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Most Popular DIRT Posts of 2019
Jewel Changi Airport / PWP Landscape Architecture, Safdie Architects
While we are always looking ahead to what's new in the built and natural environments, it's also valuable to look back at what grabbed our attention last year. Here's a review of the 10 most popular DIRT posts of 2019.
Readers were most interested in how to plan and design universally-accessible landscapes; how communities are increasingly looking to landscape architecture as a solution for the climate crisis; examples of inventive multi-use infrastructure, like the Jewel Changi airport terminal in Singapore and Amager Bakke in Copenhagen; and the on-going debate about the changing roles of landscape architects and urban planners.
ASLA members: send us your original op-eds on topics that inspire you. And tell us about your new projects and research. Please email us at info@asla.org.
Singapore's New Garden Airport
International airports are in fierce competition for passengers and regularly one-up each other with new wow-factor amenities, shops, and restaurants. But Singapore decided to raise its game by going another direction: a plant-filled haven, a gateway consistent with its moniker — "the city in a garden." The result is an inventive model other airports should copy, if not in form, then certainly in spirit.
Landscape Architects Must Become Planners
Landscape architects need to become urban planners and work "upstream" in policy and regulatory processes to ensure public space leads urban placemaking efforts. That is the argument Michael Grove, ASLA, chair of landscape architecture, civil engineering, and ecology at Sasaki; Brian Jeneck, ASLA, director of planning at HOK; and Michael Johnson, ASLA, principal at SmithGroup made at the ASLA 2019 Conference on Landscape Architecture in Washington, D.C.
Book Review: The Architecture of Trees
The Architecture of Trees was first published by Cesare Leonardi and Franca Stagi, two versatile Italian furniture, landscape, and architectural designers, in 1982. This "scientific tome" and "original 'labor of love and obsession'" has been re-issued by Princeton Architectural Press in all its arboreal glory.
Why Bicycling Has Flatlined
About 830,000 Americans biked to work in 2017, down from a high of 904,000 in 2014. Given communities large and small have made major investments in bicycle infrastructure — and bike share now seems ubiquitous — why haven't the numbers of bike commuters dramatically increased?
Nature-based Solutions Are Our Best Defense Against Climate Impacts
Today in New York City, United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres will convene the 2019 UN Climate Action Summit to, in his words, "hear about how we are going to stop the increase in emissions by 2020, and dramatically reduce emissions to reach net-zero emissions by mid-century." This Summit comes on the heels of the Youth Climate Strike last week, and kicks off Climate Week in which people in New York and across the country will demand action to mitigate the ongoing climate crisis.
We Are Designing the Earth, Whether You Like it Or Not
This purpose of this article is to reflect on the Design with Nature Now exhibition that ran over this past summer at the Stuart Weitzman School of Design at the University of Pennsylvania. The exhibition marked the 50th anniversary of Ian McHarg's 1969 tome Design with Nature and was curated by Fritz Steiner, FASLA, Karen M'Closkey, Billy Fleming, ASLA, Bill Whitaker, ASLA, and myself.
In Copenhagen, You Can Ski Down this Power Plant
Eight years ago Danish architect Bjarke Ingels came up with a fantastical idea — build a ski slope on top of a power plant. Well, now, it has actually happened — the $660 million Amager Bakke is preparing to welcome adventurous ski bunnies in Copenhagen. Known to locals as Copenhill, this cutting-edge renewable energy system converts waste into energy while giving sports lovers access to a 2,000-feet-long ski slope, a 295-feet-high climbing wall, and hiking and running paths. The project is the most visible demonstration yet of Copenhagen's determination to become the world's first carbon neutral city by 2025.
ASLA Publishes Guide to Universal Design
ASLA's guide provides a comprehensive view of which communities are underserved by the built environment. It also offers a set of new universal design principles that address the needs of deaf or hard of hearing, blind or low vision, autistic, neurodevelopmentally and/or intellectually disabled, and mobility-disabled adults and children, as well as concerns for older adults. These include: accessible, comfortable, participatory, ecological, legible, multi-sensory, predictable, and walkable/traversable.
Faced with Climate Impacts, Communities Turn to Green Infrastructure
Climate change is causing seas to rise, flooding to worsen, and hurricanes and wildfires to become more destructive, all of which puts our infrastructure at greater risk. On top of that, America's current infrastructure received a D+ grade from the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) in their latest scorecard. Increased risk from climate events and the massive backlog of maintenance projects means that our infrastructure has never been more vulnerable.
Gallaudet University Designs for the Deaf Community, But Everyone Benefits
At Gallaudet University in Washington, D.C., DeafSpace, a concept developed by campus architect Hansel Bauman, is now guiding the development of buildings and landscapes in order to better address the needs of the deaf and hard of hearing people, which also results in better spaces for everyone. Gallaudet University — the oldest university for the deaf community in the country and the only university in the world where all programs and services are designed with deaf and hard of hearing people in mind — is creating a new 2020 campus master plan that expands DeafSpace beyond the buildings and into the historic campus designed by Frederick Law Olmsted and the surrounding neighborhood.
Climate Change, Inclusive Design, Landscape Architecture, Public Spaces, Renewable Energy, Sustainable Transportation
The Architecture of Trees / Princeton Architectural Press
The Tree Book / Timber Press
Whether you are looking for the perfect gift for your favorite landscape architect or an immersive read for yourself, explore THE DIRT's top 10 books of 2019, our picks for the best on the environment, cities, and landscape:
The Architecture of Trees and The Tree Book: Superior Selections for Landscapes, Streetscapes, and Gardens
Princeton Architectural Press, 2019, and Timber Press, 2019
These are two useful and beautiful books on how to design with trees. The Architecture of Trees — first published by Cesare Leonardi and Franca Stagi, two versatile Italian furniture, landscape, and architectural designers, in 1982 and now reprinted in 2019 — features 212 trees species depicted through 550 intricate quill-pen illustrations, each drawn to 1:100 scale. The Tree Book, written by arboreal guru Michael A. Dirr and Keith S. Warren, director of product development for the tree nursery J. Frank Schmidt and Son Co., includes images, botanical and common names, and the range and climate adaptability of some 2,400 species and cultivars. Read the full review of The Architecture of Trees.
An Atlas of Geographical Wonders / Princeton Architectural Press
An Atlas of Geographical Wonders: From Mountaintops to Riverbeds
Princeton Architectural Press, 2019
This vivid collection of comparative maps and tableaux from the 19th century, organized by French researchers Jean-Christophe Bally, Jean-Marc Besse, Phillipe Grande, and Gilles Palsky, show how explorers, scientists, and artists imagined fantastical landscapes in order to better understand the true scale of the natural world. Their drawings and paintings laid the foundation for today's geographical data visualizations.
A New Coast / Island Press
A New Coast: Strategies for Responses to Devastating Storms and Sea Level Rise
Island Press, 2019
Jeffrey Peterson, who was recently senior advisor responsible for climate change policy at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)'s office of water, has written a comprehensive new national policy approach to dealing with sea level rise, a roadmap for reforming the U.S.'s broken flood insurance system and steering development away from increasingly risky coastal areas.
Choked / University of Chicago Press
Clearing the Air / Bloomsbury Sigma
Choked: Life and Breath in the Age of Air Pollution and Clearing the Air: The Beginning and the End of Air Pollution
Bloomsbury Sigma, 2019, and University of Chicago Press, 2019
At the ASLA 2019 Conference on Landscape Architecture in San Diego, former Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) administrator Gina McCarthy argued that telling the story of the dangerous health impacts of climate change will motivate greater public action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Air pollution, which causes the premature death of 7 million people worldwide each year, will only worsen with climate change. As Tim Smedley explains in Clear the Air and Beth Gardiner in Choked, the solutions to the climate and air pollution crises are largely the same: renewable power, clean cook stoves, electric vehicles, and green infrastructure.
Design with Nature Now / Lincoln Institute of Land Policy
Design with Nature Now
Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, 2019
Design with Nature Now is an accessible and well-designed companion book to the University of Pennsylvania's Design with Nature Now symposium and exhibition, which marked the 50th anniversary of Ian McHarg's seminal book Design with Nature. Edited by Frederick Steiner, FASLA, Richard Weller, FASLA, Karen M'Closkey, and Billy Fleming, ASLA, this collection of essays and projects should inspire any environmental policymaker, planner, or landscape architect to forge broader coalitions and act regionally and globally to save our fragile ecosystems and protect the future of humanity.
Designing a Garden / The Monacelli Press
Designing a Garden: Monk's Garden at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum
The Monacelli Press, 2019
Designing a Garden, written by Michael Van Valkenburgh, FASLA, is a lucid and candid examination of the process of designing and constructing a single intimate project. Van Valkenburgh intends the book as a sort of how-to guide to landscape design, not unlike a cookbook in terms of detail and clarity. Read the full review.
Planting the Natural Garden / Timber Press
Planting the Natural Garden
Timber Press, 2019
An expanded and updated new edition of a now-classic book that launched the New Perennials movement, fundamentally changing landscape design. Edited by Noel Kingsbury, the book features the works and writings of High Line plant designer Piet Oudolf and late plantsman and designer Henk Gerritsen.
Spying on the South: An Odyssey Across the American Divide / Penguin Press
Spying on the South: An Odyssey Across the American Divide
Penguin Press, 2019
Journalist Tony Horwitz's book on Frederick Law Olmsted is difficult to classify. It is a biography of Frederick Law Olmsted and a history of his America. It is also reportage from rural America and a thoughtful reflection on our times. Read the full review.
Buying these books through THE DIRT or ASLA's online bookstore benefits ASLA educational programs. And if you are based near Washington, D.C. we also recommend checking out the National Building Museum's fantastic book store.
Climate Change, Gardens, Green Infrastructure, Historic Preservation, Landscape Architecture, Resilience
Gina McCarthy: Keep up the Fight Against Climate Change
Gina McCarthy
A few decades ago, when you thought of Orange County in California, "you didn't think of the citrus growing here, you thought of the color of the sky," said Gina McCarthy, former administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), at the opening general session of the ASLA 2019 Conference on Landscape Architecture in San Diego.
