I was pleasantly surprised to find out that my letter to the New York Times Magazine was published! The letter was in response to the Architecture Issue of the NY Times Magazine, in which I had expressed disappointment at the lack of perspectives from landscape architects, and the recognition of the influence of landscape architecture among our favorite “starchitects” whom were prominently featured in several articles. Maybe they’ll come out with a Landscape Architecture Issue

Letter to the Editor, NY Times Magazine:

The architecture-themed issue, “The Next City” (June 8), was a wonderful exploration of how today’s cutting-edge architectural firms, like OMA and MVRDV, are exploding the boundaries of conventional architecture. However, I would have liked to have seen perspectives from landscape architects, or what some refer to as “landscape urbanism.” Even architects like Rem Koolhaas, Bernard Tschumi and Stan Allen are turning toward landscape architecture to infuse and renew their own architectural-design strategies. Planning cities by single buildings was, and continues to be, a shortsighted strategy. To truly design our urban centers, we must now think of the city as a landscape of infrastructure (transportation, utilities) and systems (ecological, social, institutional).

Reflections from recent trips across Southeastern Pennsylvania:

Communities are increasingly forced to deal with the long-term impacts of industrialization, where the veneer of economic prosperity ultimately gives away to reveal damaged communities and impaired ecological processes. We visited two sites that are deploying strategies to deal with such post-industrial conditions. One location was Palmerton, Pennsylvania; a Superfund town nestled in the bucolic backdrop of the Kitatinny Mountains. The other was Philadelphia’s Mill Creek, which is currently encapsulated within enormous sewer pipes underneath the city. The sustainable practices at Palmerton and Mill Creek provide some insight on how to design strategies that restore the ecological functions of highly impaired environments.

Palmerton Superfund Site

In 1898, Palmerton was founded as a factory town, nestled between two ridgelines, to conduct zinc smeltering during the height of industrialization in the United States. After decades of constant smeltering, the forest ecosystem collapsed, affecting an expanse of nearly 2,000 acres. Due to deposition of zinc, lead and cadmium from the furnaces, microorganisms in the soil substrate were killed off, and an integral component of the forest lifecycle ended. Without decomposers, nutrients in the soil were eliminated, leading a domino effect that decimated the forest. To date, it is the largest Superfund site east of the Mississippi River.

On site, I was struck by the eerie landscape of windswept, bleached trees amongst barren grounds of dry dirt. Abandoned, rusted factory facitilies stood like sentinels to remind residents and visitors of a foregone era. Amazingly, some plant and wildlife species are returning to the environment; numerous sprouts of sassafras and sourgum were seen emerging from gnarled trunks.

Due to the immensity of the contaminated area, removing the toxic substrate was out of the question. We learned about two strategies to rebuild the soil nutrients, with the goal of creating a capping layer of substrate above the contaminated soils. The first attempt to “green” the decimated slopes entailed terracing the mountain to establish over 60 miles of roadways. These costly roads provided access for trucks to spray “ecoloam” along the slopes. Ecoloam was an engineered growing medium composed of sludge and schlag material from city waste. From afar, this method successfully “greened” the mountainside. However, some critics of this method blame the pervasive amount of invasive species on the applied slopes, due to the unpredictability of the seed composition of the ecoloam mixture. Additionally, trees could not establish beyond the depth of the ecoloam because the roots would hit the contaminated substrate beneath.

The land now belongs to telecommunications monolith known as Viacom, as a side acquisition through various transactions. To its credit, Viacom is funding the implementation of the second strategy, which relies on the hardiness of warm season native grass species to restore and stabilize the mountain slopes. Based on a serpentine barren-type ecology, this strategy aims to mimic the type of succession that had occurred in the site’s geological glaciation context. To establish the grasses, a growing medium composed of limestone, commercial fertilizer, grass seeds and compost was sprayed from the air, or hand-dropped along the slopes. This method appears to be less disruptive of the mountain slope because roads are not necessary, and the warm season grasses seem to be growing quite successfully.

