Landscape architecture and climate change
Tne American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA) has added to its online exhibition which demonstrates how landscape architects are designing smart solutions to climate impacts.
The Smart Policies for a Changing Climate exhibition demonstrates how landscape architecture is helping to mitigate climate events such as flooding, extreme heat, drought, and sea level rise.
Ten new projects have recently been added to the exhibition - ASLA says they exemplify best practice approaches to landscape architecture in the era of climate change.
Sapwi Trails Community Park, Thousand Oaks, California - Conejo Recreation & Park District and RRM Design Group (consulting landscape architects). In drought-stricken Western states, climate change has added stress to increasingly fragile ecosystems. Instead of moving forward with an earlier plan that could have damaged the Lang Creek ecosystem, planners and landscape architects at the Conejo Recreation & Park District and RRM Design Group designed the Sapwi Trails Community Park to be a model for how to preserve ecological systems while improving access and dramatically reducing water use.
The projects include a mix of landscape-based and often nature-based solutions across the U.S., which range in scale from residential and school landscapes to masterplans for entire cities and counties.
There is also a focus on projects that address climate injustices and meet the needs of historically-marginalised and underserved communities.
The John W. Cook Academy Space to Grow Schoolyard, Chicago, Illinois - site design group, ltd (site). Historically marginalised and underserved communities, like those found in the South Side of Chicago, are disproportionally affected by climate impacts such as flooding. Through the Space to Grow program, a flooded asphalt schoolyard at the John W. Cook Academy, an elementary school on the South Side, was redesigned by landscape architects at site design group, ltd (site) to become a green learning and play space that captures stormwater.
“These projects clearly show how landscape architects can help all kinds of communities reduce their risk to increasingly severe climate impacts. Landscape architects design with nature, which leads to more resilient solutions that also improve community health, safety, and well-being over the long-term,” says ASLA CEO Torey Carter-Conneen.
The ten new projects were selected by ASLA’s Climate Action Committee meaning there are now a total of 30 projects featured in the online exhibition.
Randall’s Island Connector - The Bronx, New York - Mathews Nielsen Landscape Architects (MNLA). Historically marginalised and underserved communities, like those in the South Bronx in New York City, experience higher than average heat risks because they typically have fewer parks and recreational spaces. The lack of safe and convenient pedestrian and bicycle access to nearby green spaces exacerbates the problem. Working with two community groups and the New York City government, landscape architects with MNLA designed the Randall’s Island Connector, a ¼-mile-long multi-modal path underneath an Amtrak freight line.
Each project was selected to illustrate policy recommendations outlined in the 2017 report produced by ASLA’s Blue Ribbon Panel on Climate Change & Resilience.
You can see the exhibition here.
Houston Arboretum and Nature Center. Houston, Texas | Design Workshop and Reed Hilderbrand. By 2012, more than 50 percent of the tree canopy of the Houston Arboretum and Nature Center had been lost due to drought and hurricanes made more severe by climate change. By removing trees and restoring the original prairie, savannah, and woodland ecosystems found at the Arboretum, landscape architects with Design Workshop and Reed Hilderbrand designed a landscape naturally resilient to future climate shocks.