Landscape Infrastructure

While back in Japan last month, I learned of Houston’s Hurricane Harvey. The breath-taking videos of large-scale flooding were widely broadcasted on the morning and evening news programs there. The images of drowning buildings, highways, and trees under the extensive muddy water were a shocking reminder to the Japanese of their own 2011 Tsunami, in… Read more »

Tokyo, the nation’s capital, rests on the country largest plain—with a geographical scale about a half of Houston’s area—and is also close to sea level, with five major rivers flowing through. Because of its setting, seasonal storms and pacific typhoons kept putting the cities under water historically. Flood control has been one of the key agenda items for the regional lords and the nation’s governors to tackle over the past 500 years. They tried to manage the rivers with the available technologies in each age. Building levies, dredging channels, and rerouting rivers all worked somehow to disperse the water flows and energy, however, those classical measures never caught up with the rapid, extended, and intensified urbanization of the region and the cities were occasionally submerged.

There is a popular new tourist attraction located on the outskirts of the metropolitan area, with access totally controlled and only a limited number of people allowed each day. Although there is no icon, no seating, and no pipe organ, people call it ‘The Underground Cathedral’. Every visitor who has taken the 116 steps down into the space has been impressed and somewhat overwhelmed by its scale and structure, and especially by its hidden power to ease the challenges of nature.

The formally named Metropolitan Outer Floodway, a series of huge concrete structures built under a major highway, totals six cylinders and subsidiary pressure control cisterns connected by a four-mile-long tunnel, with each unit measuring 230 feet deep and 100 feet in diameter. They store up to 900,000 cubic yards of runoff water during heavy storm events and discharge it in a controlled manner. The complex took 20 years and cost $2 billion to construct and it is estimated that the facility has averted $15 billion of potential economic damage in Tokyo since it began operation 15 years ago.

We will keep experiencing ‘record-breaking’ or ‘unpredicted’ natural disasters related to climate change. Estimates of the economic damage that Harvey and Irma caused have reached $200 billion. It may be worth spending comparatively less money in advance to build mega-scale infrastructures such as those outside Tokyo in order to save a trillion dollars and to protect people’s lives in the future. What’s the alternative? Some of the towns devastated by the Tsunami already moved their settlements to higher grounds; they do not want their children to experience the catastrophic tragedy they endured.

Image courtesy of Edogawa River Office, Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport, and Tourism, Japan. Koichiro Nagamatsu is a designer in the Laguna Beach studio.

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Posted by Koichiro Nagamatsu
in Landscape Infrastructure
on 6 October, 2017

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The Pearl River Delta is characterized by a uniquely Chinese dike-pond system of integrated agriculture and aquaculture, which is operated on a geographical and economic scale unrivaled elsewhere in the world. The emergence of the dike-pond is tightly associated with flood control. Its highly flexible production system contributes to its wide dissemination in the Delta…. Read more »

In the past thirty years, however, pressure coming from two concurrent processes of urbanization—a city-centered urban sprawl and a dispersed rural-based industrialization—has compressed the space of the dike-pond landscape and caused its typological changes. Today, a large portion of the dike-pond is either converted or occupied, leading to severe water management and treatment problems. Since the late 1990s, approximately 4,000 square kilometers of farmland have disappeared every year in China. According to a national lands survey, 130,000 square kilometers of farmland—equivalent to about half the area of Germany—disappeared in the country’s rush toward urbanization between 1996 and 2009.

And it hasn’t stopped there. The Pearl River Delta is in the midst of large-scale ecological and economic shifts in its food production systems, and more change is sure to come. Current and future challenges of the dike-pond system include: the shrinking area of the dike-pond system and rising demand for fish protein; the discontinued practice of a traditional, organic food economy coupled with an increasing consumer desire for sustainable produce; and uncertainty and variability in freshwater supply due to the effects of water quality degradation and global climate change. This crisis calls for alternative models of food production amidst the irresistible urbanization.

Located in southwest Foshan City, Jiuquchong is an underdeveloped region that represents the trade-off between promoting economic growth through further urbanization and protecting fertile farmland against accelerated urban expansion.

Like many other villages in the Delta, Jiuquchong once enjoyed years of economic prosperity from its dike-pond landscape. Its closeness to the city hub, however, has cost the region a continuing period of pond infill by new development over the past few decades. The energy balance between the dike and the pond has also been broken since more dikes are converted into modern freshwater aquaculture ponds to satisfy the worldwide demand for fish protein.

