LA: Emerging Parks

One always thinks of these wonderful old urban parks in NYC, Paris, Washington DC, London, and in major urban cities worldwide. This association isn't generally held for Los Angeles, which tends to make us think of an endless urban concrete dystopia except for the suburban areas. Suddenly this issue has erupted in the form of an exhibit geared towards a new impetus in this metropolis that has resulted in the design of many new parks which are in various stages of implementation. This is meant to open a dialogue about parks in Los Angeles and how they can emerge from the urban fabric.

To quote the LA Times writeup,

We were warned. In 1930, in “Parks, Playgrounds and Beaches for the Los Angeles Region,” the Olmsted brothers and Harland Bartholomew urged the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce to set aside land and funds to create 70,000 acres of parkland running from the mountains to the Pacific. Considerable lengths of the “pleasureways” would trace natural rivers where parkland could double as flood control boundaries.

“Study has unearthed no factor which indicates that the people of this Region will be permanently satisfied with lower standards than those of other great communities,” they wrote, “and many that point toward the expediency of higher standards. The big question is whether the people are socially and politically so slow, in comparison with the amazing rapidity of urban growth here, that they will dumbly let the procession go by and pay a heavy penalty in later years for their slowness and timidity.”

Unafraid to appear socially and politically slow, never mind dumb, the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce ignored the fathers of landscape architecture and urban planning. Preserving open space didn’t compute in a region whose business model was growth.

But in the intervening decades, local efforts were implemented, and plans developed. Small community-based parks and restoration efforts have been undertaken in a patchwork over the last 30 years, most of them around the LA River and its tributaries. They are tree-planting and watershed restoration projects that are revitalizing neighborhoods, rather than the big Olmsted kinds of visions. Many of the designs shown in the exhibit have the underlying theme of restoration of discarded land and connecting it to the communities and public areas, more of an evolutionary process, driven by conservation and urban reforestation needs. Other projects result from the restoration of underutilized civic and industrial areas.

These are now beginning to coalesce via the LA River project into a major element of watershed restoration and urban planning projects along the river and its tributaries. Communities are no longer turning their backs to the waterways and creeks, but rather restoring and enhancing them as part of the movement that is breaking the city out of its concrete straitjacket and restoring life and diversity to its urban character. The old fabric of the historic LA settlement is now emergent in these rediscovered networks of creeks, pathways, old roads and hills that weren't good for development, the Audubon Center at Debs Park being a good example of parkland restoration as well as green building and conservation.

Fingers and Toes

California population 2010..........37,253,956
California population 2000..........33,871,648
California population 1990..........29,760,021

That's about 4 million more people every decade. So we're looking at a minimum of around 41 million people in 2020, more if you follow the "official" population projections from Sacramento. For which we don't even have the resources now, notably water. Not to mention the impact of climate change, which produces more extremes of heat and shifts in water patterns because of the climate change we're experiencing. So how is it possible to plan ahead for the world we're going to be living in over the next century?

These issues are raised on a map site for California provided by a joint effort by California Universities, the California Energy Commission and Google. It's an interactive tool at the website Cal-Adapt.org, which allows people to use climate prediction tools for themselves and use this for planning issues. The site encourages community involvement and local solutions from people.

An example and summary of making local use of the site is posted at Mother Jones.

Following the example of this exercise, I checked my local Southern California area and was distressed to find that that it's all just hotter and more vulnerable to wildfires and thus pollution. Add to this the very likely water shortages and one begins to wonder how any population increase is feasible at all, particularly given the challenges in our urban areas at the moment.

It's not just the physical and resource limitations. We're facing infrastructure degradation due to lack of maintenance, particularly the watershed and open spaces that provide what little relief we have now from the eroded urban landscape that has sprawled across the Southern California basin. The strategies discussed by public officials and planners, which involve greater densities and lower consumption of all resources, appears to be a dodge to the real issue of, can this continue? How do we repair the ecological damage and provide for the regeneration of natural processes? Where does the money come from now if we couldn't afford to maintain what we had even during the good times?

Clearly a major shift in priorities is called for, and one that will require a different kind of economic approach to business, lifestyles, quality of life issues and community. This shift will necessarily arise from a new frugality and economy of means that this situation is going to force upon us. If the natural environment can't support the scale of human encroachment that is occurring, we have a serious set of choices ahead of us, hopefully ones that won't be made by lurching from climate crisis to food crisis to energy crisis to water crisis. It will most likely mean coming to grips with population impacts and not trying to dodge the bullet with more "transit oriented development". More effective human habitation and less resource demand can only be managed by controlling the numbers, which means that a "market economy" will have to dramatically reconfigure to succeed in a shrinking market scenario.

These answers will arise, no doubt, from a younger generation that will respond to this bleak future with a new value system and new answers that potentially reject all the assumptions that the current leadership is operating from. Is Green Revolutionary?

