Resiliant Landscape Guide

Location: International

Website:asla.org/resilientdesign.aspx

Working with nature -- instead of in opposition to it -- helps communities become more resilient and come back stronger after disruptive natural events. Long-term resilience is about continuously bouncing back and regenerating. It's about learning how to cope with the ever-changing “new normal.”

As events become more frequent and intense due to climate change, communities must adapt and redevelop to reduce risks and improve ecological and human health. It's also time to stop putting communities and infrastructure in high-risk places. And we need to reduce sprawl, which further exacerbates the risks.

Resilient landscape planning and design offers a way forward for communities. We can now use multi-layered systems of protection, with diverse, scalable elements, any one of which can fail safely in the event of a catastrophe.

Many communities have attempted to find a single solution to disasters through heavy-handed infrastructure projects: walls to keep out water, power plants to cool cities. But working with nature to create multi-layered defenses provides several co-benefits.

For example, constructed coastal buffers, made of reefs and sand, can also provide wildlife habitat and recreation opportunities; urban forests made up of diverse species clean the air while reducing the urban heat island effect; and green infrastructure designed to control flooding also provides needed community space and creates jobs.

The goal of resilient landscape planning and design is to retrofit our communities to recover more quickly from extreme events, now and in the future. In an era when disasters can cause traditional, built systems to fail, adaptive, multi-layered systems can maintain their vital functions and are often the more cost-effective and practical solutions.

In an age of rising waters and temperatures and diminishing budgets, the best defenses are adaptive, like nature.

This guide is organized around disruptive events that communities now experience: drought, extreme heat, fire, flooding, landslides, and, importantly, biodiversity loss, which subverts our ability to work with nature.

The guide includes numerous case studies and resources demonstrating multi-benefit systems as well as the small-scale solutions that fit within those. The guide also explains landscape architects’ role in the planning and design teams helping to make communities more resilient.

Water Sensitive Urban Design

Location: Melbourne, Australia

Website: www.wsud.melbournewater.com.au

The key principles of Water Sensitive Urban Design as stated in the Urban Stormwater - Best Practice Environmental Management Guidelines (Victorian Stormwater Committee, 1999) are:

Protect natural systems - protect and enhance natural water systems within urban developments. Promoting and protecting natural waterways as assets allows them to function more effectively and supports the ecosystems that rely on them.

Integrate stormwater treatment into the landscape - use stormwater in the landscape by incorporating multiple use corridors that maximise the visual and recreational amenity of developments.

The natural stormwater drainage system can be utilised for its aesthetic qualities within parklands and walking paths, making use of natural topography such as creek lines and ponding areas.

Protect water quality - improve the quality of water draining from urban developments into receiving environment. Through filtration and retention, water draining from urban developments can be treated to remove pollutants close to their source.

This approach reduces the effect that polluted water can have upon the environment and protects the natural waterways.

Reduce runoff and peak flows - reduce peak flows from urban development by local detention measures and minimising impervious areas. Local detention and retention enables effective land use for flood mitigation by utilising numerous storage points in contrast to the current practice of utilisation of large retarding basins.

This approach subsequently reduces the infrastructure required downstream to effectively drain urban developments during rainfall events.

Add value while minimising development costs - minimise the drainage infrastructure cost of the development. The reduction of downstream drainage infrastructure due to reduced peak flows and runoff minimises the development costs for drainage, whilst enhancing natural features such as rivers and lakes that add value to the properties of the area.

Places

Location: International

Website: www.places.designobserver.com

Places is an interdisciplinary journal of contemporary architecture, landscape and urbanism, with a particular focus on the public realm as both physical place and social ideal.

We publish essays, peer-reviewed scholarship, observations, reviews, visual portfolios, and occasionally poetry and fiction, with new articles appearing weekly. Whatever the format, we are dedicated to advancing public awareness of the expansive value of design research and practice, with the ultimate goal of promoting sustainable cities and healthy landscapes.

Places Journal is a 501(c)3 organization, published by the Places Journal Foundation in collaboration with the Design Observer Group. We are grateful for the support of a network of North American and European universities as well as organizational and individual sponsors.

Prior to moving online in 2009, Places was a print journal founded in 1983 by faculty at MIT and Berkeley. The entire print archive is available in pdf format.

