Ground 35 – Fall 2016 – Edges by Ground Magazine

Landscape Architect Quarterly

Features H(edge)rows

08/

Shinrin–Yoku

10/

The Leslie Street Spit

12/

Round Table Edges

16/

Fluid Reciprocity

24/ Publication # 40026106

Pokémonenon

28/

Fall 2016 Issue 35

Contents

Up Front Information on the ground

03/

Edges: H(edge)rows Structuring a suburban neighbourhood identity

08/

Text by Michal Laszczuk

Shinrin–Yoku Reflections on a forest bathing walk Text by Real Eguchi, OALA, and Ruthanne Henry, OALA 10/

The Leslie Street Spit Urban wilderness and cultural heritage landscape Text by Heidy Schopf 12/

Round Table Edges Moderated by Denise Pinto 16/

Fluid Reciprocity Alternative infrastructure to ensure access to clean drinking water at Shoal Lake 40 First Nation

24/

Text and images by Emma Mendel

Pokémonenon

28/

Text by Real Eguchi, OALA, Kyle Gatchalian, and Fraser Vanderwel

Letter From…Berlin The new ruderal

30/

Text by Kamila Grigo

Notes A miscellany of news and events

34/

Artifact Old is new

42/

TEXT by Kamila Grigo

President’s Message

Editorial Board Message

President’s Message

Editorial Board Message

If there were a moment in time I would put to memory, it would be September 20, 2016, the day of the Governor General’s Medal for Landscape Architecture ceremony at Rideau Hall in Ottawa. Along with many other landscape architects from across Canada, I was invited to witness this inaugural event. The first Governor General’s Medal for Landscape Architecture signifies the importance of our contribution to the health, safety, and well-being of Canadians. It was a momentous event and will be recorded in the history of landscape architecture in Canada. The recipient was Cornelia Hahn Oberlander, a member of the BCLA who has created memorable spaces and contributed to the vibrancy of the Canadian landscape. Her six decades of work span the globe; often, her projects have been with notable architects and at the forefront of innovation. And she is not finished yet. At 90 years old, she pledged before the audience that she will continue to demonstrate the importance of landscape architecture to Canadians and to educate young people on the importance of the environment.

The Ground Editorial Board recently launched the magazine in an online format in order reach a larger audience. Social media activity on Twitter for both Ground and the OALA are also part of extending our reach. Month after month we are seeing a 75 percent increase in online traffic for the digital magazine. We will continue to add content specifically for the online edition, so do take a look at www.groundmag.ca.

The CSLA gala dinner that evening was a wonderful tribute to Ms. Oberlander. Virginia Burt, OALA, provided highlights of Ms. Oberlander’s life and her friendship with her, choking back tears. Carol Craig of the CSLA nominating committee also spoke briefly about why Ms. Oberlander was so deserving of this honour and how she fit all the criteria of the award. Perhaps the highlight of the evening was a congratulatory letter from Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to Ms. Oberlander that was read at the gala. (Please visit the CSLA website to read about the event and to see photos.) It was a good day and I’m glad I was there to witness it. Another notable event is the transition of Aina Budrevics to Executive Director of the OALA. Many of you have worked with Aina in her previous roles at the OALA over the last 10 years. We believe this transition, effective October 1, 2016, acknowledges Aina’s skills, her capability to run the administration of the OALA, and her capacity to work with members and resolve the ever-changing needs of a nonprofit association. Please join us in thanking Aina for her significant contribution to the professionalism of the OALA office and extending our congratulations for this well-deserved promotion. Doris Chee, OALA oala President president@oala.cA

Fall 2016 Issue 35

It is a pleasure to be part of the Editorial Board at this exciting transition time. We welcome Zhebing Chen as our new photo editor and Shawn Watters and Beatrice Saraga Taylor as our newest board members. The current board represents a diverse set of professional interests and experiences, and this helps every issue meet our goals of exploring the edges of the profession, initiating constructive dialogue, and helping to advance the profession of landscape architecture. This issue of Ground, with the theme of “Edges,” is aimed at being a catalyst for consolidating our professional efforts to be inclusive, compassionate, and responsive to all stories, histories, and experiences as we work at modifying, conserving, or enhancing the landscapes around us. While we are amplifying our reach, please connect with us to let us know what we can do more of, what perspectives you really appreciate, and where we might need more help to effectively represent the profession. We are always interested in volunteer writers and in your ideas. We also extend our heartfelt thanks to all those who have been involved in Ground as we have been working towards this transition, especially outgoing Editorial Board Chair Todd Smith, OALA, for his tireless efforts to advance this path on so many fronts. We look forward to hearing from you. Ruthanne Henry, OALA Chair, Editorial Board magazine@oala.ca

Masthead

.35

Editor Lorraine Johnson

2016 OALA Governing Council

Photo Editor Zhebing Chen

President Doris Chee

OALA Editorial Board Shannon Baker Eric Gordon Ruthanne Henry (chair) Jocelyn Hirtes Vincent Javet Han Liu Graham MacInnes Robert Patterson Denise Pinto Phil Pothen Todd Smith Katie Strang Beatrice Saraga Taylor Dalia Todary-Michael Shawn Watters Jane Welsh Kathy Zhu

Vice President Jane Welsh

Web Editor Jennifer Foden Art Direction/Design www.typotherapy.com Advertising Inquiries advertising@oala.ca 416.231.4181 Cover The Great Lakes. Image courtesy of NASA. See page 16. 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 © 2016 by the Ontario Association of Landscape Architects All rights reserved ISSN: 0847-3080 Canada Post Sales Product Agreement No. 40026106

Treasurer Chris Hart Secretary David Duhan Past President Joanne Moran Councillors Stefan Fediuk Kendall Flower Sandra Neal Associate Councillor—Senior Maren Walker Associate Councillor—Junior Justin Whalen Lay Councillor Linda Thorne Appointed Educator University of Toronto Peter North Appointed Educator University of Guelph Sean Kelly University of Toronto Student Representative Jordan Duke University of Guelph Student Representative Lauren Dickson OALA Staff Executive Director Aina Budrevics Registrar Ingrid Little

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.

Upcoming Issues of Ground Ground 36 (Winter) Data

’s environmental savings with Cascades paper

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

.35

Ground is printed on paper manufactured in Canada by Cascades with 100% post-consumer waste using biogas energy (methane from a landfill site) and is EcoLogo, Processed Chlorine Free (PCF) certified, as well as FSC® certified. Compared to products in the industry made with 100% virgin fiber, Ground: Landscape Architect Quarterly ’s savings are: 15 trees 55,306 L of water 158 days of water consumption 838 kg of waste 17 waste containers 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

Coordinator Sarah Manteuffel

See www.groundmag.ca to download articles and share content on social media.

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

Section

.30

FPO

Up Front

.35

01 Biodiversity

museum projects The Royal Ontario Museum (ROM), Ontario’s largest and oldest cultural institution, is perhaps not the first place that comes to mind when landscape architects are looking for inspiration and information. However, the museum is a treasure trove of both, with a number of resources that go far beyond what can be found in its collections. The ROM’s Environmental Visual Communications program (EVC), in partnership with Fleming College, is one such example. This graduate certificate program, which started in 2012 and is taught on-site at the ROM in an intensive six-month course, teaches students the skills required (photography, videography, multimedia, etc.) to communicate effectively about a broad range of environmental and conservation issues. With 59 graduates to date, the program has had at least one landscape architect enrolled. As Dave Ireland, Managing Director of Biodiversity Programs at

Up Front: Information on the Ground

the ROM, notes, “Landscape architecture is about storytelling—about the connections between the natural environment and the built landscape. Visual communication is an important aspect of this, and the EVC program is geared towards producing talented communicators.” The ROM’s Centre for Biodiversity is another resource that connects the museum to conservation projects. Ireland is chair of the Ontario Road Ecology Group, which works with the Ministry of Transportation and others on how best to mitigate the threat of roads to biodiversity, through wildlife “eco passages,” for example. Ireland also points to the need for keen observation of ecosystems as the basis of landscape architecture and conservation, more generally. The ROM’s BioBlitz— essentially, a weekend of intensive ecological monitoring—takes place in early summer every year. “Citizen science is an important way we can get people to advocate for nature,” says Ireland. In June, 2016, volunteers fanned out across the Credit River watershed in Toronto to inventory the species found in this urban watershed.

Another ROM project in the early planning stages is a biodiversity garden in front of the building, on Bloor Street in Toronto. “We sit on one of the most expensive and popular pieces of real estate in the city,” notes Ireland, “and the garden will bring the themes we explore inside, to the outdoors.” 01/

IMAGE/

02/

IMAGE/

As part of the ROM’s Environmental Visual Communications program, students work with environmental groups to help them get their message out. Nila Sathya Snapping turtles are just one of the many species inventoried during the 2016 BioBlitz. Fatima Ali

03/

The 2016 Ontario BioBlitz took place in the Credit River watershed.

04/

The Ontario Road Ecology Group works to mitigate the threat of roads to wildlife.

