Posted in ARCHIVES, ART, BOOKS, BROWNFIELDS, CITIES, CLIMATE, ECOLOGY, ECONOMICS, EDUCATION, ENERGY, ENVIRONMENT, ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE, EPA, FARMS, FEATURES, FOOD, HABITAT, HEALTHY COMMUNITIES, HISTORIC LANDSCAPES, HISTORY, PARKS, PLANTS, POLLUTION, PRACTICE, PRESERVATION, RECREATION, REGION, REGULATIONS, RESILIENCE, SHORELINE, SOIL, WATER, tagged activism, agriculture, agroforestry, Aldo Leopold, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, alley cropping, Anthropocene, Appalachia, Audubon Society, Ben Beachy, Benton MacKaye, biochar, biodigesters, biodiversity, Bob Marshall, brownfield, brownfield remediation, carbon emissions, carbon sequestration, Chattanooga, Civilian Conservation Corps, class, climate change, coalition-building, compost, Congress, cow manure, decarbonization, design, ecology environment, economic inequality, economy, Ed Markey, ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE, environmental movement, erosion, extractive industry, farmers, farming, Federal Art Project, forest fires, forest management, forest replanting, gender, Gifford Pinchot, Grand Canyon National Park, grazing land, Great Depression, Great Plains Shelterbelt, Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Green Brigade, green infrastructure, green jobs, Green New Deal, greenhouse gas, Home Owners’ Loan Corporation, hydroelectric power, Infrastructure, Jim Furnish, jobs, landscape adaptive re-use, landscape architect, Landscape Architecture, landscape design, Living New Deal, manufacturing, monocultural, Morris Llewellyn Cooke, multi-purpose, National Wildlife Federation, Nature’s New Deal, Neil M. Maher, New Deal, Nicholas Pevzner, no-till farming, planning, Policy, pollinator habitats, President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Public Land, Raccoon Mountain Pumped-Storage hydroelectric facility, race, redlining, Renewable energy, Rural Electrification Administration, Scenario Journal, Sierra Club Living Economy Program, Social Justice, state parks, Stephen O’Hanlon, Sunrise Movement, technological sublime, Tennessee, Tennessee Valley Authority, the left, topsoil, Toward a Natural Forest, TRANSPORTATION, trees, U.S. Forest Service, Uncertain Terrain, University of Pennsylvania, urbanization, Wetland Restoration, Works Progress Administration on July 23, 2019|
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As part of an ongoing effort to make content more accessible, LAM will be making select stories available to readers in Spanish. For a full list of translated articles, please click here.
BY NICHOLAS PEVZNER
Since the 2018 midterm elections, the Green New Deal has catapulted into the public conversation about tackling climate change and income inequality in America. It has inspired a diverse coalition of groups on the left, including climate activists, mainstream environmental groups, and social justice warriors. The Green New Deal is not yet fully fleshed out in Congress—the most complete iteration so far is a nonbinding resolution put forward in the House by Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and a companion measure introduced in the Senate by Senator Ed Markey (D-MA). At their cores, these bills are an urgent call to arms for accelerating the decarbonization of the U.S. economy through a federal jobs program that would create millions of green jobs—a 10-year national mobilization on a number of fronts aimed at reducing the nation’s greenhouse gas emissions.
The resolution text itself is a laundry list of possible goals and strategies aimed at immediately addressing climate change and radically cutting U.S. carbon emissions. These proposals are ambitious in scale and breadth: a national target of 100 percent “clean, renewable, and zero-emission” energy generation; a national “smart” grid; aggressive building upgrades for energy efficiency; decarbonization of the manufacturing, agriculture, and transportation sectors; increased investment in carbon capture technologies; and the establishment of the United States as a global exporter of green technology. What such an effort will entail on the ground is not yet clear, but if even only some of these stated goals are achieved, the Green New Deal will represent a transformation of both the American economy and landscape on a scale not seen since the days of President Franklin D. Roosevelt and his original New Deal of the 1930s and 1940s. (more…)
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Posted in ECOLOGY, EDUCATION, FEATURES, HABITAT, HISTORIC LANDSCAPES, INVASIVE SPECIES, PARKS, PLANNING, PLANTS, PLAYGROUNDS, PRESERVATION, SPECIES, STUDENTS, TRANSLATED, VIEWS, WATER, WILDLIFE, tagged ACCESSIBILITY, American hornbeam, Atlanta, Audubon Society, azaleas, biomimetic form, Canopy, DeKalb County, drainage, Druid Hills, education, elevated path, exhibition design, fern, Fernbank Forest, Fernbank Museum of Natural History, forest, Frederick Law Olmsted Jr, Frederick Law Olmsted, Graham Gund, Gus Kaufman, habitat restoration, hillside, invasive plants, J.D. Koth, Jennifer Grant Warner, Jonathan Lerner, landscape architect, Landscape Architecture, landscape design, master planning, mayapple, meadows, Museum, paths, pawpaw, Piedmont woodland, postmodernist, Preservation, salamanders, store banks, Susan Stainback, Sylvatica Studio, Thinkwell Group, trail, Trails, trees, umbrella tree, WildWoods on February 28, 2018|
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As part of an ongoing effort to make content more accessible, LAM will be making select stories available to readers in Spanish. For a full list of translated articles, please click here.
Click above for a full PDF of the translated text with English text available below.
BY JONATHAN LERNER
Atlanta’s Fernbank Museum of Natural History occupies a formidable 1992 postmodernist structure by Graham Gund Architects. Visitors enter through a lobby that looks down into an octagonal atrium dominated by enormous dinosaur skeletons posed as if on the brink of carnage. Beyond the atrium’s glazed rear facade is a narrow concrete terrace. Then the ground behind the building pitches steeply down 45 feet to a creek. So from inside, there’s a horizontal view straight out into the tree canopy, a promise of respite from the vaguely daunting scale and sense of menace inside.
This wooded ravine, which is sort of the reason the museum exists, was neglected and inaccessible until a recent intervention by Sylvatica Studio. Now, beginning right at the atrium’s back doors and set into the terrace’s pavement, the wooden planking of an elevated walkway leads into the trees. Not far along the walkway, just visible where it turns, a 26-foot-high, latticelike but curvilinear “tree pod” beckons from the midst of branches and leaves. Its shape and color mimic the blossom of the tulip tree, a common tree in these woods. The pod is a place to stop, or sit, gently protected by its rounded tracery. But it also offers a sweeping panorama down to the creek and streamside meadow. “It’s 35 feet off the ground. We wanted people to feel slightly—not afraid—but thrilled. ‘What is this experience I’m having?’” explains Sylvatica’s founder, Susan Stainback, ASLA. (more…)
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