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Posts Tagged ‘Timothy A. Schuler’

THE BATTLE OF THE MCBRIDE BRIDGE

Posted in LAM ONLINE, PEOPLE, PLANNING, POLLUTION, STREETS, TRANSPORTATION, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on November 15, 2018| 4 Comments »

BY TIMOTHY A. SCHULER

A group of designers, artists, and community activists are fighting to save the bridge. A rendering by the landscape architect Michael Beightol illustrates the viaduct’s potential as a linear park. Image courtesy Michael Beightol.

IN ERIE, PENNSYLVANIA, A HISTORY OF RACIAL DISCRIMINATION ANIMATES THE DEBATE OVER A PIECE OF CRUMBLING INFRASTRUCTURE.

 

Michael Keys used to walk the McBride Viaduct nearly every day to and from school. It was the most convenient route over the busy rail yard that bisected his east side Erie, Pennsylvania, neighborhood. Now, as a member of the local urban design advocacy group Erie CPR: Connect + Respect, Keys is one of dozens of residents fighting to save the 1,700-foot-long viaduct. The organization argues that the bridge is a crucial linkage between some of Erie’s poorest communities and that tearing it down could do harm to populations already considered vulnerable.

Erie CPR projects that removing the viaduct, which has been closed to vehicles since 2010, will force residents to cross the tracks at grade, which can be dangerous, or walk some 2,000 feet to a busy road known as the Bayfront Connector. With its high-speed traffic and blind corners, the connector is far less safe for pedestrians than the viaduct, says Adam Trott, an architect and the president of Erie CPR. Another danger, especially for children, is daily exposure to vehicle emissions. A recent World Health Organization report found that 10 percent of deaths among children under the age of five are attributable to air pollution.

The city’s decision to demolish the viaduct, which was originally built in 1938 and overhauled in the 1970s, is based on a feasibility study conducted by the engineering firm L. R. Kimball. The engineers reported that rehabilitating or replacing the viaduct were cost-prohibitive, in part because the bridge no longer meets basic road width requirements. And yet, having studied 11 alternatives— (more…)

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FAR FROM HOME

Posted in BROWNFIELDS, GARDENS, HEALING GARDENS, LAM MAGAZINE, PEOPLE, PLANTS, UNIVERSITY, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on September 6, 2018| Leave a Comment »

BY TIMOTHY A. SCHULER

Researchers explore the role of design in aiding a global refugee crisis.

FROM THE SEPTEMBER 2018 ISSUE OF LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE.

As a young girl, Elizabeth Brabec,  ASLA, knew her mother’s garden was different. Where the neighbors grew lettuce and carrots and cucumbers in neat rows, her family’s garden featured mounded beds of currants, gooseberries, and celeriac interspersed with fruit and nut-bearing trees. Everything was mixed together. Brabec didn’t understand the reason for the difference until she visited the Czech Republic decades later. Every garden looked like her mother’s.

That was the first time that Brabec, now a professor of landscape architecture at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, realized that gardens could function as an expression of a person’s heritage, a way for immigrants to create continuity between the old world and the new. Brabec’s parents fled Czechoslovakia in the 1940s to escape the ethnic cleansing that took place after World War II. When they arrived in Montreal, one of the first things her mother did was plant a garden, Brabec says, a garden modeled on the one her own mother had grown back in Prague.

For the past five years, Brabec has been studying this phenomenon, visiting refugee gardens around the world to document (more…)

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HIGH STREETS

Posted in ACCESSIBILITY, CITIES, CLIMATE, ENVIRONMENT, LAM MAGAZINE, NOW, OCEANS, RESILIENCE, STREETS, TRANSPORTATION, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on August 9, 2018| 1 Comment »

BY TIMOTHY A. SCHULER

In Miami Beach, elevating streets is not without growing pains.

FROM THE AUGUST 2018 ISSUE OF LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE.

Faced with rising sea levels, the City of Miami Beach is lifting itself out of the water’s way—one street at a time. Beginning with the neighborhoods lowest in elevation, the city has raised dozens of streets in the past few years, some by as much as two feet. The $500 million project, which also includes new stormwater pumps, is a coordinated effort to prevent flooding in the long term. In the short term, however, the rapid elevation of the public right-of-way is presenting the city with novel challenges.

Some of those challenges, such as pumps that can fail during power outages, are mechanical. Others are legal. When one restaurant flooded, its insurance company initially refused to cover damages after classifying the restaurant’s dining area as a “basement” since it was now lower than the surrounding grade. (The city installed generators to solve the first problem and advocated on behalf of the restaurant owner, whose claim was eventually approved, to solve the second.) Other challenges involve the design of the public realm. (more…)

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BALANCING ACT

Posted in ECOLOGY, ECONOMICS, ENVIRONMENT, FEATURES, HISTORY, LAM MAGAZINE, OCEANS, PLANNING, PRESERVATION, REGION, SAN FRANCISCO, SANDY, SHORELINE, WATER, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on July 26, 2018| Leave a Comment »

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 TIMOTHY A. SCHULER

FROM THE JULY 2018 ISSUE OF LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE.

