24-August-15 The Latest News in Landscape Architecture 2015 is sponsored by ZinCo – Life on Green Roofs – Ecological and Economical Green Roofs, worldwide. In this week’s Latest News in Landscape Architecture we explore tactical urbanism in the form of street making, Rio de Janeiro’s informal settlements and mobility, mapping the American commute, Costa Rica’s clean energy plans, abandoned and toxic mines, master planning Burning Man festival, the necessity but lack of trees in disadvantaged communities, and the worldwide invasion of alien plant species. 8 Stories In The News This Week:
- Streets Made By People
- Using Bikes to Improve Mobility in Rio de Janeiro’s Favelas
- Where Americans go to work when they don’t work near home
- Costa Rica’s green plans: Sustainable coffee, bikes, and clean energy
- EPA says it isn’t monitoring an estimated 161,000 abandoned mines
- Design a new Black Rock City master plan for Burning Man
- How Can We Get Trees to the Communities That Need Them the Most?
- New map reveals spread of weeds around the world
(Click the headline for the full story)
Latest News in Landscape Architecture 2015
- Streets Made By People – Pop Up City
Projects like PARK(ing) Day show how the removal of cars affects the urban space and the mindsets and lifestyles of the residents. The Belgian city of Ghent has another bottom-up approach where 16 residential streets were transformed into collectively created spaces for no less than 2.5 months.
The hills around Rio de Janeiro offer stunning views, but the infrastructure in Rio’s favelas is extremely poor. Coupled with its steep and winding topography, the hilly informal settlements surrounding Rio de Janeiro can be very inaccessible. Despite these conditions, more than half of all commutes within these communities are made by bike, signaling just how important cycling is to these areas.
- Where Americans go to work when they don’t work near home – The Washington Post
The Washington Post Wonkblog team have mapped data recently released from the American Community Survey illustrating the commutes of the 38 million Americans that cross county boundaries on their way to work. The lovely diagrams illustrate the enlarged geographic footprint of many citizens.
Costa Rica has set an ambitious goal for itself: To be entirely carbon neutral by 2021. In an effort to prove how serious the Costa Ricans are about this endeavor this summer, the entire country was powered entirely on renewable energy sources for 94 straight days. Watch this video to find out more.
The agency has said it doesn’t monitor hundreds of thousands of abandoned mines, or know which one could be the source of the next big toxic spill. A recent study by environmental campaign group Earthworks found the rate of serious tailings dam disasters is increasing globally. According to the UN Environment Programme, abandoned mines and dams are a “major unresolved environmental and social problem for the industry”.
The Black Rock City Ministry of Urban Planning, the organizing committee of the one and only Burning Man festival at the Black Rock Desert, wants to change their plans a bit for future festivals — master plans, that is. Open to everyone, the international two-stage competition will officially begin this fall while implementation of the new city plan — if one is selected — is slated for 2017 at the earliest.
Again from the journal Nature, recent research has found that having 10 more trees on your block, on average, improves the perception of your own health in ways comparable to an increase in annual income of $10,000 or being 7 years younger. But the benefits of urban trees are rarely experienced equally across a city, according to urban forestry students at Virginia Tech.
- New map reveals spread of weeds around the world – ABC Science
Nature, the international weekly journal of science, has just published findings from the first comprehensive analysis of the global movement of non-native plants. According to their research findings Australia, New Zealand, and the Pacific Islands are the weediest places in the world for their size, thanks to the influx of weeds from the northern hemisphere. –
Latest News in Landscape Architecture 2015
News report by Paul McAtomney
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