Ground 37 – Spring 2017 – Spectrum

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Landscape Architect Quarterly

Features Treaty-making and Indigeneity

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Where Darkness and Light Meet

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Round Table Spectrum of Engagement

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Publication # 40026106

The Soil Spectrum

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Spring 2017 Issue 37

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Editor Lorraine Johnson

2017 OALA Governing Council

Photo Editor Zhebing Chen

President Doris Chee

OALA Editorial Board Shannon Baker Eric Gordon Ruthanne Henry (chair) Jocelyn Hirtes Robert Patterson Phil Pothen Todd Smith Katie Strang Beatrice Saraga Taylor Dalia Todary-Michael Shawn Watters Jane Welsh

Vice President Jane Welsh Treasurer Kendall Flower Secretary Stefan Fediuk Past President Sarah Culp

Web Editor Jennifer Foden

Councillors Steve Barnhart Cynthia Graham Cameron Smith

Art Direction/Design www.typotherapy.com

Associate Councillor—Senior Justin Whalen

Advertising Inquiries advertising@oala.ca 416.231.4181

Associate Councillor—Junior Trish Clarke

Cover Mycelium by Kirill Ignatyev.

See page 22.

Ground: Landscape Architect Quarterly is published four times a year by the Ontario Association of Landscape Architects.

Ontario Association of Landscape Architects 3 Church Street, Suite 506 Toronto, Ontario M5E 1M2 416.231.4181 www.oala.ca oala@oala.ca Copyright © 2017 by the Ontario Association of Landscape Architects All rights reserved ISSN: 0847-3080 Canada Post Sales Product Agreement No. 40026106 See www.groundmag.ca to download articles and share content on social media.

Lay Councillor Linda Thorne Appointed Educator University of Toronto Peter North Appointed Educator University of Guelph TBC University of Toronto Student Representative Leonard Flot University of Guelph Student Representative Lauren Dickson OALA Staff Executive Director Aina Budrevics Registrar Ingrid Little Coordinator Sarah Manteuffel

OALA

OALA

­About­

About the OALA­

Ground: Landscape Architect Quarterly is published by the Ontario Association of Landscape Architects and provides an open forum for the exchange of ideas and information related to the profession of landscape architecture. Letters to the editor, article proposals, and feedback are encouraged. For submission guidelines, contact Ground at magazine@oala.ca.

Ground reserves the right to edit all submissions.

The views expressed in the magazine are those of the writers and not necessarily the views of the OALA and its Governing Council.

The Ontario Association of Landscape Architects works to promote and advance the profession of landscape architecture and maintain standards of professional practice consistent with the public interest. The OALA promotes public understanding of the profession and the advancement of the practice of landscape architecture. In support of the improvement and/or conservation of the natural, cultural, social and built environments, the OALA undertakes activities including promotion to governments, professionals and developers of the standards and benefits of landscape architecture.

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Advisory Panel

Andrew B. Anderson, BLA, MSc. World Heritage Management Landscape & Heritage Expert, Oman Botanic Garden John Danahy, OALA, Associate Professor, University of Toronto George Dark, OALA, FCSLA, ASLA, Principal, Urban Strategies Inc., Toronto Real Eguchi, OALA, Eguchi Associates Landscape Architects, Toronto Donna Hinde, OALA, FCSLA, Partner, The Planning Partnership, Toronto Ryan James, OALA, Senior Landscape Architect, Novatech, Ottawa Alissa North, OALA, Assistant Professor, University of Toronto, Principal of North Design Office, Toronto Peter North, OALA, Assistant Professor, University of Toronto, Principal of North Design Office, Toronto Nathan Perkins, MLA, PhD, ASLA, Associate Professor, University of Guelph Victoria Taylor, OALA, Principal, Victoria Taylor Landscape Architect, Toronto Jim Vafiades, OALA, FCSLA, Senior Landscape Architect, Stantec, Toronto

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2,178 kg CO2 14,566 km driven 25 GJ 113,860 60W light bulbs for one hour 6 kg NOX emissions of one truck during 20 days www.cascades.com/papers

TO view additional content related to Ground articles, Visit www.groundmag.ca.

Contents

President’s Message

Editorial Board Message

Up Front Information on the ground

President’s Message

Editorial Board Message

Spectrum:

Spring is here, and the promise of renewal, freshness, and growth is in the air. As you know, the OALA is on a journey to be the profession that keeps Ontario green and thriving as a sustainable economic power (green) house.

We know this is the busy season, with planting and construction in high gear, but we hope you can take the time for a thorough read of this issue. Included is great information about the new Clean Equipment Protocol, which helps to ensure that landscape projects don’t spread invasive species, as well as an exciting example of collaboration for landscape conservation.

Also included is a new perspective on the increasing importance of soil management/conservation, and James MacDonald-Nelson’s overview of some climate change mitigation projects in Europe. For those professionals specializing in public spaces, look for lawyer (and MLA graduate) Phil Pothen’s summary of Ontario’s Design of Public Spaces Standards.

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Collaborative Conservation ­

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Text by Lorraine Johnson

Emergent Knowledge ­ Treaty-making and Indigeneity MacCallum Fraser and Christine Migwans inClara conversation 08/

Where Darkness ­ and Light Meet The light-responsive design of Oman Botanic Garden

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Text by Andrew B. Anderson

Round Table Spectrum of engagement

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Moderated by Eric Gordon, oala

The Soil Spectrum Putting carbon back in the ground

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Text by Clement Kent

Business Corner Ontario’s Design of Public Spaces Standards Text by Phil Pothen 24/

Letter From…Europe Adaptive design and climate change Text by James MacDonald-Nelson 26/

Research Corner Green city-building

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tom ostler and andrew millward in conversation with Ruthanne Henry, OALA, and Dalia Todary-Michael

Notes A miscellany of news and events 32/

Artifact Creature currents­ TEXT by Glynis Logue 42/

Spring 2017 Issue 37

On April 11, 2017, all Ontario landscape architects were invited to join us at Queen’s Park in Toronto to meet with all MPPs, the Premier, and parliamentary staff to discuss our passion. They asked who we are, what we do, and how we keep Ontario green and sustainable—the same questions we are asked by our clients, friends, and colleagues. We felt it was time to enlighten everyone about what a landscape architect does. Whether you are a landscape architect who designs the urban realm or are engaged with natural systems to sustain our provincial parks, you have the knowledge, capabilities, and skills to transform the environment into a place where humans can enjoy the great outdoors while protecting Ontario’s natural assets.

The 2017 OALA AGM & Conference, held in Ottawa at the end of March, was a huge success. Many thanks to all of the volunteers and OALA staff who made this event so valuable to our members.

Our wealth of knowledge, skills, and abilities in the environment is what makes us special and unique, and it is these qualities, combined with our sense of culture, history, social needs, and economic values, that take us to a higher plane of professionalism.

Doris Chee, OALA oala President president@oala.cA

All of us are interested in public engagement whether we are the public or the professional “engager.” This issue’s Round Table discusses some of the newest innovations, such as avatars, for integrating personal stories of stakeholders in the engagement process.

The Editorial Board is committed to contributing to the reconciliation process. In this issue, we are delighted to be publishing a discussion between Clara MacCallum Fraser and Christine Migwans on treaties, Indigeneity, and Indigenous frameworks for research and policy related to land planning.

The readership of Ground continues to expand online and through subscription. We are now reaching approximately four times more readers online than through print. The Editorial Board is looking for volunteers to help with the important professional outreach Ground provides for the profession. Please let us know if you have an interest in writing, interviewing, photographing, or getting involved with Ground’s social media platforms; contact us at magazine@oala.ca.

Ruthanne Henry, OALA Chair, Editorial Board magazine@oala.ca

Up Front

Forestry. It incorporates a good summary of the importance of cleaning equipment, impacts, and steps to prevent the spread of invasive species, as well as checklists, inspection diagrams, and tips on how to clean equipment properly.

Invasive Species

clean equipment protocol Landscape architects would not actively specify invasive plants such as common reed (Phragmites australis ssp. australis), dog-strangling vine (Cynachum rossicum [=Vincetoxicum rossicum]), or common buckthorn (Rhamnus cathartica) in their project planting plans, yet the landscape profession and related industries have been implicated, over the years, in inadvertent invasive plant introductions.

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Invasive species are, by their very nature, extremely resourceful, persistent, and aggressive. They are either accidentally or intentionally introduced into an area outside their normal range. With limited or no predation to keep them in check, they outcompete native plants and reconfigure local ecosystems.

We are seeing more and more invasive plants in designed landscapes, not because landscape architects specified them, but because we did nothing to prevent them from showing up in the first place. The movement of materials and equipment to and from a construction site creates pathways of introduction for unwanted plants. Research has shown that construction sites are one of four major pathways for invasive plant species introduction, according to the Ontario Invasive Species Strategic Plan, 2012. They can colonize disturbed sites when seed and propagules are transported in soil, gravel, and water, and when unintentionally moved by equipment operating on multiple sites.

In our work as landscape architects, the invasive species we are most likely to transport inadvertently are plants, but they can also be animals, such as emerald ash borer (Agrilus planipennis Fairmaire), or a microorganism, such as Nectria coccinea, a pathogenic fungus that causes beech bark disease.

Up Front: Information on the Ground

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The section on steps to prevent the unintentional introduction of invasive species due to equipment highlights a common-sense approach to planning site visits. It suggests visiting projects that are least disturbed and free from known invasive species first, and visiting sites with known invasive species infestations last. This greatly reduces the risk of transferring invasive plants to new locations. When taking steps to prevent the unintentional introduction of invasive species from equipment, the publication provides guidelines for setting up a cleaning site. The actual cleaning equipment can be as simple as a portable pressure washer, air compressor, shovel, pry bar, stiff brush, or broom.

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The new Ontario Invasive Species Act focuses on preventing the introduction of prohibited species and reducing the risk of new species becoming established in Ontario. This is a necessary piece of legislation, but how do we, as professionals with a desire to maintain healthy, functioning landscapes, prevent further spread of species that we know are already established?

As landscape architects, it is possible to incorporate some standards of practice throughout the lifespan of a project. We can determine the presence of an infestation prior to construction and provide full disclosure and establish some site-specific actions or active management to eradicate the invasive species. We can educate employees and contractors in identification and management practices. Signage and fencing could be a standard to prevent equipment, especially tracked vehicles, from accessing known infestations of invasive plant species.

The Ontario Invasive Species Council and Peterborough County Stewardship are striving to enhance operational practices on project sites through their recent publication Clean Equipment Protocol for Industry: Inspecting and cleaning equipment for the purpose of invasive species prevention. This document (available for download at www. ontarioinvasiveplants.ca) is a collaborative effort between the Invasive Species Centre and the Ministry of Natural Resources and

Conservation authorities such as Central Lake Ontario Conservation have adopted the Clean Equipment Protocol for Industry, which is now included as a condition of permit for large-scale municipal projects. This may be a sign of things to come as other conservation authorities try to protect natural resources in their watersheds from further invasive species impacts. As our parents used to say, “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.” In today’s changing landscape, this is especially good advice.

Text by Patricia Lowe, OALA, Director of Community Engagement at Central Lake Ontario Conservation.