Air pollution grew worse and public pressure increased on government at all levels to solve the problem. Then, finally, in 1970, the Clean Air Act was passed, and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was formed. Since then, "air pollution has been reduced by 75 percent, while we have tripled gross domestic product (GDP)." This led McCarthy to state: "So don't tell me solving climate change is beyond our reach."
The technological side of fixing the climate crisis — renewable energy, a clean power grid, electric vehicles — are easy to envision and within reach. "The clean energy train has left the station, and there's no way it's turning back."
The harder problems to solve are the greenhouse gas emissions from the built environment, and the "loss of the sense of community." The solution to both problems is to build communities that can be "the foundation for a more sustainable tomorrow."
Sustainable communities create opportunities for children to get outside and play, which is why McCarthy was one of the first to create a No Child Left Inside program in Connecticut when she served as commissioner of environmental protection.
When McCarthy was commissioner, she remembered meeting school children in Hartford who lived a few miles from the Connecticut River, but had never seen it. "No one drove them there." And "there was no green space to connect them to the river."
"How can children love nature if they don't see it? How can they become the next environmental stewards if they don't care about nature?"
To achieve sustainable communities, green infrastructure must also be interwoven throughout the built environment. "By moving away from concrete pipes to green infrastructure, we can also make our cities finally look good again."
McCarthy called for "transforming the built environment to integrate nature into everything." For this, she said landscape architects play a crucial role, as they are experts on how to design with nature.
Landscape architectural solutions like urban forests and green roofs will reduce the impacts of extreme heat. "Heat stress will kill more people than all other climate impacts put together. Heat is a silent killer — it kills people in their homes and on the streets."
McCarthy believes "climate change is the most significant public health, security, economic, and environmental challenge of our time." And all progress made on the environment and climate change under the Obama administration is now under assault.
While some 92 percent of EPA regulations formulated under the Obama administration withstood legal and other challenges, "all our life-saving efforts to reduce air and water pollution and clean-up contaminated sites are under attack."
The Trump administration also recently initiated the formal process to pull the United States out of the UN climate agreement forged in Paris in 2015. "We are now the only nation who has not signed on. And we are the second largest emitter of greenhouse gas emissions."
Still, she found hope in the fact that some 25 states and hundreds of cities have stated they are still abiding by the terms of America's contribution to the agreement. Together, this coalition of states and cities represents 55 percent of the U.S. population. If this group were a separate country, it would the third largest economy on Earth.
Regardless of party, "Americans want a stable, clean environment in which they can live, work, and play. I've worked under six governors, five of which were Republicans, and not one said to me, 'we really need more pollution.'"
And that is why the attacks on environmental regulations are particularly galling for her. "The EPA really isn't an environmental agency; it's a public health agency. The EPA is focused on fewer asthma attacks and heart attacks."
Phasing out dirty power sources like coal in favor of clean, renewable energy means cleaner air. In the U.S. some 4,000 kids develop asthma each year. "If you have seen a child having an asthma attack, you never forget it." And thousands die prematurely from bad air quality.
Climate change is also about people's health, perhaps more than nature. "No one relates to glaciers. What they relate to is the health and well-being of their children and grandchildren. Health is the best way to get people to care about climate change. Communications must be personal, and health is incredibly personal. Focusing on health impacts will create action."
She exhorted the crowd of landscape architects to fight the good fight: "Do not sit on the couch. Stop being angry and anxious. Taking action is what being adult is all about. And we must demand action. We can't turn our backs on our children and grandchildren."
"Stop following the latest dramas in Washington, D.C. The Beltway isn't the real world. Have you ever heard of an innovative idea that was initiated at the Federal level?"
She urged landscape architects to "speak up, challenge the status quo, and make your families proud. Design the future; show people what it looks like; tell the story."
"We need landscape architects to design a world that is healthy, safe, and beautiful — and more just. Landscape architecture can kindle hope in all of us."
Climate Change, Landscape Architecture
To Stop Adding to the Problem, Use Climate Positive Design
Climate Positive Design
Let's be frank: landscape architecture projects can add to the climate crisis. If projects aren't purposefully designed and built with their carbon footprint in mind, they may be contributing more greenhouse gas emissions to the atmosphere than they can sequester over their lifespan. Projects can incorporate too much concrete and other carbon-intensive materials, too few trees and shrubs, or require industrially-produced fertilizers or gas-powered mowers or pruners for long-term maintenance, running up long-term emissions.
Instead, landscape architects can design and build projects that are not only meant to be carbon neutral, but go further and become "climate positive," meaning that over their lifespan they sequester more greenhouse gas emissions than they embody or produce.
To help landscape architects reach this goal, Pamela Conrad, ASLA, a principal at CMG Landscape Architecture in San Francisco, has created an inventive new platform: Climate Positive Design.
She has also thrown down the gauntlet with a new challenge: if all landscape architects and designers use the approach, they could reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the atmosphere by 1 gigaton by 2050. That would put landscape architecture well within the top 80 solutions found in the Project Drawdown report.
According to Conrad, Climate Positive Design "is not only an opportunity to re-imagine how we design our world from every aspect, but a responsibility."
Using the site's Pathfinder tool, landscape architects and designers can establish and then ratchet up specific sequestration and emission reduction targets for their own projects. "A target of five years is suggested to offset carbon footprints for greener projects like parks, gardens, campuses, and mixed-use developments. For more urban projects that require a greater amount of hardscape to accommodate programming, twenty years is the targeted offset duration."
Through her research, which includes illustrative and useful case studies produced with CMG, Conrad found that "targets could be met without changing the program or reducing the quality – the projects merely became greener."
Case study / Climate Positive Design
The website offers a design toolkit that not only shows landscape architects how to incorporate more trees and shrubs and preserve carbon in soils, but also how to replace carbon-intensive materials used in pathways, walls, fences, and furnishings with low-carbon alternatives. Conrad makes it easy to find sustainable options.
A few details about the process: Landscape architects or designers who log a project in the app are asked to input the sources of carbon, which could include "approximately eighty different types of materials used in landscape projects such as paving, walls, fences etc. and their associated 'embodied carbon' from extraction, manufacturing, transportation, installation, use/maintenance and replacement. The data is derived from the Athena Impact Estimator."
Then designers are asked to add in data about the carbon sinks they are incorporating, which could include: "trees, plants, wetlands and certain types of meadows/lawns capture CO2 from the atmosphere and sink carbon into the soil." Conrad notes that "all data used for calculating sequestration and decomposition for trees and shrubs is obtained from the U.S. Forest Service."
Lastly, landscape architects and designers can add in the "carbon costs," which "represent emissions associated with mowing/pruning performed using machinery and fertilizer use for trees and shrubs. These emissions occur regularly over the lifespan of the project and are often referred to as 'operational carbon.'"
Once this information is submitted, landscape architects will receive a Climate Positive score that indicates how long it will take to offset the carbon embedded in the project or expended through maintenance operations. The website will then send design recommendations for reducing emissions and increasing sequestration much faster. And each project has a dedicated page that can be re-visited and re-evaluated or shared.
Data collected through the app will be reviewed by advisory partners including
the Landscape Architecture Foundation (LAF), American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA), Canadian Society of Landscape Architects (CSLA), International Federation of Landscape Architects (IFLA), and the Landscape Architecture Canada Foundation (LACF).
Conrad formulated the system during her Landscape Architecture Foundation (LAF) fellowship. It's also the result of years of research and collaboration with Atelier Ten.
Go to Climate Positive Design.
Also, check out ASLA's guide to climate change mitigation and landscape architecture and series of sustainable residential design guides.
Climate Change, Landscape Architecture, Policy and Regulation, Public Spaces
ASLA Announces 2019 Professional & Student Awards
10/01/2019 10/01/2019 Jacquelyn BianchiniLeave a comment
ASLA 2019 Professional General Design Award of Excellence. Heritage Flume. Sandwich, MA. Stimson / Ngoc Doan
The American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA) announced the 2019 Professional and Student Award winners.
Chosen from 544 submissions, this year's 36 Professional Award winners represent the best of landscape architecture in the General Design, Residential Design, Analysis & Planning, Communications, and Research categories. In addition, a single Landmark Award is presented each year.
A full list of this year's Professional Award winners can be found at www.asla.org/2019awards
ASLA 2019 Student General Design Award of Excellence. "Y" Shape Jetty System: A Sustainable Solution for Coastal Ecosystem Protection, Population Retreat, and Global Tourism Development, Yi Song, Student ASLA, University of Texas at Austin.
Chosen from 368 submissions, this year's 26 Student Award winners represent the bright future of the landscape architecture profession in the General Design, Residential Design, Analysis & Planning, Research, Communications, Student Collaboration and Student Community Service categories.
A full list of this year's Student Award winners can be found at: www.asla.org/2019studentawards
"ASLA's Professional and Student Awards programs are the oldest and most prestigious in the profession. This extraordinary and diverse array of winners represent both the best of landscape architecture today and the brightest hope for our future," said ASLA President Shawn T. Kelly, FASLA.
"This year's awards reflect the global nature of landscape architecture and demonstrate to professionals and the public alike how our profession addresses some of the world's most pressing problems, including climate change and resilience, livability, and the creation of healthy and equitable environments."
All Professional and Student Award recipients, their clients, and advisors will be honored at the awards presentation ceremony during the ASLA Conference on Landscape Architecture on Monday, November 18, in San Diego, California. There are still complimentary press passes available.
Background on the ASLA Awards Programs
Each year, the ASLA Professional Awards honor the best in landscape architecture from around the globe. Winners of these prestigious awards are chosen by a jury that represents the breadth of the profession, including private, public, institutional, and academic practice, and exemplify diversity in professional experience, geography, gender, and ethnicity. Submissions are judged blind.