Although a large portion of the dike-pond is preserved owing to a national farmland protection policy, it is not economically viable. The productivity of the dike-pond system is negatively affected by its sequential layout. Pond sequential layout causes a problematic concentration of nutrients for the inner ponds; pond water quality decreases, as it is further away from the irrigation channel; and the inner ponds tend to have a higher volume of sediment accumulation, higher phosphorus, higher nitrates, and a consequent lower water transparency.

As a territory in the shadow of the cities, what can we envision for the dike-pond landscape in Jiuquchong: losing the dike-pond to the urban expansion? A passive preservation of the dike-pond? Or a synergistic development with urbanism? Is a balance between ecology and economy even achievable?

Through learning about the complex historical model and the bottom-up wisdom, my recent graduate thesis at UC Berkeley attempted to re-envision a future for Jiuquchong, posing the possibility of reconciling the contradiction between urbanization and agrarian landscape preservation. The project proposed a central spine of hybridization for the future of Jiuquchong, on which new ecologies, new economies, and cultural identities are interwoven with the process of reclaiming the productive dike-pond landscape. This central spine is, at first sight, a 1.5-kilometer roadway that connects the village to the east with newly developing urban fabric. Upon deeper study, it is actually a landscape-based infrastructure that combines freshwater aquaculture, sediment harvesting, lotus tourism, and wastewater management and treatment. It is systematic, flexible, polyfunctional, and accessible to the public.

The whole region is interrelated through a complex set of hydrologic flows and material exchanges that link the multifunctional dike-pond with the local markets and factories. The new hydrologic infrastructure links the pond occupation, preservation, and conversion zones to improve the water quality and productivity of the whole system. It collects multi-source water, utilizes the nutrient-rich water, then treats and discharges it downstream.

The Jiuquchong vision is just one iteration of reconciling the contradiction between urbanization and agrarian landscape preservation. The dike-pond landscape is highly adaptive and complex, as demonstrated in its long history. Through subtle rearrangement and hybridization, the dike-pond system can adapt to different fluvial conditions and ecological adjacencies, become part of the adaptive response to climate change, and incorporate and support the regional economy development. Through learning from the historical model and “bottom-up” wisdom, we can reconcile the complexities and embrace a sustainable and productive future.

Xiuxian Zhan is a designer in the Sausalito studio.

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Posted by Xiuxian Zhan
in Ecology, Landscape Infrastructure
on 15 June, 2017

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Smart Growth America released a study in January about dangerous streets for pedestrians. The study, “Dangerous by Design 2016,” was the 4th edition outlining the pedestrian death epidemic that totaled over 46,000 lives from 2005-2014. According to the report, Americans were 7.2 times more likely to die as a pedestrian than in a natural disaster…. Read more »

Smart Growth America released a study in January about dangerous streets for pedestrians. The study, “Dangerous by Design 2016,” was the 4^th edition outlining the pedestrian death epidemic that totaled over 46,000 lives from 2005-2014. According to the report, Americans were 7.2 times more likely to die as a pedestrian than in a natural disaster.

Thankfully, trends in the past few years have encouraged Complete Streets, walkable streets allowing for safer transportation techniques. However, an alarming number of people are clearly still in danger by simply walking as a means for transport. Reports indicate that 2015 showed the largest percent increase in traffic deaths in the U.S. since the 1990s. Smart Growth America considered race and income disparity in its study. The organization found that elderly individuals (65+ years old) are 50 percent more likely to be struck by a moving vehicle than younger individuals. Additionally, the findings suggest that people of color are more likely to be hit by a car as a pedestrian due to decreased funding for proper road construction in lower income communities.

PDI, or Pedestrian Danger Index, is the metric used to examine major metro areas around the United States. Florida tops the list with multiple cities, including Cape Coral, Tampa, Jacksonville, Daytona Beach, Fort Myers, and Palm Bay; these places have the most dangerous streets in America. Florida’s DOT is well aware of the report findings, and, one imagines, they are working toward keeping pedestrians safer.

