Winning Designs: Jury, Community Picks for Linear Park along Old Rail Corridor
The Buffalo News, 06/14/19
“A Buffalo firefighter and a New York City landscape architecture firm emerged as top winners Friday in a design competition for a linear park proposed along the former DL&W rail corridor.”

Greenwood Lake Commission Cancels Canada Geese Catch-and-kill, Adopts Alternate Plan
Northjersey.com, 06/14/19
“The revised strategy introduced by local advocates involves a long-term plan to addle eggs and use dogs to deter Canada geese from making the state’s second-largest house-lined lake their home, commission records show. Other control methods now in limited use or under consideration include laser lights, organic sprays and landscape architecture, said Paul Zarrillo, the commission’s New Jersey chairman.”

Judge: Plan to build Obama Museum in Jackson Park Should Not Be Delayed, Dismisses Legal Challenge
The Cook County Record, 06/11/19
“U.S. District Judge John Robert Blakey dismissed a lawsuit filed by the group known as Protect Our Parks, challenging the city of Chicago’s approval of the plan to bring the Obama Presidential Center to the historic park on the city’s South Side.”

Cooper Hewitt Celebrates 20 years of National Design Awards with 2019 Winners
The Architect’s Newspaper, 06/11/19
“SCAPE Landscape Architecture was recognized for its numerous projects (and master plans, and research) that combine landscape architecture with living ecology. SCAPE works across all scales but its use of regenerative landscapes and public outreach is deeply embedded in the firm’s process no matter the size of the project.”

Winning Design for Revamped Detroit Cultural District Envisions Unified Landscape, Architecture and Technology
Crain’s Detroit Business, 6/10/19
“With its vision for Detroit Square, a team including Paris-based Agence Ter with Detroit-based Akoaki LLC, Harley Etienne, assistant professor in the University of Michigan Urban and Regional Planning program, and Ann Arbor-based Rootoftwo LLC was named the winner of the DIA Plaza/Midtown Cultural Connections international design competition Monday morning.”

Treasure and Yerba Buena islands are about a mile off the northeast coast of San Francisco. They have a strange history. They were originally part of the city of San Francisco, before they were confiscated by the federal government as naval and coast guard bases during World War II, and then sold by the federal government back to the city government, which in turn has created the Treasure Island Development Authority (TIDA) and sold much of the property to real estate developers Wilson Meany, Lennar Urban, and Kenwood Investments.

As San Francisco housing prices continue to skyrocket, the aim is to create 8,000 new housing units on the islands, nearly a third of which will be affordable, transforming these islands into the “next great neighborhood” just 12 minutes by ferry to downtown San Francisco. On the 425-acre Treasure Island, some 300 acres will turned into public parkland, creating the largest new public green space in the city since Golden Gate Park. This is the kind of grand city-building rarely done in the U.S. anymore.

At the American Planning Association (APA) conference in San Francisco, one of the developers, Wilson Meany, and the planning and design team, SOM and CMG Landscape Architecture, walked us through the many facets of the $1.5 billion development, which integrates the latest thinking on both sustainability and resilience.

First, a brief history of the islands: In the 1930s, the San Francisco — Oakland Bay Bridge was constructed, linking downtown San Francisco to Yerba Buena and Treasure Island and then those islands to Oakland.

The very-flat Treasure Island was built up in 1936-37 through tons of imported rocks added over shallow shoals, all in time to become the site of the 1939 World’s Fair, which was officially named the Golden Gate International Exposition. The island later became a municipal airport, where the Pan Am clipper flew to Shanghai. Now, only those passenger terminals and hangars remain, and they are the only historic, protected buildings on the island.

At the onset of World War II, the U.S. government confiscated the island and transformed it into a naval station, an embarkation point for the Pacific theater of war. In the 1950s and 1960s, Treasure Island was the site of the U.S. Navy Naval Technical Training Center (NTTC). And according to the book Gay by the Bay: A History of Queer Culture in the San Francisco Bay by Susan Styker, there was also a dark episode in the island’s history: a psychiatric ward on the base was used to study and experiment on naval sailors who were being discharged for being gay. The base facilities closed in 1997 through the base realignment and closure (BRAC) program. The federal government remediated brownfields that littered the landscape, opening up the island for residential and commercial development.

In contrast with the flat artificial nature of Treasure Island, the nearby Yerba Buena Island is nature made, filled with steep hills, and rich in native plant and bird life. Once called Goat Island or Sea Bird island, this smaller 150-acre island has a similar history. The U.S. federal government confiscated it and managed as part of the Treasure Island naval base. The island was home to officer housing, including for residence for Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, who was commander of the Pacific fleet in World War II. There is now a U.S. coast guard search and rescue base and clipper boat cove. Across both islands, there are now a few thousand people living full-time.