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Simple actions such as cleaning boots and other equipment can help prevent the spread of invasive species.

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Central Lake Ontario Conservation Authority

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Community volunteers play an important role in invasive species eradication.

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Central Lake Ontario Conservation Authority

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The sap of wild parsnip, an invasive species, can cause severe burns.

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Central Lake Ontario Conservation Authority

Up Front

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live in the Carolinian Life Zone, including the spotted turtle, prothonotary warbler, and American badger.)

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in the zone The Carolinian Life Zone is the most biodiverse ecosystem in Canada, and includes habitats such as tallgrass prairies, marshes, sand dunes, and deciduous forests. Although it covers just one-quarter of one percent of Canada’s land mass, this small corner of southwestern Ontario is home to approximately 25 percent of Canada’s population. This density puts a severe strain on the ecosystem—so much so that more endangered and rare species reside in this zone than in any other part of Canada. (Forty percent of Canada’s vulnerable, threatened, or endangered species

The Carolinian Canada Coalition was established in 1984 with a mission to “advance a collaborative conservation strategy for healthy ecosystems in Ontario’s Carolinian Life Zone.”

Through a variety of programs, the coalition works towards a comprehensive approach that tackles conservation from many different angles, with programs that preserve, protect, and restore flora and fauna of the Carolinian Life Zone, including related research and public education.

The coalition promotes the importance of creating a natural heritage system rather than simply “islands of green.” As Michelle Kanter, Executive Director of the coalition, puts it, “natural heritage systems are critical for maintaining the quality of our water and air, for species movement, and for adapting to climate change.” She notes that resilient natural habitats have many benefits, such as filtering water, mitigating flooding and droughts, cleaning the air, and improving people’s mental health.

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Native blue flag iris

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Lorraine Johnson

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Woodland garden

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Lorraine Johnson

Up Front

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amending the soil when necessary, and doing research on how the plants will grow and what conditions they thrive in.

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Because more than 95 percent of the landscape within the zone is privately owned, the Carolinian Canada Coalition, in partnership with World Wildlife Fund (WWF-Canada), has developed a program, called In the Zone: Gardens That Help Native Species Thrive, aimed at developing healthy native ecosystems on privately owned land. As Kanter explains, “we can’t do conservation here without working with landowners and homeowners.”

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The initiative provides guidance from wildlife and gardening experts regarding how residents can create and maintain thriving native plant and wildlife habitats. Primarily through a website, four different guides—meadow and prairie; woodland; ponds and wetlands; and shrubs and vines—offer a solid base of information including a comprehensive list of plant species to make it easy for people to plant native species in their yards.

Ben Porchuk, an ecological consultant involved with In the Zone, concurs: “With the highest biodiversity in all of Canada in an area that is mostly privately owned, the only way we are going to recover habitat is if we are the stewards and become the people who take actions in our own hands.”

The In the Zone program encourages residents of the Carolinian Life Zone to plant native species in their home gardens, providing life-sustaining habitats for native wildlife. After working for many years with rural landowners, the coalition is targeting urban areas through In the Zone, beginning with London, Toronto, and Leamington. As Kanter explains, “healthy communities need 30 to 50 percent natural cover for resilient landscapes,” and privately owned lands, including home gardens, are integral to achieving this goal.

Kanter explains the rationale for promoting the use of native plants in the Carolinian Life Zone: “We have only half the habitat we need in this region. If you don’t use native plants, you are taking up precious real estate but not supporting the web of life.” Stefan Weber, ecologist and seed lead at St. Williams Nursery and Ecology Centre, near Long Point in the Carolinian region, further explains some of the benefits of gardening with native plants: “Native plants are adapted to our climate so they tend to require less water and care, and resources generally, after they are established. Many native plants are drought tolerant, and tolerant of tough soils.” Weber notes that native plants may not behave in the ways that typical garden varieties are expected to. He recommends “working from the soil up,” preparing the planting area, 07

One of the unique aspects of the In the Zone program is that participants are encouraged to use the In the Zone Garden Tracker to monitor their gardens’ contributions to healthy landscapes. Wildlife sightings can be linked to scientific databases including the Natural Heritage Information Centre and eBird. In the Zone also provides a community of gardeners to exchange their experiences and share the knowledge they have gained.

In the Zone seeks to work with residents to restore the Carolinian Life Zone and provide much-needed habitat for wildlife. Porchuk encourages people “to go out into the woods or visit a wetland to remember that it wasn’t too long ago that downtown Toronto looked like that, or London or Simcoe or Sarnia, or all the farmland in between…We can give back so much just by taking tiny simple steps.

It’s an opportunity—from a single plant to somebody who wants to change their entire yard or influence people on their street—and it’s truly remarkable.”

Visit www.inthezonegardens.ca for more information or to sign up for the project.

Text by Astrid Greaves, a landscape and urban designer at IBI Group and a member of 1:1 Collaborative.

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Native Jack-in-the-pulpit

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Lorraine Johnson

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Small ponds can be incorporated into urban gardens.

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Jarmo Jalava

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Water features provide great value for wildlife.

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Dawn Bazely

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Native grass big bluestem in a schoolground restoration

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Lorraine Johnson

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Young tulip tree, an iconic Carolinian tree

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Dawn Bazely

Collaborative Conservation

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Text by Lorraine Johnson

A new approach to the protection and management of remaining natural areas in the Hamilton/Burlington region offers an exceptional example of collaboration for the greater good. Under the banner of the Cootes to Escarpment EcoPark System, a multi-agency alliance has formed to purchase and restore remaining green spaces and create corridors connecting Lake Ontario to the Niagara Escarpment. Discussions began in 2006, and a formal agreement (a Memorandum of Understanding) among the various partners was signed in 2013.

According to Peter Kelly, coordinator of the project, no other alliance quite like it exists in eastern North America. What’s unique is that although the deed for each land purchase (or donation) may be held by one particular agency within the coalition, the money for the purchase may be jointly raised, with the understanding that the land will be protected and managed in perpetuity as part of the larger EcoPark System.

The alliance formed in response to development pressure in one of Canada’s most rapidly growing urban regions. Natural areas in this part of southern Ontario are severely fragmented, with a number of 400-series highways and rail lines flowing through—and bisecting—the landscape.

According to David Galbraith, Head of Science at the Royal Botanical Gardens (RBG) in Hamilton who has been chair of the EcoPark System initiative from its earliest days, the project stemmed from two related questions: how best to manage Cootes Paradise, which the RBG owns, and how best to facilitate the ongoing remediation of Hamilton Harbour, which multiple agencies, including the RBG, are involved in.

“You can’t improve a harbour,” notes Galbraith, “if you don’t improve the watershed.”

Hence, the natural heritage committee of the remediation project started exploring options to bring various conservation groups and agencies together to improve connectivity across the landscape. “We tend to manage natural areas on the basis of property lines,” says Galbraith. “But a Jefferson salamander doesn’t care who owns the land. What’s important are things like road risks, and permeability of the landscape, and habitat values.”

To date, nine partner groups have signed onto the formal agreement to expand conservation lands in the region, and to restore the properties: two conservation authorities (Conservation Halton and Hamilton Conservation Authority), three municipalities (City of Burlington, City of Hamilton, and Halton Re-

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Marsh, Royal Botanical Gardens, Hamilton

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Peter Kelly

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Kerncliff Park boardwalk, wetland, and cliff

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Peter Kelly

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Smokey Hollow, Waterdown

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Peter Kelly

Collaborative Conservation gion), three non-profit organizations (Bruce Trail Conservancy, Hamilton Naturalists’ Club, and Royal Botanical Gardens), and one university (McMaster). Each of the partners has contributed funds, and decisions about acquisition and restoration are made by consensus. “Everyone has to be on board for decisions,” says Peter Kelly. And, so far, this model has worked well.

Properties are acquired by the partnership in three ways: by direct purchase; by donation; through conservation easements.

“Individually, each group wouldn’t necessarily have the funds to buy strategically important corridors,” says Galbraith, “but together we’ve got clout and more resources.” In a highly unusual and altruistic approach to land ownership, the alliance doesn’t place much importance on which group actually has title to the land—the point is rather that the land is protected by a group sharing a bigger goal of conservation.

Beyond actual ownership for conservation purposes, one of the other tangible benefits of the arrangement is that the alliance meets regularly to address common concerns and land management issues collectively.

“We’ve created a table where we can all get together,” as Galbraith puts it. Topics covered include the common problem of invasive

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species and issues related to managing urban wildlife such as coyotes, for example.

Restoration plans for each property in the EcoPark System are developed jointly by committee and agreed to by all.

As of early 2017, a total of 5,000 acres of land are protected in the Cootes to Escarpment EcoPark System. The RBG has designated all 2,700 acres of its lands to the initiative—right down to the parking lots. Other partners have also contributed lands under their jurisdiction, and the alliance has added another 223 acres since the Memorandum of Understanding was signed in 2013.

Both Kelly and Galbraith speak with enthusiasm of one particular success for the alliance: the protection of a wildlife corridor that connects a coastal wetland on the western end of Lake Ontario to the Niagara Escarpment. This is the last such connection that does not have a 400-series highway running through it. Now, it has pride of place in a new model of collaborative, connected conservation.

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BIO/ Lorraine Johnson is the author of the recently published revised edition of

100 Easy-to-Grow Native Plants for Canadian

Gardens and the editor of Ground.

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Pollinator meadow planting, Clappison Woods, Waterdown

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Peter Kelly

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Tire-removal work at Eileen and John Holland Nature Sanctuary in Burlington

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Peter Kelly

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Egret, Hamilton

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Peter Kelly

Emergent Knowledge

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Clara MacCallum Fraser and Christine Migwans in conversation about the ways in which Indigenous consciousness and local treaty history can inform land-use planning today

Clara MacCallum Fraser (CMF): In my first semester as a masters in planning student at Ryerson University, we had to do a planning law class assignment in which we did a site assessment, explaining all the details about one particular property and identifying the policies overlaid there. I decided that I wanted to learn more about planning on the reserve that my family has always gone to. As I scrolled to the reserve on the mapping tool we normally used, it went grey and said, “no information available.”

Emergent Knowledge

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Plan of parts of Ontario and Quebec showing lands affected by the Robinson treaty and treaty number 3, along with unsurrendered land, 1901

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Library and Archives Canada

Emergent Knowledge

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That was my first introduction to the massive disconnect between what planners are doing—municipal planners, regional planners, planners working for government ministries, people who are dealing with management and use of the land—and Aboriginal and treaty rights.

I am now doing a Ph.D. at York University, continuing to look at the way in which urban planning intersects with Aboriginal and treaty rights. Planners are increasingly told that they need to take into account Indigenous interests, but they don’t have any training on this. There’s dialogue around these issues, but it’s largely framed by conflict and focused on problems. (The conflicts at Caledonia and Oka were sparked by planning decisions, for example.) The entryway for settlers into this discussion, discourse, and consultation with Indigenous peoples is laced with fear—a fear of the unknown. We’re told that we need to know about treaty rights, but that wasn’t part of our education growing up, so we’re not well informed.

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Policy has changed, but practice hasn’t. In 2014, the Provincial Policy Statement, which guides what planners do, was updated to include reference to Indigenous peoples.

