[Jason Turner]

I know that this subject died a natural death in 2008. I find myself considering a move to the Middle East to pursue employment. Can anyone there cast some light on the current opportunities?

Thanks

[Jason Turner]

Gosh – I feel so old fashioned…
There is nothing new to contribute – we either use the Excel – Paste Special command and/or the SSX command for block count in Autocad, but we only use the differentiated blocks for trees – and even then, fairly seldom.

The reason for my mailing is to query the general acceptance that differentiated blocks are the way to go.
I have always found the symbols too cluttered and make the plan very cumbersome to use on site.
We tend to use simple circles with a center point and lines connecting the center points and overlapping circumference areas removed, with a label which describes Genus-species-size-qty. Ground covers are hatched areas with a label indicating Genus-species-area-rate/m2(foot2 to most of ye) and total qty. Measuring the hatch area makes this simple too.

This keeps the plans clean and really easy to read on site. We believe.
Totting up the totals is done either with a red pen and a notepad or a counting layer with a tick icon (make your own) dropped to confirm each label counted. Old fashioned, but trustworthy.

Comments or differing opinions on this are invited.

[Jason Turner]

Trace, that is probably the most graphic ‘Handle’ on this. The reason we are muted is we all know the extent of our own complicity. They wouldn’t be drilling there if we weren’t buying it as fast as they can suck it out of the ground. So OUTRAGE against the machine sounds so hollow and hypocritical. We all want it to quietly go away so we can get on with out lives in our cozy comfort zone. Hardly a news flash, is it?

The sooner we run out of the poxy stuff, the sooner we are forced to make the changes we are procrastinating on making. As Lester Brown points out in his brilliant book ‘Plan B’, Roosevelt turned the American economy around from a civilian one to a wartime economy in 6 months. Completely reinvented it and the way it functioned.

We can do it too. If we want to.
What we need is clear and committed leadership.
And that is sorely lacking.

[Jason Turner]

second furlough? sorry – what’s that?

[Jason Turner]

Yes, thankfully. Chatting to other professionals in the built environment field – we are all at the same point where we have pretty much exhausted whatever was on the table when the bubble burst, and we have hung on by our fingernails since then, but that work is more or less all gone. Despite the talk of things improving, I think we will see more and more practices having to let staff go or close entirely, as there is a long lead-time on many of our projects. For some of us, the light at the end of the tunnel may be an on-coming train…

[Jason Turner]

Can landscape architects contribute to a world where more human effort is required? Can we make a transition to reshaping food production, supply routes, localized manufacturing, transportation, cities, and housing when hydrocarbons are doing less of the work, or are we too engrained in the status-quo?

Back when studying N.L.P. I recall there was an item of faith that held one should never offer a product as ‘New’, if you could help it, as this scared people. ‘New & Improved’ has a far better feel – it is a safer sell (the logic went). The world has never been short of people preaching that we are all going to hell in a hand-bag and we should stock up on tuna and bottled water and move to the mountains. They were seldom heeded.

We tend to be listened to (to some extent) in that we ARE part of the status quo. if we offer a ‘New & Improved’ product offering, which looks at water recycling and management, the opportunity of food security maybe, heck, catch us on a Friday after a liquid lunch and we may even propose a development where vehicles are exiled to the periphery, we have a better chance of being taken seriously than someone who says we should ban anything more complex than an ox wagon and a Dover stove. ‘Softly-softly catchie monkey’ as the saying goes. When we get the model of ‘Village Homes’, Davis as our default approach to Urban Design rather than something we aspire to, we start to turn up the heat a little, with a ‘New & Improved’ version of that, etc, etc…..

To my mind, the most important contribution we can make is to skill up and move ourselves further up the decision making chain as possible, that when the developments are being planned, we are up there putting our agenda first and foremost on the table, that the entire project is viewed through the eyes of sustainability (in all the ways that manifests itself) and landscape architecture. That way we use our position in the status quo to turn the tide.

[Jason Turner]

I’m going to be watching this one with interest, as we have the same issues here in South Africa. I’m told that recycling the water is a tricky issue, as there are vitriolic acids (or something like that – their name eludes me right now) and residues which can only be removed with Reverse Osmosis. Even if you do use R.O. on the water, the resulting spoil from the R.O. unit will be concentrated waste which is essentially industrial waste and would need to be handled as such. I will do some hunting around locally and on the net, but look forward to any other ideas the forum may have.

[Jason Turner]

Whilst it doesn’t pay the rent, we are focusing our efforts on sorting out our systems and sharpening our output quality, preparing for the inevitable uptick, and all those things we never get to do the rest of the time whilst we are so gunnel under. We have enough work to keep us going (just – and for the time being), but we are diversifying our marketing strategy too – so far it hasn’t paid dividends, but we are figuring it can’t hurt – the usual avenues are more like the dusty high street of a ghost town, complete with tumble weed and creaking saloon doors….

