Landscape Links
Perspectives of Professionals on Equity-driven Design Practice
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Rachel Mc Namara, Kristine Miller
What are the challenges of and opportunities for advancing equity through landscape architecture practice? Equity in this study is defined as “just and fair inclusion into a society in which everyone can participate and prosper.” This study emerged from a long-term collaboration between Juxtaposition Arts and the University of Minnesota’s Department of Landscape Architecture called ReMix. ReMix envisions the Twin Cities’ environmental design professions as diverse and equity-focused. Since 2005 we have collaborated on teaching, research, and engagement efforts. In 2018 and 2019, UMN student Rachel McNamara conducted (interview-guide) interviews with 25 Twin Cities landscape architects and designers. Interviewees practiced in public agencies, non-profit organizations, and private design firms. Through analysis of interview data we found similarities and differences among how practitioners view the possibilities of advocating for equity from their particular professional positions. For instance, public sector designers see opportunities to help remove obstacles faced by community members who want to participate in decision-making. However, the time they spend removing barriers to participation through more innovative and sustained engagement strategies counts directly against the project’s overall construction budget. Private sector practitioners expressed that if a designer is perceived by their employer or potential employers as an “activist,” it can diminish their job prospects. Private sector designers also felt that design training for students interested in equity needed to be a “both/and” where students gain a strong base in traditional technical skills and knowledge about how professional designers can use their skills to advance equitable outcomes.
Modeling Landscape Performance of Los Angeles’ (Unbuilt) Parkways View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Aaron Liggett
In response to ecological and cultural strains on Los Angeles during the 1920s, there was a call for the efficient management of water, expansion of public parks, and new transportation infrastructure. A solution was proposed by the Olmsted Brothers landscape architecture firm to construct a series of interconnected parkways that would serve as multimodal transportation routes while also providing green space for recreation, wildlife habitat, and stormwater management. For a number of reasons, the proposed park corridors were never constructed; however, the forethought of the design approach and the subsequent floods that devastated Los Angeles in 1938, offers a rich opportunity for backtesting how the original parkway designs could have performed during large storm events. Digital applications, such as HGIS, AutoCad, and SketchUp provide methods to simulate, test, and interpret how natural systems might have interacted with the built environment in a historical context. Digital models offer ways to analyze ecological, functional, and experiential landscape systems to uncover potential outcomes. This innovative research approach offers new applications for testing and visualizing proposed (and existing) designs as well as technical insights and methodologies to inform contemporary sustainable development strategies. Using this method, this study examines a portion of the Hollywood-Palos Verdes Parkway, utilizing proposed grading and planting plans, 1923 USGS topography maps, and records from a historic 1938 flood event, to digitally model the landscape, revealing how the design could have managed the space during various levels of rainfall.
Anti-Intervention: Or The Project as a Claim
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Juliana Ayako Okada Ahmed, Otavio Leonidio
The concept “reclamation of the landscape” doesn’t presuppose the knowledge of the present situation nor a distinction between knowledge and action. It suggests a model unrelated to the realism and historicism that commands the project of alternative action. This study has its origins in the project “Reclamation of Guanabara’s Landscape”, that approaches Guanabara Bay in Rio de Janeiro in a speculative way. Assuming that both pollution and siltation processes are non deliberative actions, what would be an alternative response to these consequences? The project seeks to act in a way disconnected from the ideas of anticipation and control. These anxieties do not aim to conform a prescription with solutions, but a way to question landscape design usual methodology and approach to the field.
Parks and Recreation: Co-creating Public Space in a Colombian Comuna
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Aaron Brakke
Liminal spaces in the periphery of Bogota have expanded, yet remain sites of neglect and violence. Neighboring communities that were founded and developed through forms of pirated urbanism have been recognized and pertain to the municipality of Soacha, yet have received limited assistance to obtain essential services and are still lacking basic infrastructure. Inhabitants of these zones have struggled to create a sense of belonging in a place that has struggled with violence, endured tragedies such as “Falsos Positivos”, and served as a landing pad for internally displaced citizens in Colombia, as well as Venezuelan refugees. The paper ponders how notions of the right to the city can be appropriated by the community that lives in Ciudadela Sucre, a comuna in the municipality of Soacha. One disruptive urban tactic that has been tested with them is the co-creation of public space. Zig Zag park was constructed through a collaborative process of imagining, designing, developing, and building. This project is used to demonstrate that the negligence of governmental entities can be countered with disruptive tactics that empower citizens and help them define their environs. This paper describes and evaluates the participatory action research that was employed to transform both the imaginary and public space.