Before that, there was nothing. Yet planners don’t know what to do with that. There’s a big grey area on how to translate this highlevel discourse around the duty to consult and accommodate Aboriginal peoples‘ treaty rights with everyday planning vernacular or with the processes that are a part of planners’ everyday work.

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A park in Brampton, Ontario

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Rui Lopes

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The intersection of Native Landing and Whitewash Way in Brampton [Editor’s note: This intersection was brought to Ground’s attention in a public lecture by Pierre Bélanger.]

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Rob Patterson

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Treaty money, 1930; for more information on treaty-making, see the report of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, published in 1996.

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Library and Archives Canada

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Whitewash Way street sign

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Rob Patterson

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My Ph.D. dissertation will be asking a couple of questions. One, how has treatymaking shaped urban and regional planning processes in Canada? Conventional approaches to planning don’t consider the role and impact that Indigenous peoples have had in shaping our institutions today.

I consider treaty-making as early planning.

But often we‘re told that the early planning in Canada started around issues related to infrastructure, such as the need for clean water.

Emergent Knowledge

My second question is: how do Indigenous and non-Indigenous ways of knowing and values differ in relation to land management? I’ve been thinking a lot recently about the philosopher John Locke’s idea of how you make land valuable: you buy a plot of land and you mix the sweat of your brow and your blood with the soil. He’s talking about developing the land, and that’s what makes it valuable. You can see that in the conflicts that take place now—whether it’s development within cities or resource development— there’s a stark difference in how we see value. How does that differ from Indigenous understandings of values and land?

The third question I’m asking in my dissertation is: how can contemporary planning policy in Ontario, and Canada in general, evolve so that it’s informed by Indigenous principles, enabling the planning process to be a catalyst for genuine reconciliation? We talk about reconciliation but not in the context of planning. We talk about law and about social work—these are mentioned in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission as areas that need to integrate knowledge of residential schools, for instance, into their education.

But what about the people who are learning how to manage land? These are people who are making massive decisions about how we use and share the land, so I find it bizarre that reconciliation is not something that planners are talking about. The values we have around land—they’re just buried.

Christine Migwans (CM): I want to talk about treaty consciousness, and of what collective memory and expression of treaties are for Indigenous peoples and their divergences from planning and other types of regulations of Indigenous identity—the relationship between spatial use and ideological apparatuses of colonialism, such as residential schools.

Manulany Mayer, a Hawaiian epistemologist I really respect, talks about Indigeneity in a way that really resonates with the way I also experience my Indigeneity. She talks about it as an enduring set of practices, those that

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have endured over time. The key word, number one, is enduring; number two is practice.

If you look at what colonialism tried to do, it was to construct Indigenous peoples as a permanent absence. Permanent absence is the opposite of enduring Indigeneity. So colonialism made Indigenous people—tried to turn us into a people who were destined to vanish—this a radical divergence away from what was embodied and enacted on the lands by Indigenous nations.

I see Indigeneity as enduring presence.

And you have to have a practice to be present. I see the land itself as conscious; it’s a sentient being you can communicate with through rigorous practice. And you can have rigorous practices of listening to and hearing the lands. So in that way it’s not like a metaphor or a cute romanticism. Our ceremonies and our ways of healing and our way of knowing are intrinsically embedded in a consciousness that was realized through our practice of ceremony.

Rigorous practice obviously tunes the senses.

Rigorous spiritual practices calm the mind and help quell thoughts in order to have rigorous processes of listening and hearing. It’s not like a supernatural thing—that was part of colonialism, making these fictions about us, like we’re so romantic and so primitive, and we were just destined to vanish.

Indigenous knowledge is a rigorous practice that leads to spiritual insight, just like any other rigorous spiritual knowledge. The treaties are an invitation into consciousness, an invitation to share Indigenous concepts of nationhood. We were not relating through nation-states in the early part of treaty-making, so we’re understanding and invoking our nationhood through our sense of connection to the land. We’re seeing nationhood as something that is really connected to deep processes of inner knowing, and knowing truth and knowing consciousness.

We practise our knowledge, it makes truth, and that creates collectivity. We have nationhood; we share nationhood with the plants, or with the thunderbirds. And we really interact with them.

Basically, when we made those treaties, we were saying, this treaty is a peace and friendship treaty. Or, this treaty is going to be here for as long as the sun shines and the grass grows. We were basically extending radical relationality to the people who showed up here. We conveyed that by the highest expressions of consciousness. Because what is the highest truth of consciousness?

That the sun shines and the grass grows.

We extended the idea, we shared that with them. We said not only that we’ll embody that through wampum, but that we’ll embody that in the total sense. We’ll have a symbol of the relationship, which will be this wampum, but it really is embodied—your body senses what the land says and what the spirits say.

And that was okay for a little bit, until Canada formed and created the Indian Act. That was a radical departure because Canada formed itself and then said, in our laws you are illegal, our laws are extermination laws: you should be on a reserve and not be able to leave the reserve; you must have a pass to leave the reserve; your spirituality should be eradicated; and we will continue until there’s not a single Indian left. Canada tried to legislate Indigeneity out of existence through categories—status Indian and all these horrific types of Indian policy. Then treaty planning turned to a process of land surrender. It ruptured our sense of consciousness because it was basically trying to map unconsciousness onto Indigenous bodies and place, and make a new spatial consciousness, which is the spatial consciousness of the nation-state and the country. It mapped a very violent thing onto us forcibly—making all the children go to residential schools, and then torturing the children, and murdering the children. This reconstructed what we embodied literally, into the image of our colonizers.

They basically legislated the idea that no, you don’t exist, and you must internalize that you don’t exist, believe it, not only spatially but also ideologically. They attempted to eliminate the sense we ever existed as a people on the land.

Emergent Knowledge

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So if we’re talking about planning, we’re saying, well, what are we going to plan on the lands of the people whose children we killed?

I see the Truth and Reconciliation Commission as a return to treaty-making, it’s the same process. That we engage the consciousness of the land, but we also have other types of work to do in restoring the relationship. So it can’t just be about land, what non-Indigenous peoples do on the land, and Indigenous people again as a permanent absence, just plugging them in somewhere. It’s not about that. It’s about really being seen. What does it mean if we again are seen, if we again are present? It means we rupture a landscape, and consciousness will emerge.

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Treaty signing at Windigo, Ontario, July 18, 1930

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Library and Archives Canada

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A park in Brampton, Ontario

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Rui Lopes

If we have rigorous spiritual practice together, then insight can emerge, and the way we should share land will emerge from practice. I believe Indigeneity can be invoked in every moment, that it can emerge, that it can rupture again by being able to practise mindfulness of colonialism. I can observe the colonialism, I’m conscious of it. I’m mindful of it. And we can have processes that draw us into collective consciousness. Insight comes from consciousness, and practice is pathways. What we practise will show our way forward.

So, is it fair to do planning that erases certain parts of violent experiences of Indigenous peoples? Is it ethical to live in a country that can’t recognize the way it came into being?

We have to be able to recognize that this is where we live and this is what happened.

For us to have reconciliation, we have to disentangle from colonialism; colonialism is the consciousness killer. I don’t think planning or land management is the issue. The paradigm is around the recovery of the relationship—the truth of our relationship to the land.

Certain things are true for us—such as that you can just go ask thunderbirds in the land to help you, and that is the right thing to do.

You should just do that, practise reconciliation, very simply by enacting consciousness.

We’re looking at two different types of spatial consciousness. What kind of spatial

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Emergent Knowledge

consciousness is assumed in planning (its theories and its practices)? And what types of spatial consciousnesses are assumed or embodied when we talk about treaties?

On paper, in the context of land surrender, it’s not like, well, it’s on paper, and it says you surrendered this land, so now we can plan on it because you surrendered it. That’s not what a treaty is, and those aren’t treaty ethics. Our treaty ethics extend everywhere.

We have treaties with the spirits, treaties with each other, treaties with our land. We have radical treaties, and I see it as asserting our right to relationship, the right to right relationship. This is not a simplistic “going back”; it’s the idea that through realizing, enacting, and embodying new practice, insight will emerge.

CMF: Last year, I took a course with my supervisor, Deb McGregor, called Reshaping Research with Indigenous Peoples. It was a life-changing course. At a certain point in the middle of the semester, I reached a point that shifted the way I think about doing things. This shift was instigated by learning about Indigenous research methodologies, which differ depending on the community.

But there are some common features, one of which is the process of reflexivity—spending a lot of time really looking inward to see what are the things that have shaped you, whether in your own life or in your own culture. Academics spend a lot of time trying to make things neutral (making sure that you’re aware of all your subjective biases, and trying to eliminate them), but Indigenous researchers talk about the objectivity bias— our insistence that we can be distant, and that we can be separate from what we’re talking about, when in fact it’s completely arrogant to assume that you came to these conclusions just on your own in isolation.

Christine was talking about practice, and it’s a spiritual practice that grounds her. Western culture dismisses rituals. We have a ton of our own rituals, but it dismisses rituals that are actually acknowledged. In this process of learning about Indigenous research methodologies, what occurred to me was the importance of ceremony and bringing people into this space of ceremony.

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Planners are always saying, what can I do?

I want to do something, I want to make a change, I see that this is wrong, and I want to do something. But what actually needs to happen is self-reflection, a process that’s going to take place over generations. Education will play a role, and I’m really trying to push for planning education to include Indigenous issues (excuse the vagueness of that) in the accredited planning program, but it really has to start with every individual confronting their own prejudices and taking themselves to a place of discomfort.

place, and the deeper we go into place, the more consciousness we can realize. If we really practise rigorously and work on embodiment instead of disembodiments, then it’ll be okay…

CM: People who assert objective knowing have to have a lot of feelings about the validity of objective knowing. They have a lot of feelings that it’s a right way to see the world. So I’m, like, okay, how about you tell me about your feelings about objective knowing, and then we can go underneath your claim to objective knowing, where there is a bunch of other confusion, and disembodiments, which, of course, is what colonialism will do. It’s a process of disembodiment. It disembodies everybody, if everybody thinks in a colonial paradigm.

CMF: For people who want to start undoing the narrative about this place that some of us call Canada, a good place to start is to read the report on the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, a massive report that was done in 1996. It was commissioned out of the conflict at Oka. You can read it in sections; it’s accessible, and compelling. You can learn about the treaty-making that happened before settlers arrived, the treaty-making that happened in Europe, and then the treatymaking that happened between.

If you have an emotional integrity, you will get to that understanding. Which is precisely why if we create emotional geographies and look at moral landscapes, if we look at the landscape in a different way, then we can see that we have various outpouring of truths and emotions from all people who live here.

I think that’s what reconciliation is asking for: emotional integrity and moral integrity. And fostering inner knowing is the right thing to do for all people. Knowledge will emerge if we go to a space of integrity. We’ll find the knowledge about how to plan or how to do things.

It’s like we’re still failing the treaty, and we’re still doing colonialism. Because it puts Indigenous people in the place of dismantling colonialism; it forces Indigenous people into doing the work alone. And that’s not the premise of the treaty in any way.

