HUD, DOT, and EPA Form Partnership to Forward Sustainable Communities

Unprecedented partnership indicates a new activism regarding issues important to the landscape architecture profession. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), Department of Transportation (DOT), and Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) have announced a new partnership to help American families in all communities—rural, suburban, and urban—gain better access to affordable housing, more transportation options, and a healthy environment. “This is an even stronger indication that the new administration and these agencies are serious about issues that are important to the landscape architecture profession,” said ASLA Executive Vice President and CEO Nancy Somerville. At a meeting of the Smart Growth Partners hosted by the EPA on June 17, Marcia Mulkey, acting associate administrator of the EPA’s Office of Policy, Economics, and Innovations, portrayed the partnership as evidence of the administration’s commitment “to active governing around the issues of smart growth and sustainability.” Earlier this year, HUD and DOT announced an unprecedented agreement to implement joint housing and transportation initiatives. With EPA joining the partnership, the three agencies will work together to ensure that these housing and transportation goals are met while simultaneously protecting the environment, promoting equitable development, and helping to address the challenges of climate change. DOT, HUD, and EPA have created a high-level interagency partnership to better coordinate federal transportation, environmental protection, and housing investments and to identify strategies that: provide more transportation choices promote equitable, affordable housing increase economic competitiveness support existing communities leverage federal investment enhance the unique characteristics of all communities by investing in healthy, safe, and walkable neighborhoods—rural, urban, or suburban Among the HUD/DOT/EPA partnership’s goals: enhance integrated planning and investment provide a vision for sustainable growth redefine housing affordability and make it transparent redevelop underused sites develop livability measures and tools align HUD, DOT, and EPA programs undertake joint research, data collection, and outreach Find a more detailed announcement online at http://www.dot.gov/affairs/2009/dot8009.htm.

ASLA Annual Meeting: Register Today!

Join us in Chicago, September 18–21, for the ASLA Annual Meeting and Expo. Both the website and the print brochure you will receive in early June contain all the info you need to register for the meeting, plan your travel, and book your hotel room.

The theme of our meeting is Beyond Sustainability: Regenerating Places and People. We’ve been anticipating public sentiment to turn to the need for sustaining the planet for many years. As landscape architects, we must go beyond and aspire to adopt practices that not only sustain but regenerate our ecosystems and restore diminishing biohabitats.

Programming is crafted around our theme to challenge and inspire the more than 5,000 attendees who will gather in Chicago. This meeting offers more than 125 sessions—a record in the history of ASLA—from which we may choose to earn more than 21 Professional Development Hours.

While the economic downturn has delayed our vision of green infrastructure, signs of optimism are emerging daily. The education session schedule is replete with programs on how firms are coping—and even thriving: from marketing strategies to direction on where to find new clients and projects to how to track stimulus funding opportunities. The

ASLA EXPO—the largest product display in the industry—will feature nearly 400 exhibitors, many of whom will be new to our show. We’ll recognize current and future leaders of the profession with honors and awards. And we’ll connect with our colleagues from across the country and around the world at special events throughout the weekend.

Every effort has been made to reduce costs as much as possible.

Register early and save significantly on registration rates. Ticket prices for the LARE workshops, tours, and field sessions are less expensive than last year. Air or train fare to Chicago is affordable from any point in the country. And our hotel room rates are extremely competitive. All of this is tax deductible for the individual or business, to the extent allowed by law.

The first 300 full registrants will receive a free ASLA shirt (up to $34 value), and all full registrants for the meeting will receive a complimentary one-year digital subscription to

Landscape Architecture magazine.

Join us in Chicago as we learn to go beyond sustainability to regenerate places and people.
See you in September!

Angela Dye, FASLA

ASLA President

INASLA Annual Meeting Key Note Speaker Announced!

Kaid Benfield is director of NRDC's smart growth and transportation program, which supports innovative solutions to sprawl and automobile dependence. Kaid is a founder and former vice chair of Smart Growth America, a national coalition working on smarter land development policy. His numerous publications include Solving Sprawl (2001) and Once There Were Greenfields (1999), NRDC's definitive books about smart growth and sprawl. He has also led NRDC's land program and its forestry and agriculture projects, and served as NRDC's legal affairs coordinator. He is a graduate of Emory University and Georgetown University Law Center.

Visit his blog and see what he has to say! http://switchboard.nrdc.org/blogs/kbenfield/

House Passes Water Projects Bill

On Thursday, March 12, the House of Representatives passed, by a vote of 317-101, H.R. 1262, the Water Quality Investment Act. The measure would authorize $19.4 billion over five years in wastewater treatment grants and loans and other water quality projects. In particular, the bill authorizes $13.8 billion for an Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) fund that provides grants to states for infrastructure dealing with sewage, water runoff, watershed restoration, and other water infrastructure projects. Read more...