Assuming at one point or another we have all found ourselves walking down a busy street in unsafe conditions, we know how uncomfortable it can be. Why should the elderly or people of lower income neighborhoods suffer? Let’s face it; roads built in the past were commonly built with solely one thing in mind: the automobile! The fact of the matter is, whether retrofits or new construction, there is a lot of work to do on streetscapes as designers and planners of our nation’s urban, suburban, and rural communities.

The redesign process begins with public interest and then funding.

We can do a lot of work with design to transform street environments; however, practicing landscape architecture is not the only form of improving our streets. Perhaps we can also do our part, as humans, by taking responsibility for our actions, sticking to the speed limit, putting away our cellular devices, not driving under the influence and paying closer attention to the road. Traveling by public transit is another option one should consider. Fortunately, cars will soon drive themselves. Unfortunately, however, these man-made robotic experiments do not come with an accident-free guarantee.

Dangerous by Design 2016 research shows that pedestrian deaths from 2010 to 2014 increased after commuters started returning to work following the Great Recession. Longer commutes, decreased funding for infrastructural improvements, and the citizens’ increased desire to walk to work, fueled the epidemic. Lots of sidewalks in suburban and rural communities are worn down, defeated, and in some cases non-existent.

In conclusion, designed walkable streets can transform dangerous landscapes by revitalizing the spirit of place. If you ask people about their favorite childhood memory, 90 percent of the responses involve an outdoor experience. In addition to the elderly and people of low income, many children around America suffer from treacherous streets as the neighborhoods they explore daily become their playgrounds. Hopefully, Smart Growth America’s study will nudge the Complete Street Movement along a bit quicker, while opening the public’s eye to a safer, friendlier, and more walkable united nation.

Billy Guarino is a designer in the Laguna Beach studio. Image is courtesy of the San Francisco Bike Coalition. For more information on Dangerous by Design 2016, click here.

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Posted by William Guarino
in Landscape Infrastructure, Urbanism & Planning
on 13 February, 2017

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Considering the tremendous struggle over the Dakota Pipeline, I’ve been thinking a lot about what water really means to people, what water brings to us, and what we can bring to water. Closer to home, I recently heard that the 20-year-old plan mapping the future of the LA River is getting an update that will coordinate numerous ongoing efforts to revitalize the 51-mile-long body of water. The prime concerns about the plan have to do with the change of land value, bad gentrification, and losing affordable housing, conditions which rushing to develop the water corridor may bring about. As a landscape designer, I care most about what kinds of changes would occur in the interaction between the river and people.

In the city where I was born, water channels weave in and around a historic village (Hong Cun). The village hasn’t changed through hundreds of years, and people there have preserved their intimacy with water: creeks still weave in front of their houses and they perform all kinds of daily activities there: washing clothes, playing, fishing, swimming, growing food, and so on. At first I thought these water channels and water bodies were natural, however I was surprised to read that most of them were made purposely over hundreds of years, with the goal of moving water from outside the village inside, from the water channels to water wells in houses.

This interconnected water system shows the wisdom of using and enjoying water. For the people there, as with the North Dakota Sioux natives, water means their life. In other cultures too, interactions between water and people are sacred. In India, where tanks are usually categorized into temple tanks and agriculture tanks, a unique system of holding water and holding activities is intertwined. Agriculture tanks are everywhere, controlling floods, allowing water to flow and overflow, and providing cultivated land for people. More unique is the temple tank that allows people to perform many ritualized activities in water. While rituals are anchored in temple tanks, at the same time, people’s lives are being ritualized by water.

Some more great designs give me vivid images of people attracted by and interacting with water. The ongoing revitalization of the waterfront in Belgrade, Serbia, offers a great example of an SWA-generated transformation. And, instead of burying its problematic waterway, San Antonio created the popular Riverwalk attraction, which quickly became home to diverse water-related activities and a tourist and economic hub. The ChonGae Canal revitalization plan, by Mikyoung Kim Design, in Seoul, Korea, similarly restored and transformed a highly polluted and covered waterway into a public recreation hub. People now come from all parts of the city to gather in the ChonGae River.

Water brings and holds activities for people who live around it. It is celebrated in ordinary and everyday practices across many cultures. Four our professional purposes, water can be represented in many design vocabularies to offer new interpretations of landscape practice and design.

Yi Li is a designer in the Laguna Beach studio. Image of the Belgrade Waterfront by Tom Fox.

