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Urban Environments
Professional Practice Network
This network is for landscape architects specializing in urban design, mobility and transportation, community-driven design, historic preservation in urban contexts, and advancing environmental justice.
Compared with other practice areas, the Urban Environments PPN focuses on the places where many of the profession’s biggest questions converge:
- How do we retrofit existing cities for climate change?
- How do we design public spaces that are welcoming and accessible to many different users?
- How do we support density while still creating meaningful relationships between people and nature?
- How do we honor local culture and history while planning for growth and change?
This PPN creates a space to share how we navigate those questions in real projects, real communities, and real constraints. It recognizes that designing urban environments are not only about making places look better; it is about helping cities and towns function better for people, ecologies, and future generations.
Who Should Join
The Urban Environments Professional Practice Network welcomes all who are interested in shaping the public realm of cities and towns:
- Landscape architects
- Urban designers planners
- Public agency staff
- Community-based practitioners
- Allied professionals
- Educators
- Emerging professionals
- Students
This includes people working on streetscapes, transit corridors, plazas, waterfronts, campuses, civic spaces, trails, mixed-use districts, downtowns, neighborhood plans, and public open spaces of all sizes.
Why Join
Members should join because the Urban Environment PPN offers a place to exchange practical strategies, lessons learned, case studies, and ideas with peers who are working through similar challenges. Urban work often involves many voices, overlapping priorities, and competing definitions of success.
A strong professional network gives members a forum to ask better questions, test ideas, share approaches, and learn from others who are designing in comparable contexts. They can also build relationships with people who bring different perspectives—designers, planners, agency leaders, advocates, educators, and students—yet share a commitment to improving the public realm.
PPN Chair
Hannah Higgins, PLA, ASLA
Hannah is a professional landscape architect based in SmithGroup’s Chicago office focusing on mobility and urban trail projects. With experience working in both public and private sector environments, Hannah focuses on how transportation and urban design projects come together to create dynamic and accessible public spaces for all mobilities. Prior to joining SmithGroup, Hannah worked for the Ohio State University as a project manager/space planner and the Chicago Department of Transportation implementing complete streets and sustainable design capital projects throughout the city. She believes the best way to experience any city is to slow down and explore by foot, bike, or even canoe/kayak when available (she also volunteers as a canoe guide!).
What gets me excited about this practice area is the opportunity to work with communities and clients who care deeply about creating connections—between people and nature, neighborhoods and resources, history and future growth. At its best, it turns everyday spaces into vibrant shared places that help communities feel seen, supported, and connected. Even better when I get to ride my bike through these amazing corridors and community spaces once built!
Hannah Higgins, PLA, ASLA
Leadership Delegates
Leadership Delegates are volunteers who help turn the Chair's vision into action by leading projects, contributing to deliverables, and driving the network's goals forward.
- Kal Almo
- Josh Sloan
- Ryan Booth
- Dave Norden
- Isaac Cohen
Want to Join a Professional Practice Network?
Joining a PPN is a ASLA membership benefit. Members can join up to three networks without additional cost!