05/

For the 2015 BioBlitz, more than 700 participants surveyed 19 different sites across the Don River watershed and catalogued at least 1,038 species in this heavily urbanized area.

IMAGE/ IMAGE/ IMAGE/

Stacey Lee Kerr

Brennan Caverhill

Jeff Dickie

Up Front

.35

Text by Lorraine Johnson, the editor of Ground.

06 Place Making

indigenous street naming Toronto residents may have noticed something different about the typical street signs in the city over the past four years: the Ogimaa Mikana Project (Reclaiming/ Renaming) has been replacing street signs and historic plaques with versions in the Ogibwe language, Anishinaabemowin. More recently, these interventions have grown in scale with the installation of billboards throughout Anishinaabeg territory, including Barrie, Toronto, Thunder Bay, North Bay, and the Peterborough area by Rice Lake. In place of city-erected historic plaques and street signs, the Ogimaa Mikana Project installs Anishinaabemowin versions of the signage that display Anishinaabemowin place names or messages. Through these small-scale interventions, the project connects with Indigenous peoples, making visible First Nations languages, history, and presence. The project also sets out to disrupt non-Indigenous residents’ understanding of their surroundings by bringing to light the presence of Indigenous peoples, languages, and the history of Indigenous places, often rendered invisible.

07 06/

The Ogimaa Mikana Project has been installing billboards across Anishinaabeg territory (such as this billboard in North Bay), addressing issues related to reconciliation and decolonization, and reminding non-Indigenous people that they are on Indigenous land.

IMAGE/

Courtesy of Ogimaa Mikana Project

07/

Ogimaa Mikana Project billboard in Peterborough

IMAGE/

Courtesy of Ogimaa Mikana Project

Up Front

.35

of the land through a lot of different ways. Our stewardship resulted in this land being as beautiful as it is, and as lush and fruitful as it was when settlers first arrived here. It was because of controlled burns and all of these kinds of things that we actually did in taking care of the land. We have a lot of knowledge that we can share and we haven’t had the opportunity to share that knowledge and we would like that opportunity.” The project is intended to spark conversation. As Blight points out, the interventions have generated a “good critical dialogue about what naming means and what renaming by the colonial systems means—and how that is used as a tool to erase our history and to erase Indigenous jurisdiction of the land and to alienate us from our land.” 08

The Ogimaa Mikana Project was founded by Susan Blight, a visual artist, filmmaker, and arts educator from Couchiching First Nation, and Hayden King, an activist and educator from Beausoleil First Nation. The mandate is to “restore Anishinaabemowin place-names to the streets, avenues, roads, paths, and trails of Gichi Kiiwenging (Toronto)—transforming a landscape that often obscures or makes invisible the presence of Indigenous peoples.” As Blight explains, “we are trying to promote the language, to centre and privilege it for a couple of reasons. One is for other Anishinaabe people, to let them know that we are here, that we are communicating with them, and we want them to feel at home in the city. But also for non-Indigenous people, to remind them that this is Indigenous land, that Indigenous people are still here, that there is a colonial history that we all have to work through, and an ongoing colonialism that we have to negotiate.” The project is named after the original intervention, a renaming of a section of Queen Street in Toronto as Ogimaa Mikana (Leader’s Trail), “in tribute to all the strong women leaders of the Idle No More movement.” With the support of an Ontario Arts Council Aboriginal Arts Projects grant, the project expanded to billboards. Parkdale, a west-end Toronto neighbourhood, served as the site for a billboard intervention in March, 2016. The rapidly

gentrifying neighbourhood was selected due to the relatively large Indigenous presence in the area in the 1970s and 1980s (with a much larger one pre-1830)—a presence that continues to decrease. The billboard reads in the Gchi’mnissing dialect of Anishinaabemowin: “Giishpin waanda kendamaawnen gegoo, aabideg ntam g’gagwejikendaan maanda.” Translated to English, this means: “If you want to learn something, first you must learn this.” This billboard features an image of the Dish with One Spoon wampum belt, a significant diplomatic treaty amongst Indigenous nations. As the project explains, “the treaty imagines that we, as diverse peoples and nations, can live together peacefully in the same territory if we respect rights to mutual autonomy. But more, that we have obligations of mutual care, to each other and to the land we share.” As Blight further explains, “Canadian history is the history of the land. When you think about Anishinaabeg people, the reality is that we say that we are caretakers of the land, or that we have been for 15,000 years. That is not hyperbole; we really did take care

Blight continues, “What we hope to do is to open up questions. We are hoping for multiple interpretations of these pieces. If anything, that people are inspired to learn a little more, to deepen their relationships with Indigenous people. And to think hard and deeply about the land that they are on, the history of that land and the people who have been here for a long time, and the knowledge that we have because of that long history we have with the land.” Through altering mundane, taken-forgranted aspects of the cityscape (street signs, plaques, billboards), the Ogimaa Mikana Project presents small-scale interventions that hold the potential to deeply impact viewers’ perceptions of their surroundings. This street-art approach connects with the surrounding community in an unexpected way, and holds the potential to reach out to both Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples. For more information on the project, please visit http://ogimaamikana.tumblr.com/. Text by Astrid Greaves, a landscape designer at IBI Group who holds a Masters of Sociology and Landscape Architecture, and is a co-founder of 1:1 Collaborative, whose installation as part of come up to my room, at toronto’s gladstone hotel, opens in january, 2017.

08/

The Ogimaa Mikana Project’s first billboard was in Toronto’s Parkdale neighbourhood.

IMAGE/

Courtesy of Ogimaa Mikana Project

09/

In collaboration with the Dupont BIA and the City of Toronto, the Ogimaa Mikana Project has Indigenized street signs in the Dupont/Spadina area of Toronto.

IMAGE/

Zhebing Chen

Up Front

.35

As well, relatives can reuse existing plots after 40 years have passed, a practice contingent on burial without concrete grave liners, so that existing remains can be reburied deeper and eventually returned to the earth. Grave reuse is a rarity in Canada, but Hearn thinks it would be a big move forward for sustainable burial practices. In her position at LEES + Associates, Hearn worked on the Woodlands area at Victoria’s Royal Oak Burial Park, which was created in response to community demand and opened in 2008. A shady grove surrounded by the native coastal forest of Vancouver Island, it is the first dedicated green burial area in Canada, and expresses a communal approach to the land. People are interred sequentially, and memorialized on a central monument. Hearn says that this gets people thinking of the larger picture instead of concentrating on the ownership of a single space.

10 Green Burial

sustainable memorial sites Since the 1831 founding of Mount Auburn Cemetery in Massachusetts, credited with inspiring North America’s public park movement, spaces of remembrance have played evolving, disparate roles in cities. Landscape architects have been instrumental in negotiating the uses of cemeteries as parks, memorials, arboreta, and, more recently, natural burial grounds. Today’s green burial is an iteration of the ancient practice of direct ground burial, which is still traditional in many cultures. In guidelines laid out by the Green Burial Society of Canada (GBSC), an unembalmed body is placed in a simple wooden casket or shroud, which is placed directly in the ground, without a concrete vault or liner. To complete the process, the surface over the grave must be restored with indigenous plants, and the cemetery plan must minimize the disturbance that can come with digging new graves. The British Columbia-based GBSC was formed in 2013 to promote sustainability within the bereavement sector and share information about green burial. The GBSC is also working towards establishing certification standards for green burial practices, something its American older sibling, the Green Burial Council, has already put in place in the United States.

Catriona Hearn, BLA, Senior Associate at LEES + Associates and Vice President of the GBSC’s board of directors, emphasizes that Canadian certification will acknowledge the spectrum of green practices within the bereavement sector: “Death and choices about disposition are sensitive—and legitimately so. We should be trying to help people consider these things based on real information.” According to Hearn, “The burial industry has become more sustainable—environmentally, socially, and, on some levels, economically. It’s incremental, and largely based on people understanding the value of land in a broader sense, especially as space becomes more precious, notably in urban areas. This has led people to see cemeteries as park space.” Hearn points to Mountain View Cemetery as an example of the positive change sustainable practices can bring to traditional urban cemeteries. Owned and operated by the city of Vancouver since 1886, Mountain View has dealt with the space crunch by becoming a pioneer in grave reuse, allowing it to remain active. The cemetery searches out and reclaims pre-paid vacant plots, using advertisements to try to find the owners of potentially abandoned lots purchased before 1940.

While B.C. is clearly a leader in green burial, options for sustainable interment also exist in Ontario. Three non-denominational cemeteries offer green burial: Duffin Meadows Cemetery in Pickering, Meadowvale in Brampton, and Cobourg Union Cemetery north of Toronto. As well, there are a number of Muslim and Jewish cemeteries with green practices, including the Toronto Muslim Cemetery in Richmond Hill. Both Duffin Meadows and Meadowvale cemeteries are run by the Mount Pleasant Group, Ontario’s largest not-for-profit cemetery. At these sites, graves are not individually marked, and memorials are inscribed on central monuments. Meadow grasses are allowed to grow tall, and naturalization is encouraged. Rick Cowan, Mount Pleasant Group’s Assistant Vice-President of Marketing and Communications, describes natural burial as a niche market:

10/

Woodlands entry monument at the Royal Oak Burial Park, Victoria, B.C.