Professional Awards are presented in six categories: General Design, Residential Design, Analysis & Planning, Communications, Research, and the Landmark Award. In each of the first five categories, the Jury may select one Award of Excellence and any number of Honor Awards. It is not guaranteed that an Award of Excellence will be selected each year, as it is up to the jury's discretion. Only one Landmark Award is presented each year.
This year's Professional Jury included: Andrea Cochran, FASLA (Chair); Henri Bava; Kofi Boone, ASLA; Gina Ford, FASLA; Deb Guenther, FASLA; John King, Honorary ASLA; Pam Linn, FASLA; John Vinci; and Keith Wagner, FASLA. Joining the Professional Jury for the selection of the Research Category were representatives on behalf of the Landscape Architecture Foundation (LAF) and Council of Educators in Landscape Architecture (CELA): Stephanie A. Rolley, FASLA and Galen Newman, ASLA.
Student Awards are presented in seven categories: General Design, Residential Design, Analysis & Planning, Research, Communications, Student Collaboration and Student Community Service. Like the Professional Awards, the jury may select one Award of Excellence and any number of Honor Awards. It is not guaranteed that an Award of Excellence will be selected each year, as it is up to the jury's discretion.
This year's Student Jury included: Linda Jewell, FASLA (Chair); Diana Fernandez, ASLA; David Gouverneur; Robert Gray, ASLA; Damian Holmes; Kendra Hyson, ASLA; Maki Kawaguchi; Signe Nielsen, FASLA; and Daniel Tal, ASLA.
Cities, Climate Change, Ecosystem Restoration, Ecosystem Services, Gardens, Green Infrastructure, Health + Design, Inclusive Design, Landscape Architecture, Public Spaces, Resilience, Sustainable Transportation, Urban Redevelopment, Wildlife
09/23/2019 09/23/2019 The Dirt Contributor1 Comment
Climate Ready East Boston / Stoss Landscape Urbanism,
As the world's leaders gather in New York this week, ASLA calls for all governments convened at the Climate Action Summit to adopt national policies that incentivize investment in nature-based solutions to help communities adapt to the impacts of the climate crisis, with a greater focus on the disproportionate impacts faced by vulnerable and underserved communities.
While it's encouraging to see international leaders finally thinking seriously about resilience, sustainability and climate change mitigation, I'm extremely proud to say that I belong to an organization and a profession that has been protecting our planet since 1899.
Since our founding, the American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA) has advocated for nature-based solutions to reduce coastal, inland flooding and the urban heat island effect; improve air and water quality; protect and enhance biodiversity; and support human health and well-being through universal access to nature.
ASLA has always been a vehicle for landscape architects not only to protect and expand our livelihoods, but to advocate for those values we hold as a profession. The Kresge Foundation found ASLA to be one of just nine organizations that have "adopted a holistic approach" to educating their members and the public about climate change "that includes adaptation, mitigation, and the explicit consideration of social justice."
In 2017, ASLA convened a Blue Ribbon Panel on Climate Change and Resilience that produced a report called Smart Policies for a Changing Climate. The report identifies the following core principles, key planning and design strategies, and public policies that will promote healthy, climate-smart, and resilient communities.
And we didn't stop there. Just this year, with a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, ASLA opened our Smart Policies for a Changing Climate Exhibition and website – a demonstration of 20 case studies that show the report's recommendations at work. From Boston's multi-billion dollar investment to protect itself from sea level rise and severe storms, to Houston's Buffalo Bayou Promenade, which is designed to contain greater floodwater, to New Orleans Redevelopment Authority's community adaptation program, these cases are just a few across the country and around the world that showcase how landscape architects can us nature-based solutions to mitigate the effects of a changing climate.
ASLA 2009 Professional Award of Excellence in General Design, Buffalo Bayou Promenade, SWA Group/Bill Tatham.
Community Adaptation Program in Gentilly, New Orleans, Louisiana / Design Jones, LLC.
ASLA is also a proud signatory of the We Are Still In Declaration. The declaration, signed by 63 cultural institutions and 3,800 leaders representing 15 million Americans and $9 trillion of the U.S. economy, relays our continuing commitment to the goals outlined in the international Paris Climate Agreement and America's contribution to it.
World leaders are finally coming around to what we at ASLA have long known: nature-based solutions are advantageous to our communities, our environment, and the health of our world. They:
Are largely more cost-effective and resilient than engineered "grey" solutions for protecting communities against sea level rise, higher temperatures, and increased flooding.
Have many co-benefits like improved community health and well-being.
Reduce greenhouse gas emissions to the advantage of our environment.
Create well-paying, local green jobs.
When a member joins ASLA, they agree to a code of environmental ethics that states they will make "every effort within our sphere of influence to enhance, respect, and restore the life-sustaining integrity of the landscape for all living things." This, to me, is the Hippocratic Oath of a landscape architect – one that we live every single day, in every project we take, in everything we do. It is my earnest hope, and the hope of ASLA as an organization, that the leaders gathering in New York today will heed the calls of climate strikers, scientists, and people around the globe to take bold action and protect our planet from the perils of the climate crisis.
Shawn T. Kelly, FASLA, President, American Society of Landscape Architects
Designing a Green New Deal
09/19/2019 09/23/2019 Aaron KingLeave a comment
Environmentally beneficial transmission line easement / LOLA Landscape Architects, .FABRIC and STUDIO 1:1
Close to 1,400 attendees and several thousand online viewers watched the day-long Designing a Green New Deal conference hosted by the University of Pennsylvania, which brought together for the first time the policy experts and activists driving the Green New Deal (GND) with landscape architects, architects, and planners.
"It is really important to think about what it would mean to build out a GND," said event co-host Billy Fleming, ASLA, Wilks Family Director of the Ian L. McHarg Center. "The policy experts didn't have anybody that could help them think through what it would look like and how it would work." Fleming hoped the event would spark a conversation between policy experts and designers about what kind of built work might arise from and hasten a GND, and how those projects could address both climate and social issues.
Some of the most inspiring ideas came during the event's first session "Beyond Hagiography – Mining the New Deal Legacy." Nick Pevzner, ASLA, senior lecturer of landscape architecture at the University of Pennsylvania, presented speculative and built projects that put energy infrastructure to creative use and deploy renewable power in sensitive ways (see image at top).
"The GND implies a rapid expansion of renewable energy infrastructure," Pevzner said. How and where this infrastructure might be situated in the landscape, and what co-benefits it may provide, are issues that landscape architects should be considering.
As Pevzner pointed out, conflicts are already arising between renewable energy infrastructure and existing land use. Landscape design and careful planning can help navigate those conflicts.
Landscape architect Kate Orff, ASLA, founder of SCAPE, who spoke at during the event's "Bold Visions for a GND" panel, emphasized the ability of design workshops to spark policy. She asked attendees to think about ambitious projects that would transcend municipal and state boundaries, projects that would inspire "new, casual coalitions of self-interest," and a stronger, greener federal mandate.
Among these ideas were a Mississippi River National Park, as well as a coastal "shore-way" featuring "equitable, managed retreat, investing in living shorelines, and stemming the collapse of coastal biodiversity."
"We need to visualize and give form to this exciting, new, low-carbon landscape," Orff said. But is a GND necessary to realize projects of such scope and ambition? Yes, Orff told me. "This kind of change requires federal, state, and local cooperation in ways that are currently elusive."
Fleming agreed, saying "it's impossible to imagine a world in which we're able to take on challenges like climate change, climate justice, and social justice at the scale at which it is occurring without a GND. We've reached the limits of what we can do through the project-by-project, private firm-driven development of the world."
One of the event speakers, Leah Stokes, assistant professor of political science at University of California at Santa Barbara, elaborated on the challenges of de-carbonizing the U.S. power sector with or without a legislative package as transformative as the one the GND implies.
"We've been living on borrowed time" in terms of our energy resources, Stokes said. The potential of hydro and nuclear power has for the moment been tapped. Wind and solar represent our best hope at de-carbonizing the power grid and transportation system. In order to do that, the U.S. will have to approximately triple its current capacity in the next 10-20 years, according to Stokes.
In other words, "we have to get really good at building stuff better and quickly," Fleming said. Beyond projects that foster renewable energy or low-carbon modes of transportation, landscape architects have a role to play in ecological restoration, environmental justice, and social justice. Fleming pointed to the Yellowstone to Yukon Conservation Initiative and the Emscher Landscape Park in Germany as projects that took on critical issues outside of energy, such a biodiversity and adaptive reuse of industrial land.
The Yellowstone to Yukon Conservation Initiative / Y2Y.net
Emscher Landscape Park / Latz+Partners
Architect Peggy Deamer, representing The Architecture Lobby, laid out several principles that designers can hold themselves to that are in line with the GND's principles. "We have a say in what we build," Deamer told the audience. "We need to build projects that aren't just objects of capitalist consumption." She also emphasized that project stakeholders are not just the owners, developers, or users of a project, but the environmental and social community in which a project sits.
Several other speakers echoed this sentiment, including Orff and Rhiana Gunn-Wright, policy director for New Consensus, who advised the designers in the room to "meet people where they are" in order to listen and share how planning and design can benefit their communities.
Fleming said he expects the conversation between policy experts like Gunn-Wright and design experts to continue, with the McHarg Center facilitating dialogue between greater numbers of design firms and GND policy experts.
Watch the full day-long event:
Cities, Climate Change, Ecosystem Restoration, Landscape Architecture, Public Spaces, Renewable Energy
Adapt Now: New Report Calls for $1.8 Trillion for Climate Adaptation
If global governments invested some $1.8 trillion over the next decade to help communities adapt to climate change, these communities would see some $7.1 trillion in benefits. This is one central finding of Adapt Now, a major new report by the Global Commission on Adaptation, which is led by Ban Ki-moon, Secretary General of the United Nations; Bill Gates, co-chair of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation; and Kristalina Georgieva, CEO of the World Bank.
