The Atlanta BeltLine is a comprehensive revitalization and mobility project powered by local citizens, civic leaders, and private partnerships that is transforming the city of Atlanta through the additions of rail, trail, greenspace, housing, public art, and a dedication to sustainable growth. At the core of the Atlanta BeltLine project is the creation of a… More
May’s issue of Arboricultural Consultant, the magazine of the American Society of Consulting Arborists (ASCA) has side-by-side articles by James Urban, FASLA, and Nina Bassuk, Ph.D. discussing different methods for providing trees with soil underneath paving. Jim’s article is on “Comparing Silva Cells and Structural Soil,” and Nina’s is on “The Why’s and How’s of… More
Google Earth is so much fun to explore. You can really and truly get lost in it, the feeling of “traveling” somewhere on your screen that you’ve never been in person. I recently saw that they’ve applied the same approach to creating a timelapse tool for the earth from 1984 to 2012 called Earth Engine.
Today I am incredibly excited to share a project that has been months in the making – a time lapse video of a Silva Cell installation at the Haas School of Business at UC-Berkeley that took place this winter.
In 2010, my colleague Peter MacDonagh attended the American Society of Consulting Engineers (ASCE) conference and emerged with a chart from a presentation given by Bram Gunther and Fiona Watt, of the New York City Department of Parks, that listed the urban tree canopy information for about two dozen U.S. cities. Ever since then, I’ve… More
Here’s a little light entertainment for a summer Friday. Peter MacDonagh found this, Isaac Asmiov’s Super Quiz: Trees, in an edition of last month’s Minneapolis StarTribune. Care to give it a whirl?
Earlier this month we hosted a webinar where James Urban, FASLA was the guest speaker. This webinar complemented Jim’s article in the April 2013 issue of Landscape Architecture Magazine, “The Root of the Problem.” During the webinar, Jim spoke about one of the most important points in the process of designing and planting a tree: that moment… More
This area used to be a bog. Acidic water leached minerals for hundreds of thousands of years, forming a hardpan, making drainage very slow. The soil is unfavorable for plant growth in several ways – it is extremely acidic, aluminum levels are high enough to be called toxic, nutrients are low, and the poor drainage… More
Downtown Lincoln, NE. Flickr credit: Edward Stojakovic A trees-and-stormwater Silva Cell installation is set to take place in Lincoln, NE in July that will provide over 400 cubic feet of soil per tree to 12 trees in a parking lot. This will actually be our fourth installation in this city of just over 260,000 people…. More
(Read “Rise of the Curb Cut: Part 1 here). The fundamental behavior of stormwater in curbs and street design is simple. Each creature, each inanimate object, each molecule of everything functions and abides by its simple and powerful law every day: gravity. From this basic concept, direct parallels can be drawn between the design elements… More
The city of Derby has been in the midst of an ambitious urban regeneration project since 2003, a key aspect of which has been the development of a public realm strategy that increases pedestrian freedom and enhances major civic spaces such as the Derby Railway Station. Derby City Council laid out a plan to modernize… More
Before anyone is lost to their thoughts or misgivings about the title of this post, this is not a piece on Germany in World War II or military strategies. Rather, this is about how odd parallels can be drawn between streets and nature, the built environment and natural one, and how an understanding of history… More
Soil. Stormwater. Sustainable Infrastructure.
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