IMAGE/

Courtesy of LEES + Associates

11/

Woodlands memorialization

IMAGE/

Courtesy of LEES + Associates

Up Front

.35

“While much has been written about natural or green burial, demand for this choice of disposition, in our experience, remains relatively low. Our goal is to provide choice regardless of the market size.” Stephanie Snow, OALA, a principal at Snow Larc Landscape Architecture, has worked with private cemetery clients to increase environmental stewardship through use of low-impact design, such as xeriscaping at Toronto’s Prospect Cemetery. She sees green burial as one option among many for cemeteries trying to appeal to a diverse population: “Some cultures have embraced natural burial for a very long time. For example, the Bahá’í faith does not permit embalming unless required by law. Jewish burial restricts embalming and places the body in as close contact with the earth as possible. Muslim tradition restricts embalming, and the deceased is wrapped in a simple shroud. Traditionally, the casket is carried to the gravesite by members of the community, on foot, and shovels are provided at the graveside. If a vault is used, and it most often is not, it is open bottomed to allow the remains to be in direct contact with the earth.” Snow and Cowan both point to cremation as an option for people searching for an environmentally conscious choice, citing

the development of nearly emission-free crematoria, such as those added to Elgin Mills and Mount Pleasant cemeteries in 2014. These advancements come as the bereavement industry makes a major shift towards cremation. Between 1985 and 2014 the number of cremations in the Greater Toronto Area jumped from 8,500 to roughly 55,500. However, according to Snow, 50 percent of the remains were either left at the crematorium or “stored” at home, reducing the number of interments. As she sees it, “The business challenge for cemeteries and landscape architects alike is that while designers create more options to attract families back to cemeteries, fewer people are using them.” As well, Snow reports that peoples’ burial requests are changing: “In addition to scattering forests and scattering gardens, I’m seeing my clients incorporate a range of green burial options, from mausoleums using geothermal heating systems to communal ossuaries.” Nicole Hanson, MES (Pl.), a community planner and former funeral celebrant who has worked as a regulator for Ontario’s Cemeteries and Crematoriums Regulation Unit, sees the challenges of access to affordable housing created by rising land values mirrored in cemeteries. People want to memorialize relatives nearby, but can’t necessarily afford the options in the city. She asks where people will go if they can’t afford to pay thousands for a plot and their culture forbids cremation: “Death is becoming an equity issue when you are looking at planning for death, and designing for death, and memorializing people. We should be allocating spaces for people to die [and be memorialized] in the city.” Hanson points to the extensive cemeteryneeds analysis done by York Region in 2015 as the kind of planning that needs to become more common. The report inventoried the region’s existing cemeteries and user demographics, and projected the need for cemetery space up to 2041, a planning horizon considered too short by many stakeholders. Notably, the report suggests that 66 percent of the users in York Region could be coming from Toronto within the next 25 years, as Toronto will have reached its interment capacity. Hanson hopes that Toronto will undertake its own cemetery-needs analysis soon, and she has been working with Deputy Mayor Denzil Minnan-Wong and Councillor Justin J. Di Ciano in an effort to make this happen.

Hanson sees opportunities for planners and landscape architects to design smaller memorial sites that serve nearby communities, or to find more capacity in currently inactive municipal cemeteries. She has seen cemetery operations consolidate as small sites no longer able to support themselves are signed over to municipal care, which provides municipalities with the opportunity to incorporate cemeteries into their long-term plans. As Southern Ontario continues to densify, the green practices of cemeteries such as Mountain View and Royal Oak Burial Park could be examples of how to deal with space constraints in memorial sites. However, that will depend on what consumers want from the bereavement industry, and how far into the future planners, landscape architects, and cemetery operators are willing to think. Text by Katie Strang, a landscape architectural intern at bsq landscape architects and a member of the Ground Editorial Board.

12/

Woodlands view of the entry into Phase 1, Royal Oak Burial Park

IMAGE/

Courtesy of LEES + Associates

13/

Woodlands 2009 plan

IMAGE/

Courtesy of LEES + Associates

14-15/

Mountain View, a Vancouver cemetery, is a pioneer in grave reuse.

IMAGES/

Wayne Worden

H(edge)rows

.35

because the trees and shrubs along these edges were allowed to grow naturally; farmers retained them because they served as windbreaks between fields.

How conventional planting design often compromises a culturally important landscape feature in the everyday suburban landscape

Text by Michal Laszczuk

Back in 1997, when the neighbourhood I grew up in was being built in the north end of Guelph, there was a lack of awareness about the risk that emerald ash borer posed to ash trees in Ontario. Almost all of the trees planted on my street were ash, as was the case in many neighbourhoods developed in the 1980s and 1990s. Now, in 2016, many of the trees along my street will be removed, and we will have to start over in developing the tree canopy. However, along the edges of backyards and the local Golfview Park, we still hold on to a precious neighbourhood landscape feature that helps define our local identity: the hedgerow. A hedgerow is a linear band of trees that exists between agricultural fields and along fences. They exist primarily

Due to the nature of suburban home and neighbourhood design and a reliance on the automobile, neighbourhoods built within the past twenty years are often left with little by which to structure a local identity. As the demand for tract housing has grown, agricultural fields have been swallowed by development and, when the crops are gone, there are few obvious references left to the history of the land. My neighbourhood was developed on an agricultural field, and, if one were to glance at my street, one could say that it does not have any distinct characterdefining features to link it with an identity informed by geography, history, and ecology. 01/ IMAGE/

Greater distribution of hedgerows in the neighbourhood, along the Speed River, and by the Guelph Lake trails

02/

Distribution of existing hedgerows in the neighbourhood surrounding Golfview Park

IMAGE/

Courtesy of Google Earth, edited by Michal Laszczuk

H(edge)rows

.35

But behind the houses and along the edge of Golfview Park, there is a series of hedgerows that are populated primarily by American linden (Tilia americana), poplar (Populus tremuloides), some American beech (Fagus grandifolia) and crabapple (Malus sp.), and a lot of buckthorn (Rhamnus cathartica). Though the latter species is an invasive pest, these trees and shrubs have been embraced by the neighbourhood as prime features of residents’ backyards and as incredible places for children to play. As a child, the hedgerow in the park by my house was a site of discovery, and I used to traverse the trails and map every portion and arrangement of trees. I spent a lot of time gazing up at the American lindens, admiring their twisted trunks, which look so different compared to the same species planted in gardens or parks. Due to these hedgerows, I have known the tremendous value of nature in play since childhood, and many people who grew up here hold a deep personal connection to these landscape features. Though the hedgerows are important in an aesthetic and emotional sense, residents become so accustomed to them on an everyday basis that they often are seen simply as groups of trees, even though they have a distinctive linear arrangement along the edges of properties. If marked on a satellite map, the hedgerows trace the form of the agricultural fields that existed before residential development. Unfortunately, not all hedgerows in my neighbourhood remain; if they did, then the linear bands of trees would extend beyond my street throughout the urban fabric of the suburbs across the north end of Guelph. Beyond the neighbourhood, by the Speed River and Guelph Lake trails, most of the hedgerows are still intact and form a striking contrast with the surrounding red pine (Pinus resinosa) plantations introduced in the 1970s. There, you can get a taste of how

visually powerful hedgerows could be if they received more emphasis in community and landscape design. In 2013, the removal of the buckthorns in the park’s hedgerows sent a sobering reminder that these features are ever changing. Even though I understand that this invasive species had to be removed, I sorely miss the buckthorns—their dense configuration provided a perfect place to play and explore when I was a child. Thankfully, the lindens remain, but they are not long-lasting, as their wood is not very strong. If a replanting scheme were introduced to ensure that new trees and shrubs would maintain the dense character of the hedgerow, I would be completely comfortable with the hedgerow as a continually evolving landscape entity. Unfortunately, though, the city’s replanting scheme has left many parts of the hedgerow between the lindens empty, with turf, in an attempt to make the hedgerow more park-like. I wish that more shrubs, such as dogwood (Cornus sp.), had been planted as a reference to the dense configuration of buckthorn that used to exist. However, the integrity of the hedgerow is generally intact, as long as the American lindens remain and care is given to ensure that successor trees, such as young American lindens, poplars, and bur oaks (Quercus macrocarpa), take over. With these hedgerows, I see my neighbourhood and other similar suburban areas as cultural landscapes. Terms used in cultural landscape assessment, such as integrity and character-defining features, can

highlight the significant cultural importance embedded in these vernacular landscape features in a type of neighbourhood that is usually seen as being devoid of historical identity. It is through this approach— which I first thought about when reading Anne Whiston Spirn’s The Language of Landscape—that people can learn to read the suburban landscape in order to form a closer attachment to place. Along with this historical dimension, if native plants were introduced to bring back the dense form of vegetation once defined by the buckthorns, then the hedgerows could better function as greenways to bolster ecological connectivity across the suburban landscape. A few years ago, the Wilson farmhouse in my neighbourhood was a heated topic of debate throughout Guelph. People were divided as to whether or not the farmhouse should remain as an icon of the agricultural heritage of the area. There was not enough interest to repurpose it for use as a home or community centre, and, ultimately, the house was destroyed. Thus, the hedgerows now remain as the only remnants of the neighbourhood’s agricultural heritage. The edges of the landscape have retained a critical cultural and ecological dimension in the area, and this is the only place where one can look for clues pointing to the heritage embedded in the landscape. My hope, then, is that hedgerows will be seen as cultural landscape features across neighbourhoods in Ontario, with better management and design practices and a recognition of their contribution towards both environmental and cultural sustainability. BIO/

Michal Laszczuk studied archaeology for his Bachelors degree at the University of Toronto and is currently a Masters of Landscape Architecture student at the University of Guelph. His interests lie in the integration of cultural landscapes and archaeological heritage with contemporary design approaches in landscape architecture. Related interests include 3D modelling, visualization, and urban design.

