Landscape Architecture Magazine June 2022

KATHLEEN BERGERON (“Something in Common,” page 26) has written on topics as varied as the couple who repaired the last playable Stradivarius guitar, innovations in highway design, and the early years of the Republic of Texas. You can contact her at kathleenabergeron@gmail.com. “I wish we’d had space to address the herculean efforts of the general contractor and its subs, overcoming the challenges of record-level rains, numerous change orders, and of course, the COVID-19 pandemic.” JIMENA MARTIGNONI (“Bog Wild,” page 100) is a freelance writer, curator, and architect with a postgraduate degree in landscape planning. She specializes in urban and landscape design projects in Latin America. You can contact her at mariamartignonitilbe@gmail.com. “The beauty and isolation of Península Mitre—at the southernmost tip of the world—makes us think of nature-based solutions as the most coherent…

When I was in graduate school, I worked for a business development company focused on the federal tech sector. My job was to scan the hundreds of announcements online for RFPs or RFIs looking for the North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) codes that aligned with my clients’ business. The gold standard was a presolicitation, a notice that a job may come down the federal procurement pipeline. I would find the potential jobs and then try to reach the project managers and get something—anything—out of them that could give the client the edge in preparing their submission. I was decent at the research task because I was a historian and a tenacious digger. I was terrible at the persuading task (also because I was a historian, and thus an introvert)…

The aftereffects of mass incarceration provide myriad roadblocks and complications for people who are attempting to reintegrate into society. But one Washington, D.C.-based environmental organization sees potential in addressing the challenges of reentry while also promoting environmental protection and connecting individuals—particularly Black people—to nature. “The main challenge is raising awareness of the need and the opportunities to invite the reentry community more intentionally into the work of protecting the planet, and to invite them in with an eye toward their gifts, talents, and expertise, as opposed to their past and the limits society wants to put on them because of it,” says Caroline Brewer, the chairwoman of the Taking Nature Black Conference, a program of the Audubon Naturalist Society that took place last fall. Alex Smith, the owner of Division Street…

Salisbury, North Carolina, originated as a welcoming rest area of inns and taverns for European immigrants heading south from northern port cities. Like many cities in North Carolina, the town was organized around a common. Within a few decades, however, that common property had fallen into private hands. Now, more than two centuries later, Bell Tower Green, a new threeacre park sited on part of the original common, is helping restore Salisbury’s central green space. On a visit to the park on a recent Sunday afternoon, young children filled the playground area, and older ones tossed a football on the green. A senior couple who had recently moved from New Hampshire to a nearby retirement home walked under the garden trellis. Three young Black professional women gathered near the amphitheater to…

In the Pacific Northwest, the rainfall frequency estimates that define a 100-year storm are more than 50 years old. Along much of the East Coast, the estimates are 20 years old. That’s a problem when, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, both the frequency and intensity of storm events have, in many regions, already increased. Historically, atmospheric scientists have assumed that the past was an accurate measure of the future. “We’re seeing that that is not necessarily the case,” says Mark Glaudemans, the director of the Geo Intelligence Division at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), which publishes the aforementioned rainfall estimates in a database known as Atlas 14. Aidan Ackerman, ASLA, an assistant professor of landscape architecture at the State University of New York College of Environmental…

The Oregon coast’s shoreline is naturally erosive, exposed to one of the most extreme wave climates in the world, according to Jonathan Allan, a coastal geomorphologist with the Oregon Department of Geology and Mineral Industries. “It’s not uncommon to experience significant wave heights reaching 33 feet,” Allan says. Plate tectonics are an erosive factor too, he says. Along the northern half of the Oregon coast, the sea is rising faster than the land is uplifting, causing more erosion and flooding. Against those natural forces, the state’s coast-related policies, drawn up decades ago, may no longer be adequate to protect the shoreline, especially as sea level rises. In Tillamook, one of the northern counties, the Board of County Commissioners recently granted an exemption to Goal 18, which prohibits hardening for properties built…