GEOG 346: Day 14

Open Space, Green Space, and Green Infrastructure

Housekeeping Items• Have a good Reading Week and catch up on

the readings.• A reminder that the field trip assignment is

due on Thursday, March 5th.• Any questions or concerns?• Can There Be A Peaceful Co-Existence

Between Nature and the City?• Some resources:

http://www.ted.com/talks/michael_pawlyn_using_nature_s_genius_in_architecture and http://www.ted.com/talks/janine_benyus_biomimicry_in_action.

Fusing the Natural and Built Environments

• There are a whole array of strategies:GreenbeltsGreenways/ core and corridor systems in the city that serve as

habitat/ wildlife migration corridors and also as alternative transportation pathways

Parks of varying degrees of wildnessConservation subdivisionsBotanical gardensJapanese gardens/ quiet oases in the cityCommunity gardensGreen buildings, green roofs, “living buildings”Alternative stormwater management systems (swales, etc.)Living walls

See “The Urban Garden”: http://search.alexanderstreet.com/view/work/873488

A Key Strategy is Preserving Remnant Natural Environments in Cities; A Partial Victory was Recently

Achieved with Linley Valley West

• There are a number of videos about Linley Valley, including ones showing the beavers (many since trapped out). Just Google Linley Valley.

Linley Valley and the ‘Ecosystem Approach’• How would you characterize the development process

in cities from an ecological point of view? It is certainly not undertaken from an ecosystem perspective. Too often it’s a “death by a thousand cuts” approach – i.e. “Oh, well, we’ve got more forests and wetlands, it won’t hurt to pave over some more.” That may have been the prevailing attitude in the Linley Valley.

• Before large parts of Linley Valley were set aside as park, in aYou Tube videos, Mayor John Ruttan and (former) planning director, Andrew Tucker, are shown pointing to the forms and checklists and saying: “The developers did everything required by law, they jumped through all the hoops.” But just because something is technically legal doesn’t mean that it is socially or ecologically optimal, or even ethically right.

Condon – Chapter 7• To take an ecosystem approach, one would need to look at the big (regional) picture or, as Condon says, to see that “the site is to the region what the cell is to the body… the ecological function of the site have everything to do with the ecological health of the region.” You can’t make ecologically irresponsible decisions at the site level and expect them to add up to greater ecological health at a regional scale.

• He extends his analogy to the human body by saying that rivers and streams are the veins of the urban ecosystem, and that rooftops, driveways, lanes and streets are the capillaries.

Condon – Chapter 7• His critique of the way we do development is two-fold: it undermines ecological health, and it deprives children and others of direct nature experiences. It

has been shown by numerous psychological studies that contact with nature greatly reduces stress and restores attention.

Condon, Chapter 7• In this chapter, he discusses a bit of the history of

landscape architecture, his discipline. It was founded, at least in North America, by Frederick Law Olmsted, and was influenced by the romantic strain of the transcendental movement of Emerson and Thoreau.

• Olmsted’s greatest achievements were the design of Central Park in New York and the Emerald Necklace in Boston, but he also designed Parc Mont Royal in Montreal.

• There are many things that his parks were supposed to accomplish: • spiritual uplift • bringing different social classes into contact with one another • facilitating passive and active recreation • enhancing real estate values • facilitating transportation (paths and trails) and • enhancing ecological function.

• His thinking is many ways was more holistic and integrative than most 20th century parks planners.

Frederick Law Olmsted

Condon, Chapter 7• The Emerald Necklace exemplifies a critical feature of

contemporary ecologically and alternative transportation-inspired parks planning: connectivity – creating linked corridors through the urban environment that can facilitate wildlife movement, walking and cycling and that match, in some cases, stream networks.

• Olmsted’s son and stepson carried on his work.• His proto-ecological thinking was revived by Ian McHarg,

author of Design With Nature. McHarg anticipated GIS by developing sieve mapping, which involved the overlay of different types of data to see where development would be most advantageous (or least injurious). He mapped habitat, areas of hydrological significance (e.g. recharge areas), unstable soils or those with agricultural value, etc. and steered development clear of those areas.

Condon, Chapter 7• The largest application of McHarg’s

ideas was the new community of Woodlands, Texas. While Condon has some criticisms of it, it was and is a huge advance on conventional greenfield planning and development. The work by Randall Arendt represents a modest application of some of the same principles.

• Low-impact development standards have also been developed in cities like Olympia, WA. These involve significant riparian buffer zones and emulation of natural processes in the treatment of stormwater. In terms of the latter, Dockside Green in Victoria has implemented such a system into its structure.

Ian McHarg

Condon, Chapter 7 The work of limiting urban sprawl

was greatly facilitated by Oregon’s passage, in 1973, of Senate Bill 100, which mandated that all cities establish land use goals and urban growth boundaries. Despite numerous court challenges, it has endured.

In Ontario, as a result of agitation by the Save The Oak Ridges Moraine (STORM) Coalition and other groups, the province was forced to set up a large green belt to limit the sprawl of Metro Toronto and to protect important aquifer and habitat areas along the Oak Ridges Moraine and Niagara Escarpment.

How successful it’s been is open to question

Niagara Escarpment

Oak Ridges Moraine

Condon, Chapter 7 In the rest of the chapter, Condon offers five

principles for urban green space planning: put nature out front (where it is visible), not out

back; use the seam between nature and the city for

alternative transportation; integrate natural systems into more formal

recreation areas and civic spaces; expand the green network indefinitely; provide an alternative movement system

throughout the city (for cyclists and pedestrians, etc.).

Apart from the example of Pringle Creek in Salem, OR – which Condon cites as an example of all of them – can you think of examples of each of these principles?

Condon, Chapter 7• Are there more innovative ways of doing development

than is the norm in Nanaimo? (One exception is Hawthorne Corner by Insight Developments)

• An example from Boulder, Colorado is as follows: http://www.boulderhousing.org/content/recent-development-holiday-neighborhood and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lSVyshBniL4.

• Another is Dockside Green.• What are your ideas?• I’ll do more with green infra- structure when we come back from Reading Week.

Randall Arendt on Conservation Design

• He contrasts conventional subdivision design with conservation subdivision design. Conventional design is “where all the land is divided into houselots and streets, with the only open space typically being undevelopable wetlands, steep slopes, floodplains, and stormwater management areas” – or SLOAP, Space Left Over After Planning.

• In these subdivisions, there are usually few places to walk,

for community events, or children to play.• The Planned Residential Developments (PRDs) of the 1960s were somewhat more flexible in layout, but they didn’t provide better treatment of open space.

[See http://site.ebrary.com/lib/viu/docDetail.action?docID=10196536]

Randall Arendt on Conservation Design

• In conservation subdivision design, at least 50% of the site is reserved for open space, and half of that in a relatively natural state. The other half can be used as playing fields or parkland for picnics, etc.

• The half of the land that is developed contains as many units as would exist in a conventional subdivision – that is, to say, the development is “density neutral.” It achieves this either through narrow, smaller lots and narrower

houses or through duplexes, townhouses, or other denser forms of housing.• The key thing is to select the conservation lands first.• See next page for contrasting examples.

[See http://site.ebrary.com/lib/viu/docDetail.action?docID=10196536]

Conventional subdivision

Conservation subdivision