In addition to the warm-season grasses, the predominant plant species we observed included the gray birch, sassafras, poplar, aspen and chestnut oak trees. Furthermore, some rare plant species were thriving quite well in these extreme conditions, such as wild bleeding heart and sandwort. Despite the calculated efforts to establish native plants, invasive species continue to pose a threat to the restoration efforts. As such, the staff work hard to eradicate the butterfly bush and ailanthus tree that they find along the slopes.

Mill Creek, Philadelphia

Mill Creek is exemplary of how industrialization and the fast densification of urban areas impact watershed ecology. Mill Creek is one of hundreds of streams that were channeled and buried into Philadelphia’s combined sewer system. Tracing the journey of Mill Creek from upper Merion to its confluence with the Schuylkill River in Philadelphia was a fascinating excursion. Unaware of the negative ecological impacts of channeling Mill Creek into the sewer system, the city of Philadelphia filled in the stream valley with fly ash to provide ground foundation for more development. Eventually, the ash compressed and significantly destabilized the foundation, leading to the collapse of several neighborhood areas along the historic streambed.

Photo credit

As we traveled across West Philadelphia, following the historic streambed, we visited sites that are employing various sustainable initiatives to improve storm water quality, among other issues. As a landscape architect, one can conceptualize these efforts as ways to measure, or index, the historic stream path. Gardens, tree plantings, swales, retention systems, and rain gardens not only mark the path of the stream, but also restore some ecological functions of the watershed. These interventions can bring new life back to the over-developed, impervious surface of urban areas.

One such intervention is taking place at a community garden called Mill Creek Farm. The site, located above the Mill Creek historic streambed, originally had row houses built on top. When the foundations collapsed, local residents took over the empty lot by starting a vegetable garden. Today, two dynamic young women manage a portion of the farm as a non-profit. In many ways, Mill Creek Farm reminded me of the community gardens that I had volunteered with in Detroit. Like the network of urban gardens in Detroit, Mill Creek had a strong educational component in which urban youth were provided direct, hands-on experiences with the land and sought to increase food security and nutrition in urban settings. Spanning half a city block, Mill Creek Farm was packing a high concentration of programming into its operations, including a green roof demonstration project, nutritional workshops, public art, a composting toilet, beehives, and organic gardening practices.

Mill Creek Farm is located on property owned by the Philadelphia Water Department, which is central to a lot of this initiatives in the city. PWD has highly innovative approaches to dealing with water issues in the city, and Mill Creek Farm is one manifestation of their vision. These practices included a “hybrid sewer system” next to the Blackwell housing development in West Philly, which entailed an underground water retention system that would retain water for a period of time. We also examined a basketball court that used porous asphalt. An overflow swale was constructed at the edge of the court to account for excessive runoff that would lead to a drainage pipe. At Clark Park, one can almost imagine a time when Mill Creek formerly flowed freely in this area. Today, portions of Clark Park experience drainage issues, evidence of former mill ponds. Nearby, a native plants demonstration garden stewarded by USP adds an accent of greenspace in the area. Unfortunately, it was fenced off and inaccessible to the public.

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We currently live and operate in a condition that is forcing us to deal with the ramifications of industrialization that built a petroleum-dependent economy and society. These impacts have negative effects on our ecosystems, community structures and social cultures. These two trips afforded a sense of potential for landscape architects to become proponents of positive impacts, providing a framework for design solutions to our damaged world. Perhaps the solution lies in the synthesis of many solutions. Palmerton and Mill Creek initiatives are demonstrating that life after “death” can take place, where nature and humans are no longer opposing forces, but a symbiosis of processes that can sustain a better quality of life for future generations.

