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Ryan, thanks for following up with this! I learned a lot from everyone’s input this morning…

I think you probably neeed to travel more, or just look at garden/urban design books from other countries – a lot of public art is not abstract, although I agree we have approved a lot of abstract art in america recently – I find public art to be usually abysmal. Stuff that was put up in philly was actually embarassing – or some of the sculptures…[Read more]

where was this when I was writing my senior thesis report? LOL!

….all about principles and guidelines….
boring.gud luck.

where is the project?

Wow, sounds like an exciting project with plenty of opportunity to improve it..But that is a good example – in virginia you cannot build on steep slopes. End of story. Over 20% slope, forget it, 15-20% require special permission. To me, here where the land is mostly sedimentary, it would be so much more important to restrict building on steep…[Read more]

LandFX is a great tool to use the computers ability to import smart objetcs and draw with smart lines in a BIM-ish system. Becaus we are not building “buildings” the massive amount of information that can be generated by BIM is not possible in a landscape project. when a building is designed in a BIM system each window is catalogged each header is…[Read more]

Here’s an article about someone who harvests rainwater in Africa: http://www.theecologist.org/take_action/local_hero/270547/the_man_who_farms_water.html
It doesn’t go into a lot of detail about how the farmer accomplishes it, but the author of the article, Brad Lancaster, also wrote a book called Rainwater Harvesting for Drylands and Beyond. It’s…[Read more]

As to specific examples of what landscape architecture is in Southern California, I am currently working on project located in a native oak canyon south of Los Angeles. The developer will do massive amounts of grading to the canyon to carve in 48 homes on 80 acres of land. Of this 80 acres 51+ acres of the project will be replanted with 365 native…[Read more]

Yes, hopefully I am not looking in the proper areas, and there is just as much commitment here as anywhere..sorry to use same examples, it is just easy. I spent twenty years in planning in various cities on the east coast… twenty years of projects…I will look for the good, as you say…

Okay so you give us one city on the east coast which requires native plants, and you have ripped a major project on the east coast, and again with the Kit fox thing. As for stewards of the landscape perhaps you are not looking in their proper areas, after numerous fires, the landscapes put back into the local hillsides of southern California are…[Read more]

Yeah, sorry Bob, not impressed with California. I find, as I said before, that LA”s don’t want to do environmental design here.. I think it is that attitude that I find so different – the regs are actually similar, although east coast is more dependent on local regs, Ca. more on state..But for example in Southampton, NY, you would not think of…[Read more]

Can you provide for us some examples of the attention to detailing and increased regulations that you speak on, you have repeatedy express disdane for how things are done in California specifically, but you seem to have isssues with a large portion of the Landscape Architecture field outside from the east coast. Your opinions have seemed very…[Read more]

Yes, you are both right about the regs – I worked in planning for years..I geuss as a transplanted New Yorker I am surprised by the lack of regs in California…I find there to be much more attention to detail going on on the east coast..and strangely, much more sensitve conditions here in california…anyway, good discussion, I always learn…[Read more]