At the report's launch at the World Bank last week, Axel von Trotsenburg, acting CEO of the World Bank, said gains made in reducing extreme poverty around the world are now being undone by the increased destruction wrought by climate change. More flooding, more hurricanes, longer droughts, more wildfires, and hotter temperatures are hitting the poorest communities hardest. "There are now 100 million people worldwide who are poorer because of climate change."
Von Trotsenburg estimated that of the billions spent on climate change globally by governments and development agencies, just some 30-40 percent is focused on helping communities adapt to a changing climate; the rest is aimed at mitigation, which is geared towards reducing greenhouse gas emissions. He called for increasing adaptation spending to at least half of all climate change-related investments.
Andrew Steer, CEO of the World Resources Institute, which co-wrote the report with the World Bank, also called for much greater investments to help communities get ahead of the climate impacts they are destined to experience. "We can either plan wisely and smartly now or wait and see much more human misery. We can plan and prosper or delay and have more pain."
The report calls for spending $1.8 trillion in five critical areas deemed to have the greatest adaption benefit: early warning systems, mangrove protection, climate-resilient infrastructure, improved dryland agriculture, and investments in making water resources more resilient.
According to the report, early warning systems are among the most effective investments. They "save lives and assets worth at least ten times their cost. Just 24 hours warning of a coming storm or heat wave can cut the ensuing damage by 30 percent. Spending $800 million on such systems in developing countries would avoid losses of $3–16 billion per year."
Protecting and expanding coastal mangroves can also provide a 10:1 return. "Mangrove forests provide more than $80 billion per year in avoided losses from coastal flooding—and protect 18 million people. They also contribute almost as much ($40–50 billion per year) in non-market benefits associated with fisheries, forestry, and recreation. Combined, the benefits from mangrove preservation and restoration are up to 10 times the costs."
Designing and building climate-resilient infrastructure, such as networks of green infrastructure, can "add about 3 percent to the upfront costs but has benefit-cost ratios of about 4:1. With $60 trillion in projected infrastructure investments between 2020 and 2030, the potential benefits of early adaptation are enormous." The authors cited The Netherlands' Room for the River program, which directs river flooding into safer areas using natural and engineered systems, and projects created by landscape architects, such as smart "water plazas," which have been built in Rotterdam to store excess flood water, as key examples.
Water plaza by De Urbanisten / Rotterdam Resilience Strategy
The report goes into great detail about the need to increase nature-based approaches to both climate adaptation and mitigation, calling for greater investment in creating "sponge cities," expanding tree canopies, wetlands, and wildlife habitat, and using agroforestry to improve soil moisture and reduce evaporation, all approaches landscape architects have actively promoted for many years. (The sponge city approach, which is now national policy in China, was conceived and promoted by Chinese landscape architect Kongjian Yu, FASLA).
ASLA 2013 Professional General Design Honor Award. A Mother River Recovered: Qian'an Sanlihe Greenway. Turenscape / Kongjian Yu
The report delves into the many co-benefits of natural climate solutions as well, "such as better water quality, more productive natural resources, job creation, improved health, cultural benefits, and biodiversity conservation. Nature-based solutions often work well at a broad scale, such as in whole watershed restorations or along coastlines. They can be more cost-effective than engineered approaches, like seawalls, and can also work well in tandem with those engineering approaches to control floods, protect coasts, and reduce urban heat."
Perhaps Steer's most persuasive argument for those focused on the financial bottom line is that investments in resilience are critical to ensuring future growth. Without protective infrastructure that can reduce flood risks and high temperatures and ensure water and food supplies, communities can't attract the investment needed to grow. Therefore, in the near term, climate risks need to be "made more visible," not hidden. That is the only way to get governments and the financial sector to increase spending on climate adaptation quickly.
In a panel discussion, Laura Cook, vice president for sustainability at the World Bank, said "good adaptation is good development." Climate adaptation must become part of the "DNA of every project," even for things that are seemingly unrelated. For example, climate impacts can have ripple health effects. When flooding hits Kampala, the capital of Uganda, which has population of some 1.6 million, "some 30 percent of the population can't get to a hospital." Future health infrastructure investments should then be coordinated with resilient urban planning and design.
Steer was ultimately optimistic, arguing that many countries have shown that we can adapt. In 1970, Cyclone Bhola killed 300,000 people in Bangladesh, and then in 1991, another cyclone killed 138,000 people there. After decades of investment in national and local disaster preparedness and an early warning system, a cyclone that came through the delta country in 2019 resulted in 5 deaths. While even the loss of a few people is horrible, "this is largely a climate adaptation success story."
Cities, Climate Change
Interactive Ooze: Three Visions for a New La Brea Tar Pits
La Brea Tar Pits Mammoths / National History Museum of Los Angeles
Keep the kitschy but beloved fiberglass Columbian Mammoth family or not? That's just one of many design decisions facing the three teams who are finalists in a competition to re-imagine a museum, active paleontology research center, and public park, which together make up La Brea Tar Pits in Los Angeles.
According to The Los Angeles Times, problems with the current complex include limited entrances and too many fences around Hancock Park, which is itself "circuitous" with "often confusing pathways," and outdated display exhibitions in the George C. Page Museum, which is decades old and leaks. The complex is also not well connected to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) next door and the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures just down the road.
The National History Museums of Los Angeles County, which runs the site, called for multi-disciplinary teams of architects, landscape architects, artists, and scientists to create bold concepts for an ecological and accessible educational landscape.
They also purposefully asked for dramatically different concepts stakeholders and the public can parse. One proposal calls for totally redesigning the original museum, which is from the late 70s, and two for remodeling and expanding the museum. One proposal calls for removing parking all together, while others call for burying and covering parking spaces in green space. (Previous excavations for a parking garage in the tar pits yielded skeletons of giant ground sloths, dire wolves, a nearly-intact mammoth, and the partial remains of a prehistoric woman).
All the design teams propose integrating building and landscape into a more cohesive whole and creating new circulation systems through the lakes, green spaces, oil pools, and laboratories that can result in a more immersive experience.
The proposal developed by a team led by Danish architecture firm Dorte Mandrop, which includes landscape architecture firm Martha Schwartz Partners, along with Gruen Associates, Arup, and Kontrapunkt, calls for a layered approach that builds off the Pleistocene landscape to create an ecological museum park that is filled with "wonder and sheer fun."
The museum is currently submerged within landscape berms, with just its "halo" visible, making it difficult to find from some directions. The team proposes gutting the museum, but keeping its essential form, and then lifting it up so it becomes a center point and covering it with a green roof. Pathways from all corners of the triangular site will lead to this more visible educational hub.
La Brea Tar Pits design proposal / Dorte Mandrop, Martha Schwartz Partners, Gruen Associates, Arup, and Kontrapunkt
The landscape itself is completely redesigned. Some "cherished aspects," like a berm kids love to roll down, will take new form. And the mammoth family will stay. New boardwalks will help visitors explore the new park featuring native-plant lawns and gardens and mega fauna-themed playgrounds. "Discovery scaffolds," or sculptural fencing, will enable visitors to peer into the gurgling tar pits but also keep these research sites secure. And parking will be buried under expanded green space.
Martha Schwartz Partners worked with Pamela Conrad, ASLA, at CMG Landscape Architecture, the founder of Climate Positive Design, to create a landscape design that sequesters an estimated 10,000 metric tons of CO2 through "tiny forests; super-sequestering plants; low-carbon materials like wood, sand, lightweight fill and gravel; and reducing and reusing materials on site."
According to Conrad, "the carbon footprint will be offset within five years of being constructed – meeting the goals of the Climate Positive Design Challenge."
The second proposal developed by a team led by Diller Scofidio + Renfro, which includes landscape architecture firms Hood Design Studio and Rana Creek Design, along with Nabih Youssef Associates and Arup, embraces the messiness of the oily landscape that seeps asphalt.
The team proposes an entry way into a new museum that will take visitors through the layers of the geological past, sunken plazas where visitors can watch the landscape ooze, an oil creek, and a more seamless tar pit lake.
La Brea Tar Pits design proposal / Diller Scofidio + Renfro, Hood Design Studio, Rana Creek Design, Nabih Youssef Associates, and Arup.
The team also proposes experimentation and exploration in Hancock Park, including different ecological zones and "test landscapes," as well an interactive dig site where visitors can get closer to the scientific action.
But the mammoths are gone, as is parking, which they propose moving off the complex, perhaps to avoid digging an underground parking garage that would disturb the ecological and scientific integrity of the site.
The existing Page Museum would be replaced by a glass cube surrounded by four landscape plates that visitors would be able to walk up (and roll down). The plates are an evolution of the sloped roof lawns DS+R created at Lincoln Center in New York City.
Lastly, the concept created by a team led by Weiss/Manfredi Architecture/Landscape/Urbanism, which includes Mark Dion, Dr. Carole Gee, Michael Bierut, Karin Fong, and landscape architects Michael Steiner, ASLA, and Robert Perry, ASLA, proposes generally keeping the form of the existing museum, but expanding the overall exhibition space by adding a second elliptical wing and connecting them via a plaza covered in a berm. The overall effect is a sinuous, interconnected complex that is more open and inviting.
La Brea Tar Pits proposal / Weiss/Manfredi Architecture/Landscape/Urbanism, Mark Dion, Dr. Carole Gee, Michael Bierut, Karin Fong, Michael Steiner, ASLA, and Robert Perry, ASLA
This team is the only one to propose an elevated pathway across the tar lake, creating the opportunity for looping pathways and spaces for vast lawns, "pit stops" for play, intimate "paleobotanical gardens," and close-up encounters with the fiberglass mammoths. The team proposes planting some 400 trees at the edges of the central greens.
A pathway of discovery leads visitors through the tar pit section of Hancock Park, which would feature Pleistocene-themed native plant gardens and a new amphitheater for public events.
A jury will decide on the winning proposal later this fall.