03/

IMAGE/

04/

IMAGE/

For the planting design within the hedgerow in Golfview Park, much of the hedgerow was replaced with turf in order to appear more park-like. Michal Laszczuk This hedgerow provides an ideal place for children to play and explore local natural surroundings even though species such as buckthorn, present here, are detrimental to the ecological health of the hedgerow. Michal Laszczuk

Shinrin–Yoku

.35

Reflections on a forest bathing walk

Text by Real Eguchi, OALA, and Ruthanne Henry, OALA

In the spring of 2016, Ben Porchuk invited us to participate in a guided forest therapy walk called Shinrin-Yoku. This translates from the Japanese into English as “forest bathing.” It took place in Sunnybrook Park, Toronto. We both had been interested in this practice since hearing about it several years ago. After a small amount of pre-walk research, and as seasoned landscape architects, we were skeptical to varying degrees in thinking that this could in any way be a profound, therapeutic experience. Ruthanne has walked in forests for more than four decades and Real has engaged in nature-related activities since childhood. But we remained open and agreed to leave our skepticism outside the forest. Ben started the walk with a quick introduction as we entered the forest. As an experienced ecologist as well as a forest bathing guide, he explained that this was not going to be a

cognitively based interpretive/educational experience. Ben indicated that we likely would not cover very much ground, so this was not focused on physical exercise either. We were told that we would be invited to share in a series of experiences and we could accept or decline any invitation. For the first of these invitations we sat in a circle, focused on our breath, and shared our name and what we were grateful for based on what we were sensing and the feelings that arose in that moment. We felt a sense of group connectedness within and to the forest. The second invitation found us swaying our bodies, listening, with our eyes closed, while feeling supported by the ground. We were grounded. After this we allowed the forest to be slowly revealed to our sense of sight. In this meditative state, the forest was startling in its renewed beauty, with magical shafts of sunlight spraying down through the many layers of foliage. In the stillness, we connected deeper with nature and to ourselves.

Shinrin–Yoku

.35

The third invitation was to mindfully walk with full visual and vestibular awareness while intensely noticing “movement” around us. We walked with “intention” on the pathways and at our own pace through the forest. We witnessed the breeze gently blowing in many different locations on numerous elements of the forest in an integral and connected way. We felt the subtle nuances of the air grazing our skin. We experienced the extensive activity of flora and fauna at every scale. It was an entranced feeling, similar to snorkeling around a coral reef, everything in constant moving harmony with the current. The forest revealed itself as a large interconnected organism, our heightened sensory perception engaged in its slow motion. Another activity had us standing on rocks within the refreshing cool of a small brook, fed by groundwater. We felt the water with one hand in stillness—above, within, and below the flowing water. This included immersing our hand in the substrate. Our hand was uniquely bathed. There were other invitations such as trusting each other during a partner exercise near the top of a ridge and feeling quite vulnerable in our bodies. In that exercise, we deepened

our connection with the nature around us, with each other, all the while awakening our awareness of our own bodies. After each invitation and experience, we shared what we felt, and, in so doing, clarified and confirmed our experiences in each moment. We ended our forest bathing walk in a closing circle while sharing a tea that Ben made from a couple of abundant forest plants he collected along the way. He assured us that we did not negatively impact the local ecology. We drank the forest, literally, again deepening our alignment with the forest by yet another direct sensuous and nourishing experience of the nature we were immersed within. Shinrin-Yoku is a therapeutic experience, in essence a moving meditation encouraging full sensory immersion. It offers an approach to reducing stress in our challenging urban life by connecting us to the rhythms and processes of nature. The outcome of the session left us alert and calm. Landscape architects are relatively well informed about natural phenomena and processes because nature has always been central to our work. In addition to enhancing

our own rejuvenation and restoration, the regular practice of forest bathing provides us with an additional somatic framework for understanding nature, thus potentially helping us to be more mindful of the medicinal, meditative qualities that others may experience in the landscapes that we help steward. BIOS/ Real Eguchi, OALA, is a Principal of Eguchi Associates Landscape Architects/bREAL art + design. His key interest is “sustainable beauty,” an aesthetic that derives from the traditional Japanese sensibility of wabi-sabi, awe, and cultural trauma in the context of nature. Principles such as imperfection and impermanence have led him to a creative practice that combines somatic healing, mindfulness improv dance, earth-based spiritualities, and landscape architecture and art.

Ruthanne Henry, OALA, is an arborist and landscape architect who has specialized for most of her career in forest-related landscape practice, such as habitat restoration, forest conservation, and minimizing impacts related to infrastructure design in sensitive environments.

For more information on the Association of Nature and Forest Therapy Guides and Programs, see www.shinrin-yoku.org. For information on the Canadian chapter, headed by Ben Porchuk, visit www.facebook.com/shinrinyokucanada or www.restorativenatureexperiences.com/ books.

01/

IMAGE/

02-03/

IMAGES/

04/

IMAGE/

Ben Porchuk shared tea, made from abundant, sustainably harvested forest plants, at the end of a recent forest bathing walk. Ruthanne Henry Ben Porchuk (left) and Real Eguchi during a forest bathing walk Ruthanne Henry The forest context for Shinrin-Yoku Ruthanne Henry

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

The Leslie Street Spit

.35

01 01/

IMAGE/

02/

IMAGE/

The Leslie Street Spit jutting out of the headlands, 1980-1998 Courtesy of City of Toronto Archives Concrete mixing plant in Toronto, 1922

04/

A Toronto brick pit in 1928, now filled in and rehabilitated as Monarch Park

IMAGE/

Text by Heidy Schopf

Courtesy of City of Toronto Archives

03/

IMAGE/

Urban Wilderness and Cultural Heritage Landscape

The Leslie Street Spit is a manufactured landform made from construction waste and dredgeate, and now colonized by an incredibly diverse community of plants and animals.

Courtesy of City of Toronto Archives

The Leslie Street Spit

The Leslie Street Spit, also known as Tommy Thompson Park, is a five-kilometre-long peninsula that extends from Toronto’s old industrial lands into Lake Ontario. It is an entirely manufactured landform, composed of construction debris and dredgeate. The Toronto Harbour Commission (now Ports Toronto) began dumping construction waste and lake dredgeate in Lake Ontario in 1959 with the aim of creating a harbour for an anticipated shipping boom. The shipping boom never materialized but the dumping continues to the present day. The Leslie Street Spit is now more than 500 hectares in size. The rubble of the Leslie Street Spit has been gradually colonized by seeds and plant matter dispersed by wind, birds, water, and deposited material. The Spit has undergone a dramatic transformation, the result of both natural process and ecological regeneration efforts by Ports Toronto and the Toronto and Region Conservation Authority (TRCA). Now, it boasts wildflower meadows, cottonwood forests, coastal marshes, (brick) cobble beaches,

.35

and sand dunes, and has been colonized by more than 390 plant species and 290 animal species. The Spit is also a globally significant birding area, an important stopover during migration for songbirds, raptors, waterfowl, and shorebirds.

century buildings, including small theatres, arcades, bank branches, and downtown residences. In all cases, the demolition of neighbourhoods and individual buildings in the city raises questions of social justice and highlights the need for careful planning decisions as we face another development boom in Toronto. Currently, high development pressure threatens some of the remaining historical residences, commercial buildings, office buildings, and streetscapes in the downtown core.