People are connected to place, and there are very intense emotions people have with

When people are honest and have honest, rigorous inner knowing, they will willingly step away from colonial processes. I really believe that. And they would have their moral imagination to see something else if they made the inner space to see and to know. Instead of just always doing colonial imagining.

Treaty-making is a part of all of our history, and we need to open our eyes and re-learn what should be our national narrative. And treaties should be a part of our narrative of this country and this space, however you understand it. And so I would urge you to read that. For a start.

[This conversation took place on November 30, 2016, as part of the dialogue series Indigenize or Die, curated by Kevin Best, held in Toronto. For more information on the series, visit www.unifytoronto.ca.]

BIOS/ Clara MacCallum Fraser is the co-executive director of Shared Path Consultation

Initiative, an Indigenous-non-Indigenous

organization that raises awareness around

urban planning and Aboriginal and treaty

rights through workshops and research.

Her research, entitled “Imagining Planning Futures: urban planning as fulfillment of treaty,” focuses on the intersection of

urban planning and Aboriginal and treaty rights, with a particular focus on

Anishinaabe Nations in Ontario. In seeking to make reconciliation a part of her life, Clara is learning about treaties and her

own responsibilities to those treaties as a settler person, in particular those over

Toronto and the eastern shores of Georgian Bay, where she grew up and currently resides.

Christine Migwans holds a masters degree in Indigenous studies from Trent University.

She has worked extensively with Indigenous peoples in Canada and Thailand. She is interested in reconciliation through

Indigenous education, transforming the moral fabric of the country, and treaty ethics and philosophy.

Where Darkness and Light Meet

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The concept for the Oman Botanic Garden has remained constant since the inception of the project: to present the native plants of Oman, along with the cultivated plants that tell their own story of human development, in a series of scientifically accurate, habitatbased displays. The seven terrestrial habitats of Oman will each be represented, with their unique plants and landscape features taking centre stage.

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The light-responsive design of Oman Botanic Garden Text by Andrew B. Anderson

Oman is a country we hear very little about.

As a result, this ecologically diverse and stunningly beautiful country, perched on the edge of the western shores of the Indian Ocean, is one of the world’s best-kept secrets. While I generally like to keep it that way, the natural and cultural heritage of Oman is worth sharing.

With high mountains that rise more than 3,000 metres from the coastal plains, beguiling sand dunes, vast escarpments that expose the geological history of the planet, gravel plains that burst into bloom with the spring rains, lush green wadis (valleys), and one of the world’s most unusual ecosystems—the monsoon-influenced sub-tropical cloud forest of Dhofar—the seven terrestrial habitats of Oman are as varied as they are beautiful and scientifically significant. The country is home to nearly 1,400 native plant species, with very high numbers of endemic plants that grow nowhere else on earth. This quiet corner of Arabia is the living laboratory where the plants of Asia and the plants of Africa have mixed over the ages to create a native flora of global scientific value.

In recognition of the ecological significance of the native plants of Oman and an ancient agricultural heritage that goes back uninterrupted to the very beginnings of domestication, the Sultan of Oman initiated the development of Oman Botanic Garden (OBG) by Royal Decree in 2005. Since then, a growing team of botanists, ecologists, ethnobotanists, horticulturists—and me, a landscape architect who joined the team in 2011—has been scouring the country, documenting the ecological conditions, discovering species new to science, and collecting seeds to grow, for the first time in cultivation, the native plants of the entire country. It’s a tall order.

Simultaneously, the OBG team has been working with a huge array of consultants to design the project. Working with landscape architects, architects, engineers of every description, interpretation designers, graphic designers, soil scientists, plant physiologists, irrigation designers, to name but a few, we have been hard at work designing what promises to be a scientific and cultural institution of international significance. With more than 10,000 construction drawings ready to be put to good use, the project is about to start construction.

The botanic garden will be built in one of the hottest capital cities in the world: Muscat.

Despite soaring summer temperatures and humidity levels in Muscat, the plants from five of the seven terrestrial habitats are naturally adapted to these harsh conditions and will be planted in outdoor gardens and in surrounding amenity areas. However, the plants from the southern mountains and from the northern mountains will require climate-controlled interior environments in order to survive the long, hot Muscat summers.

The plants of the northern mountains, including Mediterranean-inspired juniper and olive woodlands, will be housed in a glass biome that emulates the colder, drier montane conditions. The biome has been sited to minimize solar gain while providing the light levels that the plants require to flourish.

The plants of the southern mountains include some of the rarest and most exotic plants on earth. Naturally occurring in a narrow band of escarpments that faces the southern Arabia Sea, and inundated by the annual Indian Ocean monsoon, these are the plants that make up the mysterious cloud forest of Dhofar. Once the monsoon season has passed, the cloud forest—dripping wet and swirling with fog for three months of the year—reverts back to hyper-arid conditions.

In order to provide the plants of this habitat with the unique conditions they require to survive, one of the world’s technical marvels is about to come to fruition: the Oman Botanic Garden southern biome. The sweeping curves and undulating design of the biome are impressive in and of themselves, however the story of the design of this structure demonstrates how light and landscape can influence the design of buildings. The biome contains five distinct habitat zones, with each of those habitat zones sub-divided into scientifically accurate sub-habitat zones. With a public display area of more than 7,500m2—in addition

Where Darkness and Light Meet

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to back-of-house facilities, teaching facilities, a café, and various public amenities—nearly 65 percent of the biome footprint is dedicated to the coastal and escarpment cloud forest plant communities, with the remaining 35 percent of the biome showcasing drier, sunnier inland habitats.

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and will provide the added benefit of “exercising” the plants to mimic natural exposure to wind. Unlike most “glasshouses” of the world, this one will be harnessing the power of the sun through photovoltaic panels and a solar array to provide a cool, dark monsoon environment for part of the year, for part of the biome, while still providing the plants of drier, sunnier interior habitats with the light levels they require. Fixed exterior louvres—specific to the annual solar cycle of Muscat—and mechanically retractable interior shading systems will allow for daily customization of light levels within the biome throughout the year. The southern biome is on track to qualify for LEED platinum designation.

The design of the biome—and the landscapes contained within, including plateaus, undulating rocky plains, and a dramatic interior escarpment emulating that of the Dhofar cloud forest—necessitated a collaborative approach between the scientific team of the Oman Botanic Garden and the landscape architects, architects, engineers, and interpretation designers. Many workshops and site visits were required for the entire team to understand the design implications of the deceptively simple fact that plants require energy in the form of sunlight in order to facilitate the production of carbohydrates from carbon dioxide and water. The chemical energy produced by this photosynthetic process fuels plant respiration and the production of roots, stems, leaves, and flowers.

Of all the radiation that hits the surface of the earth, only certain wavelengths are useful to plants. While plants favour a band of frequencies similar to those used for human vision—the visible light spectrum—plants absorb a higher percentage of energy in the red and blue ends of the spectrum.

While Goethe’s theory of the constitution of the colours of the spectrum first suggested that “colour appears where light and darkness meet,” the design of the southern

biome is fundamentally based on light. The tropical greens of the cloud forest plants and even the delicate white blooms of the famed frankincense tree will put on their seasonal show for all to enjoy thanks to a detailed understanding of the light requirements of an entire ecosystem, and how to translate this into the design of a unique built enclosure. In this case, form doesn’t just follow function, but form follows spectrum.

BIO/ oman-based Andrew B. Anderson is a landscape architect and world heritage expert, former chair of the Ground Editorial Board, and a long-time member of the

Ground Advisory Panel.

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Rendering of the southern biome escarpment cloud forest interior at the Oman Botanic Garden

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Andrew B. Anderson

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Baobab tree in southern Oman

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Andrew B. Anderson

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Low light levels and lush green vegetation of the monsoon

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Andrew B. Anderson

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Rendering of the southern biome, Oman Botanic Garden

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Andrew B. Anderson

The roof height of the southern biome undulates based on the tree heights of each of the sub-habitats sheltered beneath its glass. At its highest point, the biome will enclose soaring 25-metre-tall baobab trees (Adansonia digitata) that will emerge from an endemic forest of Anogeissus dhofarica trees. The siting, orientation, and technical design of the biome is entirely dedicated to providing the plants with the optimal light intensity and spectral distribution, while minimizing solar gain.

Natural ventilation in the cool winter months will eliminate the need for mechanical cooling

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Listening to the Public Pulse Moderated by Eric Gordon, oala

BIOS/

Geordie Adams is the president of PubliVate, a collaborative engagement company that specializes in innovation and collaboration management, community engagement, crowdsourcing, innovation and engagement strategy and planning, business architecture, performance management, and e-consultation.

Joshua Barndt is the development coordinator at the Parkdale Neighbourhood Land Trust—a community land trust led by residents and organizations trying to protect the social, cultural, and economic diversity of Parkdale, in Toronto, by redefining how land is used and developed.

[See Ground 34, pages 4-5, for an article on the Parkdale Neighbourhood Land Trust.]

Danielle Davis is a landscape designer with Tocher Heyblom Design Inc. Davis is also the artistic director of the Citiesalive podcast, which aims to facilitate planning dialogue and mobilize grassroots planning efforts by offering citizens a vehicle to share their stories and be inspired by others.

Eric Gordon, OALA, is a Ground Editorial Board member and principal at Optimicity, a Torontobased landscape architecture and urban design practice that aims to maintain a diverse project portfolio that reflects an effort to solve urban and landscape problems of all sorts.

Glynis Logue is a Guelph-based environmental designer with a diverse background in science, art, and wellness. She is the founder and principal of LOGUE land studio, where she creates healing landscapes and bio-inspired architecture to address pressing issues such as human aging, physical health, and land degradation. She also was a co-founding member and executive director of a guelph environmental non-profit organization for 12 years.

Erin Moroz is the director of community relations and communications for regional express rail at Metrolinx, where she and her team conduct countless public engagement events using a variety of methods and tools to address their unique constituency.

Shawn Watters, OALA, is a Ground Editorial Board member based in Wellington County, where he is a Councillor in the regional government.

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Mobile-based engagement strategies make participation quick and easy.

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Geordie Adams

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Eric Gordon (EG): Public engagement is an often required or necessary step in landscape planning or urban design projects.

The process has some important, enduring questions: who are we engaging? Who are we not reaching? And what are the consequences of this gap?

Erin Moroz (EM): I am going to describe myself as a translator because I work predominantly with engineers through the community engagement process. One thing that’s really struck me is that you get such a variety of input depending on where people are coming from and how they experience something. For example, I had one person who was actually not involved in the project say to me, I don’t care if you run coal trains out to Guelph, we just need more train service. And then a few kilometres down the track, someone is saying, we want the trains electrified.

I think there’s a distinction between education and providing information. You should never presume that someone needs to be educated, or even that someone’s perspective on a project, irrespective of full information, doesn’t have value. They may be coming at it from a really specific, localized place, but that may still have great value. When my staff talk about needing to educate people on a certain matter, I correct them: we’re not educating, we’re providing information.

We need to be very respectful of the people we’re engaging with.

EG: What are some of the best approaches for broad-spectrum engagement, in terms of bringing in as many people or as many voices as possible?

Geordie Adams (GA): if you can start with objectives and outcomes, and use that as the scaffolding by which you build your

engagement, and then if you engage early, and if you make sure there’s something in there for everyone, then chances are you will have a good engagement.