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Posted by Yi Li
in Ecology, Landscape Infrastructure
on 12 December, 2016

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Landscape Architecture as an aesthetic discipline may at times seem irrelevant in the face of such pressing problems as global warming, social inequity, resource depletion, and habitat loss. But there is a fundamental aspect of what we do that tackles these issues, with landscape architects a part of interdisciplinary teams. This movement, if you will,… Read more »

This movement, if you will, can encompass the specification of recycled content and the parametric modeling of coastal revetments. We participate whenever we push our projects, clients, and communities to consider data as part of the design, when we reach out to large groups through social media to contribute to democratic design processes, and when we collaborate with horizontally structured interdisciplinary teams. In return, we experience a growing sense of empowerment and capacity; we’re part of an idealistic and values-driven practice that at once ignites a designer’s passion and adds a touch of whimsy to our work. We are the Neo-Victorians.

Like Olmsted and Downing, we have the benefit of following a cresting wave of innovation in tangentially related industries. Olmsted first used asphalt, patented in 1870, to reduce noise from carriages in Central Park; Portland Cement was invented in the 1850s; the Bessemer process was patented in 1856. The first reinforced concrete bridge was built in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park in 1889. The Victorians were inventing urban parks with new high-tech tools developed during the industrial revolution. Neo-Victorians have the information revolution as our wave. We came into practice after the hard work of adapting computer technology to design occurred; we expect open access to information, and using CAD, 3D modeling, GIS and cloud-based collaborative tools to enable precision, processing, and systems analysis.

The similarities between generations is also aspirational. Olmsted’s generation of urban park designers sought to improve the quality of life for the public. Neo-Victorians come out of school with the desire to change our environment and communities for the better. We are embracing the challenges of an urbanizing world undergoing climate change and the Anthropocene. We are exploring the relationship between design and social justice. Public Architecture’s 1% program, B-Corporations, non-profit design firms, and activist designers all push issues at the front of practice.
Since the 1980s, the growth of concept-based design curriculum has become pervasive. Today, “Draw ‘til it’s beautiful” and problem solving is not sufficient without a strong narrative. In seeking narrative, designers are trained to develop higher levels of awareness around the site, as well as the politics of place and systems. Their interventions are tied, however tenuously, to these networks of ideas and this pedagogy develops the expectation of higher levels of meaning to practice. Concept-based design education has raised a generation of unabashed idealists who see landscape architecture not as a job, but as a lifestyle decision.

When considering how landscape architecture as a discipline will address the world’s future, the answers are already embedded in our collective practice. Neo-Victorians are diverse and pluralistic, unhesitatingly technical and optimistic. This mandates the integration of environmental amenities and infrastructure; community involvement; and an aesthetic whereby digital custom fabrications welcome ornamentation.

Neo-Victorians are everywhere: small research-oriented firms, government, nonprofits, and corporate offices. These different types of practice provide varied channels and support for elevating the discipline. Work such as Kate Orff’s Oyster-Techture or Petrochemical America integrates real data and research methods into design processes, revealing charismatic ideas for intervention and experimentation. Challenging typical funding and business practice, Mass Design Group’s work in Rwanda identified the issue first, and the team applies as much creative process to funding its work as to its physical design. SWA Group’s Landscape Infrastructure practice integrates public space amenities with large-scale infrastructure systems such as the Buffalo Bayou Park and flood control system, in Houston, Texas.

Neo-Victorians have a huge advantage over the Victorians: there are so many more of us, and we come from all over, with every culture and background influencing our inspirations. We practice with the last 150 years of technical advancement, cultural development, and design experimentation at our fingertips. We will develop many strategies to overcome the looming crises of our times. Many will not work, but those that do will inevitably have major implications.

Imagine today’s cities without the benefit of Olmsted and the Victorian designers. Tomorrow’s communities will look back on the Neo-Victorians as igniters of an explosion of ideas who just started to harness the power of the digital age to inform place. As we continue to focus on concept, values, and rigor we can look forward to a future enriched by the romantic belief that we can make a difference, and find nobility in giving our best selves to our work.

Chris Hardy is a landscape architect in the San Francisco studio and the creator of the montage accompanying this post.

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One Response to “Who Are the Neo-Victorians?”