According to Chris Meany, a partner at Wilson Meany, the process of developing the island started in earnest in the 2000’s. After a decade-long “mind boggling” negotiation process, Mayor Gavin Newsome agreed in 2009 to pay the federal government $105 million for Treasure Island, while the federal government retains some 40 acres for U.S. Department of Labor Jobs Corps facilities and a section of Yerba Buena Island for the U.S. Coast Guard. In 2005, the first land plan was developed by the city and a team of developers at Wilson Meany, Lennar Urban, and Kenwood Investments. The plan included a development rights swap between Treasure and Yerba Buena islands in order to protect 75 percent of the richly bio-diverse Yerba Buena from development and concentrate denser housing on Treasure island.

For the new communities on the co-joined islands, the city and the developers aimed for sustainable and resilient design excellence. This involves creating public transit access; orienting communities to reduce wind; building sustainable and resilient housing, parks, and promenades; and creating a massive park that can adapt to rising sea levels.

Leo Chow, a partner with SOM, said Treasure Island is a beautiful place with access problems. Right now, visitors can either drive, bike, or take the bus over the Bay Bridge. A new ferry terminal in development on Treasure Island will take people to and from downtown San Francisco in 12 minutes. There, people can also hop on a bus or access bicycling lanes to go anywhere on the island. “It will be possible to circumnavigate the island by bike.”

The new commercial and residential eco-districts are oriented on a “parallelogram grid” to maximize sun exposure but reduce the impact of high winds coming off the bay.

The commercial district will include a retail corridor in the historic airport terminals and hangars. Residential communities themselves will be compact developments, 90 percent of which will be a 10-15 walk from the primary ferry and bus terminal.

Amid the new housing, there will be smaller, shared streets that privilege pedestrians and bicyclist instead of cars, leading to pocket parks and the coastal parks, promenades, and bicycle pathways.

Neighborhoods themselves will mimic San Francisco’s urban feel — the “white, gold city.” Architects will follow rigid design standards calling for white buildings. “It will be a light-colored city against rich nature.”

Kevin Conger, FASLA, a founding partner at CMG Landscape Architecture and an integral part of the design team for the islands, said the public spaces were designed with both the 15,000-20,000 full-time residents and the many thousands of expected visitors in mind.

The public spaces had to be thought of as an “attractive destinations for the whole city — a city-wide waterfront park and a regional open space destination, with sports fields, a 20-acre urban farm for local food production, and natural areas, along with facilities for kayaking, sailing, and bicycling.”

CMG thoughtfully designed all the landscape infrastructural systems to be multi-purpose, too. The green spaces ensure that the island manages 100 percent of its stormwater run-off but also create habitat for wildlife. An island waste water treatment plant funnels reclaimed water to wetlands and is used for irrigation. “The goal was to close all these cycles in a self-contained eco-district.”

The large parkland was designed to accommodate future sea level rise as well. “We purposefully set-back developments 350-feet from the shoreline, so we can protect the communities now but also through 2060 or 2070.” In the area called the wilds, which is filled with adaptable wetlands in an inter-tidal zone, the park will naturally recede or retreat as waters rise.

Overlaying the ecological elements is a public art master plan, which puts 100 percent of art in the public realm, “increasing the cultural value of the parks.” Conger believes art is an important ingredient in a walkable public realm — “it’s so critical to reward pedestrians with a high-quality walking environment.”

Local landscape architecture firms, like Andrea Cochran Landscape Architecture and Hood Design Studio, are filling in pieces of the parks on Treasure Island and Yerba Buena Island as well. Cochran is designing the plaza for the multi-modal ferry and bus terminal around building 1, while Walter Hood, FASLA, is creating a new park with 360 degree views at the peak of Yerba Buena Island that is also expected to become a regional destination park.

Over on Yerba Buena Island, where CMG devised a comprehensive wildlife habitat management plan that creates “natural landscape patches,” connected habitat for birds and plants. Some 75 percent of the island will be reserved for parks, beaches, and 5 miles of walking and bicycling trails.

Working with the San Francisco department of the environment, the team has already removed invasive species and propagated many thousands of native plants from seeds, and then planted them back into the island.

There are some 16,000 golf courses in the U.S. In the last decade, about 800 have closed. In 2009, about 30 million Americans played golf. In 2016, just 20 million did, a 30 percent decline in less than a decade. Americans are simply too busy to play 9 or 18 holes. And the demographics for golf and the culture surrounding the sport have fundamentally changed.

Since 2010, around 20 defunct golf courses have been transformed into public parks. According to Eric Bosman, an urban designer at Kimley-Horn and Associates, who organized a session at the American Planning Association (APA) conference in San Francisco, underused courses were once converted into subdivisions. But now, more “communities want them to become nature parks or preserves.”