Friends of the Urban Forest

Location: San Francisco, CA

Website: www.fuf.net

Friends of the Urban Forest's mission is to promote a larger, healthier urban forest as part of San Francisco’s green infrastructure through community planting, tree care, education, and advocacy.

Each year, Friends of the Urban Forest helps communities plant nearly 1,000 trees. Neighbors organize the plantings. Friends of the Urban Forest obtains permits, removes sidewalk concrete, supplies tools and materials and selects, purchases and delivers the trees. On planting day, Friends of the Urban Forest volunteers work side-by-side with residents. After the work is done, everyone celebrates over a community lunch.

At plantings neighbors meet, often for the first time, to improve their streetscape. Spirits are high and everyone has a good time for the common good.

In 1995, Friends of the Urban Forest formally instituted Tree Care to improve tree health and to increase survival rates. Friends of the Urban Forest’s certified arborists, assisted by volunteers and trainees, prune and restake existing street trees. Tree Care aims to provide essential maintenance services and to educate neighbors, through mailings and hands-on assistance, on how to care for their trees.

Friends of the Urban Forest is committed to increasing its resources for Tree Care, which is essential to maintain and enhance the community’s investment in San Francisco’s urban forest.

Friends of the Urban Forest seeks to increase public awareness of the importance of trees in an urban environment. In addition to its newsletter and other periodic publications, it offers tree tours, quarterly pruning workshops, and leadership training.

Friends of the Urban Forest’s Youth program trains youth from underserved communities, in planting and tree care. It also encourages young people to engage with their communities and introduces them to careers in urban forestry.

In all of its programs, Friends of the Urban Forest seeks to improve our City’s environment, build community and connect San Franciscans with the natural world and each other.

The Cultural Landscape Foundation

Location: Nationwide

Website: www.tclf.org

The Cultural Landscape Foundation (TCLF) is the only not-for-profit (501c3) foundation in America dedicated to increasing the public's awareness and understanding of the importance and irreplaceable legacy of its cultural landscapes.

Through education, technical assistance, and outreach, we broaden awareness of and support for historic landscapes nationwide in hopes of saving this diverse and priceless heritage for future generations. While TCLF seeks donations to support its efforts, it is not a membership organization.

Founded in 1998 by Charles Birnbaum, FASLA, TCLF achieves its mission by
•Collaborating with individuals and local, regional, and national groups to understand and protect our landscape heritage and to reach the broadest possible audience. For example, TCLF is one of the American Society of Landscape Architects’ “partners in education”;

•Training professionals, students, teachers, and the general public to recognize, document and safeguard America's cultural landscapes;

•Serving as the nation’s largest and most valuable non-profit source of information about our nation’s historic landscapes and those pioneering individuals who have contributed (through design, planning and advocacy) to this legacy;

•Raising awareness of and support for individual landscapes-at-risk; and

•Recognizing and celebrating the efforts of owners, supporters and stewards of significant American places.

TCLF’s overall success can be measured by the millions of people who have learned about cultural landscapes through its website, publications and events—as well as through the growing national awareness of the importance of America’s cultural landscapes and the increasing efforts to document and protect this heritage.

re:place Magazine

Location: Vancouver, BC

Website: www.regardingplace.com

Re:place intends to be a forum for discussion on relevant issues pertaining to Greater Vancouver’s public spaces and urban landscape.

Re:place intenfs to educate citizens about the workings of the public realm, and to encourage interaction and engagement in cities.

Re:place intends to explore the ever-changing look and dynamic of Greater Vancouver.

The world is urbanizing. Of the 6.5 billion inhabitants of this world, 3.2 billion currently live in cities and the number is forecasted to increase to 5 billion by 2030 – an estimated 61% of the global population. Vancouver, with its reputation for balanced, healthy and sustainable living, is being faced with the challenges of population growth and urban development every day.

This reality makes discussions regarding urbanism and the public realm of the utmost importance, yet there are currently no media in the GVRD where the primary focus is the investigation of these issues.

We aim to change this. re:place is a non-profit organization devoted to facilitating the holistic discussion of relevant urban landscape and public space issues throughout the GVRD.

The re:place team offers a depth and variety of experience in architecture, urban planning, municipal processes, journalism, media relations, design and sales. This organization will strive to shed light on the complex issues inherent to the ideal of sustainable urbanization.