On a chilly Sunday afternoon in the spring of 2016, a group of designers and preservation professionals wandered through one of Newport, Rhode Island’s oldest neighborhoods, visualizing what it would look like underwater. It wasn’t hard to imagine water flowing down the narrow streets and into the basements of the quaint, colonial-era homes located just blocks from Newport Harbor and a mere four feet above sea level. Some had already seen it.

In 2012, Hurricane Sandy sent floodwaters into many of the Point neighborhood’s historic homes, including 74 Bridge Street, a red-painted, two-story house originally built in the late 1720s. The basement flooded up to the first-floor framing and the kitchen took on at least seven inches of water.

Two years later, the Newport Restoration Foundation (NRF), a nonprofit preservation group founded by Doris Duke in the 1960s, purchased the house at 74 Bridge Street. As the house of one of Newport’s most notable cabinetmakers, a Quaker named Christopher Townsend, it had sat for years at the top of the NRF’s list of most desirable historic Newport properties. It was an important acquisition for the NRF, which currently owns 78 properties throughout the city and helps fund their upkeep. But the organization also knew that 74 Bridge Street would flood again.

“It’s in the lowest point in the Point neighborhood—literally, the lowest topographical point,” says Shantia Anderheggen, NRF’s former director of preservation. With sea levels on the rise—and in Newport they already had risen 11 inches over the past century—it was a statistical certainty that what happened in 2012 would happen again. And it wasn’t just the Townsend residence. The entire Point neighborhood, which has one of the highest concentrations of colonial-era structures on the continent, was under siege from the sea. (more…)

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A SECOND CHANCE, JUST IN TIME

Posted in CITIES, FORWARD, LAM MAGAZINE, MEMORIAL, NOW, PARKS, PRESERVATION, RECREATION, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on May 3, 2018| 1 Comment »

BY TIMOTHY A. SCHULER

Nashville has a plan to preserve Fort Negley Park—one that many hope deals with its violent past.

FROM THE MAY 2018 ISSUE OF LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE.

Fort Negley Park, a 55-acre swath of open space two miles south of downtown Nashville, Tennessee, is most famous as the site of a prominent stone masonry fortification built during the Civil War after Union soldiers seized the city. Built out of earth and dry-stacked limestone, Fort Negley is said to be the largest inland fort constructed during the war. It helped the North retain control of Nashville and eventually win the war.

The structure itself, however, was built by nearly 3,000 African American men and women, who were “impressed” against their will—rounded up on the street or pulled out of church services, some of them as young as 13 years old. A quarter of them died, either from injury or mistreatment. They were buried near the fort, (more…)

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READY, SET, SWIM

Posted in ACCESSIBILITY, LAM MAGAZINE, NOW, RIVER RESTORATION, SHORELINE, WATER, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on December 14, 2017| Leave a Comment »

BY TIMOTHY A. SCHULER

A recent study shows that Portland’s public docks nicely suit swimmers.

FROM THE DECEMBER 2017 ISSUE OF LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE.

Early morning swims across the river. An annual river float and beach party. A full-moon, women-only swim known as “Naked Goddess.” These are just some of the events organized by the Human Access Project to encourage people in Portland, Oregon, to dip their toes (and more) in the Willamette River. After all, says Willie Levenson, the ringleader (his official title) of the nonprofit organization, the river is the city’s largest public space and ought to be seen and used as such. Most recently, Levenson enlisted the help of MIG’s Portland office to explore the feasibility of repurposing downtown boat docks as places for sanctioned swimming.

City planners, working with Mayer/Reed, already had evaluated downtown Portland for potential swimming areas but had focused mostly on beaches. Levenson saw the city’s docks as another, potentially cheaper point of access. Working practically pro bono (Levenson’s budget was $5,000), MIG chose five docks (more…)

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PAINT THE TOWN GRAY

Posted in CITIES, ENERGY, LAM MAGAZINE, MATERIALS, RESEARCH, STREETS, TECH, TRANSPORTATION, Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on October 26, 2017| 1 Comment »

BY TIMOTHY A. SCHULER

An asphalt coating could help cool Los Angeles. Will the benefits offset the costs?

FROM THE OCTOBER 2017 ISSUE OF LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE.

Initially, the product was for the military. Marketed as CoolSeal, the light gray-colored asphalt seal coat was developed to reduce the surface temperature of runways so that they would be less visible to infrared satellites. A few years ago, Greg Spotts, the assistant director of the City of Los Angeles Bureau of Street Services, wondered what would happen if you painted every street in the city with CoolSeal. Could you reduce the urban heat island effect, a phenomenon that has been estimated to cost the city $90 million each year in energy bills?

Now, with $150,000 in public funding, Spotts is testing the coating at locations in each of the city’s 15 council districts. The coating, which is just 15 microns thick, goes on in a brilliant gray, far lighter in color than a typical asphalt street, though Spotts says it soon fades to more of a “battleship color.”

By this fall, all 15 streets should be complete, and according to the city’s asphalt testing lab, even in the afternoon on the hottest days, the surface temperature of the coated pavement is, on average, (more…)

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