design | IDEAS

Urban heat island effect is measured as the temperature difference between the air within the urban canopy layer and that measured in rural areas. Built urban environments can suppress air movements, obstructing cool flows and exacerbating pollution. However, as Alexander Robinson argues in his research for SWA, “high density cities may be our best sustainable… Read more »

FORMATTED Freeway Potential Heat Island Mitigation_001

Borne of the urban condition, urban heat island effect has even more complex impacts, from precipitating the formation of smog (as temperature rises) to creating scenarios that encourage huge consumptions of energy (e.g. air conditioners during a heat island-induced heat wave). This phenomenon is mainly caused by the absorption of solar radiation by urban surfaces, and subsequent trapping of the heat-energy by the geometries of built environments. Mitigating these impacts is just as complex.

Los Angeles is currently posed for worsening heat island effects. Projected temperature rises from global warming will make Los Angeles hotter regardless of heat island effect. With a growing population, the increased development and mineralization of the urban environment seems inevitable. Surface modification, in the form of rooftop greening, has the potential to mitigate heat islands in Los Angeles. The temperature was moderated at one point in history with surface modification: the agricultural irrigation of orchards drastically dropped summer temperatures. The most water-efficient method of surface modification are trees, which produce deep shade and comfortable microclimates.

Facilitated air movement and surface modification are used as urban heat mitigation techniques. The city of Stuttgart in Germany provides an excellent precedent in designing for air movement to mitigate urban heat island effect. The city’s Urban Climatology department has identified areas critical for nocturnal air flows, called “STEP” zones. Cold-air generators (e.g. agricultural fields, forests, oceans) and flow corridors are identified and protected from development, so cool air can flow into the otherwise poorly ventilated city at night. Corridors must be at least 100m wide and kept free of obstructions (including trees).

Many reports provided in Alexander Robinson’s research for SWA recommend wider streets and stepped back buildings to improve air circulation. Depending on urban geometry, freeways have the potential to act as corridors for cool-air movement. Perhaps freeways can be enlisted in moving cool air from the Pacific Ocean through the urban neighborhoods of Los Angeles?

Alexander Robinson was a designer at SWA from 2007-2009. He is currently an Adjunct Assistant Professor in the Masters of Landscape Architecture Program at the University of Southern California.

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Posted by YingYuHung
in Landscape Infrastructure
on 27 March, 2012

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Experiencing severe coastal storms has always been part of living near the sea; however, current planning models and infrastructures are putting residents in positions equivalent to placing their heads in the sand. On September 13, 2008 Hurricane Ike struck the upper Texas coast, wreaking havoc on infrastructure and washing away entire communities. In response, SWA teamed with the University of Houston for Rice University’s SSPEED (Severe Storm Prediction, Education and Evacuation from Natural Disasters) Center to identify a system of solutions that equally considers structural and non-structural strategies.

The focus was to protect where appropriate and promote land uses resilient to environmental forces, where the viability of the landscape is an indication of effective, sustainable shields to flooding.

Hurricane Ike still narrowly missed the modeled “worst case scenario,” where storm waters would track up the densely populated west shore of Galveston Bay and into the heavily industrialized Houston Ship Channel. Labeled only as a category two storm by wind speed, Ike surpassed all inundation damage predictions for its designation and changed the lives of millions of people.

This one event, in a region populated by 6.5 million residents and frequented by hurricanes, sparked a sorely needed reassessment of historic storm preparedness . The first major proposal was the “Ike Dike”, a continuous dike to be built across the bay. This proposal came with high costs and potential for great environmental degradation. Once completed, the monumental dike would promote a false sense of safety, exponentially increasing the original post-Ike rush to rebuild and develop and exposing millions more to future risk in the still environmentally fragile bay. Before long, the concept was deemed a “moral hazard”.

What are needed instead are new approaches to effectively and sustainably protect and develop our modern coastlines by the integration of land use and necessary infrastructures.