10 Great Eco-Jobs

These are not your parents’ eco-careers. It wasn’t so long ago that your typical environmentalist was a whale-saving, alfalfa-sprout–eating lefty with bumper stickers slapped on the back of her VW bus. But times have changed: As environmentalism has evolved from a grassroots movement into a lifestyle, ecorelated jobs have become more fashionable, better paying, and more mainstream. From global conglomerates to small-town shops and businesses, today’s green workforce has created more eco-professionals than ever before. To showcase this sea change, Plenty interviewed men and women who are applying their green interests to a diverse array of fields. From helping high-end audio manufacturers abandon cancer-causing lead, to turning a once-gritty Midwestern city into a green jewel, to playing the renewable-energy stock market, these professionals show that caring about the environment isn’t just a way of life—it’s a great way to make a living. Read more...

Purdue University's First Sustainable Green Roof

Purdue University’s first sustainable green roof will be installed on the Schleman Hall of Student Services, thanks to support from the State Farm Insurance Co. youth advisory board.

Gary Elliott, State Farm administrative services manager, presented a check for more than $68,000 to representatives of Boiler Green Initiative, a student organization that focuses on evaluating and enhancing the sustainability of Purdue and surrounding communities. Initiative President Ryan P. Cambridge, a senior from Indianapolis majoring in landscape architecture, and Vice President Am้lie Davis, a graduate student in forestry and natural resources, accepted the check on Feb. 23rd in Schleman Hall, Room B38.

Green roofs range from mossy vegetation to full-scale gardens, meadows or trees that grow on specialized structures atop buildings. Cambridge, who founded the initiative in 2006, wrote the grant and designed Schleman Hall’s green roof layout. He and other members hope to install the roof system by May. “By installing and monitoring Purdue’s first green roof, we will set a precedent for increased environmental responsibility on campus and provide a way for others to get hands-on experience with practices that lead toward a more sustainable future,” Cambridge said. “We believe one of the biggest barriers to environmental change is lack of understanding by the general public. By creating a system that can be experienced firsthand, we can help eliminate that barrier.”
Kim Wilson, landscape architecture professor and initiative adviser, said both Purdue and the environment would benefit from the new roof. “Besides being aesthetically pleasing, there are many advantages to installing green roofs,” said Wilson. “They reduce storm water runoff and heat island effects. They also improve energy efficiency and substantially extend the life of the roof by protecting it from weather-related effects.”

Elliott said Purdue’s green roof projects are a good match for his company. “State Farm recognizes that being a good neighbor means being a green neighbor,” Elliott said. “These forward-thinking community projects are just what we’re looking for because the benefits of this investment can last a lifetime.”

Cambridge said the Boiler Green Initiative’s long-term goal is to install green roofs atop all new campus buildings and retrofit buildings with flat, newly resurfaced roofs. “Because the installation of a green roof system can more than double the cost of a regular rooftop, we’re continually seeking grant support from environmentally friendly corporations such as State Farm, who want to help Purdue reduce its carbon footprint,” Cambridge said.

Future plans call for green roofs on the Discovery Park research facility Mann Hall, the Purdue Armory and a portion of the horticulture building.

Peter Lindsay Schaudt speaks at INASLA Green Expo Luncheon

The Indiana Chapter of ASLA was pleased to present on January 13, its annual luncheon at the 2009 Indiana Green Expo of the Indiana Nursery and Landscape Association. For twelve years the chapter has hosted a landscape architect of note from outside Indiana who has been invited to share their professional inspirations, philosophies, goals, challenges, successes, and anything else they would like to speak about. The luncheon has featured a host of most distinguished and accomplished landscape architects.

Joining that roster was this year’s speaker, Peter Lindsay Schaudt, FASLA. His Chicago based firm, Hoerr Schaudt Landscape Architects is nationally recognized for its design of public, institutional and commercial spaces and for creating exceptional private residential gardens. In early 2008, Peter partnered with fellow prominent Chicago landscape architect Douglas Hoerr, FASLA, to create the firm. Mr. Hoerr had earlier appeared as a luncheon speaker in 2001.
Peter spoke of his early influences growing up in Chicago amidst it architectural and landscape heritage and of his architectural training at the University of Illinois – Chicago, followed by landscape architectural education at Harvard. He reviewed the three rewarding years spent as an associate with internationally known landscape architect Daniel Kiley, an experience which has greatly influenced his work since.

Several of his most significant projects were showcased, including:

• The Campus of the Illinois Institute of Technology
• Revitalization of Nathan Square in Toronto
• Landscape of the renovated Soldier Field on Chicago’s lakefront
• The newly completed Indianapolis Central Public Library

Each, he described, had its own inherent and unique site, budget, creative or client challenges. All were designed and built with impressive results.

The audience of 40 consisted of a mix of landscape architects and green industry suppliers and consultants who were rewarded with an informative and inspiring presentation and wonderful illustration of the great work being done in the profession.

The chapter looks forward to hosting the event again next year and in-turn providing the means for its members to also take advantage to the Trade Show and continuing education opportunities presented by the Green Expo.