ASLA's Federal Public Policy Priorities for 2007-2008
Pursuing New Opportunities, Championing Long-Term Goals

Over the past six months, ASLA, through the active participation of the Board of Trustees and Government Affairs Advisory Committee, has developed a federal public policy agenda for the next two years. This agenda, approved by the Executive Committee in November, continues the Society’s commitment to achieving long-standing goals and seeks to capitalize on new opportunities in Congress and with key federal agencies. The following summarizes the key priorities that will guide ASLA’s federal advocacy and indicates how it is shifting focus in some areas in response to changing issue dynamics, member interest, and other factors.

Maintaining Focus on Long-Term Goals
Over the next two years, ASLA will continue to build upon progress on issues that have long been a part of the ASLA agenda, even as some of the strategies and approaches will change to maximize its effectiveness. Priorities in this area include:

• Funding the Historic American Landscapes Survey (HALS)—ASLA worked with the National Park Service to establish HALS in 2000 and has campaigned to fund it for several years. ASLA will continue this effort with the support of members of Congress, HALS liaisons, chapters, the Historic Preservation PPN, and members nationwide.

• Advancing Effective Security Design—Landscape architects are pioneering new approaches to security design that provide highly effective protection and are well integrated into the site and its surroundings. The strategic emphasis for this issue is shifting from pursuing legislation in Congress to focusing more on federal agencies and nongovernmental entities that are playing active roles in shaping policies, procedures, and practices affecting security design.

Capitalizing on New Opportunities
As ASLA looks to the future, two new types of opportunities have emerged. The first is opportunities to develop and pursue entirely new initiatives. The second represents new factors that could allow ASLA to take its work on long-standing priorities to another level.

• Small Community Visioning Projects—Landscape architects frequently help residents, community leaders, and others to articulate their visions for the future in words and pictures. In many cases, landscape architects are uniquely qualified to play this role. At the same time, many small communities rarely have the in-house staff or financial resources to hire professionals to help them and their residents tackle the economic, social, land use, and other challenges affecting their futures. With this in mind, ASLA has worked with private sector landscape architects and university-based programs with particular expertise in this field to develop a legislative proposal that would provide federal financial assistance to support community visioning efforts. The legislation requires partnerships between communities, private sector landscape architects, and university programs, emphasizes active and sustained public participation, and is community driven. One of the Society’s top priorities for the next year is to have one or more members of Congress introduce this legislation in the House and Senate.

• Sustainability—The profession of landscape architecture is synonymous with sustainability, and promoting sustainable development has been an ASLA priority for many years. However, advocacy in this area has been challenging in terms of translating this sweeping concept into specific policy proposals and tangible examples that members of Congress and others can readily understand. There are new factors that will help ASLA and its members meet this challenge in the future:

• The ASLA green roof is a powerful education tool in terms of design as well as hard data documenting how this technology addresses crucial stormwater, air quality, and energy efficiency issues.

• During debate on the 2007 Farm Bill, considerable attention will be focused on making agriculture more sustainable and shifting resources from supporting traditional commodity production to a wide array of conservation initiatives.

• A year-long effort by the National Park Service to develop a long-term management plan for the National Mall in Washington, D.C.—which is the most visited National Park in the country—offers landscape architects a national stage on which to highlight how it can be managed and sustained for decades to come.

• Active Living—Supporting policies that encourage active living is a long-standing ASLA goal. Much of the emphasis flows from the fact that landscape architects make active living possible through their work in residential and commercial development, transportation, and parks and recreation, to name a few. Over the next two years, ASLA has a renewed opportunity for focused advocacy in this area, in part by partnering with the National Recreation and Park Association to champion its Call to Action Agenda for Urban Parks. The Call to Action includes a range of specific legislative and policy initiatives designed to reinvigorate and modernize support for our nation’s urban parks and recreation infrastructure. ASLA will also continue to support implementation of portions of SAFETEA-LU that are particularly important to active living, including Safe Routes to Schools.

ASLA’S federal government affairs staff is excited about the opportunities that lie ahead. With the active engagement of members, chapters, and leaders, ASLA can capitalize on them and ensure that landscape architects play a meaningful role in the national debate about these and other critical issues.

Scott Kovarovics is Manager of Federal Government Affairs for the American Society of Landscape Architects, skovarovics@asla.org.  For more information about the 110th Congress, please read this issue’s lead article.