Climate Change, Landscape Architecture, Public Spaces
"The Monk by the Sea" by Caspar David Friedrich (1808) / Wikimedia
As curators we worked for well over a year to select the 25 works in the exhibition. We began by asking colleagues around the world for project recommendations. We stipulated in some detail that projects had to be "McHargian" in scale and scope. From well over a hundred nominations, we reached the short list of 25 and organized them into five categories: Big Wilds, Urban Futures, Toxic Lands, Fresh Waters and Rising Waters, which can be explored online.
Big Wilds
• Great Green Wall, Africa
• Yellowstone to Yukon Conservation Initiative, USA and Canada
• National Ecological Security Pattern Plan, China
• Malpai Borderlands, Arizona and New Mexico, USA
• Samboja Lestari, East Kalimantan, Indonesia
• Landscape Regeneration of Western Waiheke Island, New Zealand
• Willamette River Basin Oregon, USA
• Qianhai Water City Shenzhen, China
• Envision Utah Salt Lake City Region, USA
• Medellin, Colombia
• Barcelona Metropolitan Region Plan, Spain
Toxic Lands
• Emscher Landscape Park, Ruhr Valley, Germany
• Stapleton, Denver Colorado, USA
• Freshkills Park, New York, USA
• Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, London, England
• The BIG U, New York, USA
• A New Urban Ground New York, New York, USA
• Fingers of High Ground Norfolk, Virginia, USA
• Zandmotor Ter Heijde, The Netherlands
• 2050—An Energetic Odyssey North Sea, The Netherlands
Fresh Waters
• Healthy Port Futures Great Lakes Region, USA
• Room for the River The Netherlands Rijkswaterstaat
• Los Angeles River Master Plan California, USA
• Weishan Wetland Park Jining, China
• GreenPlan Philadelphia Pennsylvania, USA
It's important to note the final list of projects doesn't mean we completely endorse the work, nor is the exhibition a collection of the "best of." This is not an awards forum; it is a representative selection of work that we think does a pretty good job of scoping, extending, and in some cases questioning McHarg's legacy into the 21st century.
Without being too coy about it, we generally think these projects indicate important directions for the future of the profession. A criticism we accept and have worried over is the collection is geographically and culturally quite limited, itself a reflection of landscape architecture's current professional reach.
So what do we mean by extending McHarg's legacy? Simply, the works we've chosen tend to be "plannerly," that is, they are big in terms of site and timescale and tend to involve complex socio-political and ecological processes with multiple authors and agencies. In short, there are no gardens, plazas, or streetscapes (to name but a few types) in this collection. This is not to say these are unimportant, they just don't fit the raison d'etre, or the occasion of this exhibition.
Turning to the question of designing a planet: the functionalist definition of design is to make a tool that will do something more effectively than prior to the tool's existence. But what's most important about this—at least what largely seems to distinguish us to some degree from many other species—is that the invention of the tool, or the desire for the invention of the tool, takes place in our minds before it takes place in the world.
Without wanting to at all elevate humans above other species, we do have an exceptional propensity for imagining causality. In a word, we have foresight.
In Greek mythology foresight was the special gift of Prometheus – the father of humanity. We, the "Anthropos" (meaning not only humans, but also "the lower ones"), received our ability for foresight from Prometheus. Under instruction from Zeus, who wanted some pets to alleviate his boredom, Prometheus made the Anthropos out of clay taken from somewhere between the Tigris and Euphrates, and with the admixture of Athena's breath, here we are!
As the story goes, Zeus told Prometheus to give the Anthropos some degree of free will so as to make them more entertaining, but he stressed not to give them so much that they might then compete with the Gods themselves. Of course, by giving us not only a modicum of foresight, but also fire, Prometheus gave us everything we needed to do exactly what Zeus feared we would. And the rest, as they say, is history.
Suomi NPP launch by NASA/Bill Ingalls, public domain via NASA.gov
From the origin of the Anthropos we can trace an arc to the 1960s when, just before McHarg released his manifesto, Stewart Brand, the man responsible for persuading NASA to release the original earth image, pronounced: "We are now as Gods and should get good at it." This is a hugely significant thing to say, but what's more is that Brand recently updated his statement to "we are as Gods and MUST get good at it."
In other words, not only have the Gods abandoned us, but we are now so deeply implicated in the workings of the Earth system that we really have no choice but to try and design it. In so far as we know, for the first time in evolutionary history, there is now a form of networked planetary intelligence registering its own environmental predicament. If so, then humanity is the first species in evolutionary history to attempt to design a planet, a fact as preposterous as it is, according to Brand, a necessity.
The poster child for the historical drama in which we now cast ourselves as both the villain and the hero is the atmospheric chemist Paul Crutzen, who popularized the term Anthropocene. As Crutzen explains, the Anthropocene is an act in three parts: first, the industrial revolution; second, the great acceleration (consumer-driven capitalism since 1950); and now he says we should move into a third phase in which we begin to, and I quote, "steward the earth."
This of course is exactly what McHarg said 50 years ago. Now you might say that we have already designed the planet. Certainly, humanity has colonized and impacted every square inch of the earth's surface, but we haven't really done this with foresight. Until recently, we haven't done it in a way that is self-conscious in regard to the problem of the tragedy of the commons. The question now is not whether we should design the planet, but how. Ironically then: If it's true that species naturally over consume their environments to their own detriment, then since we have no major predator, we now need to learn to become unnatural. And in a further semantic twist, according to McHarg and his disciples, we can only do this by designing with nature.
However, the problem is this assumes we know what nature is. Truth be told, we do not. Accepting that fact is important because it protects us against anyone ever using nature as justification for authoritarian politics or any number of other oppressive ideas. Accepting then the partiality of knowledge, all we can do is develop approximations of how nature works and try different ways of productively coexisting with it as such.
We write in the introduction to the exhibition's eponymous book that by asserting the sum-total of what we mean by design (human foresight) could be based on a singular—and in McHarg's case, a scientific idea of nature—McHarg created a significant intellectual problem for himself and the profession. This problem is brought to light by Ursula Heise during a keynote at the Design with Nature Now conference, which was held at Penn alongside the exhibition in June, 2019.
Heise explains "the basic goal of cultural studies for the last twenty years has been to analyze and in most cases, to dismantle appeals to 'the natural' or 'biological' by showing their groundedness in cultural practices rather than facts of nature. The thrust of this work, therefore, invariably leads to skepticism about the possibility of returning to nature as such or of the possibility of places defined in terms of their natural characteristics that humans should relate to."
Design with Nature Now / Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, 2019
Correct though she may well be, the problem with this postmodern skepticism is that if nature is not one thing, it's everything. And if its everything, its nothing, and if it's nothing, it can't very well guide our designs, let alone an entire civilization as McHarg intended.
How then are we to respond to the conditions of ecological crisis? Well, you don't have to agree with McHarg's teleology of humanity fitting into a certain idea of nature to accept and use the sheer practicality of his method. Inversely, you also don't need to be debilitated by the recognition that post-modern nature is a cultural construct. On the contrary, recognizing the design of nature as a cultural construct can be completely consistent with an ecological world view, just not a tyrannical one.
The ecological crisis and the misuse of land that McHarg directly confronted is not just a postmodern cultural construct – it is an appalling reality and McHarg's importance is that he proposed a simple, replicable, and practical method for addressing it.
McHarg represents then the beginning of modern culture taking responsibility for the land with modern technology. Other societies throughout history have done this in different ways, but a modern method suited to the abstraction of modern development processes had to be created. People like Geddes, Mumford, Leopold, Carson and others provided the narrative and McHarg the method. And that he did this is enough. We don't need to make him into anything more or less than that.
Designing with Nature Now means designing with the new nature of the Anthropocene. And to understand the Anthropocene we need to turn to both the sciences and the arts. The scientific bible for the landscape of the Anthropocene is, I think, the book Global Change and the Earth System, published in 2005. It is to the Anthropocene what the encyclopedia was to the Enlightenment.
Global Change and the Earth System / Springer
To quote directly from its introduction, the book's purpose is "to describe and understand the interactive physical, chemical, and biological processes that regulate the total earth system, the unique environment it provides for life, the changes that are occurring in that system and the manner in which these changes are influenced by human actions." This last expression "…the manner in which these changes are influenced by human actions" is critical because this is not the study of nature as something separate to culture; this is now the study of nature as culture.
Global Change and the Earth System is the work of literally thousands of scientists, all bringing their various models of different phenomena together in an attempt to form a complete, holistic model of the Earth System. The idea being that if we can at least better understand how the Earth system functions then we can make more informed decisions about our actions within that system.
One can imagine the ecological revolution in design, which McHarg catalyzed in regard to settlement patterns and which we are still in the early historical phases of, now means that everything we design will increasingly be conceived, tested, and valued as to how it performs within the larger material flows of the Earth system as a whole. Hyper-McHarg, if you will.
Now, while the scientists are working on their empirical models, the question in the arts is not so much how the Anthropogenic Earth works but what the Anthropogenic Earth means. To wit, just look at the plethora of recent books that use the word Anthropocene in their titles. Notably, almost all are dramatic and apocalyptic. Indeed, thoughout the humanities, there is evidently outright panic about the advent of the Anthropocene. And rightly so, because the old idea of nature as something stable and inviolable, history's backdrop, has literally just evaporated into the carbon-saturated atmosphere of our own making.
To help make some sense of this panic, I've added some keywords to a sample of books on the topic of the Anthropocene (see larger version of the image below). These keywords establish polarizations that demarcate spectrums of current thought, at least as I read it. The first polarization concerns the question of whether or not we should even be calling this the Anthropocene. For its critics, the term naturalizes climate change and casts a new colonizing term over the entirety of the human race, many of whom have had very little to do with the industrial modernity that created the problem in the first place. Instead, they argue this should be called the Capitolocene, which is to say climate change must be apprehended as a cultural matter, and the blame for its advent placed squarely at the feet of first-world capitalism, and presumably communism, since it too has had an appalling environmental record.