It's certainly political.

Microsoftworld

In a more mountainous land with an erratic overlord, it was a journey not easily undertaken. Having previously traversed the flatlands and foothills of Windows 95 and 98, and then beginning an ascent with the XP beast, it was clearly time to scale further heights and discard old trappings. The new beast of burden, a temperamental and stubborn creature, massive of code, is a lighting fast dual core creature mounted with Windows 7.

It took some particular struggles with new saddles and gear, but after conferring with an ancient wizard, the proper incantations took hold and the new beast began to form. With prayers to the ancient gods of DOS, leaving behind the fading incarnation of Norton, and expert hardware and tech sherpa support, the quest continues for the holy grail of a networked information platform that responds to the slightest gestures of visual command. Similar to a Tron world, the Master Control Program is operative and doesn't permit trespassers in its territory, and actively seeks out control over other processes and users. Its insistence on channeling specific online files into locked in folder structures resulted in difficulties in taming the beast.

This quest needs a platform capable of carrying large loads while scaling new heights, hence the necessity of strapping down the saddle and reining in this creature so that it can be trained to follow the proper leads over the winding ascent ahead. The landscape here grows as it's traversed and and begins to climb into the clouds, making navigation difficult for the traveler with a purpose. Armed with sketchy maps from other fellow adventurers, we're beginning to find our way through the ever-growing thickets and mountains of data in search of a means of arriving at the summit of engagement of a building team in charge of its information and processes.

We've found that the only way to climb the summit is to rope the beasts together and share our provisions, sending scouts ahead to scope out the way before us. Typical of historical exploration into new lands, it's a risk that has to be undertaken by the stakeholders in search of the final objective, which is a new way of using information to create built environments that will meet the challenges of our future. As the flame of extractive energies dims, we're wayfinding our path to new strategies that will move us into a place of regeneration of life, not the endless consumption of it.

Our smarter beasts should be able to get us there.

The Threat Remains

On May 24, a Hahamongna Watershed Park Advisory Committee public meeting reviewed the various issues involved with the water, dam repair and sediment issues, as well as the various user group agreements for the site. A report on this meeting is here at Friends of Hahamongna. An additional blogged response, a very effective one from Dianne Patrizzi, is here at Mademoiselle Gramophone; a map posted here shows the issues very clearly.

This project has become a long, drawn-out fight about the use of natural riparian habitat area for a soccer field, about which no one seems to know why it's being proposed in this location. It appears to be a manufactured use, since the public demand for soccer fields is centered in the schools. It's in an isolated area that has seasonal flooding, perfect place to take your kids to drown in the muck, I suppose. It will destroy the habitat with tons of sediment fill (I think I see the hand of the County and the MWD in this) that currently sits behind the dam. Unfortunately this one-time solution of piling sediment here does not solve the ongoing sedimentation issue with a functional redesign of the system which could sluice the sediment and bank more water than the old original design is capable of. Where does the next pile go? The discussion has a long, involved timeline of over a decade, which can be read in a series of articles on the Save Hahamongna site.

An earlier report from June of 2010 documents a public meeting that, as always, registered serious public protest over this proposed development in the Hahamongna Watershed Park. Somehow the actual public desires and goals for this public open space are being lost to destructive management solutions, so that this threat to our local natural ecosystems remains to this day.

We must redefine this problem to respond to the actual impact of increasing runoff and silting that occurs now and in the future; that was never part of the original plan which was to just park this pile of sediment inside the Watershed Park. And so what does the County plan to do with the next pile of dirt in a few years? Just fill in the whole thing? This makes less and less sense the further this thing moves along, particularly since the County doesn't do the necessary maintenance that would mitigate the problem.

The destruction of the Angeles National Forest during Sept. of 2009 has not been taken into account as it should be for any EIR mitigation process; when things change necessarily so do the plans and strategies. Look at the lessons that we're having to learn from New Orleans and the Missisippi Delta; the old way of brute-force engineering doesn't work any more, nobody can afford the cost to keep it up, and the resulting destruction is massive. So the game has now changed to working with natural terrain and watershed forces; a different approach.

Sun Sets on an Obsolete Solution

Nuclear power is once again on the table for discussion now that we've experienced another incident on par with Chernobyl, with impacts on society and ecosystems that make the 3-Mile Island incident (1979) that triggered worldwide protest look tame. This recent calamity, in the "land of the rising sun", Japan's Fukushima reactor illuminates the extreme risks and costs of nuclear, the result of the 9.0 quake on March 11. It's now evident that four of the six reactors experienced meltdowns, which is why so much radioactive material has been pumped into the atmosphere and the ocean, impacting other countries globally.

It's not just the radiation risks of this extreme and unsustainable technology. Nuclear power uses tremendous amounts of water, its Achilles' heel. It's far more effective to use local strategies to move water and power in ways that work in concert with natural systems. In California, this is an especially sensitive issue, because water sources are already scarce, and the statewide aquifers are being overdrawn, which collapses the ground and destroys water quality. We cannot support nuclear capacity in the West for this reason.