While the ecological success and significance of the Leslie Street Spit is of incredible importance, the site also has an interesting, but lesser known, cultural history: the construction material found at the Spit can be tied to specific areas of Toronto and to retired and active aggregate sites both within and beyond the city. Linking the Spit to demolition episodes in Toronto gives us an understanding of what was lost and who was displaced. The slum-clearing demolition activities of the 1960s resulted in the displacement of entire lower-income neighbourhoods, such as Alexandra Park, and the loss of nineteenth-century buildings and urban landscapes. The demolition of downtown structures to make room for office towers in the financial district in the 1980s resulted in the loss of many nineteenth-

The connection of the Leslie Street Spit to aggregate sites within and beyond the city is also significant. The Spit is linked with a number of active and former aggregate sites, as bricks marked with the company names associated with these sites are found in abundance at the Spit. Historical (retired) aggregate sites associated with the Spit include: the Don Valley Brickworks (Toronto), brickworks in the vicinity of Greenwood Avenue (Toronto), the Cooksville Brickyard (Mississauga), Streetsville Brick Plant (Mississauga), Canada Brick (Ottawa), Phippen, Quinlan & Roberston (Belleville), the Milton Pressed Brick Co (Milton), and the Ontario Terra-Cotta and Pressed Brick Co. (Campbellville). Currently active aggregate sites associated with the Spit include: Hanson Brick (Streetsville, Aldershot, and Burlington) and Canada Brick (Streetsville, Aldershot, and Burlington). Tracing the origins of the brick found at the Leslie Street Spit allows us to connect the site with aggregate production and disposal cycles, and serves to highlight the environmental costs of construction and demolition activities: the bricks, telephone poles, chunks of sidewalk, rebar, and concrete that make up the landscape clearly illustrate the brief life cycle of seemingly permanent urban fixtures. 03

The Leslie Street Spit

.35

For example, the Spit has design and physical value because it is a unique landform that was started as a dump but has since evolved to become a valued and ecologically rich landscape. The dumping at the Spit follows a specific design that responds to wave action from Lake Ontario and creates protected beaches made of rubble and brick. The design also includes three “cells” that have been capped and converted into naturalized wetlands using ecological restoration best practices to create thriving terrestrial and wetland habitats within this manufactured landscape. 05 05/

IMAGE/

06/

IMAGE/

07/

IMAGE/

08/

IMAGE/

Tommy Thompson Park Courtesy of City of Toronto Logan’s Brick Yards on Greenwood Avenue, Toronto, 1912 Courtesy of City of Toronto Archives Pouring concrete on Yonge Street, Toronto, 1954 Brook McIlroy Downtown Toronto, as viewed from the Leslie Street Spit John Vetterli

Given its history, and ties to the city of Toronto and broader Ontario landscape, can the Leslie Street Spit be viewed (or better yet designated) as a cultural heritage landscape? An evaluation of the Spit against criteria set out in Ontario Heritage Act O.Reg. 9/06: Criteria for Determining Cultural Heritage Value or Interest—design or physical value; historical or associative value; and contextual value—suggests that it can (and probably should) be defined by its heritage value as well as its ecological value.

The Leslie Street Spit

.35

As well, the Spit has historical and associative value as it has direct associations with demolition episodes in the city that yield information about development pressure and planning ideals that have impacted the city and its surrounding landscape through time. It is also associated with Ports Toronto and the TRCA, which are significant Toronto agencies that have played a defining role in the development of the waterfront and/or natural landscapes in the city.

10 09/

Tommy Thompson Park

10/

Footbridge on the Leslie Street Spit

IMAGE/

Rick Harris

John Vetterli

And finally, the Spit has contextual value as it is a character-defining part of the Toronto waterfront. Formally identified as an Environmentally Significant Area (by the City of Toronto) and a globally significant Important Bird Area (by Birdlife International), the Leslie Street Spit is an important landform that is valued by the community and is home to a wide variety of wildlife.

The Leslie Street Spit meets all of the high level criteria set out in O. Reg. 9/06 of the Ontario Heritage Act. Designating the Spit as a cultural heritage landscape would give this treasured landscape protection and could result in a strategy that would keep both the ecological and cultural attributes of this landscape intact in perpetuity. Defining it as a heritage resource, as well as an ecological one, would result in the preservation, conservation, and restoration of Toronto’s “urban wilderness.” BIO/

Heidy Schopf is a cultural heritage specialist at Stantec. She has worked in the field of cultural resource management for the past five years as both a research archaeologist and as a heritage specialist. She has been exploring and writing about the Spit since 2009 and continues to research the Spit along with academic co-author Jennifer Foster.

Round Table

.35

From policy and political boundaries to riparian buffers, this issue looks at things on the fringes. Where does one region end and the next begin, and how do we sensitively and appropriately manage things in transition? Our Round Table explores bi-national and international landscapes and waterways, to examine the parts of landscape practice that relate, react, or respond to what’s on the edge. Moderated by Denise Pinto

01/

IMAGE/

The Great Lakes in sunglint by NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Centre Courtesy of NASA

Round Table

.35

Round Table

BIOS/

.35

Murray Clamen held the positions of engineering adviser and secretary in the Canadian Section of the Canada-United States International Joint Commission (IJC) and has led and participated in numerous Canada-U.S. water resource studies and assessments. With more than thirty years of combined experience at the IJC and Environment Canada, Dr. Clamen has significant expertise in integrated water resource management, including the establishment of cooperative approaches with key environmental partners, stakeholders, NGOs, and government departments at the federal, provincial, and state levels in both countries. He currently is an Affiliate Professor at McGill University, in Montreal, in the Bioresource Engineering Department and teaches a graduate course on water policy. Denise Pinto is the Executive Director of the Jane’s Walk project, which supports residents from more than 200 cities—from Calgary to Calcutta—to produce walking tours that get neighbours together exploring the places they live, work, and play. Denise has lectured widely and walked with community leaders in Vienna, Hong Kong, and Chicago. Trained as a landscape architect, she is a Board Member for Open Streets Toronto, MABELLEarts, and Ground: Landscape Architect Quarterly, where she frequently contributes. This year, she was named a Vital Person by the Toronto Foundation, honoured for making a difference in the city. Krystyn Tully is Vice President and co-founder of Lake Ontario Waterkeeper/Swim Drink Fish Canada and co-creator of the Web’s most popular beach information service, Swim Guide. Tully has a B.A. in Public Administration and Governance, with a minor in Non-profit Organizations, and a B.A.A. in Radio and Television Arts, both from Ryerson University in Toronto. She has spoken on non-profits, technology, and community engagement for a range of audiences, including federal, provincial, state, and municipal water agencies.

02/

IMAGE/

03/

IMAGE/

04/

IMAGE/

05/

IMAGE/

Denise Pinto (DP): For this issue of Ground, the theme of which is “edges,” we are very interested in bi-national and international landscapes, and how political boundaries are superimposed on watersheds, which can often lead to competing priorities. There are policy moves, and people flows, and water flows, and political consciousness around the issues on both sides of the border. We’d like to have a discussion about what the edge of that interaction looks like.

Fishing in Lake Ontario at Port Credit Ian Muttoo The Great Lakes from space by NASA Goddard Space Flight Centre Courtesy of NASA

I’ll start with Murray. When I was looking at water issues along the U.S./Canada border, I came across a term you use: transboundary water management. Could you talk about what that is, and how your thinking about shared oversight has changed in the past twenty years?

Warning sign on Lake Erie Sarah Keating Pollution and erosion are ongoing problems in the Great Lakes. Courtesy of International Joint Commission

Murray Clamen (MC): Water management is all about balancing a range of interests, working on different problems and processes, and coordinating the management of both natural and constructed systems. For example, you might talk about a water supply system for a city, but you could also talk about incentives for conservation, or about stormwater runoff. These are all examples of water management projects.

It’s a very broad activity, considering the physical, environmental, economic, social, and political interests. Transboundary water management, or transboundary integrated water resource management, is all those things, plus. As an example: various researchers have noted that there is something in the order of 260 rivers covering 45 percent of the total global land barrier shared by two or more countries. So, when you have situations like that, transboundary becomes a rather important issue, and it’s very challenging, because in addition to the normal issues you have to deal with that I mentioned previously, you have different jurisdictions, different laws and regulations, customs, perhaps languages. How do you deal with these challenges in a contemporary way? The International Joint Commission (IJC) has two basic responsibilities. One is to give advice if both governments have an issue that they need the IJC to advise on. The other responsibility is much more practical and fundamental, and it goes back to when the Boundary Waters Treaty of 1909 was signed. If there’s a project in some transboundary waters that affects one country or the other, then the country undertaking the project might have to get approval from the IJC.

Round Table

.35

Furthermore, if the project is approved, the IJC sets up a group of bi-national experts to monitor and make sure that it’s in compliance with the “order of approval,” as it’s called. The government signed the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement in 1972, and continues to improve it. It was improved in 1978, 1987, and very recently in 2012. The agreement gives the IJC some very important responsibilities to monitor and report on how well the governments are doing. The IJC is required to comment on climate change and land use, for example, but it has quite a bit of flexibility in terms of what other tough topics it can talk about and bring to bear. DP: Beyond bi-national considerations, how are First Nations’ uses of and connection to water considered in the work that the IJC does? MC: In the early years of the IJC, there was very little coordination or input, and, in my opinion anyway, First Nations were not very well represented. Over the last couple of years, it’s my opinion that the commission, both in Canada and the United States, is doing a much better job of reaching out to First Nations in Canada and the U.S. I think the IJC still has a way to go, but there has been some success. For example, there is now First Nations representation on various boards of experts that monitor projects. First Nations serve as equal partners with other government people, with non-government people, and academics. The IJC also makes an effort to hold public meetings, public hearings, round tables, workshops, or open houses with First Nations’ groups on their home territory. This helps commission members understand better any problems that may exist in that particular area. Several First Nations folks have indicated that they would like to be commissioners, but that hasn’t happened yet. DP: With more perspectives at the table, settling on policy directions is quite a bit more complex and challenging. Is the work that’s coming out enhanced by that collaboration and sharing?