[Jason Turner]

There is freeware version called Gimp which I use on my Mac. It’s ok – worth what you pay for it. I am not that good with image editing software, so I wouldn’t really know just how good or bad it is, but I can do just about anything I need to do on it. Its fairly much like Photoshop, if not quite as slick.

http://www.gimp.org/macintosh/

[Jason Turner]

I am currently working on a project on a farm where for technical reasons, we have limited access to water, and are making use of dry land management for cut flower production. Where this becomes relevant to this discussion is that I had a consultation this week with Ken Yeoman, author of ‘Water For Every Farm’ and Keyline designer. In essence, Keyline ploughing moves water from the steep runoff areas laterally to the flatter ridgelines and in so doing creates a sheet of water which rehyrdrates the entire landscape and recharges the water table. [ http://www.yeomansplow.com.au/ ] They have managed some amazing results in dryland brittle environments such as yours. [ For a brief synopsis see also http://www.laceweb.org.au/kff.htm]

Whilst this seems a bit broad to the particular scope of this discussion, it is a means of looking at alternative ways of getting water to a landscape. In terms of permaculture, restoring the hydrological balance within the soil is a key element of success. Village Homes in Davis, California is a text book case where once the soil had been rehydrated through swales, the storm water infiltration improved dramatically, and apparently handles peak storm surges better than any other ‘conventional’ system in the area. Soil hydration is critical, not only to health of the soil and the biosphere but storm water damage control too. You mentioned erosion – Ken Yeoman was saying the keyline ploughing is a very effective way of managing that too.

[Jason Turner]

“It’s Worse Than That,- He’s Dead, Jim”

10 inches a year! Now that is dry. I have heard about your snow melt problems. You guys are in for a rough ride, by the looks of it.
What is your through put of potable water through the dwelling/estate? Is recycling on site possible? You can install a simple recycling plant very easily and it is not that expensive (relatively) so you can harvest what is going down the drain. From a permaculture perspective, water moved into the atmosphere via transpiration is a ‘rain seed’ as the bacteria that are carried in the transpired water form a nucleus around which water molecules accumulate and form rain [- Rain forests apparently produce their own rain]. Whilst you are a long way off that in the valley, you are sure on the right side of the equation. Better use the water that way than just lose it down the drain to wherever it ends up. I would be inclined to say that the ethical thing to do WOULD be to use it. If you use it wisely on site, you could help rehydrate the soil profile, which would be a good thing.

[Jason Turner]

An interesting question. In a nutshell, I would say that if you are using safely recycled water, then it is fine – but that depends…

I guess it depends on what you are doing with your waste water, on a macro scale, and how much is available on the project, as to whether or not there is adequate available to meet your requirements (or depending on your rainfall patterns, make up the shortfall with harvested rainwater).
On a macroscale, if the local Council treats sewage by the conventional wisdom of taking some dirty water and adding a bunch of clean water to it, then flushing it into the nearest stream (its not quite that crude, but not too far off in many instances) then you are doing everyone a favour by using recycled water. If on the other hand, your local Council is recycling the water for irrigation purposes, it would make no difference in the great scheme of things. If the Counci were recycling to potable standard, then you are back to square one, where in terms of water scarcity, potable water on the landscape is indeed another aspect of our lives as consumers to which we need to become more sensitive.

I heard on the radio yesterday that the El Nino cycle has been confirmed as being active in the antipodes, so we are headed for a drought cycle down here (in subsaharan Africa). Water recycling is about to become a really big thing down here again.

[Jason Turner]

Yup, that goes on the desktop as a widget for the next splurb I gotta write – a truly invaluable tool, which lends itself to TLA’s (Three Letter Acronyms) with disarming ease. The perfect Jargon Mill. Thank you so much for sharing 🙂

[Jason Turner]

As was mentioned in one of the responses above, it does kinda seem to depend on a number of factors, not least how good you are and how many skills you bring to the table. In this neck of the woods (Cape Town) things are very ‘clique~y’ and once you get in with a team, you seem to end up working with the same people and developers repeatedly. As they develop confidence in your skills, you get to shoot your mouth off more, and you get called in earlier on projects, so you can have earlier input. When you are a new kid on the block, you kinda have to hold your peace until you prove yourself, and make do with mitigating the imposition of others on the landscape.

I remember a landscape architect in Ireland who dictated everything on some of his sites, from road positions, finishes and lighting down to the facades of buildings. It gives you an idea of how far you can go i you have enough skills on offer.

[Jason Turner]

I had a company doing wastewater recycling, which arose out of necessity during a dought. I closed the company once the drought was over, as it is not my passion, but the experience has proven valuable.
There are a vast number of systems on the market, most of which use a very similar system. Essentially, you are farming bacteria. There are two types of organisims, aerobic and anaerobic, and they are treated separately, and each type do a different job in the cleaning of water. The systems do work, and are fairly easy to maintain, requiring very little maintenance, more management of what goes in and quality control of what comes out.
I could go into greater detail and send you schematics if it is of interest – I’m not sure what level of detail you are after.

[Author]

Posts