The Topography of Wellness: How Health and Disease Shaped the American Landscape
By Sara Jensen Carr; Charlottesville, Virginia: University of Virginia Press, 2021; 288 pages, $34.50.
Reviewed by Pollyanna Rhee
In 2016, Karen DeSalvo, the acting assistant secretary for health at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, noted that public health was in a new era where “one’s zip code is a better indicator of health than genetic code.” DeSalvo’s link between health and place underscored a pervasive and uncomfortable fact about living in the United States today: Racial and class-based segregation is both common and harmful for people’s physical and mental health.Continue reading Book Review: No Green Pill→
Indigenous landscape designer Tim Lehman helps move a master plan and a mission forward.
By Lisa Owens Viani
Volunteers replanted the areas around three large ponds with native and Indigenous food plants. Photo by Tim Lehman.
After Native Americans occupied Fort Lawton—today part of Seattle’s Discovery Park—in a peaceful protest in the early 1970s, the city negotiated a long-term leaseback of 20 acres of the 534-acre site with the United Indians of All Tribes Foundation. “The land was supposed to be given back to the local tribe from which it was taken, but that didn’t really happen,” says Meghan Jernigan, a traditional medicine program director with United Indians, which led the protest. “There wasn’t a lot of political support, but a growing, cross-cultural coalition made this space thrive and allowed for development of the Daybreak Star Cultural Center.”Continue reading A Star on the Horizon→
As hurricanes increase in frequency and intensity, Puerto Rico’s landscape architects have solutions for managing rivers, stormwater, erosion, and coastal development—if only the government would ask.
By Laurie A. Shuster
A road blocked by a mudslide caused by Hurricane Fiona in Cayey, Puerto Rico. Photo by Stephanie Rojas/AP/Shutterstock.
In 2017, back-to-back hurricanes Irma and Maria devastated Puerto Rico, causing hundreds of billions of dollars in damage and taking roughly 3,000 lives. The territory was still recovering when Hurricane Fiona struck in September 2022, bringing up to 30 inches of rain in some areas, killing 25 people, knocking out power to the entire island, and causing some $10 billion in additional damage.Continue reading Storm Warnings→
A Chicago garden calls a Black community pushed to the margins back together again.
By Zach Mortice
MKSK’s design for the community garden extends a Mauricio Ramirez mural onto the ground plane. Image courtesy MKSK.
Since 2009, a vacant lot turned community garden on the 4600 block of Winthrop Avenue in Chicago’s Uptown neighborhood has commemorated the Winthrop Avenue Family, the descendants of a group of Black families who for much of the 20th century were confined to this one block of the predominantly white neighborhood. “Everybody who lived on the block [was] not necessarily blood-related, but we were so close we felt like we were, and still do,” says Emilie Lockridge, whose mother was born there in 1925.
Shorter, wilder courses and ample room for habitat are just some of the transformations coming to golf.
By Lisa Owens Viani
Ephemeral drainages will be restored in Larsen Meadow, the former back nine of San Geronimo Golf Course. Photo by Erica Williams, courtesy Trust for Public Land.
One outcome of the last housing boom was a glut of golf courses built to market new suburban developments. As courses have closed or sat vacant, planners and communities have debated their next best use.
ONTHECOVER: Al Fay Park in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, by SLA. PhotobySLA/PhillipHandforth.
Featured Story: “Play It Cool,” by Jessica Bridger. A desert forest is a surprising sight in the booming heart of Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates. For the popular Al Fay Park, Copenhagen-based SLA used local materials and resilient native plants in unexpected ways, creating engaging settings for play and rest.
Florida’s Emerald Trail strides toward a more walkable future.
By Margaret Shakespeare
The trail will create connections to the water and offer opportunities for nature-based play. SCAPE, courtesy Groundwork Jacksonville
McCoys Creek Boulevard in Jacksonville, Florida, is a major thoroughfare that increasingly is closed to traffic because of flooding, even after a routine afternoon shower. It’s one of many areas in the city that, due to aging infrastructure like undersized pipes and inadequate drainage—particularly in older residential neighborhoods—now experiences chronic flooding events. Continue reading Jacksonville Steps Ahead→
The Magazine of the American Society of Landscape Architects