Montage of book covers and keywords related to the Anthropocene / Richard Weller
First, with regard to the politics of the environmental movement I would place Eco-socialists at one end of the spectrum and Eco-modernists at the other. For the Eco-socialists, technology (unless its green) is a problem before it is a solution, and it is only through a return to communitarian, small scale, low-population, stable-state economies that true sustainability can be achieved. For the Eco-socialists, only the worst of climate change can now be avoided, whereas for the Eco-modernists, modernity is an incomplete project, and through technological rationality the best is yet to come, or at least, the worst can be avoided.
For Eco-socialists climate change warrants socio-political and theological revolution, something Clive Hamilton, the author of Defiant Earth: The Fate of Humans in the Anthropocene, for example, calls a "rupture" with history. On the other hand, for the Eco-modernists, history since the agricultural revolution is a continuing saga of environmental modification at the hands of technology. In this sense, even though there is now more at stake, for the Eco-modernists we are just doing now what we've always done. This latter position is effectively that taken by the other keynote speaker at the Design with Nature Now conference, the geographer Erle Ellis.
Second, to translate this spectrum of environmental thought into design discourse, I use the terms mitigation and adaptation respectively. Taken seriously, mitigation means taking on the causes of climate change, not only the fossil fuel industry, but also the economics of capitalism and the the philosophy of liberal humanism. Adaptation, on the other hand, means adjusting to the conditions of a changed climate but not necessarily changing its causation and certainly not changing the fundamentally-modern belief in techno scientific rationality to solve our environmental and socio-economic problems.
Per McHarg, adaptation means fitting ourselves benignly into the landscape. But this now seems way too pastoral for a planet of 8 billion people in the throes of rapid climate change. More likely and more frightening is that adaptation will become the rationale for climate engineering: regulating the albedo of the atmosphere and the chemistry of the oceans, and planning vast landscapes so they not only feed us, but also help stabilize the carbon and nitrogen cycles.
Both adaptation and mitigation point towards what is now routinely referred to as resilience. Even though in the illustrative diagram I am situating resilience equidistant between adaptation and mitigation, I think resilience theory and practice tends more towards adaptation than it does mitigation.
The reason for this is that the utopia of sustainability, which is what mitigation implies, has by now proven itself to be something of an impossibility. Accordingly, resilience has been criticized as sustainability without hope. In other words, for its critics, resilience is seen as abandoning any possibility of mitigating the environmental and social crises of modernity. Instead, we, and in particular the poor, must now learn to live with the symptoms. In this sense resilience is palliative, conservative, and at worst complicit in preserving the very systems that created the risk in the first place.
Maybe so, but this is all a little too black and white. I would also add that resilience is realistic, whereas mitigation is hopelessly idealistic. Resilience brings sustainability closer to the indeterminate way that both the natural and cultural worlds actually work. Whereas sustainability was based on an idealized ecology of equilibrium, resilience is based on an interpretation of nature as a state of disequilibrium. I think McHarg hoped ultimately for a world of equilibrium between the natural and the cultural but seems now that this is just not the way the world works.
Turning briefly now to the projects in the Design with Nature Now exhibition, there are two particular aspects of McHarg's legacy that I want to channel. The first is his aspiration for large-scale impact and the second is his anticipation and use of digital technology. The first is what I call Big Plans and the second is Digital Natures.
Let's start with Big Plans. On the map below, Global Landscape Connectivity Projects, you see most of the major conservation projects planned or under construction in the world today. This is an extraordinary image because it shows humans now, for the first time in (modern) history, actively and intentionally reconstructing ecosystems at a planetary scale – so yes, effectively designing a planet, or at least treating it as a garden instead of a mine. (See larger map).
Global Landscape Connectivity Projects / Richard Weller, Claire Hoch, and Chieh Huang
McHarg would love this map and it should give us all hope. And yet from a professional perspective much of this restorative activity doesn't currently involve landscape architects. That we think it should is why we've included projects such as the Yellowstone to Yukon (Y2Y) Conservation Initiative in the United States and the Great Green Wall across sub-Saharan Africa in the exhibition.
Yellowstone to Yukon (Y2Y) Conservation Initiative / Y2Y.net
Great Green Wall / United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO)
For example, the Y2Y is a remarkable ongoing story of collaboration (and tension) between land owners over some 2,000 miles of territory in order to create landscape connectivity for species migration. The Great Green Wall is also a remarkable story of what began as a top-down initiative to resist the southward encroachment of the Saharan desert but has since evolved in to a mosaic of bottom-up initiatives to boost local agrarian economies across the 14 impoverished nations it comprises. When completed, if ever that day comes, the Great Green Wall will be the largest living thing ever created by humanity.
A third Big Plan, I'd like to single out that is versed in McHargian methods is the 2008 National Ecological Security Patterns for the whole of China by landscape architecture firm Turenscape, which was founded by Kongjian Yu, FASLA, and the Peking University Graduate School of Landscape Architecture. The plan shows where the ecological security of land in China should be prioritized.
Framework for national security ecological patterns / Turenscape
Ecological security pattern for biodiversity conservation / Turenscape
This research coincides with President Xi Jinping's 2013 declaration that China should transition from a Gross Domestic Product (GDP)-focused civilization to an ecological civilization. And in this regard, while the study represents a powerful breakthrough for landscape architects, it is also something of a Faustian bargain. It raises the question of whether plans done in the name of national ecological health for totalitarian governments could come to overrule local culture in the same way development projects previously did in the name of the national interest. Imagine mass evictions not for hydroelectric dams, but now for biodiversity corridors.
Regarding the second aspect of McHarg's legacy, the theme of Digital Natures relates to how landscape architects today are increasingly able to simulate environmental conditions in order to guide design decisions. There are two aspects to this. The first is the ability to create one's own data instead of just passively receiving it from an authority, and the second is the increasing capacity to model complex, chaotic systems such as hydrology, and perhaps eventually entire ecosystems, cities, and ultimately the Earth system itself, as we see in the case of the book Global Change and the Earth System.
The key here is being able to model systems in the fourth, not just the third, dimension. That is, we are moving into an era where the old problem of a map being redundant the moment it is drawn can finally be overcome. It is early days in the emergence of the genre of Digital Natures, but the work of academic practitioners such as Keith Van Der Sys, Karen M'Closkey, Bradley Cantrell, ASLA, Justine Holzman, Sean Burkholder and Brian Davis — all of whom are variously modelling fluvial landscapes — is promising.
For example, the Healthy Port Futures project in the Design with Nature Now exhibition by Burkholder and Davis foregrounds digital modelling to predict sediment flows in the world's largest inland water body, the Great Lakes of the USA and Canada. The project centers on creating simulations to show how instead of being treated as a useless waste product, sediment can be redirected so as to create new landscapes of ecological and social value. Stemming out of the academic Dredgefest initiative, Burkholder and Davis' work is significant for its methods and also because with it they are muscling their way into territory otherwise dominated by engineers.
Contextually calibrated alternatives for passive sediment management for Lorain, Ohio / Sean Burkholder and Brian Davis: Healthy Port Futures
Which leads to what is for me the most extraordinary and perhaps the most compelling work in the exhibition: the so called Sand Motor (Zandmotor) constructed in 2011 off the coast of the Netherlands. The Sand Motor is a novel approach to coastline protection in which sand is mined offshore and added to the beach at a strategic location so that the littoral drift steadily redistributes the material further along the coast, thus reinforcing Holland's coast against the sea. This could only be done through predictive modelling of the coastal system. Absent recent advancements in computing power, such analysis would have been previously prohibitive. Now, not only could the Sand Motor's behavior be accurately predicted before it was built, it is also continually monitored, establishing a feedback loop between the digital and the real.
Zandmotor by Rijkswaterstaat
The Sand Motor marks a new technological and predictive level of human engagement with the environment, one that will expand at both macro and micro scales this century. In addition to designing gardens, parks, and plazas as we always will, the kind of systems design the Sand Motor suggests it is as foreboding as it is promising.
Even if unintentionally, the sand motor is also, I think, a highly aesthetic work. In fact, I'd go so far as to say it is one of the great artworks of the early Anthropocene, something land artist Robert Smithson pointed to 50 years ago. I imagine a scene where Professor Marcel Stive, the lead engineer of the Sand Motor, now replaces Caspar David Friedrich's Monk by the Sea, not to contemplate God's awesome creation, but rather ours.
And that brings me full circle to where I began with origin of the Anthropos. For if we have now become Gods then, for all their complexity and contradiction, I do think the projects in the exhibition show that we can be good at it.
This post is by Richard Weller, ASLA, the Martin and Margy Meyerson chair of urbanism, professor and chair of landscape architecture, and co-director of the McHarg Center for Urbanism and Ecology at the University of Pennsylvania.
Cities, Climate Change, Ecosystem Restoration, Ecosystem Services, Landscape Architecture


This Thursday, the Spanish company premiered the first season of its original series, Vergüenza, on its network and digital platform Movistar Series.
Spanish telco Movistar continues to move forward with its original series premieres plan in Latin America with the arrival of the first season of Vergüenza in the region.
The comedy, which premiered on November 24 in Spain as Movistar's third original series, will arrive this week on its network and digital platform Movistar Series in Guatemala, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Costa Rica, Peru, Colombia, Ecuador, Panama and Chile.
It joins the premieres of The Zone, The Plague, Felix, Matar al padre and Mira lo que has hecho.
From the projects that already premiered in Spain, the only ones left are El día de mañana and Velvet Collection, which in Latin America are available on Netflix.
Movistar+ is also developing and producing a long list of titles such as Déjate llevar, Instinto, Arde Madrid, Gigantes, Virtual Hero, El embarcadero, Hierro and the adaptation of teen series Skam.
Vergüenza is a comedy created by Álvaro Fernández-Armero and Juan Cavestany, and stars Javier Gutiérrez and Malena Alterio.
