Cover Story

For too long the city has been designed for cars. Pedestrians can often feel like second-class citizens, as cities are much easier to drive into than walk through. Recently, built environment professionals have been advocating improving the quality of our built environment by making cities easier to navigate by foot. In this article, we look at how landscape architects are especially well qualified to implement walkability in our cities and how landscape architecture can improve the quality of our walkable urban environment. Walk and Walkability A simple definition of a walkable city or neighbourhood is one that is enticing to pedestrians, encouraging walking over other forms of transport. Professionally, the term covers several phenomena. In her 2015 paper ‘What is a Walkable Place? The W...Read More

The phrase “God is in the details” is, with uncertainty, attributed to Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. But whether it came from the Modernist great or someone else, there is something about the play of detail in the creative process that transcends time and geography. Detail occupies a particularly complex and nuanced role in the Japanese garden. The Japanese gardener’s planning process is embedded in the details – working up from the individual elements, rather than from a top-down master plan. A layout and sketches inform and help guide the process, but factors such as the available choice of materials can cause a change in the design. It can happen that the directionality of one particular boulder or composition of boulders, or the form of a single tree, becomes the focal point — and by...Read More

The rise in autonomous vehicles is happening faster than many people think. NVIDIA CEO, Jensen Huang, says that fully automated vehicles will be on our roads by 2022, while Scott Keogh, Head of Audi America has promised that Audi would have its first self-driving cars ready to purchase by as early as 2020. So, with the rapid acceleration of the autonomous vehicle (AV) market, what are the main challenges we face as urban designers? And how will autonomous vehicles affect the urban fabric of our cities? Towards a New Autopia? Throughout the latter half of the 20th century, our urban and suburban environments have been primarily designed for private car use. However, there has been a recent reduction in the ownership of private vehicles. Thanks to on-demand ridesharing services like Uber and...Read More

The chart above is of profound importance to landscape architecture as a profession and especially for any practitioner or student under the age of thirty. This chart, which is based on the science supporting the Paris Climate Agreement, foretells that if we are to have any chance at salvaging a livable climate, humanity must essentially cease the use of fossil fuels within 30 years. Vitally too, this chart shows that we must work to draw down the excess carbon dioxide (CO2) that is already in the atmosphere. These two actions give us the best chance of bringing climate back into a balance conducive to civilization. This “below zero” era of minimal carbon dioxide emissions and increasing CO2 drawdown will have enormous implications for landscape architects. For while the need for our work ...Read More

Great leadership is integral to the success of any business, particularly in a service industry, and leadership transition, while inevitable, is often not planned for nor adequately considered. No one lives or works forever. It’s an existential dilemma for a design consultancy: How to facilitate new leadership and preserve the cherished corporate culture — while also committing to and evolving a firm for the next generation? For TBG Partners, founded in 1987 by Earl Broussard, this process necessitated designing a transition plan from a sole proprietorship to a legacy practice — with deep consideration given to issues of ownership, purpose, leadership and work. Specific aspects included determining how to transfer years of equity and ensure generational ownership transition, determining wh...Read More

ASLA and CLARB have aggregated data on all states and provinces regarding education and experience requirements needed in order to sit for the LARE. The North American map provided by CLARB, shows the information for the states or provinces you are considering getting licensed in. (Note to CLARB: Please add state and province labels to your map like we talked about on the phone today.) For those of us who live and work in one state and have no plans to relocate, we generally seek licensure in that state, although District of Columbia practitioners must still seek licensure in a neighboring state, until DC completes its licensure rule-making process. ASLA has advised candidates to sit for the LARE as soon as possible, register for the exam in a state with fewer work experience requirements ...Read More

Multidisciplinary design firm Bolton & Menk came about the idea of a children’s book when the firm was brainstorming ways to partner with communities that were hosting the Smithsonian Waterways Traveling Exhibit. The firm had completed a number of water improvement projects with a handful of the host communities and thought a children’s book about the water cycle (Walter the Raindrop) would be fun to develop and hand out in conjunction with children’s activities being offered in one of the communities. The idea grew from there as the design firm began to approach staff within its various work groups. Two more books were authored by staff within the landscape architecture and civil engineering groups. The purpose of the project has evolved into a much larger idea – to develop a se...Read More