MC: Most definitely. For the past 15 years or so, the IJC has been undertaking some very serious studies on how to improve the St. Lawrence Seaway power project. There has been quite a bit of participation by First Nations, and the IJC has been praised for taking into account the various perspectives that First Nations have brought, such as ecosystem protection and ecosystem values, and maintaining as much of the ecosystem as possible. The IJC has moved quite a bit from the original proposal to the one that’s currently on the table, at least in part due to First Nations participation.

They’re not water bodies devoid of human presence, so when we think about watershed management, and our relationship to water, we need to make sure that people are present. There’s still an old school of urban planning, or policy-making, that looks out at a body of water and sees emptiness, which is not actually the case. There are recreational water users, there’s wildlife, fish, birds, there’s a whole world of life and nature that’s happening on and under the water. When we remember and embrace that, the communities we build around water will be stronger.

DP: That’s a wonderful segue into your work, Krystyn, because you are working with so many different people and organizations to support a common vision for watershed management based on grassroots care and stewardship. Could you talk a little bit about Waterkeeper, and how you develop a common vision and enable people to take action?

The vision and goal of the Swim Drink Fish project is that people need to be able to touch the water around them. This idea can be found in most cultural traditions throughout the course of human history. The water needs to be clean enough that you can touch it without getting sick, that it can provide a drinking water supply, and you need to be able to find fish for a sustainable food supply, and this relates both to actually eating fish and also just to the presence of fish as part of a thriving ecosystem. One additional goal is navigation, or access, and the right to move.

Krystyn Tully (KT): At Lake Ontario Waterkeeper, we’ve got two initiatives: first, our local Great Lakes-focused work to restore and keep intact Lake Ontario and the Great Lakes watershed, and the Swim Drink Fish Canada umbrella. The common thread for us is that we’re a network of people who all care about swimming and fishing in the water. When you think about what a watershed in an urban area looks like, particularly in the Great Lakes, there’s always going to be people in the frame.

Our community of Waterkeepers are all people who explicitly understand that these are goals or values they have to try to protect. There are so many organizations connected

Round Table

with watershed protection, so many companies catering to recreational water users, outdoor activities, tourism, and land use and development. Even real estate is affected by sewage in the water, so that then becomes the touchstone around which you can have a conversation with that industry about how to develop a Swim Drink Fish community. It starts with water where you can swim, drink, and fish, and then you have every economic opportunity in the world available to you if you can do those three things. DP: Those handles on the issue are so relatable to so many people. Do you work with any international partners in the United States, and is that any different from your work in Canada? Do you have your jurisdiction and they have theirs in the United States for the shared waterways? KT: It’s pretty seamless. There are two types of international collaboration that we do. One is actually working to protect the Great Lakes, and since Lake Ontario is partially in Ontario and partially in New York State, with anything we do, we’re collaborating. It is really easy to just focus on the jurisdiction you’re in. But we try to make an effort, and say, “Oh right, I’m going to read the

.35

a watershed can extend quite far away and high up on the land side. So, while I think it’s important to consider water in the context of swimming and beaches, hopefully people will also look at new ways of influencing how water reaches a particular area.

Rochester newspaper this morning, I’m going to read the Buffalo newspaper this morning, I’m going to make an effort to see what the EPA in the United States is doing about sewage and stormwater.” The other type of international collaboration is our work with partners. Through our Swim Guide, for example, we have 60 non-profit partner organizations that are outside of Canada. Because we’re all working to protect swimmable water, and because there is a relatively standardized system for monitoring beach water quality and beach health, it’s really easy to forget that our partners are in a different country. We’re talking about the exact same activities. Are people using the water to swim and bathe? Is it monitored? If not, how do we get it monitored? If it is monitored, what’s the water quality like? People basically care about the same things. They want information about a watershed when they need it, and in a format they can understand, in a way that’s accessible and easy for them to use. As an organization working towards a shared goal, the political boundaries really just fall away.

DP: That’s a great point. At every moment in the watershed, we’re responsible for the health and quality of the water at the edge, certainly. MC: And it can come down to various landscapes. It can be how parking lots are designed, how buildings are built, how schools are designed, how parks operate— it’s a lot of little things that add up, so I think everybody can play a part. Most people have shared values around swimmable, drinkable, fishable water; they can have an important impact. DP: In terms of engaging citizens around this on both sides of the border, are there ever conflicting cultural priorities or attitudes that have been challenging, or that you’ve had to navigate? KT: Not in terms of priorities or values, no. Sometimes we get some questions like, “What does it really mean?” and we talk it through, but it’s more about nomenclature and ways of seeing. One example is that in the United States, the way that their beach water law and policy has evolved, they really focus on coastlines, which means the ocean coasts and the Great Lakes coast, and not so much on the interior.

MC: A lot of people just focus on the edge of the beach and the water, and don’t necessarily think about where it comes from. I’m not sure that people really understand what a total watershed approach really is, because

We’ve been really influential in training some U.S. organizations to understand that those swimming holes they love are beaches, too. We should be taking our kids to the beach at least once a year; we should try camping. For a lot of people, they don’t go to the beach

06/

IMAGE/

07/

IMAGE/

Connecting people to the watersheds in which they live, through parks such as HT0, in Toronto, shown here, is crucial to protecting those watersheds. Ruby Pajares Climate change is expected to increase the rate of flooding in many areas. Courtesy of the International Joint Commission

Round Table

or try fishing because they love nature, they do it because it’s an open space where they can spend time with the people they care about the most—and then that body of water they spend time in becomes the backdrop or the setting for some of the most important and magical moment of their lives. DP: Murray, we were talking about policy, and you’re making policy recommendations related to a much bigger time scale than the kind of activity we’re talking about at the cultural and social scale. What are some of the ways you both navigate and balance those two time scales, and the way in which people relate and engage with water, and our priorities over the next 100 years, in order to make sure that we have clean, safe, accessible water? MC: When I was at the International Joint Commission, about twenty years ago the commissioners became concerned about climate change and what impacts this would have, primarily on water resources and the management side of the operation. They were noticing that in many different watersheds, things seemed to be out of the norm. Climate events were outside the recorded averages. And this appeared to be happening in other parts of the country, too—for example, in Alberta, and Saskatchewan, and Montana, where the IJC is responsible for apportioning water. There was concern about the glaciers receding, and whether or not the water supply would be the same as it was. So the IJC started to have independent workshops about climate change, trying to understand what it was all about, and whether or not the climate change models were adequate for looking long term at a particular watershed that was very small. I think the focus now is on adaptation. Climate change brings a lot of uncertainty, so what I think the IJC is trying to do is to build as much as they can of what they call adaptive capacity. They recently set up an adaptive management team—in the Great Lakes, and that’s the largest watershed that the commission deals with—in the hopes of monitoring and looking at different aspects of the ecosystem,

.35

to see over the long term what might be happening, and whether this is directly or indirectly related to climate change, and what sort of measures can be put in place that allow for changes in the face of all this uncertainty. KT: If you look at any poll or study, Canadians are more likely than any other country in the world to say that they love nature and the environment. But when you rank Canada against other developed countries, we rank among the lowest when it comes to every measure of environmental protection. So there’s this mysterious gap between what we say is really important to us as individuals, and what we are actually doing when it comes to taking care of our natural resources. Why is that? This question is something we have focused on extensively for the past year, and what we have found is that there is a water literacy gap. People say that they love water, but they don’t actually understand what a watershed is, or how it works, or how the things that they do every day affect the water around them, and how the water around them affects the things that they do. Closing that water literacy gap has become our main mission as an organization. When you understand how water flows, and where it comes from, and where it goes, and how the system acts and behaves, then you start to understand your place in that system as an individual, and then you start making much smarter decisions about how to act and behave in that watershed—whether it’s a massive hundred-year vision for land use or a very, very small decision about what to plant in your front yard garden, just knowing where you fit in that watershed is incredibly important. To shift behaviour, the number one thing that needs to improve or change is water literacy. With climate change, and other emerging issues, we need to adapt as new information becomes available, and we need to be able to adapt very quickly. If a chemical everybody thought was fine turns out to be harmful to fish, we need to be able to respond rapidly as that new information becomes available to us.