What’s important in almost all the engagements we do is that there’s a level of transparency, which removes some of the prepositioning that might be done by participants or by the sponsors. Everyone can see what everyone else is doing. For a lot of things we do, all of the user-generated data is there for everyone to see. From that perspective, it’s about as clean as you can get in terms of someone being worried that the dialogue is somehow being bent in a certain way.

Shawn Watters (SW): People will get engaged if there’s an issue that’s close to their heart—for example, a development across from their house or something they feel may personally affect them. But typically,

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The Parkdale Neighbourhood Land Trust is a community development organization that is controlled and run by local residents.

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Parkdale Neighbourhood Land Trust

they expect politicians to look after those issues. I don’t think it’s a good idea to leave it up to a few individuals to make decisions on the future of your community.

EG: One of the perceptions of engagement is that a person’s voice will not be heard or that all the feedback gets shelved and there’s no action.

GA: There’s a core piece of work we try to do right at the very beginning, in the planning stages. We ask the client what they’re planning to do with all the great data, ideas, and insights we’re generating.

EG: What strategies or techniques can we use to support key groups who might be in minority groups—whether it be physical, racial, or socio-economical definitions—how do we identify them and support them through the engagement process or design process?

EM: I think you have to identify stakeholders, you have to look at a project and understand where maybe someone’s not being represented and do your best to seek them out. But you might be making assumptions about how they want to be engaged or why.

I worked for a school board and things were translated for some parents; we thought that might be helpful but what came back was that they were insulted that it wasn’t in English, because they had moved to Canada and they wanted to be treated as Canadians, quote unquote, and get the same materials as everyone else was getting.

Glynis Logue (GL): One of the biggest challenges we’re facing right now is to really give marginalized communities the empowerment to be the centre of some of our hardest problem-solving events. It’s important to allow different perspectives to come together so that you can create rich solutions. Co-design

is an interesting new way of thinking. When the main user is a child, you don’t set up your meeting for 7pm at night—you go out into their community. You spend time with them. You become fully engaged in their needs and behaviours, and then you start to get true solutions coming to the surface. It requires that you shift how you design, who does the designing.

I’ve always called myself an environmental designer, and that’s partly because it evades classification. It has allowed me to work in a trans-disciplinary way. Because we require so much innovation, other people become partners in the design.

Joshua Barndt (JB): So many residents in Parkdale [a low-income neighbourhood in Toronto] have expressed their mistrust of mainstream consultative activities and opportunities, such as community meetings, when there’s a development proposal application for a condo developer, or a consultation on a particular new policy piece. People in this community have attended so many events over the years where they contributed their two cents and have continued to see the neighbourhood change and policy come out that doesn’t serve them. Toronto is increasingly an unaffordable city and the development that’s been approved by city planners continues to not serve the interests of low-income individuals. So there’s a huge amount of distrust just on that level.

It’s important to remember that a lot of people don’t attend these events because they don’t believe their voices are being heard or that what they contribute will actually lead to substantive, meaningful change.

One good example is that when community members are invited out to meetings about condo development applications, their comments don’t actually have any formal

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power or influence in the process because even the councillors’ or city planners’ opinions or decisions can be overruled by the Ontario Municipal Board. So people are disappointed by their lack of legitimate influence in the development process. Really what you have there is manipulation and therapy, where people come assuming that their voice will be meaningfully heard and in fact they have no real agency towards the outcome.

What we can do, though, is substantial. In every neighbourhood, we can build local resident-run organizations that residents can trust, that are going to involve them in development decisions in meaningful ways, and by involving people in organizations that are resident-run, we can build back residents’ trust and start to organize development processes that are more respectful of what low-income and vulnerable people need and want.

In Parkdale, we‘ve created a community land trust—a community development organization that is community controlled and run.

Our board is elected by other residents and made up of residents, and so we are actually actively participating in organizing community-led development activity. We start by talking to residents about what they need, and then build proposals out of that, to respond to local needs. There are massive opportunities for resident participation when you begin speaking to people before you determine what the project will be.

EG: Are there new technologies that can facilitate the engagement process?

Danielle Davis (DD): New York City made avatars, based on the demographics of the city, and compiled little narratives for them. Then they ran their plan through these different people—or personas, as

A French student poster from 1968: “I participate, you participate, he participates, we participate, you participate… they profit.”

Creative Commons

they called them. The City of Toronto is doing that for their TO Core planning process, as well. When you start thinking about a traffic problem, for instance, the first people you consider are the drivers, right? But when you go through your cheat sheet of twelve avatars…

EG: Three of them cycle to work…

DD: Exactly. Now, how does that frame your decision?

GA: We do something that’s somewhat similar in that we have used a lot of the data to do some intricate scenarios. These are based on what we’ve heard and seen from public engagement, and the scenarios basically make up about ninety percent of what came out of that dialogue. We call it “use cases.” We’re doing an engagement right now that has about ten different use cases—two primary ones and eight secondary ones. We will literally bring in actual individuals who represent those use cases to test what we’re building before we take it live and into the public domain. We ask them: did we miss anything, did we get it right?

DD: What I like about the avatars is that each one has a story and it’s a story about how a real person experiences something.

And so it helps build empathy and helps me understand other people’s perspectives a little better.

JB: Empathy is key to engagement. The way we set up engagement activities or discussions or consultations can create opportunities for people to have a collective experience by which they build empathy.

Their position may be informed by the process of hearing other voices in the room, and I think there’s a benefit to that.

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GL: There’s a whole movement now around empathic design. I didn’t really realize that I was using empathic design, but most of my projects have required the designer to start off as the listener, and this means that you’re emphasizing what is the emotional ecology of the project. Using that perspective suggests that you have to suspend your designer intentions sometimes. You can’t necessarily impose what you think is best.

You have to sit back and allow all the different points of view so that you can gain intuitive insight to then get to the heart of what will become the ways to motivate a socially engaged place.

JB: We recently did a consultation regarding the first affordable housing being built

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in Parkdale for decades. We had already done community planning to identify three priority housing needs: supportive housing, senior housing, and affordable family housing. So we started the discussion by having speakers—residents who are in current need of each of those forms of housing—at the beginning of the activity, and then the discussion was informed by that. That was a formal way to introduce an empathetic framework by which people begin the process by hearing people’s stories. People are changed by the collective experience, and then the recommendations they offer generally attempt to accommodate the other person. I think it added to people’s understanding, and then therefore to their commitment to finding a creative solution.

As well, we had a lot of recommendations about intergenerationality being an important design framework for affordable housing, which we hadn’t heard when we just asked a question about what affordable housing should look like. But from having people listen to and hear each other, a new discourse emerged as a core design theme.

GL: The empathic design movement is quite recent. Because of the complexity of our cities, starting from an emotional perspective can garner a level of collective interest and ownership that we need. I’ve been doing a number of projects that use art as an avenue to introduce completely new types of dialogue around tough questions, and it’s fascinating because artists rarely start from the problem or from a negative starting point. Instead, it’s often a nonsensical or poetic starting point. And somehow, through ingenious ways, it can spark modes of dialogue and get people engaged to participate and encourage fundamental shifts in what’s possible in place-making.

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DD: We often try to explain things with facts and figures, but stories have a way of telling things in an emotional way. And that helps to build empathy and helps people care more. What I love about podcast media is that storytelling is a very basic form of communication. Stories give order to disjointed events and help people see different perspectives and how they come together. It’s important for city building because city building is complicated.

There was an interesting project in Australia, where they were doing neighbourhood plans, and they found key people in the neighbourhood and helped them learn how to make videos and podcasts. And then these people in the community went and collected stories from other people in their neighbourhood. So in the end they had this huge collection of stories, and the stories were used as data for the plans. But they also broadcasted all the stories to a website, and each one was associated with a point on the map. It helped a lot of people learn about the neighbourhood and helped break some of the stereotypes. It’s the locals who are determining what’s of interest, as opposed to an outsider coming in and trying to guess whose stories are important.

EM: There’s engagement, and then there’s engagement—there’s still nothing like a face to face conversation. We still do a lot of door knocking, door to door. And if no one’s home, we leave something at their door that says sorry we missed you, and my staff put their business card in it. People like to know that you’ve been there. They like to know that you’ve put in the elbow work to try to get in touch with them. Also, when people are happy with what’s happening, they don’t come out to meetings. It doesn’t mean that they don’t want to talk about it if you were to knock on their door or send them a survey.

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That’s when some other tools become very helpful to supplement and get a better idea of how to make your project responsive to community.

EG: Do you think it’s possible to hold an engagement process without framing a discussion in some sort of biased fashion?

DD: I’m working on a park design right now and we’re supposed to be doing inclusive design, but at the same time, we have to design in a very specific way. For example, we have to design the seat walls so that homeless people can’t sleep on them…It’s so that parents feel okay about their kids going to the park. To make it inclusive, we make it exclusive.

EM: When you engage with the public, you see all the best parts of the public and humanity, and then you often see the not so best parts. On one project I was working on, people didn’t want anyone sleeping under the bridge, so that became a big issue for the community—to design it so that no one can actually take shelter there.

SW: Big changes are coming to Ontario in terms of accessibility. These aren’t issues only for a person in a wheelchair. It’s children, it’s elderly, it’s people who have disabilities, it’s a big group. The idea of universal accessibility is a really important thing. It just makes your community better.

In some ways, governments are handling it a little bit better than the private sector is.

They’ve come to the realization that they have to do this in terms of public buildings.

But we’re finding a little bit of pushback from the development industry because they’re used to doing things in certain ways. It’s a matter of attitudes changing, being more accepting as a community.

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EG: What are your metrics for deciphering feedback and weighing it?

GA: It depends on the type of tool you use to undertake the dialogue. In some cases, we will incorporate different ratings schemes on the user side so that the original idea as well as suggested improvements by other participants are all rated by the community. And that will give you one indicator in terms of how the community and the crowd prioritize input.

We also have different mechanisms that we use. Often we’ll create a campaign team, sometimes a review team, that might include some of those land development officials that have more insight and understanding around aspects of the topic than perhaps the participants do, such as budget or regulatory elements—things that might impact some of the ideas put forward by the broader community. And we’ll go through a secondary review. Often you’ll use the community’s prioritization to review the top hundred ideas in the eyes of the crowd and take those to a secondary panel.

GL: I use accountability as one of the most important measures of success. After every project, I go back and look at the criteria that was developed to make sure it has had a positive impact. I think that’s just a code of ethics that we need as designers. At the end of the day, our designs must function as intended.

EM: Measuring engagement is difficult because you have to start by drawing some assumptions about what different metrics mean. Bodies in a room isn’t always the best measure of how many people feel engaged. If I’ve been in their neighbourhood, if my team’s been out having one on one conversations, I actually assume that’s

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going to diminish the number who come out to the public meetings because people have had their questions answered.

EG: A loaded question: is the public always right?

GA: The community is not necessarily aware of everything that’s going on around them. Maybe there are budget issues they’re not aware of. But as long as you meet them in the middle and are doing a sincere engagement where you really do want them to participate and inform aspects of your end objective, then you’ll be fine. And if the number one thing they come up with conflicts with what you want, as long as you meet them head on and inform them, I think most people understand that.

