Data collected by engineering firm WSP indicates that it is structurally possible construct a freeway lid over Interstate 5 (I-5) in Downtown Seattle within all four of the sub-areas studied, which extend from Madison Street to Denny Way. The study also found that integrating midrise and highrise buildings with the lid structure would be compatible and in some cases preferable from an engineering standpoint to deal with grade changes. — The Urbanist
Seattle's The Urbanist reports that a plan to add a park and buildings over a depressed portion of Interstate-5 in downtown Seattle is, at the very least, technically feasible. The finding could add momentum to the proposal. Lawrence Halprin's Freeway Park, built in 1976, represents a... View full entry
Around 0.9 billion hectares (2.2 billion acres) of land worldwide would be suitable for reforestation, which could ultimately capture two thirds of human-made carbon emissions. — Good News Network
Professor Thomas Crowther, co-author of the study and founder of the Crowther Lab at ETH Zurich that conducted the research writes, “We all knew that restoring forests could play a part in tackling climate change, but we didn’t really know how big the impact would be. Our study shows clearly... View full entry
Since [...] the federal government turned control [of Governors Island] over to New York City, under the condition that it not be used for residential housing, it has been an island in search of a purpose [...]
Now, the city has a new idea: transforming one of its last big chunks of developable land [...] into a “living laboratory” for coping with the effects of climate change.
— The New York Times
The early stages of a plan to convert New York's Governor's Island into a self-funded sustainability laboratory have come to light. The proposal bears some similarities to the Billion Oyster project, a decade-old proposal developed by an eponymous nonprofit and landscape architects SCAPE hat... View full entry
The plan calls for strengthening 2.4 miles of coastline from Montgomery to East 25th Streets by creating a series of flood walls, levies, reconstructing bridges at Delancey and 10th Streets, while also raising East River Park by 8 to 9 feet by placing piles of dirt on top of the existing landscape. — The Villager
New York City’s $1.45 billion East Side Coastal Resiliency project (ESCR) has been approved by the New York City Planning Commission despite community outcry over the required temporary closure of the Lower East Side’s East River Park that the project entails. The project is designed... View full entry
The Cultural Landscape Foundation (TCLF) has recognized influential Canadian landscape architect Cornelia Hahn Oberlander as the namesake for a new international landscape architecture prize. The Cornelia Hahn Oberlander International Landscape Architecture Prize is set to be awarded for the... View full entry
As the effects of climate change grow more apparent, the question of where to build is due to become a significantly more complicated affair. A case in point comes from a recent report in The New York Times highlighting the ties between financing, land-use, and climate... View full entry
Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has unveiled a series of sweeping legislative proposals that could, among other things, reshape access to housing in America. The so-called A Just Society: Uplift Our Workers Act plan is made up of six separate legislative proposals that each... View full entry
Gabon will become the first African nation to receive funding to preserve its rainforests to mitigate the effects of climate change. [...] Norway will pay $150 million to Gabon to battle deforestation and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The deal is part of the Central African Forest Initiative [...] The partnership sets a carbon floor price of $10 per certified ton and will be paid on the basis of verified results from 2016 through to 2025. — QZ
According to QZ, since 2000, Gabon has created more than a dozen new national parks to help preserve the country's forests. Roughly 12-percent of the Congo Basin Forest, the second-largest tropical rainforest behind the Amazon, is located within Gabon's borders. View full entry
"DOWN TO EARTH: how can we redefine all our actions as what leads toward the Earth? How can we adapt in such a way that our urban living environments can cope with the impending climate crisis – not at the expense of but in balance with nature? Indeed, where can we land?”
George Brugmans (IABR)
— George Brugmans
The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warned us in the fall of 2018 that to avoid catastrophe, human societies have 12 years to completely transform the way we use energy and land. Change is urgently needed and on a scale for which ‘there is no documented historical... View full entry
new research published Thursday in Science shows bird populations have continued to plummet in the past five decades, dropping by nearly three billion across North America—an overall decline of 29 percent from 1970. — Scientific American
Reflective, glass-skinned buildings are responsible for the deaths of over 1 billion birds each year in the United States. According to the American Bird Conservancy (ABC), buildings are the second-deadliest human-linked cause of death for birds; Only domestic cats kill a higher number of birds... View full entry
The nonprofit group that manages Central Park is planning the largest project it has undertaken in its nearly 40 years: a $110 million investment in the mostly forgotten northern corner, which may not be on many tourists’ itineraries but which is a vital backyard to surrounding blocks where green space is scarce. — The New York Times
The renovation plan, according to The New York Times, has "resurrected questions about 'park equity' and long-running criticism from advocates who say that as money continues to pour into New York’s signature parks, smaller and out-of-the-way green spaces in modest neighborhoods remain... View full entry
This Friday, the University of Pennsylvania will hold Designing a Green New Deal, a day-long symposium aimed at articulating a design perspective for "a still-abstract set of proposals for decarbonizing the economy, eliminating poverty, creating green, working-class jobs, and retrofitting... View full entry
Drawing on the Bay Area's rich cultural landscape legacy, this weekend of free, expert-led tours will feature dozens of sites, including gardens, campuses, plazas, public parks, and cultural institutions. An online city guide and printed guidebook will be produced in tandem with the Weekend. — TCLF
The tours, scheduled for September 14 and 15, include visits to the Makoto Hagiwara-designed Golden Gate Park Japanese Tea Garden, the first public Japanese garden in the U.S., and to San Francisco's Civic Center Plaza, a site currently undergoing substantial renovations. View full entry
Most of the structure that has been added since [Burning Man's 1996 revival] feels invisible to the people who come: the streets that are surveyed to be exactly 40 feet wide, the plazas that steer people together without crowding them, the 430 fire extinguishers around town, each tracked by its own QR code.
The goal now, one planner explained to Mr. Romer, is to make Black Rock City just safe enough that people can joke about dying without actually dying.
— The New York Times
Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Romer and The New York Times writer Emily Badger explore the urban economics of Burning Man's Black Rock City while envisioning the potential relevance of the instant-city planning model amid massive, worldwide urbanization. View full entry
[Finbarr Fallon's] photo series Dead Space explores how these monuments are designed, and how their history contrasts with Hong Kong’s more modern developments. “I have always been intrigued by how city-specific cemetery design can be,” Fallon says via email. “While death is universal, its memorialization practices are not. I found it fascinating that extreme density and verticality continue to be a defining characteristic of Hong Kong’s dwellings for both the living and the dead.” — Fast Company
Hong Kong's towering high-rise cemeteries can reach up to 60-stories in height. Regarding the photo project, Fallon writes, “The images juxtapose residences for two diametrically opposed groups—the high-rises for the living, and graves for the dead." View full entry