It was already renewed for a second season, which will premiere this year on Movistar+ in Spain.


The Epcot International Flower and Garden Festival is underway. This spring tradition features seminars, exhibits, food kiosks, and amazing topiaries. This year, the front of the park features Donald Duck and his family. I took this shot yesterday, on the opening day of the festival.


Stents are devices placed inside coronary arteries to help keep the vessels open so blood flows more freely, preventing blockages that may lead to heart attacks or other problems. The most common type of stent is a tube of metal mesh designed to fit easily inside artery walls.
While procedures for inserting stents differ depending on the nature of the blockages, the process is always far less invasive than bypass surgeries. Compared with bypass surgery, stenting involves smaller incisions and a shorter recovery time. Patients receiving stents often require only local, rather than general, anesthesia.
What is Included in Interventional Services in Terms of Heart Diseases? Why do Some People Get Heart Attacks Even after Normal Results from a Stress Test? Why is It Important to Take Certain Blood Thinners after Receiving Stents? What are the treatment options for heart failure?


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Ten Musicians Who Throw Shades at Exes Through Their Songs
Pexels/Burst
In addition to pop star Taylor Swift, Adele, Summer Walker as well as Selena Gomez are among celebrities who create songs inspired by their failed relationships.
AceShowbiz - Breakups are mostly difficult, especially when there are still many things left to say to the former partners. When relationships don't end well, both parties mostly choose to throw low-key digs at each other just to get something off their chest.
While most people use social media to shade their exes, musicians often turn to their music to express their disappointment and heartbreak. Some others even have fun playing games with their fans by leaving hints and clues.
Here are 10 singers who are believed to have attacked their former flames through their songs.
1. Taylor Swift and Jake Gyllenhaal
WENN/Instar/Ivan Nikolov
It's no secret that most of Taylor Swift's songs are inspired by her love story. John Mayer, Joe Jonas, Calvin Harris and Harry Styles seem to have their own songs dedicated to them following their split from the Grammy-winning artist.
However, what caught people's attention lately is "All Too Well", which many believe is for Taylor's ex, Jake Gyllenhaal. Earlier this month, the pop star released a 10-minute version of the 2012 track and "All Too Well: The Short Film", which stars Dylan O'Brien and Sadie Sink. The re-releases have so many easter eggs about the actor, making fans convinced that the song is indeed for him.
2. Adele and Simon Konecki
Another breakup ballad that has been trending is Adele's "Easy on Me". She wrote the song, which is part of her long-awaited album "30", as her marriage to Simon Konecki crumbled. The English singer admitted that her latest studio effort represents the "maze of utter disorder and inner turmoil" she has faced in recent years.
When speaking to Vogue, Adele disclosed that she wrote the song and the album to explain to their son Angelo why they split. "I wanted to explain to him through this record, when he's in his twenties or thirties, who I am and why I voluntarily chose to dismantle his entire life in the pursuit of my own happiness," she pointed out.
3. Summer Walker and London On Da Track
Summer Walker and London On Da Track are among celebrities who have an ugly breakup. The "Still Over It" artist, who often calls out her baby daddy on social media, drags him once again through "4th Baby Mama".
In the track 19 off her new album, Summer dubs London a "liar, a cheater, a deceiver, heartbreaker." As if it's not enough for her to mock the record producer, the R&B star takes aim at his mother with the lyrics, "I wanna start with yo mama, she should've whooped yo a**/ Know you ain't s**t, but she don't care 'cause you lit."
4. Abigail Breslin and Michael Clifford
Abigail Breslin was clearly upset at Michael Clifford. The "My Sister's Keeper" star sparked chatter back in 2014 after releasing "You Suck" in which she made plenty of references to the 5 Seconds of Summer member.
Abigail didn't shy away from mentioning Michale's physical traits, including his "dumb tattoo," "the scar above your eye" and his bleached eye. Despite fans' speculation that it's presumably about the boy bander, the actress/singer already clarified that it's "about a bunch of different people that I've known... It's not about one person in particular." She also made it clear that they "never dated. We literally hung out twice."
5. Selena Gomez and Justin Bieber
WENN/Instagram/Avalon
Selena Gomez and Justin Bieber had such a complicated relationship. The two had been dating on-and-off since 2010 but officially called it quits in 2018. Roughly two months later, the Canadian crooner moved on with Hailey Baldwin, whom he later married in September that year.
Selena might be surprised that Justin moved on from her too fast, prompting her to drop "Lose You to Love Me" in the following year. She sings, "Gave my all and they all know it/ Then you tore me down and now it's showing/ In two months, you replaced us." Fast forward to January this year, the Disney alum released "De Una Vez", which is about a difficult past love as she's overcoming a heartbreak. Fans once again speculated that Justin was the inspiration behind it.
6. Miley Cyrus and Liam Hemsworth
WENN/Andres Otero
Fans of Miley Cyrus didn't need to make any assumption about her music since she admitted that one of her songs is indeed about her ex-husband, Liam Hemsworth. In December 2020, the "Plastic Hearts" artist revealed to Howard Stern that "WTF Do I Know" was inspired by their split.
In the song, there are lyrics that read, "So tell me, baby, am I wrong that I moved on?/ And I, and I don't even miss you." Miley then told Howard that the last line was about her former spouse "in that minute." She explained, "Sometimes you miss people more than others, and sometimes, things get easier... Time kind of heals all, but that was at a time where I felt really strong. And then some days I don't."
7. Ed Sheeran and Ellie Goulding
WENN/Phil Lewis/Instar
Ed Sheeran's "Don't" reportedly is inspired by the love triangle between him, Ellie Goulding and Niall Horan. The speculation emerged after fans noticed the lyrics that read, "And I never saw him as a threat/ Until you disappeared with him to have sex of course" and "You were looking for a lover to BURN," seemingly referring to Ellie's 2013 "Burn".
However, Ellie denied that she ever dated Ed. "I did go on a few dates with Niall, but I was never in a relationship with Ed," she told ELLE U.K. in 2015. "I have absolutely no idea where that came from and why it was turned into such a big thing."
8. Demi Lovato and Max Ehrich
Demi Lovato and Max Ehrich called off their engagement not without drama. The former couple, who got engaged in July 2020 after four months of dating, had two different ways to bring up their issues. While the actor often took aim at the Disney alum on social media, the non-binary star used their music to drag the "Under the Dome" alum.
In "15 Minutes" off Demi's seventh album "Dancing With the Devil ... The Art of Starting Over", they sing, "Changed your colors so fast/ Tried to turn my friends into friends of the past." The pop star continues, "They Always puttin' you first, could've been your future/ But you didn't even care about me like that."
9. Justin Bieber and Selena Gomez
There's no smoke without fire. Years before Selena Gomez came up with shady songs about Justin Bieber, he allegedly threw a jab at her on "Love Yourself". Fans assumed that the acoustic ballad is a reference to Selena's Arabic tattoo which translates to "love yourself first" in English.
The 2015 song was written by Ed Sheeran, who previously revealed that the chorus was toned down from the original one. Ed divulged that the lyric was supposed to be, "you should go and f**k yourself."
10. Olivia Rodrigo and Joshua Bassett
Instagram/WENN/Adriana M. Barraza
Aside from Taylor Swift, Olivia Rodrigo managed to turn her heartbreak into a masterpiece. The "High School Musical: The Musical: The Series" star rose to fame after she dropped debut hit "Drivers License" back in January.
The fan-favorite breakup anthem is reportedly about an alleged love triangle between her, Joshua Bassett and Sabrina Carpenter. Although the Grammy-nominee has yet to confirm the speculation, she once admitted that she "was going through a heartbreak that was so confusing to her" when she wrote the song.
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Support We are grateful for the support of the NIH (EY024481 to P.A.R. and L.B.; NS066019 to P.A.R.; MH104318 to P.A.R.; GM 065519 to S.J.L), U.S. Department of Defense/CDMRP (DM102446 to L.B.), Dr. Miriam and Sheldon G. Adelson Medical Research Foundation (to L.B.), and the China Scholarship Council 2010638086 (Y.L.).
Yiqing Li, Kenya Yuki, Kumiko Omura, Hui-ya Gilbert, Yuqin Yin, Silmara de Lima, Melody Walter, Paul Huang, Stephen Lippard, Yehong Zhuo, Paul A. Rosenberg, Larry I. Benowitz; Amacrine cells control retinal Zn2+ levels, ganglion cell survival, and axon regeneration after optic nerve injury via two opposing effects of nitric oxide. Invest. Ophthalmol. Vis. Sci. 2018;59(9):2012.
Purpose : Mobile zinc (Zn2+) contributes to the death of retinal ganglion cells (RGCs) after optic nerve injury (ONI) and to RGCs' inability to regenerate axons (Li et al. PNAS 2017). Zn2+ accumulates in amacrine cell (AC) terminals within an hour of ONI and is then slowly exocytosed and accumulates in RGCs. Chelating Zn2+ provides long-term protection to RGCs and considerable axon regeneration. Here we examined the role of nitric oxide (NO) generated by a small group of ACs on Zn2+ elevation, RGC survival and optic nerve regeneration.
Methods : ONI and/or intraocular injections were performed on 8 week old male C57 wild-type (wt) mice or mice with a general, or AC-specific, or RGC-specific deletion of nos1 (nos1-/-, VGAT-Cre;nos1flx/flx, VGLUT2-Cre;nos1flx/flx respectively; founders from JAX, N ≥ 6/group). Zn2+ was detected with autometallography (AMG). NO was detected with the novel fluorescent sensor Cu2FL2. Other agents included the Zn2+ chelator TPEN, nNOS-selective inhibitor L-NPA, protein kinase G inhibitor Rp-8-Br-PET-cGMPS (all 3 at 100 μM); the NO donor DETA-NONOate (0.1-100 μM) and NO scavenger PTIO (300 μM). Cell-type specific and synaptic markers were visualized by immunohistochemistry.