The Coastal Resilience project aims to identify reasonable planning solutions to respond to Galveston Bay’s frequent tropical storms, hurricanes, and coast shaping forces. Currently, there is no clear understanding of the level of risks along the coastline, and even in the presence of clear information, it is human nature to underestimate high-level risks that occur infrequently. As a starting point, suggested non-structural responses included: improving and strictly enforcing building codes, hardening public infrastructure to be protected to a 100 year surge level, removing flood and wind subsidies in unprotected areas, buyout storm damaged properties after an additional flood, full disclosure for all future purchases, flood depth signage in all unprotected areas, better communication tools like readily available storm surge maps, and alternative land uses such as the creation of a national recreation area.

Structural or levee building opportunities sought to protect highly populated and culturally significant areas such as building an earthen levee that can protect against a 500 year return frequency (including a wave protection factor) to encourage development in the protected area. The resulting plan also identified an opportunity to tie the coastal defense infrastructure into the natural topography by rebuilding an existing roadway to specifications offering the desired 100 year flood protection and creating marshes, coastal dunes and waterfront parks to help heal the bay, promote habitat development, absorb the storm surges and sustain and protect the coastline. With this approach, isolated ‘pocket’ levee systems would only be needed in areas of existing high value development like the Houston Ship Channel. The great expense of land acquisition for post-disaster buyouts would be minimized and few populated areas would be excluded from protection. This would afford some development opportunities and also promote agriculture, recreation areas, eco-tourism and carbon sequestration opportunities outside the identified zones of protection.

This project identifies several responses to this reoccurring event and plans for the health, safety and welfare of the Galveston Bay region, subject to severe environmental forces. Each measure taken would be evaluated to maximize both the economic benefits to the local community and the potential for enhancement of the environment.

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Posted by The Coastal Resilience Team
in Landscape Infrastructure
on 19 March, 2012

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The Atlanta Connector will remain the City’s most significant and visible infrastructural corridor for the foreseeable future, so any transformation has to embrace the Connector as an integral part of the City of Atlanta. This project aims–not to make the Connector disappear–but to use the Connector as a transformative piece of the City’s open space… Read more »

This transformation strategy will use a melding of art, landscape, engineering and urban design to create layers of interest to the fabric of the Connector, affecting how the city is perceived and ultimately how it functions. Further, the transformation of the Atlanta Connector will recalibrate the national conversation on the role of infrastructure in our cities and towns, putting Atlanta on the forefront of urban design issues centered on redefining infrastructure as public space

Background

Over the last decade and a half Downtown and Midtown Atlanta have become models for urban redevelopment. Thousands of new housing units; millions of square feet in new office space; expansion of educational and cultural facilities; and over $50 million in transportation improvements, public safety initiatives, and environmental enhancements have reshaped Atlanta’s urban core into a vibrant, walkable, cosmopolitan center. The condition of the Connector stands in stark contrast to our improved urban centers. The project involved visioning for the 5-mile stretch of highway from the I-75/I-85 merge on the north end of Midtown Atlanta to the I-20 interchange near Turner Field south of Downtown Atlanta. This vast expanse of pavement carries 300,000 vehicles per day, and is marked by aging infrastructure, concrete retaining walls, and limited landscaping and maintenance.

The Problem

In its current state, the Connector creates a decidedly negative environment for the City of Atlanta, damaging both the visitor’s opinion of the City and its urban fabric. This in turn affects connectivity, transit ridership, tourism, and ultimately tax revenues and jobs in the urban core. As the Connector was built and rebuilt over the last 60 years it has slowly taken on a character that is divorced from the aspirations of the City of Atlanta. The well tended streetscapes, parks, and urban fabric of Downtown and Midtown Atlanta is absent from the visual fabric of the Connector. The academic institutions that line the Connector (Georgia Tech, Georgia State, Emory, and SCAD) have turned their backs on what could be Atlanta’s front door. A “DMZ” like zone of parking garages, vacant lands, and service drives has sprung up between the Connector and the City that it was intended to service.

