ASLA Climate Change & Resilience Forum

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  Jared Green 7:46 pm on June 11, 2018 Permalink | Reply  

  Share Your Knowledge 

  

  Smart Policies for a Changing Climate / ASLA

  We have provided a platform for landscape architects, public officials, and other design and planning professionals to share their views on how to help communities adapt to climate change through smart design policies.

  The ASLA Climate Change & Resilience Forum is meant to start a dialogue about smart policies that work at all levels.

  This forum complements Smart Policies for a Changing Climate, a new report and recommendations developed by the American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA) Blue Ribbon Panel on Climate Change and Resilience. The panel, composed of leaders from landscape architecture, planning, engineering, architecture, public policy, and community engagement, met September 21-22, 2017, at the ASLA Center for Landscape Architecture in Washington, D.C.

  Disclaimer: The comments and opinions of individual commenters belong to those individuals alone and do not necessarily reflect the views of ASLA or the panelists and their organizations.

   

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  Karen Grajales 4:40 pm on June 20, 2018 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: Community Development   

  Community Development 

  

  ASLA 2014 Honor Award, Analysis and Planning Category. The Creative Corridor: A Main Street Revitalization for Little Rock by University of Arkansas Community Design Center and Marlon Blackwell Architect. Image: University of Arkansas Community Design Center + Marlon Blackwell Architects

  In its recently released report, the ASLA Blue Ribbon Panel on Climate Change and Resilience prioritized community development policies that make people and local ecosystems safer and healthier.

  For instance, compact, walkable, transit-oriented development reduces energy use. When designed in concert with natural systems, these “smart growth” communities are also resilient and climate smart.

  Here is a summary of the solutions proposed by the panel:

  • Require transit-oriented development using green infrastructure and complete streets principles and integrating clean energy and energy efficiency.
  • Reuse/redevelop brownfieldsiv and grayfieldsv, including for open space.
  • Require environmental justice analysis and view transit policy through an equity lens.
  • Develop municipal and regional climate resilience plans and require climate change analysis of existing laws and regulations.
  • Restructure insurance programs to encourage resilient rebuilding.
  • Create community investment trusts to fund green infrastructure and resilience projects, including clean energy projects.
  • Assess and address public health impacts of climate change.
  • Require walkable open space within a quarter mile radius of all residential development.

  What’s missing from this list?

  Tell us how you contribute to smart community development? Do you encounter resistance to change, and how do you address it?

   

  George R. Frantz, ASLA, AICP is discussing. Toggle Comments

   
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    George R. Frantz, ASLA, AICP 9:40 pm on June 20, 2018 Permalink | Reply

    What is missing from this list is “PERMIT transit-oriented development…” Across the country countless planners, landscape architects and developers understand and promote the benefits of denser development, even in smaller cities. We want to do it, but local zoning regulations almost inevitably prohibit such development. Transit-oriented development doesn’t have to be mandated by local government. It has to be permitted by local government.

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  Karen Grajales 4:34 pm on June 20, 2018 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: Natural Systems   

  Natural Systems 

  

  ASLA 2014 Honor Award, General Design Category. Hunter’s Point South Waterfront Park by Thomas Balsley Associates and Weiss/Manfredi. Image: Wade Zimmerman.

  According to Smart Policies for a Changing Climate: The Report and Recommendations of the ASLA Blue Ribbon Panel on Climate Change and Resilience, designing and planning in concert with natural systems promotes resilience, capitalizes on the multiple benefits provided by natural systems, and provides greater long-term return on investment than conventional development.

  Design and planning solutions must also address biohabitat to ensure plant and animal communities remain resilient in the face of climate impacts.

  The report provided a summary of the following solutions and recommendations.

  • Provide dedicated funding for green stormwater infrastructure.
  • Require new development to retain stormwater on site.
  • Incentivize planting of locally/regionally appropriate and biodiversity-supporting vegetation; require planting of pollinator-friendly vegetation on public lands.
  • Protect and enhance natural vegetative buffers, including wetlands and water’s edge plantings, along coastlines and inland waterways.
  • Prioritize retention and expansion of green space; address inequities in access to open space and recreation.
  • Adopt a national urban and suburban tree planting strategy to preserve and expand tree canopy.
  • Promote or require water conservation and water reuse technologies.
  • Adopt a national water strategy to protect critical water sources.
  • Incentivize healthy soil management practices.
  • Preserve wildlands.
  • Assess climate change risks to biodiversity and promote greenways and biocorridors for plant and animal migration.

  Have you worked with communities to implement these strategies? Let us know about your own recommendations, successes, and challenges.

   
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  Karen Grajales 4:20 pm on June 20, 2018 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: Vulnerable Communities   

  Vulnerable Communities 

  

  ASLA 2013 Award of Excellence, Analysis and Planning Category. Lafitte Greenway + Revitalization Corridor | Linking New Orleans Neighborhoods by Design Workshop, Inc. Image: Design Workshop

  Special attention must be paid to communities that are at special risk from the effects of climate change, according to the ASLA Blue Ribbon Panel on Climate Change and Resilience in their recently released report.