SW: If people are getting good information, they can make quality decisions.

You’ve got to find the balance between information from elected officials, planners, and consultants. Where I’ve seen things go off the rails a bit is if there’s already an internal decision and the information is manipulated.

GL: Everything’s connected. We are living in a very complex system, and it motivates us to search for new ways of thinking and new answers. We’re no longer necessarily just the designer. We are often having to offer the citizen a seat at the table where they become a designer, too. That doesn’t mean any citizen can design. If you get citizens at the front end of design to be excited to contribute and develop the solutions, I think you’re going to be looking at a future that’s full of vibrant, healthy people and places.

As designers we carry a full suite of skills to navigate from beginning to end in a

multi-stakeholder situation so we can play the adapter role, jump into facilitator, perhaps be designer, and actually move seamlessly through as a team to help people get to where they need to go. They don’t necessarily need to have all that knowledge themselves. As designers we can really be bottom-up in the way we approach problem solving but also be a leader to get the problem to its richest end goal.

JB: At any given engagement event, you speak to a small number of people, and even through a protracted, long process you’re still not speaking to everyone. And even when you’re speaking to people, their opinion may change in the process. We have to be careful not to assume that just because we’ve heard particular things from certain people that they represent the public. They represent the people you engaged or you involved in the process at that given moment, and you can use that information to try to create a design or a project that meets the needs you heard. But I think that, over time, there’s the opportunity to engage residents in longer-term processes and in organizations that can develop their capacity to more meaningfully contribute, to have the information they need to contribute in really valuable and dynamic ways. But, is the public always right? I don’t know. What do you think?

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Text by Clement Kent

One of the best ways we can remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere is by adding carbon to the soil as humus or organic matter—easier by far than pumping CO2 into deep rocks, for example. As former Environmental Commissioner of Ontario Gord Miller notes, “Creating healthy soils that contain high amounts of carbon and embed carbon dioxide to make the soils rich and productive is something we have to do.”

But, as Miller also notes, “We’re not good at that in Ontario.”

The trick is to be radical, in the deepest root meaning of the word. Carbon stored in wood is easy to measure, but what is stored in the soil for the longest is the carbon added to the soil by the delicate interplay between roots, fungi, and bacteria. The area of roots underground can be up to ten times larger than the area of leaves aboveground; this root area is dwarfed, in turn, by the enormous network of threadlike mycelia of soil fungi. These fungi are mostly collaborators, rather than pathogens, for plant roots. Roots exude energy as carbon-rich sugars and, in exchange, fungi provide nitrogen, phosphorus, and minerals to the roots. Fungi, in turn, are eaten by bacteria, worms, and many other soil denizens that turn the root sugars into carbon-rich humus.

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The Soil Spectrum

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Recent scientific studies show that the world’s soils could store an extra 8 billion tons of greenhouse gases—up to 80 percent of what we produce by burning fossil fuels. But we need to shift what we plant. Eric Toensmeier’s 2016 book, The Carbon Farming Solution, focuses on this issue from an agricultural viewpoint. He shows how mixed plantings of trees and row crops or pastures improve soil carbon levels rapidly. The same ideas apply to the designed landscape.

Root depth and permanence are two of the biggest pro-carbon storage aspects of plants. Typical lawn grasses go 3 to 6 inches deep, while a native meadow species such as buffalo grass (Bouteloua dactyloides) can reach an astonishing 8 feet deep in welldrained soil. Tree roots go down 3 to 6 feet in most cases. (However, while doing repairs on my basement floor this winter I found very healthy roots 8 feet down in my sandy subsoil.) Shrubs such as common ninebark (Physocarpus opulifolius) have reached depths of 15 feet.

Planting for root depth is great for the ease of maintaining landscapes. Choose species with deep roots; be sure to break up construction-compacted subsoil; and if you need to water, do so deeply but less often. Deep roots keep leaves fresh in our increasingly hot and dry summers, without the cost of watering systems, and greatly increase the longevity and health of plants.

And, if your design has a greensward or lawn, products such as Eco-Lawn from Wildflower Farm can look spectacular in the midst of a hot August with no watering.

Not only does this save water, but mowing frequency can be much reduced, the lawn can be full of flowers that attract butterflies and birds, and the all-native seed mix will reach as deep as the soil permits. Imagine telling a client that their lawn will mitigate climate warming at the same time as it reduces maintenance costs.

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Mycelium Kirill Ignatyev

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Ectomycorrhizal mycelium associated with white spruce roots

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Switchgrass roots

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Earthworms have a huge impact on soil.

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Andre Picard

The Land Institute

Schizoform

Perennials, shrubs, and trees keep permanent roots deeper in the soil, and that allows carbon to enter the soil more deeply and be retained much longer. A live soil is a living, breathing ecosystem in which nutrient exchange (including carbon-rich sugars) among collaborating partners is in constant flow.

In The Hidden Life of Trees, forester Peter Wohlleben tells fascinating stories of how trees cooperate with each other via their roots and fungal partners. From his long experience and from scientific experiments, he notes that pairs or triplets of trees of the same species will intermingle their roots and share nutrients. So, when space permits, aim to create small clusters of trees or shrubs rather than individual specimens, and they will establish better and live longer.

Cornelia Hahn Oberlander, BCSLA, received the inaugural Governor General’s Medal in Landscape Architecture in the fall of 2016. In a commencement address to graduates of the Ontario Agricultural College, she emphasized our responsibility to care for the planet: “The scale of these environmental challenges demands that we alter our designs and attitudes throughout the land. The planet is finite and land is a resource, not a commodity.” One of the ways we can care for the land is to design with soil health as a priority.

BIO/ Clement Kent, Ph.D., is a researcher in

bee genomics at York University, an avid gardener, and past president of the Horticultural Societies of Parkdale and Toronto.

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a more direct, more proactive, and arguably more enforceable approach to regulating what outdoor spaces get built in Ontario.

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Deconstructing barriers for people with disabilities Text by Phil Pothen, Barrister & Solicitor

This article provides an overview of the Design of Public Spaces Standards regulation, and does not constitute legal advice. Practitioners with questions about the application of the standards, or any other legal matter, should contact a lawyer directly.

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Trails often have multiple barriers to accessibility.

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Creative Commons

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Wheelchair on accessible ramp

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Creative Commons

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Tactile paving

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Creative Commons

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Ramp stairs

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Beau Lebens

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Beginning in 2013, a broad and expanding swathe of landscape architectural practice has become subject to Ontario’s Design of Public Spaces Standards. These standards, which form part of a regulation enacted under the Accessibility for Ontarians With Disabilities Act, aim to make public spaces more accessible by proactively imposing technical specifications, performance benchmarks, and procedures that are less likely to exclude, restrict, or otherwise disadvantage people with disabilities.

Like the accessibility standards for employment, communications, and transportation, the Design of Public Spaces Standards balance the moral imperative of equality for people with disabilities with physical and economic constraints. They are also crafted to reconcile accessibility with the wide range of environmental and socio-cultural values and objectives that are manifested in our public spaces.

The Design of Public Spaces Standards respond to the reality that it is often discriminatory design decisions that “disable” people in the built environment. While prohibitions on built form which discriminates against people with disabilities are not entirely new, the Design of Public Spaces Standards represent

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Ontario’s Human Rights Code enshrines a right to “equal treatment with respect to services, goods and facilities, without discrimination because of...disability.” The Human Rights Code’s definition of discrimination includes any “factor” that results in the exclusion or restriction of persons with a disability, and adjudicators have long held that a physical barrier can qualify. However, the impact of this right on restrictive or exclusionary landscape form has arguably been limited by the onerous procedure for enforcing it, and by the vagueness of its exceptions.

By contrast, the Design of Public Spaces Standards provide clearer prescriptions, which, in many cases, take the form of precise technical specifications. For example, with respect to boardwalk components of recreational trails and beach access routes, the standards prescribe a minimum clear width of 1m, a minimum clear height of 2.1m, a maximum running slope of 1:20, and a 50mm maximum width for any openings.

For other spaces, the regulation provides a performance standard. For example, 20 percent of tables in outdoor eating areas are required to “have clear ground space around them that allows” people using mobility aids “a forward approach to the tables.” In still other cases (e.g., outdoor play spaces), technical specifications and performance standards are combined with mandatory consultations to ensure that the needs of users with disabilities are identified and addressed.

The Design of Public Spaces Standards are, further, designed to be enforced actively. The Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act provides for the appointment of inspectors, as well as directors who can order compliance with the Design of Public Spaces Standards and impose administrative penalties of up to $100,000 in total, depending on the severity of impact, the history of the contravention, the number of days it continued, and the nature of the obligated organization.

Unlike the Human Rights Code, the standards apply only to public spaces and landscape elements that are being “newly developed or redeveloped.” Generally speaking, this

Business Corner

means that they are unlikely to require affected organizations to redesign and rebuild public spaces for the purpose of bringing them into compliance. Ordinary maintenance activities, such as minor repairs or painting aimed at restoring a space or element to its prior condition, should not, generally speaking, trigger or engage the standards.

Limited Scope The Design of Public Spaces Standards apply only to developments or redevelopments undertaken by Ontario’s government and legislature (after 2014), by municipalities and other “Designated Public Sector Organizations” (after 2015), or by organizations with more than fifty employees (after January 1, 2017). Only a few of the standards are intended to apply to smaller organizations, beginning January 1, 2018.

It is important to note that the standards permit deviations from their technical specifications to the extent that “it is not practicable to comply with the requirements, or some of them, because existing physical or site constraints prohibit modification or addition of elements, spaces or features.” This provision may be engaged, for example, where rocks bordering a recreational trail or beach access route impede achieving the prescribed minimum clear width.

Also relevant is the fact that the standards only apply to those facilities and spaces that an obligated organization still “intends to maintain.” This likely means that when an obligated organization decides to abandon or cease operating an old recreational trail, beach access route, picnic area, parking lot, or outdoor play space, it is not required to keep these spaces compliant with the standards. For example, the operator of a forested park should probably not fall afoul of Accessibility for Ontarians With Disabilities Act inspectors because it lets its abandoned walking trails deteriorate and “return to nature” gradually, rather than demolishing them actively.

Reconciling Values and Priorities The Design of Public Spaces Standards regime is structured to avoid undermining the environmental and cultural objectives that make the creation of public spaces and public access desirable in the first place. For

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example, many public spaces, from provincial parks to forested urban ravines, exist at least in part to advance objectives such as habitat continuity or the preservation of “unspoiled” wilderness, and these objectives could be undermined by installing ramps, re-grading, or widening and upgrading trails and boardwalks. To avoid such outcomes:

into full compliance with new standards.

Such disincentives are likely avoided by way of two carve-outs from the definition of “redeveloped” that exclude “environmental mitigation” or “environmental restoration.”

Because of these carve-outs, the Design of Public Spaces Standards should not be engaged by:

• the standards regulation permits such deviations from its prescriptions and performance standards as are necessary to avoid significant risk of direct or indirect adverse effects upon water, fish, wildlife, plants, invertebrates, species at risk, ecological integrity, or natural heritage values, or any risk of direct or indirect damage to the natural heritage of a UNESCO World Heritage Site;

• “activities that are intended to reduce, mitigate, prevent or compensate for adverse effects of human activities or items, including paths, play spaces, trails and parking, upon fish, wildlife, plants, invertebrates, species at risk, ecological integrity or natural heritage values”;

• separately, “wilderness trails, backcountry trails, and portage routes” are exempted altogether from the technical standards prescribed for recreational trails and beach access routes generally.