When people were more closely connected to watersheds, they could see changes happening, but we’re more disconnected now. In a lot of cases, people growing up in urban areas don’t know the difference between a polluted water body and a clean water body. How are we supposed to be able to respond to threats if we can’t identify them in the first place? MC: In the context of water literacy, it’s a blessing and a curse that Canada has so much water, with thousands of lakes all across the country. And, for the most part, our fresh water resource is pretty good. But this creates a perception that Canada has no water problems. People see it as plentiful and have no perception of water management challenges. It’s as if abundance equals no problem. And that’s just not true. In terms of managing chemicals and toxins, for example, Europe does a much better job than we do, and the United States has better laws and regulations in many states than we do. Our record of prosecution is not very good. Water literacy is definitely important, but if you look at the education system, I don’t know where learning about water fits in. In Ottawa, the municipality used to put a little flyer in everyone’s water bill, talking about water issues such as conservation, or some other way to improve water management in the city. But they stopped doing that. There are two things I always emphasize. Number one is, if the opportunity arises to tell somebody about the importance of water, have something in your head that you can just blurt out that will capture their imagination, no matter who that person is. The second

Round Table

.35

The only time the baseline shifts in the right direction is when the people who are making choices about planning and design get creative, and think bigger, and aim higher. So we need to think not just about how we maintain the status quo when it comes to water quality, or stormwater management, or sewage management, or species biodiversity, but, “How could we improve it?” and “How could we do better?” Our goal should be that every development isn’t just as good as the development that came before, but is better. That’s the only way we’re going to make progress. 08

thing is: the media does not see water as a problem until there’s a crisis, whether it’s a flood, a drought, pollution that affects drinking water, or problems on a First Nations reserve. Other than those things, the media really doesn’t report on water issues. KT: The shifting baseline syndrome is something relevant to people in the landscape architecture field. This is a fancy way of saying that what you see in front of you, you think is normal. As our ecosystems decline, what are we considering to be a normal, healthy, functioning ecosystem? It bears no resemblance to what you would have seen a hundred years ago, which bears little resemblance to what you would have seen two hundred years ago. Someone who grows up in a contaminated or degraded area thinks that’s normal; incremental damage or change doesn’t seem so bad, because it’s only moderately worse than what they’re used to seeing. What we think is urgent changes from generation to generation, and I believe that the challenge for this generation is to confront the baseline and the definition of normal, so that the people who come after us don’t assume that what we have is normal. These zones in the Great Lakes where you can’t touch the water because it’s so contaminated, or the cities that have no access to their waterfront because they’ve been industrialized or rendered so contaminated that they’re no longer safe to use—these shouldn’t be considered normal things that we accept.

DP: I wonder to what extent landscape architects who are working on daylighting streams, or re-naturalizing the mouth of a river, or looking at systems that clean and attenuate water in an urban setting, are having an effect on the level of water literacy in the general public and making the invisible visible. The edge of our experience—our connection and our relationship to water—shouldn’t just be visible at the waterfront. It should be in all of the public and private landscapes around us. So, how might landscape architects appropriately work some of the considerations you’ve talked about into design work that amplifies the presence of water in our daily lives? KT: I love the idea of creating opportunities for accidental interactions with water. I don’t think we want to live in a world where the Great Lakes are like large aquariums where we stock the fish, or a beach is a place that is a designated zone like an amusement park or a theme park. I think the healthiest relationships with water are the ones that are unexpected and unplanned. For example, say you live in a residential neighbourhood, and you go for a walk around the block with your kids and they find frogs, because we’ve got living ditches. They find flowers, or see birds, because these species interact with the water ecosystem, and you get to experience things that you didn’t plan. That’s where the creativity of a landscape architect working on a project fuels the creativity of the people who are living in those spaces. That’s where you can get cultural innovation, economic innovation, and the things that make a community strong and prosperous.

MC: One of the challenges is that there’s a tendency for people to want to live by water. They want to experience it, they want to go near it or go in it, swim in it, fish in it, boat on it as often as the weather allows. It’s an experience that people hold in high value. What I see happening around the Great Lakes and in other places is that people are building unwisely beside the water. This is not good for the environment. I don’t have any particular solutions for this, other than to try and design things in as soft a way as possible. We haven’t really talked about the influence of industry. When I was with the IJC, we attempted to work with industry in a positive way—because for better or for worse, industry probably has the most significant impact in terms of water quality. And a lot of people perceive them as the bad actors— they take huge amounts of water, in some cases they don’t even pay for it, they use it in some industrial process, and they put it back, and cause all this pollution. I know the IJC was trying to invite industry folks into the tent more, to learn more about processes, how they can be made less polluting, and make sure that the values we talked about are at least shared. I think we’ve got to make tremendous improvements in the way in which we manage water in North America, because it’s not very good right now. There’s a little book that was put out as a result of a conference which I attended in Kingston many years ago. It’s called Water as a Social Opportunity, and it’s very helpful, it’s a very positive book. Maybe that’s the kind of approach we need—people talking more positively about solutions, as opposed to focusing just on problems and saying that it’s everybody else’s problem. KT: With regard to industry, if you want to understand what the biggest threats to watersheds are, you just have to look at what

08/

IMAGE/

09/

IMAGE/

Boating is a popular activity in the Great Lakes watershed. Dylan Neild Recreational fishing is one way that people connect with their watersheds. Martyn

Round Table

the dominant economy of the day is. When the dominant economy was fishing, the greatest threat to ecosystems was the devastation of fish stocks and species; when the dominant economy of the day, particularly in the Great Lakes, was industrial manufacturing, the dominant threat to the lakes was pollution from chemicals and the emissions from those factories. As manufacturing is moving away from the Great Lakes, and the dominant economy moves to more of a service/creative economy, the dominant threats to the lake currently are those from municipal systems. So we see emerging issues such as pharmaceuticals in the water and micro-plastics. It’s relatively easy to reflect back on environmental concerns and to predict future trends for environmental concerns. This idea of industry as the enemy is not necessarily true or false, but it’s very indicative of a particular moment in time. Anyone who is thinking about future planning should be looking to those economic cues if they want to understand what the threats might be in the future, so that we can take steps now, instead of waiting until we discover that something is devastating and try to respond after the fact. Natural systems are very fluid. A wetland is dry for part of the year, and under water for part of the year. Change is really the only thing that is constant when it comes to water, so the important thing is to bring people back down to the water. I love the fact that parks such as HTO and Sugar Beach [in Toronto] exist, but they drive me crazy because you can’t go in the water, which is the definition of a beach. People show up expecting to jump into the lake, and instead it’s got a hard-edge shoreline. They are parks that are supposed to bring people back to the lake, but they

.35

In my opinion, climate change is all about uncertainty, so when designing anything, try to build in as much adaptive capacity as possible.

actually create new, very powerful barriers between people and water. We should be dismantling those barriers, not creating more of them. When people are being trained to look at water but not touch it, I think that is stifling and potentially dangerous—to raise a generation of people who think that water is something to be seen and not touched. MC: There is a movement, but it’s very slow and not very widespread, in the United States to take down dams because the ecosystem values are higher than whatever the dam was originally built for and it may not serve any purpose anymore. Obviously, you have to be very careful about how it’s taken down and what the final product will be, but the point is that we may be going back to the future in the sense that things that have been built don’t necessarily have to remain. So whether it’s a dam that comes down, or a hardened shoreline that is softened, with some ingenuity, good planning, public involvement, and some funding, we can restore.

KT: The thread that runs through this conversation for me is that the abundance of water in the Great Lakes watershed leads us to think that we have very little to worry about. And the smallness, the localness, of some of the projects we do might make us feel that it’s too small a project to make a significant change. But we know that that’s not true, and that all water issues essentially are local issues, because of the nature of water. When we go out and talk to people about their connection to water and a body of water that’s shaped their life, we call that story a watermark. Everybody has one. It’s like a birthmark, and everyone’s is slightly different. The water you grow up with influences your physical health, your mental health, the jobs you’ll take, the people you’ll meet. And anyone who has an opportunity to influence the relationship of people in that community to water—what they’re doing is helping to write the watermark.

DP: There are real possibilities to do that now, with decaying urban landscapes and aging infrastructure all around us, which need to be transformed in some way. This is one place where we can insert these new ideas.

We’re creating stories that people are going to tell about water in the future. What do we want those stories to be? Do we want them to be stories about drought, or mistakes, or inaction? Or do we want them to be stories about nature, and beauty, and wonder, and prosperity?

MC: I think the public is going to play a major role in this. If the public can push for it, there may be more of it happening. And landscape architects and urban planners can think more about how to better design the landscape interface—the edges—between water and land. That will go a long way to improving water management and the watersheds in which people live.

Everything that shapes those stories consists of tiny decisions made on a daily basis, usually by anonymous people, at moments that don’t necessarily seem significant when you’re actually experiencing them, and it’s really important that we wake up to the importance of those small choices that we’re making.