The Strategy

The Vision

The vision advocated in this document is that of freeway moving through a green and lush landscape punctuated by art and urban incursions into the fabric of the freeway corridor. The Connector is embraced and cared for as an integral part of Atlanta’s open space system and people move freely along and across it. Dramatic gateways crafted from the landscape announce arrival into the City and serve as a marker of a special place along a travelers journey. Lighting is used to extend the effects of the transformation creating a shift in attitude from day to night. The complete composition becomes a stately museum space full of wonder and opportunity, serving as a showcase of Atlanta’s unique place in the world.

Design Elements

The core strategies that will be employed along the length of the Connector involve greening, light, art, and ultimately, urban design interventions across and along the Connector. These strategies are used to modulate and recalibrate the existing infrastructural surfaces of the freeway in a manner that adds depth and meaning to Connector experience, and by default, the visual (and ultimately physical) experience of the City.

Greening strategies form the foundation of the transformation. The permeable spaces along the Connector’s margins and within its immense interchanges will hold a vibrant, robust and legible urban forest canopy. Urban forests will be crafted to create gateways at the north and south entries into Atlanta’s urban core. These forests will follow threads of unused open space into the heart of the City, enhancing views, hiding vacant properties, and forming a medium through which the City is viewed. Where space or safety considerations limit the inclusion of forests, vertical greening strategies will be employed to continue the thematic greening of the Connector and the City. While these greening strategies will have nascent effect on regional sustainability and clean air initiatives, they are not seen as offsetting the intensely negative effects of the 300,000 vehicles per day that use the Connector. At best they will be a window into the regional appreciation of sustainable design practices and a point of departure for reducing and discussing the effect of heat island, storm water, and air quality on the City.

Inserted into the verdant green fabric of the Connector are art and light elements purposely crafted to interact with, and activate the surfaces of the Connector. The art of the Connector will transcend traditional labels with all elements, greening, lighting and art, working together to create the Museum of Freeway Art (MOFA) – a first-order art tourism destination whose mission is to transform the Atlanta Connector, and the national appreciation of art and freeway. The museum is created by co-opting the complex spatial character of the Connector as a museum space crafted with both the high-speed traveler and the neighborhood viewer in mind. Retaining walls, bridges, tunnels, and the furnishings of the Connector becomes a framework of museum walls and spaces. Super graphic murals, lighting effects, slow motion video, and sculpture will be used to highlight the natural and cultural history of Atlanta. Like its sister museums and cultural foundations in Atlanta, MOFA will have a permanent collection, rotating collections, membership, a board of directors, a national level curator, and a museum shop. By refocusing the conversation about the Connector from that of freeway to a museum space, a much richer, intensive and transformative design solution can be achieved.

Over time, new urban spaces will be created above and along the Connector that seek to take advantage of the Connector. Urban parks, promenades, trails, pedestrian bridges, and development projects are envisioned as a series of urban insertions that ripple through the City fabric as new connections are made and old ones are reinvigorated.

The Result

As the Connector is transformed from negative to positive, the public realm, private properties, and institutions along its margins will realize the positive attributes of the new culture growing within this new found public space. The end result of the transformed Connector will be an Atlanta that is outwardly welcoming to freeway users; the City will see increased walk-ability, access to transit, and stronger neighborhoods; visitors will learn something new about the City, its aspirations, and its place in the world. The economic incentives behind the project include increased tax base as properties along the Connector are repurposed or developed as vibrant mixed use districts, which in turn promotes urban living and an influx of creative class residents from around the greater Atlanta region.

