PPN Members Respond to Second Annual Member Survey

ASLA’s 17 Professional Practice Networks (PPNs) bring together members with special skills and interests to share questions, information, and expertise. Last year Professional Practice staff initiated an annual survey of PPN members in order to sample the diverse professional interests and experience that members of these groups bring to the profession.

The second annual survey of PPN members was conducted in February. One hundred and eighteen PPN members, including 26 who were members of more than one PPN, responded. Over the coming weeks, we will be presenting information on PPN member activities based on survey responses. This week, we focus on the Landscape/Land Use Planning PPN.
 
With more than 700 members, the Landscape/Land Use Planning PPN is the largest of the Professional Practice Networks. Landscape/Land Use Planning addresses planning and design issues related to large land areas such as towns and cities, counties, watersheds, and regions. Landscape architects in this area of practice apply their training in design and understanding of the physical environment to large-scale projects. Here a subset of the Landscape/Land Use Planning PPN’s membership provides a window into their professional activities and recent accomplishments:
 
Sara Pandl, ASLA, of Pandl and Associates, works with small municipalities in Pennsylvania, “assisting them with grant writing, small revitalization projects, and writing comprehensive plans and ordinances that incorporate environmental protection, open space preservation, and good design principles.” She has worked collaboratively with local conservancies to complete park and recreation plans and a township comprehensive plan. Says Pandl, “Balancing good planning practices of agricultural preservation and open space protection with private property rights is especially challenging in Pennsylvania.”

Jason Bibby, Affiliate ASLA, works for the charter township of Ypsilanti, Michigan, doing land use planning projects and promoting and overseeing existing environmental regulations in the township. Currently, he is working on the township master plan and the township Parks and Recreation master plan. A recent project that he found rewarding was working with some honor roll high school students who had volunteered to install a rain garden at a local park.

Jeremiah Dumas, Associate ASLA, is with the GeoResources Institute at Mississippi State University. As a research professor of landscape architecture, he conducts studies and research dealing with spatial technologies, community planning and involvement, transportation planning, and landscape ecology.

Sandra K. Fischer, ASLA, is employed by the City of Bainbridge Island and works for the mayor on special initiatives. Recent and current projects include "a sustainable downtown plan to evolve an aging, underdeveloped downtown to a mixed-use town center." The strategies include policies, programs, capital projects, and planning. Fischer served as director for the City of Bainbridge Island's Winslow Tomorrow project, a community visioning and urban design process for the city's downtown area. The project received the Governor's Smart Growth Award and the Puget Sound Regional Council's Vision 2020 Award. Fischer has been a speaker at local events, including APA and a "growing green" conference. Also, says Fischer, "I have been using interactive stakeholder engagement and team collaboration software by iNovem as part of a public outreach program associated with plans for redevelopment of the town's waterfront and a transit-oriented neighborhood associated with a ferry terminal expansion."

Steve Shaddox, Affiliate ASLA, works as a recruiter for Group One Search Inc. The company assists the upper management of the Engineering New Record (ENR) Top 500 Design Firms nationwide in the recruitment of talented landscape architects at all levels.

E. Lee Moser, Affiliate ASLA, is the principal of Urban and Rural Enterprises International. He works with state and county agencies in Maryland to preserve and restore water quality and environmental and cultural amenities of tributaries and watersheds adjacent to the Chesapeake Bay. He is also on the board of directors of the Friends of the Patapsco Valley and Heritage Greenway. Previously, Moser was a land use master planner and engineering consultant for the National Security Agency and other Department of Defense agencies, working on large, complex, highly classified civilian and military installation/facility master plans, both nationally and internationally, including with foreign governmental agencies.

Chad D. Nielson, ASLA, of CLC Associates, explains that his firm “takes large and small tracts of land, usually in a commercial district, and designs large retail, commercial, or mixed-use concepts.” The company has just been rated 18th in revenue in the nation in Retail Construction Magazine. Some clients include Cabela's, Wal-Mart, Lowe's, and Walgreens. One of Nielson’s more challenging recent projects involved 370 acres of farmland that had been rezoned commercial, office, and residential. He put together three mixed-use concepts; of these, the one chosen included a 1.2-million-square-foot regional mall.

Dawn Uchiyama, ASLA, has worked for the past 12 years for the City of Portland’s Bureau of Environmental Services as a natural resource planner, environmental specialist, and program manager. Her specialty is watershed and stormwater management. She was the project manager for the 2005 Portland Watershed Management Plan, which received a Planning and Analysis Honor Award from Oregon ASLA. Currently she is responsible for updating Portland's Stormwater Management Manual. A recent success was the approval by three city bureaus of the standard details and specs that she developed for vegetated stormwater facilities in the public right-of-way, an agreement she calls “unprecedented!”

For more information on ASLA's PPNs visit the PPN home page at http://www.asla.org/members/ppn/home.htm or contact Jennifer Strassfeld, ASLA's Manager of Professional Practice, at jstrassfeld@asla.org.