Childs’s contribution to the Architecture Briefs: Foundations in Architecture series published by Princeton Architectural Press. The series, we’re informed, is “designed to address of a variety of single topics of interest… in a user-friendly manner alongside the basics of architectural thought, design and construction.” Though ostensibly written for “architecture students and professionals,” Childs’s Urban Composition could be enjoyed just as easily by the interested layman.

In Urban Composition, Mark C. Childs presents not only an introduction to the practice of conscientious urban design, but also advances an optimistic, collectivist vision of civil composition’s contribution to the commonwealth. Image courtesy Princeton Architecture Press

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Just as Danny Boyle’s cinematic representation of England’s transition from a pastoral, farming nation to the leaders of the industrial revolution, London’s East End has been going through a transition of its own in preparation for the Olympic Games. The next question that begs analysis, and dare I say it, the delightfully sarcastic judgment that so often begets British dialogue, is what happens next? When the athletes, officials, tourists, and hoards of security and soldiers leave the Games to patiently wait for the next spectacle of outstanding athletic feats, what is the next phase of Danny Boyle’s English dream?

The London Olympic Committee, for all intents and purposes, has done a fairly progressive job of planning for the temporary nature of the Olympics. Finally, after 30 previous Summer Games where the host cities have seemed to plan with the spectacle in mind, and then proceed with a wish and a prayer that somehow the sites will be used after the event, the planning committees have asked, ‘Hey, maybe we should figure out what to do with this stuff when the 14 days are over’?

London has introduced concepts of temporality in its buildings, unlike previous Olympic host cities. Most of the major sporting structures will decrease in size following the closing ceremonies, or transition into other programs and uses. For this, London should be applauded. They have stepped into the zone rarely taken by architects of impermanent place making.

Yet for all intents and purposes, the Games are still an aggressive rally against thousands of displaced residents. And they’re hardly something to point to as a model of sustainability. What we didn’t see on TV are the thousands of people kicked out of their homes and businesses in the name of world sport and the Olympic ‘spirit.’ So the question still remains, despite all the talk of planning and paying attention to the post-Olympic let down: what is REALLY going to happen to the buildings, the open spaces, and the people that had to relocate all in the name of tradition?

We only have to look back a few short years to the Athens Olympic Games of 2004 to see the fissure between the spectacle scenario of the event and the chaos an ultimate abandonment of the sites after the athletes and spectators have left town. With over $1.2 billion in security alone and nearly $11 billion in total costs, there is little to no money for maintenance of the once celebrated structures. There has even been talk that the Olympics put the Greek economy into a tailspin.

While the Olympics offer the promise of urban spatial transformation, the results are often far from the early ambitions of the planners and idealists. There are 43 sites for the London Olympic Games. London has done a fairly decent job, with very few venues needing to be built from scratch. The Olympic budget has increased to a whopping $18.3 billion, causing rational people to question what will happen to the mammoth structures rising out of those billions of British pounds.

To get more specific, I’d like to take a quick look at three of the major Olympic venues in London.

1. The Olympic Stadium

What do you do with a stadium that has a capacity of 80,000? For the London Games, the Olympic Stadium’s capacity will be reduced post-events to a permanent capacity of 25,000. The structure is comprised of a temporary steel and concrete upper tier, which holds the additional 55,000 spectators to be dismantled after the conclusion of the event. The plan is to use the stadium as a venue for sporting events, as well as cultural and community events; for example, it will host the 2015 IAFF World Championships.

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Valencia’s Green River, Photography by Brian Phelps.

Bold ideas are easy, implementing them is hard. This is particularly true as cities around the world want to use their landscape infrastructure to address the issues they face. How can interventions be woven into the existing urban fabric? Beyond simply mustering the financial resources or political will, one must seek opportunities to carefully insert or adapt landscape systems to the constraints of established urban communities. New York’s High Line, Atlanta’s Beltline, and Madrid’s RIO project all relied on abandoned or superseded rail or highway infrastructure to thread linear landscapes through the hearts of old cities. Valencia, on the other hand, relied on a crisis, and in the words of Rahm Emanuel, “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste.”

In 1957, Valencia experienced a devastating flood that forever changed the city’s relationship with the Turia River. Nearly three quarters of the city was inundated by floodwater and over 60 people lost their lives. The following year, the city embraced a plan to divert the river around its western outskirts to the Mediterranean Sea.

1957 Flood in Valencia: Photograph extracted from PereDrak’s Valencia Slideshow.

Re-routing the City’s River..

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What does it mean to tell the story of landscape architecture? Of design, generally? And what about the stories behind the designs of all of the projects underway worldwide? The aftermath of a great project can unfortunately be a resounding silence: the metaphorical gates open, the space is unveiled, the construction teams leave the site, and then a few leaves fall. When people use new spaces and places in the urban setting, how do we tell the story of the creation of landscapes beyond launch day? Beyond signage? About the designers, architects, planners and people behind the projects?

In this interview, I join Amanda Walter and Holly Berkley, co-authors of the recently released book, Social Media In Action, to talk about the need for communication in landscape architecture and how the increasing prevalence of social media tools—such as blogging, Twitter, Facebook and more—are helping the architecture, engineering and planning industry change the way we communicate.

Sarah Kathleen Peck: What do you see as the role of storytelling and communication in landscape architecture?

Amanda Walter and Holly Berkley: Unfortunately, landscape architecture can be invisible to lay people. This may be the profession’s biggest struggle. If landscape architects don’t tell the stories of their projects – drawing attention to the design and intention of the space – no one else will. Your designs can’t speak for themselves when the public attributes their authorship to God. For landscape architecture firms, your narrative is what will open the public’s eyes to your work.

Today, telling and sharing stories couldn’t be easier and digital formats are great for visually rich topics like design. Social media loves visual content. Videos are shared more frequently and posts (whether on a blog, on Facebook or LinkedIn) with striking images attract more readers.  Once you start telling your stories in social media, your readers will let you know (like, share, comment on, etc.) the content they like the best – pay attention to what content engages your audience and you’ll hone your story telling skills.

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