Process

During a six-month period between May and October 2011, Midtown Alliance and CAP/ADID oversaw a planning process utilizing local planning professionals and a nationally renowned landscape architecture and urban design firm. The planning process benefitted from valuable monthly input from two advisory groups and from a series of public involvement events and opportunities. A Leadership Team of high-level decision makers worked in tandem with a Creative Team of local design professionals to provide strategic advice on design and implementation. Additionally, outreach efforts included numerous interviews with key stakeholders, a public workshop, social media outreach, and an online survey. The consultant’s scope of work involved attending monthly meetings with the leadership team, creative team, stakeholders, and the general public. Ideas and design concepts were generated and vetted with these groups over the 6 month design process. Consensus building among the myriad stakeholders was at the heart of the project so that the goal of an implementable series of projects could be documented.

The final document produced for this project included detailed inventory and analysis of the Connector, and adjacent properties. The design work and recommendations were built upon this data and informed by the public and stakeholder involvement process. In addition to the grand vision outlined in the plan, the consultant also created detailed design guidelines and cost estimates aimed at early win projects that could be quickly funded and implemented. Early implementation is underway with local philanthropic organizations joining forces to fund projects.

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Posted by The Atlanta Connector Team
in Landscape Infrastructure
on 9 February, 2012

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Urban landscapes are most often designed within a limited range of expectations. Visually interesting, sometimes providing important ecosystem services, designed landscape environments should include other, richer possibilities. There are urban farms. There are community, rooftop and kitchen gardens. There are growing numbers of people interested in reducing the carbon and energy footprint of our foods…. Read more »

There are urban farms. There are community, rooftop and kitchen gardens. There are growing numbers of people interested in reducing the carbon and energy footprint of our foods. Even more dedicated people are actively engaged in efforts to provide sustainable local foods and healthier eating choices.

Groups and individuals are mobilizing to locate suitable land, organize communities and figure out ways to bring food and the process closer where people live in urban areas. These admirable efforts often focus on locating suitable, often under-utilized land, volunteer labor or people ready to support the vision, subscribe to the effort (CSA’s), provide opportunities for weekend-warrior gardeners (community gardens) or other creative mechanisms to bring food into our urban settings. These endeavors also include myriad educational and sales efforts enlisting legions of backyard gardeners into the fray.

While all of these activities are great, perhaps we are not fully seeing the forest through the trees (or the orchard through the windrow). There are thousands upon thousands of acres of land, currently landscaped with often ample budgets for maintenance that could be converted or adapted to include food-producing components. These lands are in public and private ownership and will require creativity and design to introduce changes to these non-farm landscapes, overcoming conventional expectations and sometimes cost and aesthetic barriers as well.

Our cities include vast areas of suburban residential landscapes: in yards, streets, parks and buffer lands. Corporate and institutional campuses typically include significant areas of landscaped grounds for visual interest, recreation, visual buffering and other functional uses for employees and visitors. Maintenance budgets for these types of sites are often in the $.50-1.00 per square foot per year (significant amounts when compared to many types of traditional farming operations). Introducing employee gardens or other food-producing landscapes could simply divert a portion of the money already spent on these single-purpose landscapes could provide a diversity of additional benefits. Particularly for corporate, medical or educational campuses with cafeterias, the on-site gardens could supplement daily food needs: Organic, of course, no transport costs and fresh! Imagine the dramatic allees of trees that often grace our landscape plans, still flowering in spring, but producing fruit in summer and fall? What if the climbing vines produced fruit? What if the pears and olives were the fruiting varieties, not the sterile or male only varieties–same landscape sensibilty from a formalistic standpoint perhaps, but richer in production and utility? What if parks and streetscapes, in addition to underutilized road and utility rights of way actually produced food? Many difficult questions need to be addressed, of course. Who takes care of these landscapes? Who picks the fruit? Who is the market and how does it get from tree/plant to consumer? These are important operational and logistical questions, but forward thinking designers, farmers and commercial landscape maintenance companies are exploring these issues, particularly the diverting of traditional landscape maintenance monies into “urban farming” efforts. Give our broad-based approach to design, landscape architects are the on the forefront of these trends: understanding and accommodating the unique operational needs of productive landscapes; balancing ecological functions, and considering the aesthetic and experiential result of our designs—to the benefit of our cities and communities.