“In the 90s and 00s, there was the Tiger Woods effect. Golf became ‘every man’s sport.'” Despite Woods’ recent amazing win, that effect has dissipated. The average age of viewers of golf tournaments on TV is older than 55, and the audience is 87 percent white.

“The demographics for golf is fading away. Golf courses are no longer the place for business deals. This is because people have to practice or they will embarrass themselves” on the fairway — and not many people have time for that. For younger generations, “golf is now about social, interpersonal connections.” But they are less tied to the sport because “they didn’t grow up with it.”

So many communities suffer from a dearth of green space. The average golf course is 150 acres. Problem meets solution. And “where else are you going to find so much open space?,” Bosman rhetorically asked.

Recent projects have transformed links that either follow a traditional layout, which means they flow in a linear or L shape over 18 holes, or a modern layout, with “big rectangular blocks of land, where golfers play 9 holes up and then 9 holes back.” Whether traditional or modern, homes are often found on the edges or even middle of courses.

The 237-acre Orchard Hills Park in suburban Cleveland was transformed from a golf course into a park with a 3.6-mile walking trail and restored streams, meadows, and wetlands. “It’s picturesque and now a popular wedding destination” (see image at top).

In Belgium, Wisconsin, a 116-acre course was purchased by the Ozaukee Washington Land Trust and transformed into the Forest Beach Migratory Preserve. Its club house became a community center. Trails through the habitat areas, which include five constructed wetland ponds, range from 0.25 miles to 1.5 miles.

The Highlands in Grand Rapids, Michigan, a 121-acre course co-managed by the Land Conservancy of Western Michigan and Blandford Nature Center, offers hiking and cross-country skiing along with looped trails ranging from a half mile to 10 miles.

The focus of the rest of the panel was on the Milton Country Club in Milton, Georgia, a wealthy suburb of about 40,000 people with a strong equestrian culture. In 2017, the city purchased the bankrupt 137-acre club for $5 million, a major piece of the $25 million green space bond the city issued, which is also financing an expansive 52-mile-long trail network to connect schools and parks. Remodeling the former golf course, which will include removing golf cart trails and adding new amenities, will likely cost $17 million and take up to a decade.

Bosman and landscape architect Mack Cain at Clark Patterson Lee approached the challenge of remodeling the course by first working with community leaders to establish guiding principles: “honor the rural character, build off existing plans and studies, design safe and attractive spaces, and value all voices.”

Before hosting any public meetings, they met with the homeowners around the former course, who will now have a public park in their front yards; the equestrian community; and the green space and trails committee of the city government in order to identify primary “divergent opinions.”

Through a series of open houses and public workshops, they found the community was most concerned about increased pedestrian and vehicular traffic to the new park. Most of the residents around the course purchased their lots for the view. “Only about 35 percent of golf club homeowners typically play golf,” Bosman explained. These residents are concerned about finding the public in their yards. A draft plan calls for spending $960,000 on fences and planting walls of trees in other areas to protect privacy (and property values).

Cain said that beyond the increase in public and vehicular traffic, the community was focused on maintaining existing programs like the pool and tennis courts at the club house; celebrating and restoring nature; balancing trail, horse, and bicycle use in the new park through extra-wide paths; ensuring safety at the trail connections with roads; distributing access points and moving parking off-site; and building partnerships between the landowners and the city.

A draft master plan for the park, which was recently presented to the city council, will offer two loop trails far enough away from nearby homes, with one trail connecting to a nearby school. “People like loops — they don’t want to start and then have to go back.”

Trails will be designed for different purposes: a 2.2-mile-long trail made of porous granite will offer access for pedestrians, those in wheelchairs, and road bicyclists, while another trail for equestrians and mountain bicyclists will be made of soft, natural surfaces.

Wetlands and meadows will be restored. Cain said there will also be an environmental education component, using the landscape as a “lab for natural succession.” The tennis courts and pool are now open to all local residents, while the club house is being redeveloped as a community center and more sports amenities are added.

Jan Hancock — an expert on designing spaces for horses, and a primary author of the Federal Highway Administration-produced Equestrian Design Guidebook for Trails, Trailheads, and Campgrounds — is also part of the planning and design team for the Milton Country Club.

She said former golf courses are an “equestrian’s dream come true,” but much work was done to make these trails friendly to horses and reduce conflicts with neighbors. Riders on horseback can look over most fences, so trails will be moved away from homes to maintain privacy. “Horses can slip and fall on paved surfaces and curbs,” so they are creating natural surface trails for them. Steep inclines will be regraded to reduce accidents.

Trails will be 8-feet-wide because that is the minimum width for two horseback riders to pass each other. Paths will curve because that gives visual cues to users. “They can see if a bike is coming up.” Bridges will have at least a 54-inch rail and be able to support over 1,000 pounds of weight.

Lastly, Hancock designed “poop zones” at the beginning of trail. “Horses mark their territory and use smell to figure out if they have come back to a spot.” Knowing this, horse parking and staging areas will be separate from where pedestrian and bicyclists enter the park.

