Category Archives: Environment

Pocket Ecologies

Offshoots, Inc., designs a place for people, bikes, and plants in Boston’s Charlestown neighborhood.

By Karolina Hac

Aerial photo showing ramp, green roof, and trees shielding parkgoers from the freeway.
The park uses trees and topography to screen the adjacent elevated freeway. Image courtesy Peter Vanderwarker Photography.

Traveling into Boston on the elevated section of Interstate 93, a small pop of green is visible among the swath of industry in Charlestown’s Hood Park. Designed by Offshoots, Inc., in conjunction with Elkus Manfredi Architects, that green dot is known as Hood Bike Park. Continue reading Pocket Ecologies

Seeding a Wilder Future

A new gorilla conservation campus by MASS Design Group and TEN x TEN is a laboratory for reforestation.

By Timothy A. Schuler

Aerial photo of Fossey Center showing landscape and low-lying buildings with green roofs.
The experimental landscape at the new Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund headquarters features plant communities that are critical to mountain gorillas’ survival. Photo by Iwan Baan.

The plan was ambitious, even by MASS Design Group standards. For the headquarters of the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund, the world’s foremost mountain gorilla conservation organization, the designers envisioned a series of lily pad-like buildings nestled into a landscape made up of plant communities drawn almost exclusively from the gorillas’ native habitat in Rwanda’s Volcanoes National Park.

Continue reading Seeding a Wilder Future

Tier Drops

Water out West is disappearing. Seven states, 30 tribes, and millions of people will need to adjust.

By Lisa Owens Viani

The Central Arizona Project carries Colorado River water across a stretch of desert north of Bouse, Arizona. Photo © Ted Wood/The Water Desk.

In early August 2021, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation declared the first ever Tier 1 shortage for the Colorado River, based on the agency’s projection that Lake Mead would drop below a threshold of 1,075 feet above sea level in January. Water levels in the river’s two main reservoirs—Lake Powell (behind Glen Canyon Dam in Arizona) and Lake Mead (behind Hoover Dam on the Arizona–Nevada border)—are now at their lowest since they were filled and flows in the river have declined. Continue reading Tier Drops

Park Diplomacy Across the U.S.–Mexico Border

This article is also available in Spanish

At Laredo, Texas, and Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, “two countries, two cities, one culture, one river, one park.”

By Jane Margolies

Zacate Creek, which feeds into the Rio Grande, creates an arroyo with a natural waterfall. Photo by Overland Partners.

Laredo, Texas, and Nuevo Laredo in Tamaulipas, Mexico—known colloquially as Los Dos Laredos—were a single city divided by the Rio Grande River until 1848, when a treaty established the international border in the river, leaving one half in the United States and the other in Mexico. Continue reading Park Diplomacy Across the U.S.–Mexico Border

Sharing the City One Step at a Time

Activists, wanderers, and tourists find a common language through walking.

By Tim Waterman

As lockdowns eased in 2021, Hôtel du Nord led a walk in L’Estaque, in North Marseille, to the Miramar site, with the encouragement of music along the way. Photo by Dominique Poulain, Archives Hôtel Du Nord.

Matthew Beaumont’s beautiful book about London, Nightwalking: A Nocturnal History of London, begins with a quotation from Ford Madox Ford’s The Soul of London (1905): “…little by little, the Londoner comes to forget that his London is built upon real earth: he forgets that under the pavements there are hills, forgotten water courses, springs, and marshlands.” Beaumont shows wayfaring as an immersive and connective practice and proposes that cities can only truly be known through the practice of walking. Continue reading Sharing the City One Step at a Time

Hawaii Coastline Report Links Resilience with Access

A landscape architect-led study from the University of Hawaii combines climate adaptation and waterfront access.

By Timothy A. Schuler

A vision for 20 miles of Honolulu’s waterfront is based on a network of amphibious green spaces that buffers the city from sea-level rise. Image courtesy of the University of Hawai’i Community Design Center.

United States-controlled islands such as Hawaii, Guam, Puerto Rico, and American Samoa are rarely mentioned in U.S. climate coverage, but the projected impacts of sea-level rise to island communities are severe and far-reaching. Continue reading Hawaii Coastline Report Links Resilience with Access