Dear ASLA: You’re completely AWOL on this one- What an incredible missed opportunity… Our dues are due this

[landplanner]

Okay. Let’s try this kind of “stimulus”.  Collectively, or individually, we here at Land8Lounge seem to have a real aversion to “letting it fly” regarding compelling political events and issues of our time. That is a subject for examination at a later time, or never at all. 

I contend that this matter deserves our full attention, and reaction, now. 

If this does not garner a strong response from, at the last count, among 12,000 plus of us out there worldwide, then we are actually and truly the ineffectual and timid group that we “wring our hands at” and painfully dissect everytime a premium opportunity arises. This is one of those. 

I don’t know about anyone else here, but I am thankful for the connection to the Western World that NPR offers me. I have listened to the following pieces over the last few days. I offer them to you, to do the same. 

 

http://www.npr.org/2012/09/04/160562394/pocket-parks-start-popping-up-over-all-over-l-a

http://www.npr.org/2012/09/04/160533790/bridging-the-gap-between-two-neighborhoods

If you do actually hear these pieces, I hope your conclusion was the same as mine. Where in the $#ck was ASLA on this ? . Both have everything to do with landscape architects and we all know, somewhere in both stories, we had something to do with each of them.

Newsflash:  You know who sponsored this series ? If you listen it to one or both pieces it was the American Institute of Architects (AIA). I mean come on people, this was, and will continue to be a premium opportunity to spread the word about the consequential and meaningful things our profession does and ….nothing but “crickets”……..

Yeah these are “hard times” for all of us, but our professional representation could not have even had a “half a sponsorship ” here ? 

 

So here is what I challenge all of us to do. Right now, right here, whether your a member or not. Before our executive and less-than-that leadership leaves Washington and heads to Phoenix for some scorching sunshine and a brief respite from their real responsibilities to us all….ask them this question ……

Why were our marketing dollars not spent  more wisely on something like this that would have benefited the profession immensely and for little investment ? 

If you care at all, you will be more than motivated to express your opinion here and let our “so-called” leadership know about how you feel. 

Full Disclosure:

Even while I was unemployed (about 1 1/2 years)  I paid ASLA dues and still do. I feel beyond foolish having done so.

 

 

 

[Leslie B Wagle]

I don’t know anything about the pocket parks cited (although there are initiatives like Bette Midler’s organization in New York City and as I posted in another thread, they are advertising to fill positions and mention LA as a desired form of training).

HOWEVER, that bridge story reminds me of having read about the area one time and I just looked it up again. That’s not the only bridge on that part of the river, and an enormous long area of open land stretches along one shore that has been studied almost beyond belief. I can’t think of anything except maybe the 9/11 site and the Boston big dig that can compare with the community input and environmental and design studies already devoted to that shoreline. I think there’s a greenway somewhere, maybe further to the northeast, but take a look at this for perspective:

http://www.capitolriverfront.org/_files/docs/awi10yearprog.pdf

I would rename that pdf “non progress.” It’s 50 pages long with impressive renderings of proposals as different as open meadows vs. glass towers. Yet in google earth it looks like nothing much has actually happened. Of course it’s a significant resource and has huge potential, so it deserves a lot of thought, but were there too many government agencies involved or did it stall with the arrival of the recession?

[Leslie B Wagle]

Re-reading my post this morning (written too late at night), I see I didn’t make a good connection to the frustration with ASLA. That pdf doesn’t mention consultants, but I think I read somewhere that somebody “big” in the profession was chosen as a consultant on the Poplar Point part of it. 

In other words, there has been LA involvement already and maybe in fairness the pdf report is including remediation work as progress for such a long-range string of goals. I noticed there are nods to landscape components of whatever the transportation people do with the 11th street bridge.

So, what probably happened was that the activist gentleman knew some architects and they prodded AIA to push the more radical idea story. It was architects who got behind the loop walkway using railroad rights of way around Atlanta. Surely LAs did some of the final document work as it progressed (?) but I’ve asked about that here on Land8 before and still don’t know.

