The Dirt does admit a fondness for lists of all types, and so can't help himself but to list
Popular Science magazine's recent list of "
America's 50 Greenest Cities." The magazine used survey data and government statistics in over 30 categories to come up with their criteria that boiled down to four metrics: electricity, transportation, "green living," and "recycling and green perspective."
Here's their top ten list:
1. Portland, OR
2. San Francisco, CA
3. Boston, MA
4. Oakland, CA
5. Eugene, OR
6. Cambridge, MA
7. Berkeley, CA
8. Seattle, WA
9. Chicago, IL
10. Austin, TX
Click through to see all fifty and to see if your hometown made the cut.
Yesterday's
New York Times article on the Green Alley project in Chicago is fascinating. With nearly 2,000 miles of alleys in the city, Chicago is moving to porous concrete and asphalt for repaving. From the article:
In a green alley, water is allowed to penetrate the soil through the pavement itself, which consists of the relatively new but little-used technology of permeable concrete or porous asphalt. Then the water, filtered through stone beds under the permeable surface layer, recharges the underground water table instead of ending up as polluted runoff in rivers and streams.
Some of that water may even end up back in Lake Michigan, from which Chicago takes a billion gallons a year.
The
Times article also discusses the other sides of the story, however, and gives evenhanded criticism of the project as well. The Dirt would like to see the city move beyond porous concrete and think about bioswales, green walls, and more. But every little step helps!
[photo courtesy Peter Wynn Thompson for The New York Times]
Alex Washburn, Affiliate ASLA, who
we've mentioned before, is back on our radar with a
new article in Metropolis magazine. Washburn is the chief urban designer of New York City, Department of City Planning, and also is a principal of W Architecture and Landscape Architecture, an
ASLA award winner in 2004. His piece, "Civic Virtue by Design," explains how Mayor Michael Bloomburg's expansive and controversial
PlaNYC plan is the 21st century's new idea of civic virtue. From the article:
Mayor Bloomberg’s speech says it all. To be a better city, we must build green, use mass transit, and restore purity to our water and air, with park access for all. This is a vision of a new type of city for the 21st century: at once more urbane and more natural. It is a marriage of building and landscape that is challenging every notion we have ever had about design.Click through to read the entire piece; The Dirt is impressed with Washburn's choice to include a
Saturday Night Live allusion!
[photo by Sophia Washburn]
New York magazine last month reported on the NYC Parks Department's attempt to quantify just how much a tree growing in front of a house or apartment in the five boroughs is worth. The department counted 592,130 nonpark trees in the city, then broke down their worth using factors like energy cost savings, stormwater retention, and air quality improvement.
Click through to see the final math (and if you live in NYC, plant a tree! You'll be rich, I tell you, rich!).
Today's New York Sun writes on the selection of
Alex Washburn, Affiliate ASLA, to the new position of Chief Urban Designer in NYC's Department of City Planning. Washburn's charge ranges from the macro level (how the city's skyline looks) to the micro (how a pedestrian interacts with the sidewalk). A veteran of Senator Moynihan's office, Washburn sees himself following his mentor's path:
"Senator Moynihan believed that good design is not just about aesthetics, but that the look of a city expresses the values of the people who live in it," [Washburn] said. "He wanted to prove people wrong who thought that cities were hopeless."
[photo by Sophia Washburn]
Today
the Congress for the New Urbanism (CNU) announced 25 award-winning projects that "make a difference in the world." The winning projects span the hemisphere but are concentrated this year on the southern United States, particularly the Gulf Coast.
The Dirt is happy to see the prefab "
Katrina Cottages" received a nod this year, as did other smart mixed-use and low-income housing projects.
Click through to CNU's site for scads of information about each of the 25 winners. Also, mark your calendars--on May 18, jury chair Stefanos Polyzoides will present a lecture on the winners, which will be available on the CNU website.
Today's
Washington Post reports that the District is creating, for the first time, a master pedestrian plan. Over the next ten months the Department of Transportation will consider pedestrian safety, street lighting, and tree planting in an effort to encourage more people to walk to work. According to the article, 12 percent of D.C. workers walk to work, 33 percent ride Metro trains or buses, 2 percent bike, and 38 percent drive. The Dirt applauds DC's move to improve the quality of life of the city's streets and public spaces, and impudently suggests it check the
ASLA Firm Finder for some expert local help.
...with a little help from a landscape architect.
Naples New has this account on one very successful client-landscape architect relationship.A. Gail Boorman and Associates is giving two Florida communities a choice of "decorative light posts, metal benches and trees to revamp streets in the designated area" and set other guidelines for the beautification projects.
They choose their favorites from the design workbook and Boorman brings it all together.
Century City is the focus of a new round of urban planning for the area that would
add open spaces and increase walkability, according to this Los Angeles Times article found
via Archinect.
The median along Avenue of the Stars would feature trees recalling the grand boulevards of Europe. Public green spaces or pocket parks would dot what has been a landscape of glass towers and gray concrete, says one planner of the project.
"Many obstacles to the greening project loom," the article says. For sure, dude.
Taught by Gropius, collaborated with Louis Kahn, and an early adopter of green roofs, the
work and inspirations of landscape architect Cornelia Oberlander, FASLA, are examined in this Vancouver Magazine article.
Calling her "the undisputed queen of landscape architecture," the piece includes an anecdote from Oberlander's childhood and attempts to deconstruct her style.
How did Oberlander render the concrete of her Robson Square provincial government complex in Vancouver so serene? the article posits.
Patterns and repetitions. There’s the secret. It might look like “nature imported into the city,” as various writers have described it: a bit of mountain here, a strip of forest there, a flowering trail winding away over yonder. But it is in no way like the nature to which it refers. Everywhere, instead, the regularity, the rigour of the modernist idea. A whispered architectural mantra reworked in flowering form.
Minimalist, modernist, or both, Oberlander's work is far from cold and quite environmentally forward.
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