And in a very cogent analysis of the industry, William A. Collins emphasizes the very high cost and the dangers of building power sources that not only create immense risks, but are the most expensive and highly subsidized power sources in existence. It's an obsolete solution to a problem that must be met with local sources of sustainable power and a reduction in demand using innovative technologies. The nuclear industry, like the oil industry, is protecting old and outdated methodologies which stifles the creative and innovative approaches that could result in better infrastructure that can be maintained by smaller entities. These big projects never seem to get the funding necessary to keep them working safely, which is attributable to human nature and a perpetual underfunding of maintenance and operation sectors - the inevitable result of inflation. We need to recognize these issues and plan for sustainable infrastructure, not the old brute-force engineering solutions which require high maintenance at high cost.

When the sun rises, the energy should flow. It's that simple.

Update: Germany has decided to follow Italy and shut down all nuclear power generation by 2022. The cost of the risks is not worth it. This is demonstrated by the problems plaguing Edison International's nuclear power plant at San Onofre, California.

Seeds of Collaborative Design

When Garrett Eckbo collaborated on the design of 1414 Fair Oaks with Smith and Williams, he was part of a practice known as Eckbo, Dean and Williams, and belonged to a group of architects and designers teaching at USC which included Whit Smith and Cal Straub and many others (Wayne Williams was Whit's student at USC, not related to Edward Williams, Eckbo's parner). At that time, in the mid-fifties, he was a landscape architect who was well-known for his published work, Landscape for Living, which stressed collaborative and imaginative modern principles of landscape design. He had studied landscape architecture during the 1930s at UC Berkeley and later at Harvard, where he encountered the modern movement and studied under professors such as Walter Gropius, the founder of the Bauhaus. The full story is here:

In 1958, Eckbo Royston and Williams divided into Royston Hanamoto and Mayes, and Eckbo Dean and Williams. In 1964, Donald Austin became a partner and the firm was recast as Eckbo Dean Austin Williams, later known as EDAW. Ultimately, the laboratory for progressive landscape design with a focus on the relationship between individual and community grew into a multinational planning corporation. Eckbo returned to the San Francisco Bay Area in 1963 to head the Department of Landscape Architecture at Berkeley until 1969. He received the Medal of Honor from the American Society of Landscape Architects in 1975; he retired as Professor Emeritus in 1978, and left EDAW a year later.

The company originally founded by Eckbo, EDAW, Inc. was established in 1964 and grew to international prominence and became an AECOM company when it was acquired in December 2005. It's now an international urban design, landscape architecture and planning firm with 34 offices. EDAW’s origins date to 1939, when aspiring landscape architects Garrett Eckbo and Edward Williams formed an informal partnership to practice landscape architecture, urban design, and planning. Eckbo, a leading proponent of modernist design, and Williams, a land planner, were among the first to recognize the design and planning disciplines as a means to reconnect people to place. Eckbo and Williams were later joined by partners Austin and Davis, and the first letters of the four last names - EDAW - became the name of the firm. The practice grew in size and capabilities and was officially incorporated in California in March of 1967.

The 1414 Office Building is thus an anchor for the emerging Southern California modern movement of the time, which has ultimately evolved into an entire gestalt of integrating human experience in a dynamic landscape that demands interaction with people and their activities. This seed became a fundamental presence in the formulation of landscape architecture as part of the natural processes as well as a seamless part of the experience of the built environment, which went on to influence major projects across the globe.

Good Ideas Never Die

It's appropriate to celebrate the recognition of the Smith and Williams Collaborative work on tour this weekend, May 21st, by Pasadena Heritage. I'm posting above one of Wayne Williams' scans of the 1414 Office Building structure that housed the firm and its related consultant offices in South Pasadena. It was designed by Wayne and Whit Smith, and landscaped by Garrett Eckbo to express a unique collaborative practice that set a precedent for the integrated design methods used today in the digital BIM design of projects. It was a laboratory of design and technical innovation for the firm's projects that brought together engineers, contractors and designers from the start.
Then take a look at the conceptual design with a similar aesthetic for the Extreme Light Infrastructure project, designed by design studio BFLS in London. It starts operating in 2015 at Dolní Břežany near Prague in the Czech republic. The building will house the required infrastructure for scientific research in the field of laser development, dedicated to the investigation and applications of laser-matter interaction at the highest intensity level (more than six times higher than current levels of laser intensity). The central element of the design is a massive concrete ‘box’ comparable in size to a football field, with a lightweight roof, floating over the complex, providing a unifying element.

Cutting edge, technology, design integration, landscaped interiors and an explosion of creative ideas coalescing into forms that speak similar languages across the globe. Generation after generation!