Durp

With this good article, a lot of light is shed as to how landscape architecture is the future we need if we have to overcome the current urban problems.
June 28th, 2016 Reply

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Posted by Chris Hardy
in Landscape Infrastructure, Landscape Urbanism, Urbanism & Planning
on 13 May, 2016

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The One Belt, One Road policy (OBOR) launched last March by the Chinese National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) aims to enhance coordination across the Asian continent, namely financial integration, trade liberalization, and person-to-person connectivity. One Belt is an economic land belt that builds on the ancient Silk Road that dates to the Han Dynasty… Read more »

One Belt is an economic land belt that builds on the ancient Silk Road that dates to the Han Dynasty (206 BC-220AD). That hugely influential network of trade routes linking Asia with the Roman Empire began in Chang’an, China (now the city of Xi’an), and ended in the Mediterranean world, reaching its peak during the Tang Dynasty (618-907). The contemporary One Belt network will also link central Asia, West Asia, the Middle East, and Europe, relying on rail routes to develop oil, natural gas pipelines, and other infrastructure projects. The complementary One Road is maritime passage, a network of coastal infrastructure incorporating Southeast Asia, eastern Africa and the northern Mediterranean Sea.

OBOR’s principal goal is to boost connectivity and commerce between China and more than 60 countries across three continents, an area which takes in one third of the world’s total economy and more than 50 percent of the global population. From 2016 to 2020, the Chinese government will invest 50 billion dollars to support OBOR’s simultaneous mission of enhancing local development and integration.

There are two keys to the strategy. One is designing a regional economic architecture; reorganizing as well as optimizing the regional trade and investment patterns is the vital challenge. Over the next five years, domestic firms are strategically encouraged to go aboard to explore new markets and investment opportunities. Due to the overcapacity of certain industries such as steel, cement, and aluminum, China’s role as a global manufacturing powerhouse can be pushed further to stimulate economic growth. Investing and producing in China for export to developed markets will still be a powerful model to elevate China to the world’s largest economic entity.

The other strategy is the network of regional infrastructure. The infrastructure includes transportation infrastructure mainly railways and roads, energy infrastructure and communication infrastructure (IT infrastructure), which related to the Smart City Strategy years ago. The Infrastructure Alliance with other countries is vital for trade, policy, currency, and human connectivity. The annual gap between the supply and demand for infrastructure spending in Asia holds great potential. The excess steel industries can support OBOR infrastructure building.

The OBOR policy will exert an enormous influence on people’s lives, especially its transportation, tourism, shopping, and education aspects. The large amount of transportation infrastructure construction will increase air routes and make plane tickets cheaper. Driving a car or taking high-speed light rail from China to Europe will become realistic. As for tourism, there will be many new routes and products with special features designed around the Silk Road. More importantly, the process of issuing visas will be much easier for both Chinese and residents of other related countries. In addition, overseas travelling, e-business, and the development of free-trade zones will strongly encourage consumer shopping. Last but not least, a series of cultural and art festivals will be held among OBOR countries to enrich people’s lives.

In the next five to twenty years, OBOR will boost the urbanization process of China even further. There are mainly two challenges for us urban planners, designers, and landscape architects: One is how to guide the green and low-carbon development considering the various local features of the places we engage. The economic development should rely on local resources as well as respect the local environment. OBOR covers diverse ecological environments, such as desert, prairie, forests, and rivers. Protecting and taking advantage of those resources is key. On the other hand, China should explore a unique urbanization model powerful enough to guide development. The gap between urban and rural areas is a critical problem that requires smart solutions. Scientific guidance concerning rural marginalization, population distribution, and resource integration will be vital to informing the new urban structure.

Autumn Jing was a summer student at SWA Dallas and is the intern in the LA studio. She is from Taiyuan, China, and attends UPENN.

Image of construction in Raycom City, China, courtesy of Tom Fox, SWA.

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Posted by Autumn Jing
in Landscape Infrastructure, Urbanism & Planning
on 17 August, 2015

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Tokyo’s ‘Underground Cathedral’ Stores and Redirects Excess Flood Waters

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Pond Urbanism: Reclaiming Productive Water for the Future

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Toward Safer Streets in America

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Water, Water Everywhere

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Who Are the Neo-Victorians?

One Response to “Who Are the Neo-Victorians?”

Durp

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Chinese Urbanization Under the One Belt, One Road Policy

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