Scribd Logo
Upload

Welcome to Scribd!

  • 61 views

    Dunster APB Presentation May 2011

    Uploaded by

    kdunster
    This document discusses the important role of landscape architects in land development and protecting sensitive areas. It argues that landscape architects are ideally suited to lead interdisciplinary design projects and place the environment at the center of land use planning. The document also notes that much of the world's land has already been converted for human use, and advocates for development approaches that better integrate buildings with the natural landscape to protect ecosystems.

    Copyright:

    Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd

    Dunster APB Presentation May 2011

    Uploaded by

    kdunster
    61 views29 pages
    This document discusses the important role of landscape architects in land development and protecting sensitive areas. It argues that landscape architects are ideally suited to lead interdisciplinary design projects and place the environment at the center of land use planning. The document also notes that much of the world's land has already been converted for human use, and advocates for development approaches that better integrate buildings with the natural landscape to protect ecosystems.

    Copyright

    © Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)

    Available Formats

    PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd

    Did you find this document useful?

    Is this content inappropriate?

    This document discusses the important role of landscape architects in land development and protecting sensitive areas. It argues that landscape architects are ideally suited to lead interdisciplinary design projects and place the environment at the center of land use planning. The document also notes that much of the world's land has already been converted for human use, and advocates for development approaches that better integrate buildings with the natural landscape to protect ecosystems.

    Copyright:

    Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pdf or txt
    61 views29 pages

    Dunster APB Presentation May 2011

    Uploaded by

    kdunster
    This document discusses the important role of landscape architects in land development and protecting sensitive areas. It argues that landscape architects are ideally suited to lead interdisciplinary design projects and place the environment at the center of land use planning. The document also notes that much of the world's land has already been converted for human use, and advocates for development approaches that better integrate buildings with the natural landscape to protect ecosystems.

    Copyright:

    Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pdf or txt
    You are on page 1of 29

    Land Development in Sensitive Areas

    Katherine Dunster, R.P.Bio, MBCSLA

    Presented to Association of Professional Biology, Nanaimo, B.C. Canada May 4-7, 2011

    On every site the priority is the Landscape (not the Architecture) K. Dunster, 2011

    What is a Landscape Architect?


    Well, they are not landscapers: the people who arrange garden features in attractive ways, mow lawns, clip hedges, and blow leaves into piles with noise and air polluting 2-stroke leaf blowers.

    Who gets to be a landscape architect?


    The BC Society of Landscape Architects (BCSLA) is the legislated regulating body that licenses landscape architects in BC. To become registered someone must: have a recognised university degree in landscape architecture have either 10 years of employment experience in another jurisdiction, OR completed a period of employment in landscape architecture (3 year internship) and written 5 professional registration exams (LARE); and all must pass an oral examination before the Board of Examiners.

    What Landscape Architects Do


    Using design and planning expertise, Landscape Architects integrate human needs into the natural environment by seeking functional, aesthetic, and economically viable solutions. As architects of the landscape, they help shape the form, function, and appearance of the land for human needs while protecting ecological values. Landscape Architects deal with hardscapes (structures, paved areas, drainage, etc.) and softscapes (planted areas) at all scales from the very local (a backyard) to the very global (UNESCO/IFLA Global Landscape Convention)

    Why we need more landscape architects involved in land use planning & development
    Architects and engineers design & build structures on / over / under landscapes Planners only plan (they dont do) Biologists deal with the living natural environment Hydrologists deal with water Archaeologists deal with cultural heritage Landscape architects deal with both natural and cultural landscapes and isnt planning and development all about what we do to the land?

    Who leads?
    Traditionally, the architect was the master builder with landscape architects as mere ancillaries. Today that relationship is fast being reversed. The element of usable landscape has grown in importance in a variety of high profile projects, pulling the formerly side-kicking field of landscape architecture into the spotlight.
    The Architect's Newspaper, March 26, 2011

    Landscape architects are considered to be more intuitive in placing the environment at the centre of human (social & economic) demands for land, making them ideal lead consultants and project managers on interdisciplinary design projects.

    Humans & Landscapes


    During the entire time humans have existed on this planet, people have been central to landscape changes in most places from small individual gestures to large collective efforts.
    Old Sarum, early settlement in Salisbury, England

    Humans have converted 30% of the planet to agriculture, urban, and suburban uses. About 3.8 billion hectares of the world's land has been converted transformations that have yielded food, energy, water, and wealth.

    But conversion is also the primary driving force in the loss of biodiversity in ecosystems worldwide. Another 1/3 of the global land cover could be converted in the next 100 years. Through ingenuity, need and greed, humans have become primary global shapers of ecosystem form, process, and biodiversity, on a par with the forces of climate and geology.

    Okanagan Mountain Fire, 2003 (NASA)

    We are an integral part of the world and as it evolves into the future landscapes will continue to reflect our cultural impacts and effects on the natural. Consequently, we have moral responsibilities to manage some landscapes for human needs, while keeping others as wild as possible for the species that need wild.

    Clayoquot Sound

    Humans are easily swayed by fashion and social trends. Society is ever-changing. Political directives drive rapid actions that shape the lives of people and landscapes.

