Resilient Landscapes: Sustainability in a Changing World

Resilient Landscapes: Sustainability in a Changing World ASLA Session #C7, Friday September 18, 2009 1:30-3:00 p.m.

Resilient Landscapes in Volatile Urban Environments Joan Hirschman Woodward, FASLA California State Polytechnic University, Pomona [email protected]

Resilience theories and perspectives alert landscape architects to design for probable future volatility, ranging from short-term perturbations such as shifts in land ownership and maintenance to larger disruptions such as drought and disinvestment. This presentation highlights design strategies and applications derived from resilience science and from exploring landscapes that maintain function when intended maintenance and care are interrupted.

I. Introduction

 Kirkwood (2004) states that the professions’ predominant design approach is to create permanent works optimistically reliant on ongoing, fully funded maintenance. However, this trust frequently leads to disappointment  With the increasing upheavals in the urban economic, social, and environmental spheres, we need tools other than trust and optimism to create functioning landscapes in the face of probable volatility. A resilience perspective offers key strategies.  Strategies highlighted in this presentation are derived from resilience theory and refined by: o Exploration of Los Angeles “feral landscapes” o Application of strategies to a multi-scaled plan for resilient urban landscapes in Los Angeles  The presentation’s intent is to initiate a discussion about how we might create more adaptable, durable landscapes that carry on through periods of volatility.

II. Resilience Theory and “Feral Landscape” Perspectives

 Adaptive cycles and backloops are understudied in application to design and planning (Gunderson and Holling, 2002)  Feral landscapes are those that were designed for intended irrigation and maintenance but for a variety of reasons were released from care.  They provide a good vehicle for exploring concepts in resilience as they embody the adaptive cycle’s backloop, and “play the hand they are dealt.” (Pollan 1992)  If functional aspects of these landscapes can inadvertently survive myriad collapses of expected care, then which aspects of their design could be deliberately incorporated so that landscapes can function through probable future disruptions?  Examples: o The landscape of Paul Williams-designed Roberts home in Malibu’s Solstice Canyon has moved through front and backloops over a 50-year period and persists. o Thomas Church’s Stuart Pharmaceutical landscape design in Pasadena, CA, was neglected for over a decade, then rehabilitated. The design’s sturdy framework carried through to the next period of care and may survive future disruption.

III. Strategies for Shaping Resilient Landscapes

 The following three highlighted strategies are not prescriptions, rather, are proposals that invite experimentation and feedback o Optimize conditions when establishing new designs o Establish diverse structural conditions to support processes o Utilize ambient processes to spread self-maintaining structure

IV. Planning for Landscape Resilience: A Los Angeles Case Study

 Questions to launch planning scenarios:  If regional landscapes in Los Angeles were released from expected irrigation and maintenance, which landscapes would continue to survive and function?  Where should we intervene to assist greater cultural and ecological function?  How would strategies work over time?  Example: “Resilient Los Angeles: Landscapes for a Dynamic Urban Future” (Benito, Enos, and Wehniger, 2005)

V. Next Steps

 Test and adjust design proposals with “what if?” scenarios  Build-in manageable disruptions to siphon off catastrophic potential of backloops  Conduct experiments with back-up monitoring systems in the advent of interrupted personnel availability  Recognize the integrity of resilience and continuity  Rethink the role of maintenance

Terms (as utilized in this presentation) Landscape (noun): the vegetated areas within a region Maintain (verb): (Morris 1978) 1) “the work of keeping something in proper working condition.” 2) “carrying on” 3) “to hold in one’s hand”

Selected References

Benito, Mario, Deborah Enos and Kim Wehinger. 2005. Resilient Los Angeles: Resilient Landscapes for a Dynamic Urban Future. Pomona: California State Polytechnic University.

Birnbaum, Charles A. 2003. Silent spring. Landscape Architecture. 93(8): 62-66, 99.

Carse, James P. 1986. Finite and Infinite Games. New York: Ballantine Books.

Colding, Johan. 2007. ‘Ecological land-use complementation’ for building resilience in urban ecosystems. Landscape and Urban Planning. 81(1-2): 46-55.

Cuff, Dana. 2000. The Provisional City: Los Angeles Stories of Architecture and Urbanism. Cambridge: MIT Press.

Del Tredici, Peter. 2006. Brave new ecology. Landscape Architecture. 96(2): 46-52.

Garrison, Jacey, Hope Hoinville, and Ceanatha La Grange. 2005. Choosing Resilience: Alternative Landscape Visions for the Los Angeles Region. Pomona: California State Polytechnic University.

Gunderson, Lance H. and C. S. Holling, eds. 2002. Panarchy: Understanding Transformations in Human and Natural Systems. Washington: Island Press.

Holling, C. S. 1996. Engineering resilience vs. ecological resilience. In P. C. Schulze, editor. Engineering within Ecological Constraints. Washington: National Academy Press.

Kirkwood, Niall. 2004. Weathering and Durability in Landscape Architecture. Hoboken, N. J.: John Wiley and Sons.

Lyle, John T. 1999. Design for Human Ecosystems. New York: Island Press.

Morris, William, ed. 1978. The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company.

Pickett, S. T. A., M. L. Cadenasso, and J. M. Grove. 2004. Resilient cities: Meaning, models, and metaphor for integrating the ecological, socio-economic, and planning realms. Landscape and Urban Planning 69(4): 369-384.

Pollan, Michael. 1992. Second Nature: A Gardener’s Education. New York: Laurel.

Sloan, Kevin W. 2003. Second man missing. Landscape Architecture. 93(4): 82-89.

Sukopp, Herbert, Hans-Peter Blume, and Wolfram Kunick.1979. The soil, flora, and vegetation of Berlin’s waste lands, in Laurie, Ian C., ed: Nature in Cities: the Natural Environment in the Design and Development of Urban Green Space. Chichester: John Wiley & Sons.

Woodward, Joan Hirschman. 2005. Letting Los Angeles go: Lessons from feral landscapes. Landscape Review. 9(2): 59-69.

_____. 2005a. Lessons from feral landscapes. Landscape Architecture. 95(12): 52-59.

_____. 2008. Envisioning resilience in volatile Los Angeles landscapes. Landscape Journal 27(1): 97- 113.