landscape overlook(ed)

"He was clearly eager for the challenge of persuading a giant country that it needs to live with water and not simply resist it. But he was skeptical about anyone’s ability to effect meaningful change in the United States. He had recently taken an exploratory trip to the Far Rockaways, with a team of American engineers that was rebuilding storm walls damaged by Sandy. “These are the same walls that broke before?” Ovink asked. “Yes!” came the reply. “And what if they break again?” “We’ll rebuild them again.”

This year, for the first time in memory, the monarch butterflies didn't come, at least not on the Day of the Dead. They began to straggle in a week later than usual, in record low numbers. Last year's low of 60 million now seems great compared with the fewer than three million that have shown up so far this year.

. . . 

A big part of it is the way the United States farms. As the price of corn has soared in recent years, driven by federal subsidies for biofuels, farmers have expanded their fields. That has meant plowing every scrap of earth that can grow a corn plant, including millions of acres of land once reserved in a federal program for conservation purposes.

Landscape architects have placed significant emphasis on the rejuventation of habitat, especially in urban areas. While botanists such as Peter del Tredici stress the the importance of this urban habitat regardless of it's "nativeness" as a means of de-emphasizing the impact of so-called invasive species, the lack of bio-diversity in corn fields and other industrialized crops is shocking. For reference, see photographer David Littschwager's One Cubic Foot project. Littschwager spent a few years traveling the world, placing one-cubic-foot steel cages into gardens, streams, parks, forests, oceans, and then photographing all the little critters that passed through. Insects, spiders, worms, fish, birds, and anything else large enouch to be photographed was captured and compiled into a composite photograph that speaks to the incredible biodiversity that covers the earth. 

Philadelphia Raises Stakes With Plan to Reverse Blight - NYTimes.com

"In Philadelphia, many individuals are deterred from buying tax-delinquent properties by having to deal with a maze of public agencies or with difficulties in finding the private owners. The land bank would take control of vacant, publicly owned properties from four city agencies, leaving the city in a better position to combine them with private real estate that it would acquire to create blocks more likely to attract developers.

...

Advocates for land banks envision a variety of uses for the abandoned properties, including market-rate and affordable housing, commercial development, and open space.

Other uses could include community gardens or urban farms. For the last 17 years, a project known as Greensgrow has been growing vegetables and making compost on the site of a former galvanizing factory in a low-income area of North Philadelphia."

Vacant lots are become fertile territory for landscape architects, with brownfield remediation, airport and military lands being converted to parks (see Dusseldorf, Downsview, Orange County Great Park, among others), and projects like the High Line gaining ground in recent years.

In addition to the projects listed above, check out the following for more interesting ways landscape architects and designers are tackling vacancy in shrinking cities: 

- The Possible City (http://possiblecity.co)

- the Shrinking Cities project (http://www.shrinkingcities.com)

- the Urban Voids competition (http://www.vanalen.org/urbanvoids)

What our ancestors were able to create when we were a poor country, we are unable to sustain even now that we are rich. That’s not because of resources. It’s because they were visionaries, and we are blind.

Worried about dwindling water supplies, communities across the drought-stricken Southwest have begun waging war on a symbol of suburban living: the lush, green grass of front lawns. 

In hopes of enticing, or forcing, residents to abandon the scent of freshly cut grass, cities in this parched region have offered homeowners ever-increasing amounts to replace their lawns with drought-resistant plants; those who keep their grass face tough watering restrictions and fines for leaky sprinklers.

Arid Southwest Cities’ Plea - Lose the Lawn - NYTimes.com

Landscape architects have been embracing xeriscaping for decades. (See http://dirt.asla.org/2010/06/29/ending-the-reign-of-lawns/). Happy to see that the NYT consulted a landscape architect for this piece, Diana Balmori:

Residential neighborhoods without lawns would have been considered downright heretical just two decades ago, said Diana Balmori, a landscape architect and an author of "Redesigning the American Lawn."

Seen as Nature Lovers' Paradise, Utah Struggles With Air Quality (New York Times, February 23, 2013) 

Salt Lake County has experienced 22 days this winter in which pollution levels exceeded federal air quality standards, compared with just one last year.

...

It is not that the region necessarily emits more pollution than other large metropolitan areas, or that the problem is especially new, Mr. Bird said. What makes the situation here different is the confluence of topographic and meteorological factors.

...

“If the 40,000 women in Utah who are pregnant suddenly started smoking, that would constitute a genuine health emergency,” said Dr. Brian Moench, an anesthesiologist who leads Utah Physicians for a Healthy Environment, a group that has urged Gov. Gary R. Herbert, a Republican, to declare a public health emergency. “But our levels of air pollution are causing the exact same consequences as if all these women were smoking.”

...

In an interview on Thursday, Governor Herbert said the state had taken a number of steps to address the pollution: urging people to take mass transit, meeting with energy companies to develop emission reduction plans and reducing the use of state vehicles.

Governor Herbert's recommendations are a start. Investment in landscapes--both recreational and conservational--is critical to long-term mitigation of air-quality issues. Plenty of federal incentives exist, (e.g. Conservation Innovation Grants (CIG), intended to stimulate the development and adoption of innovative conservation approaches in conjunction with agricultural production) but these are miniscule in comparison with farm stimulus payments and agricultural subsidies. 

Study: Where Air Pollution Is Bad, Heart Attacks Are More Deadly (The Atlantic, February 20, 2013)

In Urban Parks, Our Newly Lush Life (New York Times, July 14, 2012)

Floating Islands to the Rescue

“Our river wetlands are degraded because of conditions of our watershed and the ones we created by eliminating the flood plain,” Dr. Theiling said. “We are not getting the natural ecosystem service benefits of nutrient processing and sediment assimilation that we would get if this land were in its natural state.”

How New York City's Coastline Became a Place to Put the Poor (New York Times, December 3, 2012)

In retrospect, after the storm, it looked like a perverse stroke of urban planning. Many of New York City’s most vulnerable people had been housed in its most vulnerable places: public housing projects along the water, in areas like the Rockaways, Coney Island, Red Hook and Alphabet City.

. . . 

It’s impossible to talk about the landscape of modern New York without talking about [Robert] Moses, who leveraged his position as head of the Mayor’s Committee on Slum Clearance to mass-produce thousands of units of high-rise public housing, often near the shoreline. His shadow looms over much of the havoc wreaked by the storm.

Going With the Flow: Flood Control in the Netherlands Now Allows Sea Water In (New York Times, February 13, 2013)