    World Health Organization

    While the demand for rapid change can be tough for humans to adjust to, the demands for change are also typically too fast for the natural world to adjust to in terms of ecosystem composition, functions, and processes.

    Who should we turn to for guidance?


    The political landscape? The natural landscape? The most secure place to base our actions is the natural foundation beneath us because nature grounds us in its slower paces of geological time, water and nutrient cycling, forest and ecosystem succession, and of course evolution.

    What is a natural landscape?

    Usable Landscapes = Anthropogenic Biomes

    Anthropogenic Biomes created and used by Humans 1700-2000

    Anthropogenic transformation of the biomes, 1700 to 2000 (Ellis et al) Global Ecology and Biogeography, (2010) 19, 589606.

    Key findings:
    Biosphere was <than half wild in1700, but only 5% used Transition to mostly anthropogenic between 1900 & 2000 Biosphere in 2000: 40% Used, 37% Novel, 23% Wild Novel ecosystems embedded within used lands now almost twice as common as wildlands Wildlands remaining primarily occur in Earth's coldest and driest regions.

    The new normal


    A novel ecosystem is one that has been heavily influenced by humans but is not under human management. A working forest doesnt qualify; one abandoned decades ago does. Typically they are embedded in urban and agricultural landscapes. A forest now dominated by non-native species is novel even if humans never cut it down, burned it, or ever visited it. As wilderness goes, its urban. Sometimes it is urban. Get over it. The (many) species that make it in these places are scruffy, versatile, adventurous, and resilient. They are beautiful. We need to give them as much respect as the biodiversity in the mythical pristine wilderness desperately needs.

    Ecosystems do things for us, and many novel ecosystems do these things just as well as or better than many more natural or pristine ecosystems. Ecosystems sequester carbon from the atmosphere, healthy soils prevent hillside erosion, and wetlands act as a filtration system for the water cycle. They give us food and purify the air we breathe.

    Abandoned agricultural land and old field succession a novel ecosystem

    Cities and buildings are huge consumers of ecosystem goods and services and they generate incredible amounts of ecosystemdamaging wastes. By 2030, 80% percent of the industrialized world's population will live in urban areas.

    Around a third of the worlds largest cities obtain a significant percentage of their drinking water from protected areas. This protection directly benefits biodiversity and the viability of surrounding ecosystems.

    Land Development in the New Normal


    Biologists need get past describing places as degraded, heavily invaded, anthropogenic or trashy ecosystems we need them all.
    There is no such thing as a vacant lot. This is an ecosystem. It could also be a farm.

    Suburban gardens can be biodiverse ecosystems. A 2001-2004 study of 61 gardens in Sheffield, England, ranging from tiny backyards to plots of land ten times larger found 4,000 invertebrates, 80 kinds of lichen, 63 species of bryophytes, and 1,166 vascular plant species. The number of plant species per garden ranged from 48 to 268.
    Gardens cannot replace specialised habitats. They can provide safe havens for many species now declining due to land conversion, urban expansion and intensively managed farmland. As climate changes, the network of gardens on the ground and on rooftops may help wildlife to adapt and migrate through the landscape. www.goert.ca

    Manifesto
    1. We need to stop squandering land and rejecting the opportunities to integrate ecological design principles into land development at all scales. 2. Reject all development proposals that do not put landscape ahead of the architecture. 3. Reject all local government planning that does not put gardens, landscapes, and ecosystems ahead of buildings and infrastructure.

    4. The edifice complex has to go. We need buildings and human settlements that function seamlessly with the landscapes they are imposed upon. 5. We need buildings and developments that go beyond 3dimensions and are placed in the 4th dimension of time and the space-time continuum. 500 years is a useful benchmark for buildings. If they could do that in low tech medieval times we surely can do that today.

    6. There is no such thing as an obsolescent building. If it cannot endure several centuries of adaptive re-use it should not be built.

    Medieval Houses (13th century) in Colletta di Castelbianco (Liguria, Italy). Abandoned but not knocked down, the village was restored in the 1990s to high tech standards (an E-village) while respecting the original village footprint, aesthetics of the ancient stone buildings, and surrounding rural agricultural landscape.

    7. No development should be allowed to cut off the flows of energy, freshwater, and species between terrestrial and marine ecosystems. There is help: http://www.greenshores.ca/ 8. Ditto for terrestrial and riparian / aquatic / wetland ecosystems:
    http://www.env.gov.bc.ca/wld/documents/bmp/de vwithcare2006/develop_with_care_intro.html

    9. Planners, Architects, Engineers, Developers: Seek help from landscape architects, biologists, and other scientists before you commit to anything.

    10. With all the technical support and information available to help plan and design buildings and developments that are fully integrated with local landscapes and ecosystems why O why is there still:

    We need: an integrated design process (IDP) that goes beyond creating high performance green buildings. We need: inter-disciplinary collaborations between all specialists, including biologists, throughout projects and not just for short consultations. We need: biologists to get involved in the next BC Land Summit (2014) http://www.bclandsummit.com/

    Maybe the building is the least important part of the development. It is if the landscape comes ahead of the architecture.

    Earth Cabin, St. Louis, Gasp

    My email: [email protected]

    You might also like