On a positive tip, I’ve copied a letter sent from the Obama Chinatown HQ below:

Dear Friends,

We in PA just can’t say enough about how much your support has meant to us over the past two months:

Thanks to you, United People for Obama went from meeting weekly in a restaurant basement to meeting in our own Philly Chinatown office with phone and internet. With your support, our Philly Chinatown office transformed from a simple meeting space to a vibrant Obama Philly Chinatown Headquarters.

To everyone’s surprise, with every Chinatown bus, the volunteers kept coming. Almost overnight, our Obama Philly Chinatown Office became well-known throughout the City as a vibrant, well-organized volunteer hub. On Saturday, our volunteers called 2,747 Democrats in PA and knocked on over 10,000 doors on Saturday and Sunday alone!

Thanks to you, we used to have to tell other Philadelphians where Philly Chinatown was, but now Philly Chinatown has been visited by Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Indian, and German worldwide media. People are not just fascinated by an Obama for America office in Chinatown: They are fascinated by the incredible transformation of an office space into a movement, of volunteers into a family.

In short, we’re not closing up shop in Philly Chinatown because, quite frankly, the support of this wonderful community has put us in position to be a force for North Carolina, Indiana, Oregon, and beyond. We’re Fired Up! Ready to Go!

Thank you for giving from your heart and for being our inspiration. Thank you to Mr. Lee Deng, our office donor, and the staff-Van Tamom, Director of AAPI Outreach, Field Organizer Peter Harrell, and full-time volunteer Helen Liu for everything. Thank you to Senator Barack Obama, Maya Soetoro Ng and Konrad Ng for their support of our Philly Chinatown Office!

Now let’s get to work!!!

Sincerely,

Anna, Matt, Nina, and many, many others

Obama didn’t win the primaries in Pennsylvania. But with Clinton winning PA by a decent margin, we remain gridlocked. Something’s gotta give. I sense that some folks are losing steam, and I’m hearing more from people that they want this process to be over. I, too, confess that thoughts of Obama not winning the ticket occur more frequently. Corporate media doesn’t help, and their sound bites reduce the heart-and-soul of Obama’s message into sterile political stunts. Their poor analyses spin Obama voters into a composite of young, affluent, educated, and African-American. (Turn off CNN!)

Still, I’ve dug my own deep Obama trench and am unwilling to leave at this moment. I look over at Hillary’s camp, and I see a reinforcement of the power structure. Anything’s better than Bush, but I want a great leap forward, I want to us “push our humanity” by voting in an Obama presidency. Maybe people aren’t ready for that tough road..but if not now, then when?

I’m relieved that here in Philadelphia, we passed with flying colors. I smiled seeing overly-excited college students with their Barack the Vote shirts out in the streets today. The vibe in the West Philly office on 52nd street was upbeat. Door-knocking in West Philly, I was greeted with folks who were mostly friendly, and there were plently of Obama yard signs proudly displayed. A postal worker stopped to chat, saying that she previously voted Republican and decided to register as a Democrat so that she could vote for Obama. They tried to tell her that her vote wouldn’t count, but she walked into the polls and demanded to fill out a provisional ballot.

The Clinton campaign swooped onto Penn’s campus late this afternoon.  Loud cheers and a whole bunch of hoopla took place until Hillary appeared around 8pm.  Obama supporters came out with signs and people to counter the rally, but the best show came from a neighboring fraternity house that blasted “Obama! Obama!” from their loudspeakers.

This last-minute Clinton rally was very telling about her campaign, and its lack of support among college-aged voters.  I’ve been hard pressed to come across any Clinton organizer or volunteer up until this evening’s rally.  Whereas the Obama camp had been present since February, tabling every day, registering voters, signing up volunteers, conducting dorm walks, holding visibility events.  Clinton’s campaign hardly tried, for whatever reason, and swooped in on campus the day before our primaries.   Plainly speaking, you can’t really top the 35,000+ folks who attended Obama’s rally last Friday.

This morning I was late to class because I couldn’t peel my eyes and ears away from watching a clip of Obama’s speech in Philadelphia.

