Bioregional Planning Forum

Growing the Bioregional Planning Program

In the Fall of 2016, the Bioregional Planning (BRP) Program joined LAEP, relocating its studio space from the College of Natural Resources to the LAEP Graduate Studio. To grow the understanding of bioregional planning a new Bioregional Planning Forum, held October 15-16, 2017, was conceived. Serving to inform and expand awareness about bioregional planning among students, faculty and other departments at USU.

Christina von Haaren from Leibniz University in Hannover, Germany

The two-day Forum, which was funded by the Bioregional Planning Program and CREATE 2020, provided a platform to discuss important bioregional planning topics that impact the future of our landscape and communities. The panel of invited experts included: Carl Steinitz from Harvard University, who introduced negotiation as a design method; Christina von Haaren from Leibniz University in Hannover, Germany, who discussed how landscape planning is taking the lead in the transition to sustainable energy in Germany; Dr. Ryan Perkl from ESRI, who demonstrated the landscape modeling developed for ESRI’s Green Infrastructure Plan; and Laura Ault, Director of Utah Sovereign Lands Program of the DNR, who highlighted the complexities of working with many agencies at the landscape scale (e.g., on the Great Salt Lake). Rob Thayer from UC Davis, who is one of the early bioregional thinkers, was also invited but unable to attend. Instead he contributed a white paper to the BRP Forum: “A Bioregional Bridge Across the Great American Divide”, which is available on the LAEP website and well worth reading. Rob welcomes your response!

It is difficult to measure the impact of such a Forum. However, it was evident that the attendees benefited from the ideas presented, the questions from the faculty and students as well as the discussion among the experts that followed. The bioregional planning students also had the unique opportunity to deliberate about their studio project with this group of experts. The Forum may not have definitively answered the question: “What is bioregional planning?”, but it provided insight into the kind of issues bioregional planning is addressing. We look forward to the Bioregional Planning Forum becoming a regular occurrence, offering students and faculty the opportunity to reflect on the macro issues facing our landscape and how our discipline can address them.

The opportunity to reflect on the larger issues facing our landscape and how our discipline can address them.

Department of Landscape Architecture & Environmental Planning | InSites 2018