The Design of Public Spaces Standards are also subject to exceptions and exemptions that are designed to protect cultural and historic features. As with environmental values, standards may be deviated from as necessary to prevent them from: • affecting the preservation of places set apart as National Historic Sites of Canada by the Minister of the Environment for Canada under the Canada National Parks Act; • affecting the historic interest or significance of historic places marked or commemorated under the Historic Sites and Monuments Act; • posing any risk of damage to the cultural heritage of a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

A related feature of the Design of Public Spaces Standards regulation is that it aims to avoid perverse impacts on active measures to advance environmental and broadly non-anthropocentric objectives. Obligated organizations might be deterred from modifying public spaces to create wildlife habitat, or to reduce the harm its parking facilities create for plants and animals, if this would trigger an obligation to bring a legacy facility

• “activities that are intended to benefit fish, wildlife, plants, invertebrates, species at risk, ecological integrity or natural heritage values.”

When compared with the Human Rights Code, which engages with the built form of public space in broad and general terms, the Design of Public Spaces Standards seem to provide much more guidance for landscape architects. However, the standards contain ambiguities of their own, perhaps the most important of which is the question: what constitutes public space? While the standards apply only to “public spaces,” the term is not defined. Regardless of how this and other questions are ultimately answered, the coming into force of the Design of Public Spaces Standards puts landscape form, and the professional judgement of Ontario landscape architects, more squarely in the view of law enforcement and public policy makers.

BIO/ Phil Pothen, JD, MLA, is a Toronto-based land-use planning and environmental lawyer who appears before the Ontario Municipal Board, Environmental Review Tribunal, Committee of Adjustment, Superior Court, the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario, and a range of other adjudicative tribunals.

He is a member of the Ground editorial board, and has a master’s degree in landscape architecture from the University of Toronto and a Juris Doctor from the Osgoode Hall Law School.

TO view additional content for this article, Visit www.groundmag.ca.

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Letter From…

Europe

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A month-long tour of European projects that address climate change adaptation and mitigation in effective and instructive ways 01-02/

Tredje Natur’s design for Saint Kjelds Square in Copenhagen incorporates green infrastructure to mitigate flooding.

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Tredje Natur

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The London-based organization Groundwork is working in partnership with the Borough of Hammersmith & Fulham to transform three housing estates into demonstration sites for affordable, light engineering climate change adaptation measures, including Sustainable Drainage Systems (SuDS).

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Mark Bentley

Text by James MacDonald-Nelson

Letter From…

Europe

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Finland, Sweden, Denmark, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom have all, to varying degrees, begun to address climate change adaptation in unique and inspiring ways. Through policy and practice, these countries have implemented strategies to rethink urban infrastructure, be responsive and adaptive to flooding, increase biodiversity, and reduce the amount of energy required to sustain an ever-expanding urban population. In order to find out more about these initiatives, I travelled to Europe in the summer of 2016 to speak with people and visit projects that have been built with climate change adaptation and mitigation in mind.

ARUP Foresight, produced a report called Cities Alive: Rethinking Green Infrastructure, which argues that cities must reintegrate natural processes through green infrastructure. This, Armour suggests, will create an adaptive functionality that embraces and works with the effects of a changing climate within the urban environment. Armour believes that this idea is starting to gain some traction in Europe.

Indeed, in November 2015, Europe hosted its first annual conference completely dedicated to urban green infrastructure.

I also spoke with Mark Bentley of the U.K.-based environmental organization Groundwork, which works across the spectrum of community-building, promotion of environmental sustainability, combatting climate change, and providing work training and experience for youth. Bentley, a landscape architect, has been working on an EU-funded demonstration project on a housing estate in southwest London. Here,

My first stop was London, where I spoke with Tom Armour, director of landscape architecture at the global engineering firm ARUP. In 2014, ARUP’s internal think-tank,

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Helsinki waterfront

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Tredje Natur

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his team retrofitted a number of housing blocks using some very basic, but effective, design strategies. Employing SuDS (Sustainable Urban Drainage Systems), the team installed green roofs and walls, bioswales, and rain gardens to better manage stormwater on site, and a monitoring system to demonstrate the impact of a few, seemingly small, design moves.

Bentley suggests that while it’s important to think of green infrastructure from a regional perspective, we must remember that working from the bottom up is often the first step, and that pilot projects such as this can, and must, lead to a wider application of this type of design and planning.

From England, I flew to Helsinki, Finland, where I took a long walk through the city’s central parks with Sirkku Juhola, a professor at Aalto University’s Department of the Built Environment. Sirkku explained that across the Nordic region, there is strong research collaboration between nations.

Finland, Sweden, Denmark, and Norway have established a research consortium called Nord-Star, which seeks to “enable Nordic stakeholders to design and implement successful adaptation policy and practice.” As deputy director of research for Nord-Star at Aalto, Sirkku heads a research panel that performs comparative policy and case analysis intended to influence planning policy across the region. Specifically, their research looks at how climate change adaptation and mitigation policy is funnelled through layers of governance at the city level and what effect that has on the build-out of projects. By conducting a comparative case-study analysis between

Letter From…

Europe

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environmental adaptation, and has won numerous design awards. Again, we see how adaptation and, in this case, mitigation, can begin to take form when intentions are clearly set. But a major aspect of adaptation must also include redesigning the existing urban fabric. For this I went to Copenhagen, where some very exciting things are happening.

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neighbourhood has emerged. The “City of Tomorrow,” as it is often called, was an ambitious plan to create a carbon-neutral zone in the city. The new neighbourhood uses progressive stormwater-management practices, 100 percent renewable energy, and efficient building design. It is often considered a leading example of

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Copenhagen and Helsinki, they have found that Copenhagen’s progressive policy has led to the support and implementation of projects built in the name of adaptation. Helsinki, on the other hand, is equally threatened by storm events and sea-level rise, but is slower in adopting such an approach. But, as Sirkku points out, it’s important to cross-examine policy and practice on a regional scale, so that countries can learn from each other and ultimately support the implementation of progressive design.

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After an insightful three days in Helsinki, I ventured to Sweden to continue my research, specifically in Malmö. Here, I had the opportunity to explore a part of the city called Västra Hamnen, the former western harbour, where a relatively new residential 09

Copenhagen’s maritime history is evident in the endless miles of harbourfront that surround the Danish capital. Much of this land is slowly being transformed into residential neighbourhoods, but the Danes have also made an effort to integrate miles of public space along the water. With this close relationship to the sea, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that the city has had its fair share of storm events, or cloudburst as they refer to them. Over the years, this has caused billions of dollars in damages, and the city has had to respond in innovative ways. In 2011, a massive storm flooded many parts of the city, including the western district of Østerbro. As a response, the city has committed to adaptation policy and practice.

An example is being led by a local landscape architecture firm, Tredje Natur (Third Nature), which proposed a design that will incorporate green infrastructural changes to better manage stormwater and mitigate damage caused by flooding while creating a more robust public realm by integrating these strategies into the streetscape and a new park. When I spoke with Ole Schrøder, one of the founding principals at Tredje Natur, he emphasized that we must adopt a “post-humanistic” approach to design,

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in the face of climate change. Ultimately, this trip taught me that there is no blueprint for adaptive design. Yes, we should look to other countries for inspiration, but mitigation and adaptation must be contextualized in order to truly work. As designers, we are constantly looking ahead and using our imagination to creatively change our physical environment. In doing so, we also have a responsibility to use our skills to positively impact the earth. Ecological systems and the built environment do not function separately, but rather in tandem, and it is imperative that we seek to integrate them so that they complement and enhance one another.

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and that leading with the landscape and the natural processes that we are a part of, is of the upmost importance. Reimagining how our cities can function now and into the future means we must put adaptation and resiliency at the top of the priority list. This philosophy underlies the firm’s approach to design and serves as an example of how we can begin to change our perception of the urban landscape.

Leaving the Nordic region, I spent some time in the Netherlands. The Dutch are well known for their innovative approach to water management, and you can see this as you fly into Schiphol Airport over the endless miles of agricultural lands that are divided by narrow canals. As the sunset shimmers off the water, you can make out the intricate network of waterways that forms an integrated management system. Once on the ground, it becomes clear that water is a central figure in the Dutch landscape, as canals trail alongside city streets, rail corridors, and between towns. Indeed, water has played a central role in the prosperity of the country, but it

BIO/ James MacDonald-Nelson graduated

from the University of Toronto’s MLA program at the John H. Daniels Faculty of

Architecture, Landscape, and Design in 2015.

Since graduating, James has been working

on an independently led research project

concerning climate change adaptation,

both at home and abroad, while working as a landscape designer in Toronto.

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has also dictated how planning and policy around water have taken shape over time.

For this reason, I spoke with Martin Knuijt of OKRA Landscape Architects in Utrecht.

OKRA has led the design of a number of coastal defence projects across the country. I spoke with Knuijt about a project in Katwijk, a small coastal town on the North Sea that integrates a series of dunes with buried dikes. This twenty-hectare system is intended to protect the town from storm surges while incorporating public space, an improved dune ecology, and underground parking for beach-goers.

As a country that is immensely vulnerable to water, the Netherlands has had to seek innovative ways—by working with nature—to account for urban growth and the natural elements that are integral to their landscape.

Over the course of a month, I had the opportunity to speak to some incredible people who offered invaluable insight on what we can do as landscape architects

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Bioswales and green roofs in the Västra Hamnen area of Malmö

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James MacDonald-Nelson

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Copenhagen waterfront

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James MacDonald-Nelson

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Boardwalk in Katwijk, a small coastal town on the North Sea in the Netherlands

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James MacDonald-Nelson

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The coastal defence plan in Katwijk integrates dunes and buried dikes.

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OKRA Landscape Architects

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ARUP head office, London

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James MacDonald-Nelson

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Ruthanne Henry, OALA, and Dalia Todary-Michael in conversation with Tom Ostler and Andrew Millward about green citybuilding data-collection and data visualization.

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ruthanne henry, oala, is chair of the Ground Editorial Board.

Andrew Millward is an Associate Professor of Geography and the principal investigator with the Urban Forest Research & Ecological Disturbance (UFRED) Group at Ryerson University in Toronto.

Tom Ostler was with the City of Toronto for 34 years and is now a planning consultant and part-time instructor in Ryerson’s School of Urban and Regional Planning.

Dalia Todary-Michael is a member of the Ground Editorial Board.

Ruthanne Henry (RH): Green city-building can mean many things—for example, increased sustainability through permeable surfaces, green infrastructure, and urban parkland, along with the equitable distribution of these green assets across diverse populations. Tom, can you tell me a bit about your background in data collection related to city-building, and give some examples of what the data was used for and why?

Tom Ostler (TO): Starting in the late 1970s, I helped establish the land-use information system for the City of Toronto, which tracked physical changes in the city and monitored new development applications by recording the size, height, number of buildings on site, site coverage, and other information.

