Share Your Point of View: Alternative Practice Areas for Landscape Architects

Landscape architecture is an ideal educational foundation for a wide range of creative career opportunities. Increasingly, landscape architects are discovering and pursuing alternative career paths outside of traditional studio professional roles. The ASLA Public Practice Advisory Committee wants to hear about your professional practice needs and interests. This information helps us create valuable resources for public practitioners and those members interested in alternative practice areas.

Your responses will assist with:

• Outreach efforts spotlighting the important roles landscape architects play in public policy and design of public space.
• Sharing successes and challenges of pursuing alternative career options for landscape architects.
• Developing tools necessary to pursue work effectively in government and non-profit roles.
• Increasing the public’s knowledge of public sector landscape architects.
• Providing students and emerging professionals with pertinent career development information.

The survey will take less than 10 minutes to complete. Thank you very much for your time and feedback:

Please complete the survey by Friday, August 16.

To tide you over while responses are collected, several webinars on alternative practice areas and career paths can be found in the ASLA Online Learning library:

• Alt-Practice Outside the LA Studio: Exploring the Breadth of the Profession
• Expanding the Field: Designing for Social Change
• This Land Is Our Land: Stewardship of Our Public Landscapes
• Landscape Architects as Federal Leaders
• Paths of Practice: Women in Public Service

Or, take a look back at another ASLA Public Practice Advisory Committee-led initiative: the ongoing Policy Shapers interview series, published in LAND. The series has been going strong for more than ten years, producing more than 35 interviews so far with landscape architects who are active in shaping public policy either through their work or as volunteers:

President of Tatsumi and Partners, Inc. Interview conducted by Weywantheawy Kang and edited by Carlos Flores, ASLA

Deputy director of Parks for People at The Trust for Public Land Interviewed by Aqsa Butt, Associate ASLA, SITES AP

University Landscape Architect at Duke University Interviewed by Om Khurjekar, ASLA

General manager and chief executive officer of Seattle Public Utilities Interviewed by Irene Ogata, ASLA

Retired from the University of Florida Department of Landscape Architecture and from the Program for Resource Efficient Communities (PREC), a UF cross-disciplinary research group Interviewed by Andrea Salo Weber, ASLA

Community planner at the Center for Disease Control Interviewed by Chris Kingsbury, ASLA

Principal landscape architect, Division of Design, Landscape Architecture Program, Caltrans Interviewed by Robin Lee Gyorgyfalvy, FASLA

Retired Supervising Landscape Architect, Rhode Island Department of Transportation (RIDOT) Interviewed by Robin Lee Gyorgyfalvy, FASLA

Historian / Landscape Specialist for the National Register of Historic Places and the National Historic Landmarks programs, National Park Service Interviewed by Lisa Pearson, ASLA

Director of Parks and Recreation, City of West Des Moines, Iowa Interviewed by Lisa Pearson, ASLA

Regional Landscape Architect, Pacific Southwest Region, U.S. Forest Service Interviewed by Anita Bueno, ASLA

Landscape Architect with City of Tucson, Arizona Interviewed by Jason Harrington, ASLA