  These communities include those located in coastal and inland floodplains as
  well as underserved and low-income communities.

  The panel recommended a number of solutions to help ensure that the safety, needs, and well-being of vulnerable communities are considered by policy makers, elected officials, landscape architects, and others in the design and planning professions:

  • Assess and address climate impacts on vulnerable communities.
  • Focus on environmental justice and equitable access to transportation, housing, jobs, and recreation and open space.
  • Develop relocation, retreat, and/or evacuation plans.
  • Limit or prohibit building in floodplains to protect life, property, and floodplain function.
  • Update Federal Emergency Management Agency flood maps and include projections of climate change impacts.
  • Limit or prohibit building in fire-prone rural areas.
  • Promote mixed-income housing and mixed-use development that provides easy access to essential services.
  • Establish/increase low-income housing and new market tax credit.

  What would you add to these solutions?

   
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  Karen Grajales 4:15 pm on June 20, 2018 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: Transportation   

  Transportation 

  

  ASLA 2010 Honor Award, Analysis and Planning Category. Transit Revitalization Investment District (TRID) Master Plan by Interface Studio LLC. Image: Interface Studio LLC

  According to the ASLA Blue Ribbon Panel on Climate Change and Resilience, transportation must be considered through multiple lenses: as critical connectivity from homes to jobs, amenities, and essential services; as a major source of greenhouse gas emissions; and as a contributor to or detractor from a community’s appearance and function. Planned and designed thoughtfully, transportation systems can promote resilience.

  ASLA recently released a report that includes the panel’s recommendations for improving transportation systems:

  • Require transit-oriented development, including affordable housing, with multimodal green and Complete Streets.
  • Provide equitable access to transportation options, including safe, connected pedestrian, bicycle, and transit routes.
  • Anticipate, plan, and provide infrastructure to support electric vehicles and new
    transportation methods and technologies.
  • Apply technologies and design strategies to achieve net-zero-carbon streets.
  • Promote regional transportation planning and development.

  Please share your experiences in designing and building transit systems. How do you build consensus so that thoughtful, safe transportation projects actually get built?

  Karen Grajales and George R. Frantz, ASLA, AICP are discussing. Toggle Comments

   
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    George R. Frantz, ASLA, AICP 9:48 pm on June 20, 2018 Permalink | Reply

    What is missing from this list is “PERMIT transit-oriented development, including affordable housing…” Across the country countless planners, landscape architects and developers understand and promote the benefits of denser, transit oriented development and the provision of affordable housing, even in smaller cities. We want to do it, but local zoning regulations, backed up by NIMBY “protect neighborhood character” citizen lobbies, almost inevitably prohibit such development.
    Transit-oriented development doesn’t have to be mandated by local government. It has to be permitted by local government, and accepted by local communities.

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      Karen Grajales 2:53 pm on June 26, 2018 Permalink | Reply

      Thank you, George, for your insight. I wonder how we can help local communities understand the benefits of denser, transit-oriented development? Where do we start?

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  Karen Grajales 4:10 pm on June 20, 2018 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: Agriculture   

  Agriculture 

  

  ASLA 2010 Honor Award, General Design Category. Rooftop Haven for Urban Agriculture by Hoerr Schaudt Landscape Architects. Image: Scott Shigley

  Agriculture was a topic of considerable interest to the ASLA Blue Ribbon Panel on Climate Change and Resilience when it convened in September 2017. According to the panel’s recently released report, conventional—and unsustainable—development patterns of urban and suburban sprawl are causing significant loss of farmland across the United States and around the globe.

  At the same time, agricultural systems are being stressed by the effects of climate change and unsustainable farming practices.

  Current and future impacts on food production and security, including equitable access to healthy food options, must be addressed.

  The panel recommends the following solutions:

  • Preserve farmland and support local food production.
  • Incentivize urban and suburban agriculture.
  • Incentivize conservation agriculture that builds healthy soil, increases food’s nutritional value, and sequesters carbon.
  • Encourage location of affordable healthy food sources/options in underserved areas.

  Which of these solutions has worked in the communities you serve? Do you have other ideas?

  Genevieve Lawlor and Karen Grajales are discussing. Toggle Comments

   
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    Genevieve Lawlor 7:19 pm on July 12, 2018 Permalink | Reply

    All of the above have been successful in the communities we serve. We specialize in regenerative and productive landscapes at all scales: urban farms and food justice, suburban-rural community farms and farmland preservation, agroforestry projects, productive conservation, climate-smart agriculture, etc.
    We are particularly interested in building partnerships with land trusts to adopt innovative agricultural models on protected land.

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      Karen Grajales 6:16 pm on July 16, 2018 Permalink | Reply

      Thanks for your reply. I just looked at your website and enjoyed reading about the services you provide and your projects. Have you tried reaching out to land trusts?

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        Genevieve Lawlor 6:31 pm on July 16, 2018 Permalink

        Yep – we work with land trusts regularly. I was just mentioning that as “another idea”. The intersection of land trusts and ecological landscape architecture offer unique opportunities for transforming our ag systems.

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