Thoughtful, evocative, comprehensive, unapologetic and visionary.

Anyone who is frustrated by the filtering and spinning conducted by corporate media only needs to listen to Obama in his own words to understand and feel why this man is unequivocally qualified to be the next president of the United States.  Who else has the ability, the way Obama does, to move each one of us to work towards the change we believe in?   He calls on our communities to embrace “the burdens of our past without becoming victims of our past.” In an eloquently direct way, Obama invokes messages of Gandhi (be the change we wish to seek), MLK (the fierce urgency of now), and James Boggs (America, love it enough to change it).

Click here for the full text and/or the entire clip.

Last December, Michigan took a step towards justice when Governor Granholm finally signed an executive directive calling for the recognition and incorporation of environmental justice in state policy.  This victory came after launching a three-year long campaign involving a coalition of community groups, businesses, public health organizations and environmental non-profits in Detroit.  Other states, like California, New York and New Mexico have already established such policy precedents.

As the former coordinator of this campaign, I had left Michigan to attend graduate school, but I’m thrilled that the coalition’s hard work has finally paid off.  Significantly, the campaign has brought a wider coalition of environmental justice advocates around the state, highlighting major groundwork in Saginaw, Michigan, particularly Saginaw’s urban neighborhoods that have been poisoned by dioxin and other contaminants from Dow Chemical.

Perhaps Michigan is coming back on track on the environmental justice front.  Having been a major player in the beginnings of the EJ movement, this executive directive could signify the opportunity for a new wave of energy to create more livable, sustainable and just communities.

Another significant victory in the environmental justice movement took place today at the announcement of WR Grace’s announcement to pay $250 million to clean up their asbestos scandal in Libby, Montana.

Politician - 1. a person who is active in party politics; 2. a seeker or holder of public office who is more concerned about winning favor or retaining power than about maintaining principles; 3. a person who holds a political office; 4. a person skilled in political government or administration; 5. an expert in politics or government; 6. a person who seeks to gain power or advance within an organization in ways that are generally disapproved.

Statesman - 1. a person who is experienced in the art of government or versed in the administration of government affairs; 2. a person who exhibits great wisdom and ability in directing the affairs of a government or in dealing with important public issues.

Obama’s presidential campaign has arrived in Philadelphia, and I’m amped about the elections coming right to my backyard! Last week I took another step to seal my residency in PA by registering to vote. Pennsylvania’s going to be an important piece in the election, particularly since our governor has publicly endorsed Clinton.

Tonight, I went to check out a voter registration kick-off event, hosted by Philly Students for Obama. Featured speaker was Kal Penn, who’s been volunteering for Obama’s campaign since Iowa.

I’ve been a fan of Kal Penn, through Harold and Kumar, and more recently The Namesake. It’s pretty incredible that this actor, self-proclaimed cynic, and registered independent has put himself out there for a presidential campaign.

The crowd, mostly composed of college students, was quite diverse, something I think has become uniquely characteristic of Obama rallys and events. Much like what I saw in South Carolina, Obama truly draws people from a wide range of backgrounds. And the man wasn’t even in town tonight!

Throwing in a bit of humor through his speech, Penn talked about how he got involved with Obama after hearing his DNC speech in 2004. Penn outlined the three main reasons drawing him to Obama — college grants ($4,000) for anyone who wants to attend college, being against the Iraq war from the beginning, and universal healthcare.

Penn also shared a moving story about the head of the Iowa Independent Farmers Union who told Obama volunteers that this was the first time he met a statesman. I don’t remember the last time I heard anyone use the term statesman to describe someone. I was drawn to Obama because of his organizing background, but I believe that statesman captures an additional element to his integrity as an elected official.

For folks in Philadelphia, click here for Obama’s Pennsylvania Campaign.

A couple weeks ago, I received an email announcing a callout for photos of women who support Obama. My partner and I have a half-second cameo. Click here for the final compilation.

Go Obama!