Maybe ASLA would push stories if we, the members prodded them with specifics, but is it feasible for them to know when other people hatch stories out of their own motivation? If you are an idea hatcher, you may even be able to get press attention without ASLA. It could be a case of not being or knowing the “hatchers” nearly enough.

Of course ASLA is right in the same city as this project, and you could wonder if they have made any contacts on behalf of LAs behind the scenes, but we can’t just announce that LAs are necessary to the press; we need to convince the parties involved and when the story is announced, already be part of it. And then we need to trumpet any finished work that did indeed use LAs to come to fruition.

[landplanner]

Leslie: 

Thank you for more thoughtful and well-reasoned commentary here. I have been having this problem with my knee recently where it tends to have an unexpected and massive twitch that seems to occur when I am posting on Land8Lounge, and I tend to come off more as “jerk” sometimes. If I consider things more clearly and completely like you did above, I could avoid emotional clarion calls like I did on this posting. 

Still, I feel this was credible and missed opportunity for our profession. From what I think I heard this will continue to be recurring feature on NPR. Yes, I agree, ASLA cannot be on top of every feature report that is coming out across the country or even in the city where it is headquartered. 

I just became very frustrated in listening to each of these very well done reports and not hearing any voice, evidence or mention of the landscape architects role in them, either as lead or team. And then for the series sponsorship to come solely from AIA was the whipped topping to the insult. So I spoke out. No apologies for speaking out, but toning it down and giving the room to speculate  why this opportunity was missed was the better way to present my grievance. 

Thanks for being the moderate on this one. 

[Leslie B Wagle]

Believe me, in similar contexts I also “feel the pain,” but we need to strategize what to do about it. Sometimes it’s all set, but other time the news can be an opening to hop in there somewhere. I would cite a case but don’t want to broadcast it, where I saw a story about something intriguing earlier this year and at first I had the same “darn I bet it’s too late” reaction. But I prodded anyway, and they simply hadn’t thought about an LA’s possible involvement and graciously gave me an interview…..and I think an upcoming participating (if not overall controlling) role.  We are not so much victims of being “excluded” as just perceived as an element added at later stages than we ourselves think we could be. We have to keep working on moving that line into the conceptual vs. decorative, and essential vs. afterthought mode.

[Tosh K]

Meh, at least NPR is covering increasingly LA related segments; the AIA has the money (much larger membership), let them spend it and let LAs get the word out locally to say “hey, we do that very well, how can I help?”  Awareness and interest in project types in our field is good no matter who pays for it.

My question would be was there any contact at all btw AIA and ASLA when it came to this (and for that matter APA), there should be more of a concerted effort, though it seems both sides can be reluctant to hold hands?

[Leslie B Wagle]

More I found: 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k2RB0uOJAeU&feature=youtu.be

[Jason T. Radice]

That document is a City Planning Department document and project. It has been going on for a very long time and is still progressing today. A great deal of it is being done with private money, so it is taking a while to implement, and it is being implemented in the areas of the city where it makes the most economic sense and where the infrastructure is there at the moment. The Navy Yard redevelopment has been going on for years and has a lot of smaller projects that make up the whole completed. The Western waterfront is in progress, which much of it long completed and some recent project completions. Canal Park is well into construction, and the 11th Street bridge along with the adjacent Rt. 295  is still all torn up under construction. This is a nasty bit of confusing roadway that was at one point all supposed to be connected to each other to provide quick access around the city, but was never completed. You have to negotiate a few blocks of surface streets and stoplights to move from one highway to another, and in one case coming from the city out to the highway, you have to make a u-turn to get the ramp. Very poor planning ‘transportation planning. DC is a city of “you can’t get there from here”.

 

As with anything in DC, there are TONS of agencies, developers, and little fifedoms you have to negotiate to get anything done. Some of it is city land, some of it is federal. You have DDOT and the USDOT an well as NPS, Navy, Air Force, DC City Governement, DC Parks, WMTA, Army Corps of Engineers (that is a flood plain), and this is the short list. Getting all those players on the same page is an almost impossible task.

There is also a lot of politics, sociology and economics at work on this project, which is hampering some private development. This area has been the subject of study for a very long time, and there are reasons why nothing has been done with parts of it.

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