The Camp Fire that tore through the communities of Concow and Paradise in Northern California in 2018 was the deadliest and costliest in Californian history. Some 150,000 acres burned, causing 50,000 people to flee, 20,000 structures to be destroyed, and some $16.5 billion in damages. 85 people lost their lives.

Strangely, amid all this destruction, which was sparked by downed electrical lines owned by PG&E, the state’s power utility, some homes survived. Why?

Those property owners likely obeyed defensible space laws and used Firewise landscape strategies to protect themselves from wildlife.

At a session at the American Planning Association in San Francisco, wildfire experts explained how to use these approaches as well as the broader importance of landscape planning and design in fire safety.

According to Edith Hannigan, with the California Board of Forestry and Fire Protection, Concow and Paradise and many other communities across the west are at high-risk because they formed in the wildland-urban interface (WUI), which the U.S. Forest Service describes as places where “humans and their development meet or intermix with wildland fuel.” On top of the intrinsic risk of simply existing in the WUI, add the effect of years of drought, bark beetles onslaughts on forests, and climate change, and you have increasingly dangerous conditions.

Living in the WUI raises risks for all property owners, but lot locations, sizes, layouts, and topography impact local risk levels. To provide “meaningful reduction of risks for specific situations,” California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (Cal Fire) created a land-use planning program, with two fire chiefs and ten local fire captains, that “reaches out to communities and provides technical assistance,” meeting the goals of the state’s recent strategic fire plan.

For retired Cal Fire captain David Shew, who oversaw the creation of the program and is now a consultant, wildfires “aren’t a fire department problem”; they are really a community planning problem. The solution is to respect natural systems and stop developing communities in the WUI. For those communities already there, it’s important to incorporate better land-use planning to reduce the danger.

California, like Greece, Australia, Sweden, and other parts of the world, has a “natural fire environment” in which wildfire has evolved an important role in maintaining the health of the ecosystem. Native Americans lived with the natural wildfire cycle for centuries, but the settlers moving across the West in the 1800s were unnerved by constant small wildfires. As settlers formed communities that in turn suppressed fired, the natural fire state ended. It turns out it was “the hubris of mankind to think we can control Mother Nature.”

Mother Nature has made her voice louder. California sees more devastating fires than ever before — and now they occur throughout the year. “There is no longer a fire season.” 9 out of 10 of the most destructive fires occurred since 2013. In 2018 alone, there were some 5,800 fires that consumed 1.3 million acres. And greater fires loom: there are 100 million dead trees in the Sierra Nevada area that will fall over and create more fuel for fires. Shew said: “We have disrupted evolution and the result is devastating wildfires.”

Wildfires themselves often don’t cause homes to go up in smoke; “it’s flying embers that cause most fires.” Wood fences and gutters also catch on fire, spreading to homes. “The materials are really important, but where a structure sits on the landscape — where and how homes cluster — are also of great importance.”

Michelle Steinberg, director of the wildfire division with the Natural Fire Protection Agency (NFPA) — creator of codes and standards state and local governments use to protect communities and the Firewise USA program, which includes some 1,500 sites — got into the details on how to protect against wildfire using codes designed for different community types. The codes provide rules for crucial evacuation zones, the materials and layout of residential structures themselves, and the landscape around a home and community, including common spaces.

The residential landscape is re-imagined by NFPA as the “home ignition zone (HIZ),” a concept developed by retired USDA Forest Service fire scientist Jack Cohen in the late 1990s, following “some breakthrough experimental research into how homes ignite due to the effects of radiant heat.” The HIZ has three zones: 0-5 feet from the house, which is the immediate zone; 5-30 feet away, the intermediate zone; and 30-100 feet, and out to 200 feet, the extended zone. In the immediate zone, there can be no trees and vegetation and all materials need to be fire-proof. In the intermediate zone, lawns need to be trimmed, debris cleared, and trees need to be well-spaced and set within small clusters. In the extended zone, all dead trees and plants need to be removed.

Wildfires are a major problem elsewhere in the U.S. Molly Mowery, with Community Planning for Wildlife (CPAW) in Colorado, a joint partnership between Headwaters Economics and Wildfire Planning International, explained how she is helping communities across the country assess risks and apply land-use solutions to reduce their exposure to wildfire.

For example, working with Summit, Colorado, CPAW helped spur the development of new regulations and zoning that require defensible space zones in subdivisions, prohibit the planting of flammable juniper trees within 30 feet of homes, and require non-combustible fencing and safer firewood storage within 5 feet of homes. Mowery said many communities struggle with seemingly-insignificant things like fences near homes, but they are often the cause of the fires that take down homes.

Download a free APA resource — Planning the Wildland Urban Interface — which was partly financed by the U.S. Forest Service.