Following amalgamation in 1998, it was challenging to collect data across the entire city, because the former municipalities were not tracking physical changes in that way.

But we sorted that out by implementing a system for collecting all of that data for development projects as they entered the approval stream.

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RH: What was that built-form information used for?

TO: It would provide density information at a site or block level, and data for analyzing physical trends in the city and how they relate to market activity. In terms of the office market, for example, the data would show how much office space had been built, and the City could marry that with our data collected from employment surveys in order to look at how space is actually utilized.

RH: Is built-form data compared to demographic/economic data in order to help determine whether some areas of the city might have greater needs for certain resources?

TO: The data are not comparable, but sometimes one can make inferences on a spatial basis. A key initiative for the city has been the designation of Neighbourhood Improvement Areas. This social development initiative overlays demographic data with data on social assistance rates and social services including housing-stock data from Toronto Community Housing Corporation, along with data that reflect social needs. When planning for improvements for these communities, one of the things City Planning can bring to the table is data about new development applications that are in the pipeline. One of the more interesting things was that in neighbourhoods where there were no development applications, there was little opportunity to leverage private sector initiatives to contribute to community benefits, but there were market interests, often on the edge of the communities, because they’re generally defined by arterial roads, and that’s where there was development interest.

RH: Andrew, can you talk about green citybuilding and the role of public education in relation to green city assets?

Andrew Millward (AM): For the past ten years, I’ve focused my research on urban forest-related interests and have used geographic data for the purpose of protecting and expanding nature in cities. With my training in computer-based mapping technologies, and in remote-sensing data interpretation, I’m working on bringing together social and environmental spatial data and asking questions oriented at further expanding the potential for equitable access to nature in cities. We’ve developed a web app that we

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Research Corner

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call Citytrees; at present, it’s a collaboration between Ryerson University and Codetuitive, a private-sector web development company.

The overall goal of the project is to enhance engagement with nature in our cities by providing people with a tool to explore trees in their neighbourhoods, and, where data related to trees is not available, giving people the opportunity, through a citizen-science-based platform, to add to an open access database of urban trees and their many attributes.

Citytrees functions in a variety of ways, one of which is fairly immersive in that it allows someone to use a mobile device, walk through a neighbourhood, and when you’re in a certain geographic proximity to a tree, it alerts you so you can explore the attributes of that tree, in addition to the environmental functions that that individual tree is providing.

We’ve worked closely with the U.S. Forest Service to integrate some of their models, mostly from the iTree suite of tools, to be able to feed various tree characteristics into the model, receive the environmental benefits back, and then populate our Citytrees application with the data. For the citizen-sciencecreated information, we have a somewhat more simplistic tool, with an estimator built in; so, if someone is able to measure the diameter (or DBH) of a tree and input the species name, we’re able to provide a very general estimate of the many environmental services that the tree is providing. Our intent is that by putting this tool in the hands of citizens and homeowners, we can raise awareness about the benefits of nature, which can lead to proactive stewardship initiatives.

Some of the other work my research group does is with satellite imagery, classifying this imagery according to tree cover characteristics and correlating these characteristics, spatially, with the sociodemographic characteristics of neighbourhoods as a means of investigating who has access to nature in cities.

RH: Your tool sounds very useful for community stewardship and neighbourhood forestry plans, such as Neighbourwoods, for example. You could use Citytrees if you were a BIA or an organization that wanted to do a Neighbourwoods community forestry plan.

AM: Citytrees has been designed in such a way that it requires a user to create an account. A BIA could create an account, for example, as a way to manage its trees and monitor their condition and delivery of environmental benefits. Currently, we have an operational prototype of Citytrees for most of Leslieville and Riverdale [neighbourhoods in Toronto] street tree data; so in theory someone could walk those streets and learn about all the street trees there. Our goal in 2017 is to migrate all of the City of Toronto street tree data—half a million trees—into Citytrees.

Citizens can also go and collect their own data on private property, such as in backyards, and contribute it to Citytrees. Such citizen-sourced data can then be used to build out the database, as private trees usually outumber public ones within cities. Citytrees data can also be made private (not visible to others), by its contributor, should such a requirement exist.

Dalia Todary-Michael (DTM): I’d like to ask about integration and visualization of the data.

Since there are two sources of data—information that you’ve collected and also information that people are contributing—what’s the extent of accuracy when it comes to empirical data and how you represent it?

AM: It’s important to stress that we’re in the development stage with Citytrees. With regard to data collection, and the accuracy of citizen-contributed data, our intention is that users are able to filter and visualize and make distinctions between the different sources of data. Although there is debate around the whole idea of citizen science and what if the data are wrong, our argument is that the fundamental reason for developing this tool is to try to engage more people around the value of nature in cities.

RH: You’re both working right now in academics. How important is collaboration with municipalities and academics around integration and application?

AM: Data liberation—making data available that was otherwise very difficult to ascertain— provides real-world examples to students. I think Canada is a little bit behind in terms of open data, so I’m really delighted to see that, especially in southern Ontario, and specifically in the Greater Toronto Area, we’re now gaining access to this sort of information.

Several of my graduate students are experimenting with City of Toronto massing data (which refers to building heights and all the different architectural specs of buildings) to produce shadow coverages, which can be useful in terms of urban trees that are sensitive to different amounts of sunlight.

It’s an interesting example of how that kind of architectural building data can fuse with decisions regarding green space.

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Mountain Equipment Co-op green roof, Toronto

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Jackman Chiu

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National biomass and carbon dataset, map by Robert Simmon, based on data from Woods Hole Research Center

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NASA Earth Observatory

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Tree measuring is a basic component of data gathering in the urban forest.

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Ollivier Girard

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Students collaborate on a geo-location exercise using GPS on their mobile phones.

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Connor Rowe

Notes

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Notes: A Miscellany of News and Events invasive species To slow the spread of emerald ash borer into new parts of Canada, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) is expanding areas regulated to control the movement of potentially infested materials to include the city of Thunder Bay. People who move regulated materials from regulated areas without the permission of the CFIA could face fines and/or prosecution. For more information, visit www.inspection.gc.ca.

climate change A newly formed nonpartisan grassroots network in the U.S., called Architects Advocate Action on Climate Change, has formed to work towards meaningful legislation to mitigate climate change.

For more information on this initiative and on members of the network, visit www.architects-advocate.com.

conferences “The North American Invasive Species Forum: Building Cooperation Across Borders,” a biennial conference encompassing the interests of professionals and organizations involved in invasive species management, research, and regulation in North America, will be held from May 9-11, 2017, in Savannah, Georgia. For more information, visit www.invasivespecies2017.org.

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books A recently published book, Experimenting Landscapes: Testing the Limits of the Garden (Birkhäuser, 2016), edited by Emily Waugh, focuses on the Métis International Garden Festival, held annually in Quebec, and features a selection of 25 of the more than 150 temporary gardens at the cutting edge of garden design and environmental art that have been been installed over the years at the festival. Grouped according to various conceptual frames, and with essays and descriptions by practitioners, the book offers a feast of ideas, provocations, and inspiration. Another recent book, Cities of Farmers: Urban Agricultural Practices and Processes (University of Iowa Press, 2016), a collection of essays edited by Julie C. Dawson and Alfonso Morales, explores the urban planning and built environment context of urban agriculture and includes a number of case studies.

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A recent book features 25 of the 150 temporary gardens exhibited at the Métis International Garden Festival since 2000.

Métis International Garden Festival

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infrastructure Now in its 5th year, “Grey to Green,” a conference that explores the most recent green infrastructure science, economic valuation, asset management, public policy developments, new technology, and best practices in design, installation, and maintenance, is being held in Toronto from May 8-10, 2017. This year’s theme is quantifying green infrastructure performance. For more information, visit www.greytogreenconference.org.

new members 05

The Ontario Association of Landscape Architects is proud to recognize and welcome the following new full members to the Association: Anita Bennell

Lacey Pearse *

Jeff Cutler

Mark Talarico

Jessie Elliot Brunning *

Ben Vander Veen

Rebecca Ellis *

Moira Wilson *

Karen Leasa *

Thomas Woltz

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awards

Andrea Mantin *

Asterisk (*) denotes Full Members without the use of professional seal.

04

art Grow Op, an annual urbanism, landscape, and contemporary art exhibition, will be held at the Gladstone Hotel in Toronto from April 20-23, 2017. As in past years, the show features the work of many artists in overlapping disciplines presenting challenging, provocative, humorous, and thoughtful explorations of landscape. For more information, visit www.gladstonehotel.com.

Nicolas Koff, a co-founder of Office OU, an emerging landscape/architecture practice based in Toronto, recently announced that Office OU’s proposal for the new National Museum Complex of South Korea (in collaboration with Korea’s Junglim Architecture) was selected as the winning design to be implemented, following an international design competition that received more than 80 entries from 26 countries.

For more information, visit www. nmcc2016.org/english/awards/ awards_04.asp.

transportation The Toronto Centre for Active Transportation recently published Active Transportation Planning Beyond the Greenbelt: The Outer Ring of the Greater Golden Horseshoe Region, a new book that profiles 13 recent projects that have improved conditions for walking and cycling in unique contexts beyond the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area. For more information, visit www.tcat.ca

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Round Up (After Monet) was created for the festival by Legge Lewis Legge in 2008.

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Métis International Garden Festival

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Jane Hutton and Adrian Blackwell’s Dymaxion Sleep was shown at the Métis International Garden Festival from 2009 to 2011.

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Métis International Garden Festival

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The exhibition Grow Op will take place in Toronto in April.

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Grow Op

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Office OU’s winning proposal for the National Museum Complex of South Korea

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Nicolas Koff

Business Corner

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Alternative grassing option

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Artifact

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Glynis Logue on her sculptural insect landscape

04 text by Glynis Logue

Creature Currents is a Guelph-based creative project that repurposed seven locally felled ash trees destroyed by the emerald ash borer. In the summer of 2016, over a two-month period, the dying trees were transformed to amplify the impact that unpredictable weather conditions are having on the migration of moths and other insects and to facilitate the production of a larger-than-life sculptural insect landscape.

02 01-05/

IMAGES/

A community-based creative project led by artist Glynis Logue, in Guelph, used felled ash trees to create a larger-than- life sculptural insect landscape.

Glynis Logue

Sawn bark and inner wood slabs became the building blocks for citizens to reposition their closeness to ecology amidst a backdrop of climate change. As such, the project invited Guelph farmers’ market visitors to choose from a selection of printed images that depict nature and the various airborne and wind-propelled insects that

inhabit it. Participants were shown how to transfer these images onto pieces of reclaimed local ash wood, which were then assembled into a kinetic public art installation designed to be set into motion by passersby and the wind.

The artwork questions how nature will thrive in the urban landscape and possible social trajectories. By giving new meaning and presence to Guelph’s former ash trees, Creature Currents serves as a highly visible beacon, stimulating the imagination and building awareness of life’s constant changes—especially in the world of bugs.

BIO/ Glynis Logue is a Guelph-based environmental designer and artist with more than 20 years of experience in biological science, ecological art, and community engagement. Her work

has been recognized for its unique ability to offer wayfinding, healing, and critical conversations about

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