In Europe, landscape architects are using simple interventions to manipulate the use of forests while prioritising their essential environmental function, writes Zaš Brezar for Landezine.
Landscape architects, Zaš writes, can “bring forests closer to people in a meaningful and careful way. Empowering bonds between landscapes and people is one of the most important tasks of our profession. We maintain what we appreciate.”
Strengthening the existing, and designing by maintenance rather than from scratch, is central to designing forests with conservation and care in mind, they say.
In Strandskogen Arninge Ullna, a park in Sweden, landscape architects maintained “existing ambiences” by choreographing visitors’ movement through the dense riparian forest on elevated walkways.
“This way, they have minimised the impact of people staying in the woods and enabled them to visit the site in times of higher waters.”
Brezar says practices such as curating light by thinning foliage in certain areas and adding clearings on the forest floor for dynamic use can make them more liveable and accessible for the community.
Simple interventions, they say, can be effective when working with a low budget. For example, for the Ika Meditation Spot project in a Transylvanian pine forest in Romania, Batlab Architects and Studio Nomad “marked dramatic views and exciting spots” by simply installing platforms to encourage “observation of the natural processes.”
Many of Sydney’s former high streets, Price suggests, have been compromised by Covid-19, with funding promises “yet to have measurable impacts.”
“Compromised” and “successful” high streets have been judged and measured through physical characteristics – such as speed limits, footpath width, clearways and bike lanes – in a recent report by the Committee for Sydney, ‘Mapping Sydney’s High Streets’.
‘Surry Hills envy’ is an expression describing the inner-city suburb’s village-like street appeal – with a high street rated ‘great’ in the Committee for Sydney report. Says Price: “Where else can you get beers on a verandah, ice creams, about-to-flower pot plants and take your grandchild to a gorgeous little park all within 100 metres?”
Peter Phibbs, former chair of urban planning and policy at the University of Sydney, also suggests looking to Melbourne’s high streets as a role model. “As a cohort, they are truckloads better than anything we have in Sydney.”
Phibbs points to Sydney’s preference for large shopping malls, which, he suggests, “tend to draw customers away from the high streets.”
In the Committee for Sydney report, co-author John Richardson from COX Architecture suggests councils take measures to revitalise high streets including “slowing down traffic, widening footpaths, making the high street a good place to be a pedestrian, to wield a pram, to ride a bike.”
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Street Furniture Australia’s entire product range and manufacturing operation has received carbon neutral certification through Climate Active™. Achieving carbon neutral certification marks a significant milestone in our operation and the culmination of a four year long process of detailed measurement and analysis. Climate Active™ is the only Australian government-backed carbon neutral certification programme for businesses to measure, reduce, and offsets their carbon emissions. It is one of the most rigorous carbon-neutral programs in the world. An approved Emissions Reduction Strategy (ERS) is central to achieving certification through Climate Active. Street Furniture Australia has elected to use SBTi validated science-based targets to ensure their ERS is meaningful and aligns with the 2015 Paris Agreement – to limit global temperature rises to 1.5℃ above pre-industrial levels. For those emissions that can’t be …
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How our cities work – essential lessons from lockdown: By Matt Wade New research on the demographics of essential workers in Australia’s largest cities casts a stark light on geographic and gender inequalities, writes Matt Wade for the Sydney Morning Herald. Essential workers are employed “across health and social services, education, freight and delivery, transport, police and emergency services, logistics, construction and some retail,” and make up 45% of the workforce in Australian capital cities. They are exposed to greater risk of contracting Covid-19 in their workplaces, and through travelling to work. According to a study by consultancy SGS Economics and Planning, most essential workers in Sydney and Melbourne live in outer metropolitan growth areas where housing is more affordable – these regions also recorded a high share of infections …
Cities’ answer to sprawl? Go wild: ‘Rewilding,’ “…the growing global trend of introducing nature back into cities” has the capacity to “help bolster climate resilience, biodiversity, even moods,” writes Chris Malloy in Cities’ Answer to Sprawl? Go Wild. “Globally, past urban planning decisions like the prioritisation of the car have given rise to cities that, but for scattered parks, tend to be divorced from nature.” However, “growing urban sprawl heightens the need to build zones to manage runoff and temperatures and preserve biodiversity.” In the face of the many consequences of rapid urbanisation and climate change including “loss of biodiversity, urban heat islands, climate vulnerability, and human psychological changes,” rewilding could impact the health of our cities. As amorphous spaces, Malloy says that “most definitions agree that rewilded spaces should …
Students could have a field day with more outdoor learning: “Australian students typically spend over 10,000 hours during their adolescence in schools” – despite this, the schoolyard hasn’t traditionally been viewed as a space to improve student wellbeing, writes Gweneth Leigh for the Sydney Morning Herald. The return to classrooms in the wake of COVID-19 has prompted an urgent need for schools around the world to create learning spaces that are well-ventilated and socially distanced. Outdoor learning has proven to be an innovative and simple answer to this dilemma. “For some this meant clustering picnic tables together, building shade structures, adding trees, gardens, even yoga circles and mountain bike trails”- varied, resourceful outdoor classrooms have had a distinctively positive impact, they report. Studies have revealed that greening school grounds helps …
