Posted on May 26, 2010 by elissahoagland
ASLA’s The Dirt recently covered the 2010 Dumbarton Oaks Garden and Landscape Study Symposium. This year’s focus was “Designing Wildlife Habitats,” which looked at ways to preserve biodiversity in rural and urban environments. America’s cities are an appropriate laboratory for such a movement, given that many city-dwellers’ encounters with wildlife are limited to rats, raccoons [...]
Filed under: green infrastructure, planning | Tagged: connectivity, mental health, sustainability | Leave a Comment »
Posted on November 30, 2009 by Ben Welle
A small town in Pennsylvania designed by Frederick Olmsted is trying to turn a corner after years of decline by building on its history as a city designed to be in tune with nature. The AP’s Ramit Plushnick-Masti writes how Olmsted designed Vandergrift, 35 miles northeast of Pittsburgh and its streets to follow the river. [...]
Filed under: green infrastructure, renewal | Tagged: small cities, sustainability | 1 Comment »
Posted on November 3, 2009 by Ben Welle
Revitalization starts with goats, or so it goes for Baltimore’s Druid Hill Park. The city’s Parks and People Foundation is undertaking a $10 million renovation of a decrepit mansion on the edge of the historic 745-acre park that will house an environmental learning center, the group’s main offices and trail connections to the rest of [...]
Filed under: green infrastructure, maintenance/management | Tagged: baltimore, sustainability | 2 Comments »
Posted on September 2, 2009 by Ben Welle
GOOD magazine takes us to Philadelphia to look at the city’s new trash compactors. LOVE Park (or JFK Plaza as it is formally known) is seen in the background. more about “Trash Compactors in Philadelphia“, posted with vodpod
Filed under: maintenance/management | Tagged: philadelphia, sustainability | 2 Comments »
Posted on December 22, 2008 by Ben Welle
Many park agencies and park friends groups are trying to go “green” by reducing their carbon footprint. In many ways, this has nothing to do with parks themselves, but tactics to reduce energy consumption that would apply to many other companies or government entities. In any case, the Tacoma, Washington city parks agency just hired [...]
Filed under: maintenance/management | Tagged: sustainability, tacoma | 4 Comments »
Posted on November 10, 2008 by Ben Welle
The Sustainable Sites Initiative is inviting public comment on a new proposed set of standards for sustainable landscape design, construction and maintenance. The report, entitled Guidelines and Performance Benchmarks Draft 2008, is the most comprehensive set of national guidelines yet developed for landscape sites, and is available for download at www.sustainablesites.org. (An online feedback form [...]
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Posted on October 12, 2008 by Ben Welle
The Portland Tribune does a nice job of explaining a pilot program to go pesticide free in a few of Portland’s parks. The basic message is that if you want to go pesticide free it will require both volunteers and money. The parks department has partnered with a nonprofit that has organized 244 volunteers who [...]
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Posted on September 25, 2008 by Ben Welle
SustainLane is out with its annual ranking of sustainability for the 50 most-populous cities in the nation, benchmarking each city’s performance in 16 areas. The particular category of interest to parks is “Planning & Land Use,” which combines data from the Center for City Park Excellence on parks as a percent of land area in each city with Smart [...]
Filed under: planning | Tagged: rankings, sprawl, sustainability | Leave a Comment »
