ASLA President-elect Candidates Field Questions
LAND Online asks how candidates would support ASLA’s sustainability goals.

In the second of three questions for this year’s President-elect candidates, LAND Online notes that sustainable design has been a long-standing tenet for landscape architecture and the Society. What can ASLA do to further demonstrate the profession’s leadership in sustainability? If elected, how would you support the Society’s sustainability goals?

Below are their responses.

Rob Tilson, FASLA

Our profession has been green for over 100 years, and sustainability is one of the foundations of our profession. Of all the design professions, landscape architects have the pertinent training and experience for synthesizing human civilization and natural ecosystems to maintain a healthy viable environment. As a profession, we must continue to create landscapes that minimize environmental impacts to our planet, avoid unnecessary consumption of natural resources, and respect the needs of future generations. Therefore, I wholeheartedly support ASLA’s policy statement on sustainability and applaud their efforts in creating the Sustainable Sites Initiative.

As Vice President of Information and Professional Practice for ASLA, I attended the initial Sustainable Sites Initiative Summit in Austin, Texas, in the summer of 2005. This summit facilitated the formation of the partnership between the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center and ASLA. It brought together interested organizations from all over the country to brainstorm and create a plan to develop standards for sustainable land development and management practices.

If elected, I will continue to champion the Sustainable Sites Initiative and work to ensure that it evolves into a LEED-certified program. This program will advance our profession as leaders of sustainability through the integration of environmental science, technology, and design. More important, it will establish criteria and quantitative data to measure our effectiveness in creating more sustainable projects. We can use this pivotal program to promote and further qualify our value as a profession to our colleagues in other design professions, decision makers, and the general public.

Gary Scott, FASLA

We stand at a critical juncture to demonstrate leadership in sustainable design. My priority will be to complete what our partners and ASLA have begun on the Sustainable Sites Initiative and ensure that it becomes the model for sustainable site design through LEED, Green Globes, and other worldwide rating certifications. The value of our profession will be measured, credentialing landscape architecture as the premier provider of site design services.

ASLA must show a higher level of leadership by communicating our collective efforts on the Sustainable Sites Initiative. While we must remain aware of our partnership role, we have the responsibility to develop a comprehensive communications plan that reaches our members, allied organizations such as AIA, APA, ULI, NAHB, and the general public. We must expand the list of approved spokespersons, develop story releases and talking points, and get the word out extensively over the next two years. Our members need to be encouraged to provide case studies and specific “how-to” examples of detailed sustainable site design methods. Our goal should be to make the association between sustainable site design and landscape architecture automatic by the time the Initiative’s rating system, pilot projects, and reference guide come on line in 2011 and 2012.

Equally important to our leadership profile is to continue and expand ASLA’s visibility efforts on the green roof. We have just launched the Green Roof Education program. We must continue to promote public awareness, tours, and monitoring results to demonstrate the value of green roofs and their relationship to landscape architecture.

We can heighten awareness of sustainable design by instituting formal sustainable criteria in our awards program and developing a separate category for sustainable design. In addition, since the bulk of our members in private practice create residential design, ASLA and its members could promote sustainable products and techniques that can be easily implemented. Our profession can highlight these principles to a broad audience in a setting where they are most connected and concerned—their home environment.

We must also look beyond these initiatives at the broader view of sustainability. Our profession should adopt green infrastructure as a guiding principle in our work, since we have been using it under different names for years. Our practitioners, such as Ian McHarg, Phil Lewis, and others, have significantly advanced its evolution. ASLA can help inspire and assist our chapters and members to get more involved in local efforts with selected partners to educate design professionals, policy makers, and the public about the value of a green infrastructure approach. This type of combined effort has produced results in Des Moines, Iowa, as well as other metropolitan areas.