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Posted by JoeRunco
in Urban Agriculture
on 27 January, 2012

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“Ecologistics,” the continuous and sustainable development of Rugao’s port-city interface near Shanghai the world’s busiest cargo and container port cluster, promotes a regional port-city alliance for the area and integrates global logistics with local ecology. In this three part series, we will focus on the history and evolution of ports and the specifics of Rugao…. Read more »

Posted by QiuHongTang
in Urban Ecologies
on 21 January, 2012

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If there is magic on this planet, it is contained in water…. Its substance reaches everywhere; it touches the past and prepares the future; it moves under the poles and wanders thinly in the heights of air. It can assume forms of exquisite perfection in a snowflake, or strip the living to a single shining… Read more »

As urban designers we are at once moved by the tremendous challenges facing our urban imprint upon the land—the city; and its affect upon our planet—her atmosphere, oceans, and living systems. In our search for solutions, we look to nature for guidance; that perhaps within her experimentation with complex outcomes and interdependence there exists a clue to our built environment. The following three projects are an exploration of this relationship between nature and the city; of not only a latent attempt to emulate her beauty, but her processes as well.

In The Art of Ecology we attempt to paint urban solutions as an artist paints the landscape, with an eye towards boldness; but understanding that our limited attempt is only the first step in unlocking the relationship between ecology and urban development.

The inspiration behind Jining New City, Rugao District, and the Shunde Guipan Riverfront lies in capturing what is unique and most beautiful about the place and enhancing it. In all three, we explore the most fundamental landscape element of the site, the river, and its affect upon urban pattern.

In all three, though representing various scales of development, the idea of water or canal is rooted in the history of the place and has influenced the growth of their respective locations since their inception. In all three, emulating the art of ecology is less about imitating her physical beauty, but more about learning from her processes.

Imitating Ecology

Beyond the mere inspiration of her beauty and formal language, we must begin to understand natures processes in our attempt to imitate her. From the air, we are inspired by natures patterns; of vast forests and grasslands, weaving mosaics of color, but must ask ourselves, what is the science behind this painted canvas? Are there natural laws that govern her art?

For example, flat terrain often leads to braided water systems that seek to find paths of least resistance, responsive to the forces of fluid dynamics. The end result are often tree-like patterns that grow and branch, moving and changing relative to fluctuating environmental conditions. As the finer-grained water systems branch out, increased edge conditions result, giving way to a variety of opportunities. Environmentally these opportunities manifest in the increased ability for nutrient exchange (along the edges of wetland marsh) and organism exchange (predator and prey along open water edges versus protected grassy waters). Maximizing edge surface area increases opportunity for exchange. Within the urban context, a similar relationship can be said to exist between circulation (roads) and real estate (commercial property); and yet again between residential property values and green space (parks). And so the opportunity exists to exploit this corollary between edge intensity; namely water and real estate, evolving this braided ecology into a kind of braided urbanism.

Filtering Ecologies, Filtering Urbanism

At the same time, all three sites exhibit a need to improve water quality. At Jining, the project area exists at a critical threshold between existing city and major lake; at Rugao, the proposed development straddles a key bend along a polluted river; and at Shunde the proposed river park lies between a new city and a culturally important waterway. As an ecological principle, braided systems have the ability to increase filtration capacity through increased edge condition and nutrient exchange. Thus, by incorporating this braided design as a fundamental framework for urban development, we can conceptually increase the filtering capacity of city-making.

These braided water patterns then give rise to braided districts and braided neighborhoods, each varying in land use (commercial, residential) and density. Furthermore, density (apartment towers versus single family) can have a direct correlation with water pattern; more course and larger waterways create larger islands and greater flexibility for higher densities, while finer-grained waterways create opportunities for more secluded low densities (single-family residential). A wholistic pattern begins to emerge in which real estate and development objectives coincide with and compliment environmental ones. A braided ecology becomes a braided and filtering urbanism.

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