Results : Zn2+ levels rose continuously in the inner plexiform layer (IPL) 1-24 hours post-NC and in RGCs at 2-3 days. Zn2+ was nearly eliminated in nos1-/- and VGAT-Cre;nos1flx/flx mice (P < 0.001, Fig. 1a-c) and in wt mice treated with PTIO or L-NPA. Conversely, DETA-NONOate increased retinal Zn2+ even without NC. NOS1is only expressed in a small population of ACs, and was absent in VGAT-Cre: nos1flx/flx mice (Fig. 1d). Following ONI, retinal NO increased in ≤ 1 h and remained elevated for ~ 3 days (both P < 0.02, Fig. 2a,b). The validity of the signal was confirmed by its suppression by L-NPA and in VGAT-Cre;nos1flx/flx mice (Fig. 2a,b). Surprisingly, eliminating NOS1 in ACs (but not RGCs) eliminated the regeneration that was otherwise seen with Zn2+ chelation (Fig. 2c). Conversely, DETA-NONOate (10 μM) promoted optic nerve regeneration (P <0.01), and this effect was eliminated with Rp-8-Br-PET-cGMPS (P <0.001, Fig. 2d).
Conclusions : NO generated in a small group of NOS1-positive ACs leads to the deleterious elevation of Zn2+ after optic nerve injury but also exerts positive effects on optic nerve regeneration via cGMP signaling.


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Gardens :: Friends Spotlight: Veta Boswell
Friends Spotlight: Veta Boswell
Tuesday, October 01	 by Samantha Mitchell
Welcome to our new series, Friends Spotlight, where we interview one of the fabulous Friends of the Arboretum. The Friends of the Arboretum are a treasured group of distinguished members who are committed to supporting our groundbreaking horticulture, education and research efforts through an annual gift beginning at $3,500. Benefits of being a Friends member are many, such as concert tickets, private golf cart tours, invitations to exclusive events and more.
We are so thrilled to honor one of our favorite long-time supporters here at the Dallas Arboretum, Mrs. Veta Boswell, who just celebrated her 90th birthday. Veta's legacy is evident in her major capital contributions, particularly the Boswell Family Garden's elegant and many-hued roses. We would not be the same without her, and we hope you will enjoy learning a little more about this remarkable woman.
Veta was born August 7, 1929, in Euless, TX where her father and uncle ran the only general store. Her father, Warren Riley Fuller, went on to become the first Mayor of Euless. Despite the substantial hardships of the Great Depression and World War II, Veta attributes her memorable and happy childhood to the small rural town.
"The Euless community looked out for one another," she said.
After graduating from The University of Texas with a Degree in Home Economics, Veta became a dietitian at Parkland Hospital. There, she met and fell in love with an orthopedic surgeon, Dr. George M. Boswell, Jr. They married in 1958. Dr. Boswell worked for several years of his residency in the emergency room at Parkland, and later opened a private Orthopedic practice in East Dallas with a surgical affiliation at Baylor University Medical Center. George and Veta were blessed with three daughters: Brianna Brown, Kama Koudelka, and Maia Boswell-Penc.
George and Veta built their Lakewood home in 1959. Famed architect Naud Burnett (who also has designed much of the Dallas Arboretum) designed and landscaped the remarkable gardens for their home. This stoked the flames of George's passion for landscape art and gardening, and encouraged Veta's involvement with the Yosemite Garden Club for many years.
In the 1990s and early 2000s, George and Veta began to take personal interest in the Dallas Arboretum through their friends Naud Burnett, Neil Sperry, Dave Forehand, and Warren Johnson. From 1992 to 1999, George served on the Dallas Arboretum Board of Directors.
In 2006, George gave a Christmas gift to his family by honoring them with The Boswell Family Garden. It was named "El Inesperado", meaning "the unexpected" in Spanish. This gift was so meaningful to the Boswells and had a very appropriate name. Veta says "It was located in a place near and dear to our hearts, next to the Sunken Garden, and it was definitely an unexpected surprise!"
Veta has so many memories shared with family, friends and eight grandchildren at the Arboretum. The annual Friends spring dinner in the Jonsson color garden, tea at the Restaurant DeGolyer at Christmas, and Cool Thursdays concert nights at the Rutchik Concert Lawn are all favorites. Perhaps Veta's most precious Arboretum memory to date is her granddaughter's wedding in the Lay Family Garden, with a reception on the Camp House lawn. Though Dr. Boswell had passed away in 2011, the family "knew that George was right there with them when the beautiful couple arrived at the altar. A bright red cardinal flew in, perched itself on the arbor, and began to sing."
Veta continues to donate to the arboretum for numerous reasons: for the joy and beauty that the Dallas Arboretum gives to her and her family, the education it provides to children and families from all over the world, and continuing the legacy of her husband's generosity. We are forever grateful to Veta and the whole Boswell family.
To learn more about becoming a Friend of the Arboretum like Veta, please visit the membership page or call Samantha Mitchell at 214-515-6548.
Birds of a Feather … Build Nests Together!
The Meaning of Flowers on Valentine's Day
The Texas Native Plant Lab Comes Alive This Spring at the Dallas Arboretum
A Tasteful Place Cooks up Something New for Dallas
Texas Native Plants Abound


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Home Government Board of Education Search continues to find replacement for retiring Fayette Schools chief Barrow
Search continues to find replacement for retiring Fayette Schools chief Barrow
Ben Nelms
Fayette County School Superintendent Dr. Jpseph "Jody" Barrow. File photo
Scott Hollowell.
When it comes to finding a replacement for outgoing Fayette County Public Schools Superintendent Jody Barrow, school board Chairman Scott Hollowell said the process is moving forward as quickly as possible.
Barrow announced in February that he would be retiring at the end of June. That led to a search for a new superintendent, with the closing date for the position coming in late May. It was during the search period that the Covid-19 pandemic was in full-swing.
Meantime, Barrow agreed, at the request of the school board, to postpone his retirement for a few months.
"Hopefully we'll be getting candidates the first part of June," Hollowell said on May 11. "We just thought as a board, there's a lot of planning to be done this summer. There's a lot of uncertainty still surrounding what the school year could look like this fall. For consistency sake, we've asked Dr. Barrow to postpone his retirement."
The school board began reviewing applications in early June. Those considerations are still underway, with Hollowell saying last week that the school board has met three times to discuss potential candidates.
"The process is ongoing," Hollowell said.
Indicating that even though there is no time frame connected to finding a replacement, Hollowell said the school board continues to do its due diligence in determining who the next superintendent will be.
"We're moving ahead as quickly as we can," he said.
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Teen Dancer, 15, Diagnosed with Long-Haul COVID-19
By Rebelander Basilan
https://news.amomama.com/254883-teen-dancer-15-diagnosed-long-haul-covid.html
Last summer, a slumber party to celebrate Delaney DePue's 15th birthday marked the start of a new chapter for the teen — one that would be defined by her illness and uncertain future.
A week after celebrating her birthday, Delaney of Fort Walton Beach, Florida, had tested positive for COVID-19, said her mom, Sara DePue. She then suffered flu-like symptoms that kept her bedridden.
Despite Delaney's hopes, she never recovered. She used to take 20 hours a week of competitive dance classes without any underlying conditions, but now she cannot take two classes in a row, Sara said.
NO KNOWN CAUSE
In order to avoid becoming bedridden, Delaney must not exert herself to the point of becoming fatigued. Her shortness of breath exceeds her in unexpected places like the grocery store.
Delaney ended up being diagnosed with COPD, a chronic lung inflammation that makes breathing difficult, said Sara. Her daughter's health decline has not been attributed to any known cause.
Dr. Uzma Hasan of St. Barnabas Medical Center in New Jersey said that, given the increasing number of patients like Delaney, there is a need for a new follow-up plan for children recovering from COVID-19.
HOW TO DETECT COVID-19 IN KIDS
An infectious disease doctor at Toronto's Michael Garron Hospital, Dr. Janine McCready, has launched a school-based program in the east end to improve children's chances of being tested.
It is vital for parents and school staff to listen and validate student concerns.
According to McCready, the vast majority of COVID-19 cases are spread outdoor rather than within schools. Even so, some outbreaks develop in schools, which leads to closures.
McCready said parents should always pay attention to the following symptoms — fever, even if it gets better by itself after an hour or two, headaches, runny nose, sore throat, and vomiting/diarrhea.
Girl with white face mask. | Photo: Pexels
The doctor explained, however, that only a test will show definitively if a child has COVID-19. Even if a child only displays one symptom, parents should keep them home and get them tested, she said.
A child with mild symptoms can be quite difficult to spot, McCready noted. Parents are shocked, she said, that their child has the COVID-19 because they have only mild symptoms.
Woman putting hand sanitizer to a little girl. | Photo: Pexels
LESSENING KID'S FEAR OF COVID-19
Teachers are being vaccinated, which will make it clear that children will return to school as planned this spring. But many children are reluctant to attend school because they are scared.
Sean Perry from the We R H.O.P.E. organization meets with children each day to help them set goals to move forward. It is vital for parents and school staff to listen and validate student concerns, Perry said.
instagram.com/witneycarson
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WITNEY CARSON COVI9-19 STORY
During a Q&A she held on Instagram, Witney Carson revealed that she had been infected with the virus when she and her husband, Carson McAllister, welcomed their son, Leo, in January.
Carson said that their son Leo's birth was the most challenging and most rewarding day of their lives. The dancer had a 24-hour labor, 2 1/2 hours of pushing, and an unexpected C-section.
We at news.AmoMama.com do our best to give you the most updated news regarding the COVID-19 pandemic, but the situation is constantly changing. We encourage readers to refer to the online updates from CDС, WHO, or Local Health Departments to stay updated.Take care!


text: Q: Nodemailer not sending mails after deploying it on docker container I have deployed instance of my NodeJS application on docker container. The application is working fine except my Nodemailer module. Nodemailer is not sending emails as required. How can I solve this.

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