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

Fluid Reciprocity

.35

Alternative infrastructure to ensure access to clean drinking water at Shoal Lake 40 First Nation

01 01/

IMAGE/

The site context for Emma Mendel’s proposals for alternative infrastructure at Shoal Lake 40 First Nation Emma Mendel

Fluid Reciprocity

.35

As part of her work in the Masters of Landscape Architecture program at the University of Toronto, Emma Mendel met with the University of Toronto’s First Nations House and the Centre for Indigenous Studies in an effort to understand how traditional knowledge might inform infrastructure design related to water.

SITE 1 Healing | Water Treatment Plant

Text and images by Emma Mendel

04 02-04/

IMAGES/

Ideas for the water treatment plant

In traditional knowledge, water symbolizes the element from which all else comes. It is a living force and the centre of life rather than simply a component of it: life, land, and water are inseparable. This relationship with water is shared by all those on earth: our ancestors, the fish, grass, and rocks. It is characterized by a spirituality and sacredness, as well as an intimate knowledge and reciprocal respect and reverence for each body’s rights and responsibilities.

Emma Mendel

In a political environment of reconciliation between First Nations and Canada, it is timely to question the continued deployment of universal infrastructure solutions that have shaped Canada’s landscapes. What are the possibilities of pairing infrastructure standards with traditional knowledge?

Canada has the second largest global supply of fresh water, yet for First Nations communities, limited or no access to safe drinking water is a persistent reality of daily life. Nearly half of the 133 First Nations communities in Ontario have not had access to clean drinking water for more than ten years, according to a CBC news report, and an astounding 20 percent of First Nations communities are currently under drinking water advisories. Shoal Lake 40 First Nation is one community that has been under boil water advisories for more than ten years. The community, which straddles the Manitoba-Ontario border, has existed on an artificial island for one hundred years. In 1919, Winnipeg built a passive aqueduct to transport clean water from the community’s lake, Falcon Lake, to the provincial capital, an ambitious feat of engineering that still sustains the Greater Winnipeg Water

Fluid Reciprocity

.35

SITE 2 Gathering | Freedom Road

07 05-07/

IMAGES/

08-10/

IMAGES/

Ideas for the Freedom Road Emma Mendel Ideas for the school Emma Mendel

Districts (GWWD) to this day. The government unilaterally sold Shoal Lake 40 First Nation reserve land and moved the community onto a narrow peninsula to make way for heavy infrastructure. In order to keep the runoff from Falcon Lake away from Winnipeg’s intake pipe, the government severed the community’s land from the mainland, creating a dike that directed unwanted runoff into the community’s only source of water. Forced dislocation has affected Shoal Lake 40’s capacity for economic sustainability: the community must haul bottled water, groceries, and medical supplies by ferry in summer and on ice in winter to their relocated houses and places of business. For Shoal Lake 40, there are three points of disconnection: the dike , the canal, and the ice road. Infrastructural, architectural, and landscape design solutions could address these problems. Manitoba’s provincial government recently released RFPs for a water treatment plant, a new all-seasons road

(named Freedom Road), and a new junior school. These projects are an opportunity to propose alternative infrastructure solutions based on First Nations traditions and culture rather than on standard models of design. For example, the location of the future water treatment plant could be complemented with a biological water treatment landscape and become a site of healing; the site of the new road connecting Shoal Lake 40 to Winnipeg could serve as a point of gathering; and the new school could incorporate a landscape design that embodies ideas of offering. Each of these alternative proposals is here described in turn, with each project based on reverence for the land, and each project reinterpreting the land through water. Turtle Island: Water Treatment Drawing from traditional fishing weir traps and Alan Berger’s “Wetland Machine,” a set of designed weirs could be placed into the bay and, over time, collect sediment, clarifying

Fluid Reciprocity

.35

SITE 3 Offering | New School

the water through vegetation by removing organic content. This clarification of water would create biodiversity, making the water more palatable and transforming the site for the future expansion of a water treatment centre in the community. The design would keep the water moving and keep it alive through a turtle shell pattern, suggestive of Turtle Island rising from the waters’ surface and sprouting new life. Thunderbird: Freedom Road The fanning wings of the thunderbird, a mythical creature related to rain and storms, allow spaces of gathering, moving, and collecting. They also gesture towards future expansions of the site and their relation to the line of water. The design begins to weave and start a dialogue between the severed landscapes. For the site of gathering, rocks could be used to define and categorize agricultural land for planting medicinal and ceremonial crops, including sweetgrass, wild rice, tobacco, and cedar trees.

Mishipeshu: School For the site of offering, inspiration was drawn from traditional basket weaving. The passing of knowledge could be amplified through a canopy, deck, and dock, extending the educational experience outdoors. The copper tail of the Mishipeshu, an underwater lynx, is reinterpreted through copper guiding lights that protrude from each surface design. These lights would serve as visual guides at night and in winter. The suggestive connection represents a union between Shoal Lake 40 and the neighbouring community, Kejick. Mishipeshu’s tail is transformed into an undulating support system that demands respect and caution when crossing these waters. While the deck and the dock would allow travellers to move more safely between the communities, the canopy would be designed as a space for celebration and ceremony where knowledge is passed down to youth. The canopy space is embodied below the surface of the water with logs that, over time, would create aquatic habitat.

These proposed, alternative infrastructure designs seek to open a space between western science and traditional knowledge; infrastructure and ecology; and land and water. BIO/

Emma Mendel holds an MLA from the University of Toronto and a BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design. She would like to express her sincere gratitude to practitioner Janna Levitt, professor Liat Margolis, professor Mason White, and especially to her thesis advisor and department head at UofT, Alissa North, for their guidance in the creation of this project. She would also like to acknowledge the University of Toronto’s First Nations House and the Centre for Indigenous Studies for their time, advice, and guidance.

Pokémonenon

.35

text by Real Eguchi, OALA, Kyle Gatchalian, and Fraser Vanderwel

Upon its release in mid-July, 2016, the mobile game Pokémon GO broke records for most popular download in App Store history. While it might be interesting to try to predict how sustainable the phenomenon is, what seems most important to landscape architects is that Pokémon GO has very quickly changed the way that many people experience the public realm, while also re-defining our understanding of boundaries, property and ownership, and opportunities for commercial partnerships. As design practitioners, we can be cautiously excited about the opportunities that technology such as Pokémon GO creates, but also realize that it is just one instance of how quickly technology can influence the cultural landscape and how, just as quickly, it can be superseded. Pokémon GO is an augmented reality game that allows smartphone users to track, catch, and play with Pokémon. Augmented reality (AR) is the product of the digital enhancement of real-world environments by way of computer-generated components. Pokémon GO establishes an AR by utilizing smartphone

GPS and camera functions to superimpose the Pokémon universe onto the real world as seen through the phone’s screen. The game encourages users to explore landmarks in real-life cities and towns in order to catch Pokémon, and to visit Pokéstops and Pokégyms. Pokémon GO is a phenomenon based in fantasy but, in its short time in the hands of the public, the game has had very real implications for the use of outdoor space. On a sunny Saturday afternoon, a few days after Pokémon GO’s Canadian release, downtown Toronto’s waterfront was filled with people on their smartphones chasing Pokémon across Queens Quay. In Peterborough, Pokémon GO was used to organize a cleanup of the Otonabee River shoreline. Many other interesting stories were covered by the media. While players of the game (trainers) have perhaps explored territories they might not have previously visited, Pokémon GO has a way of relegating all spaces, regardless of intended use, beauty, or meaning, to destinations on a checklist. Unless trainers are purposefully using the game as a way to explore their city,

Pokémonenon

Pokémon GO does not necessarily promote meaningful engagement with public places. It appears that those who are outside simply for the sake of catching Pokémon, experience all spaces with a certain level of detachment, indifference, and even irreverence. It is for this reason that more sensitive sites such as the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park in Japan and the Arlington National Cemetery near Washington, D.C., have been removed from the game as locations. Pokémon GO offers novel incentives and alternative forms of social relationships, competition, and physical movement outdoors. We can’t help but look forward to what future iterations of the game or related and subsequent games will lead to. The built

01-03/

IMAGES/

.35

landscapes we dwell in, with their cultural demarcations and meanings, are in a sense imaginative and virtual, and they are the results of our cultural, spiritual, political, colonizing, and consumptive mindset superimposed onto and augmenting the natural and indigenous worlds that existed prior. AR games could deepen our connection with the earth, help us to renew our relationship to the land as hunter-gatherers. Through play, AR allows us, potentially, to experience a neo-tribal, nomadic-like social reality.

People playing Pokémon Fraser Vanderwel

Not surprisingly, it seems that Pokémon GO is most compelling to young adults who were kids in the 1990s when the Pokémon game and cartoon first debuted. Millennials are Poké-familiar, smartphone-equipped, and nostalgic. While Niantic, Nintendo, and its partners struck gold with their market analysis and offering, we are reminded once again that rapid change is central to our culture. The Millennials reflect back fondly about their iPod Minis and the large collection of instant messaging platforms they used, all of which are now obsolete. Soon enough, the fad of Pokémon GO will be surpassed and the game will be left in the hands of dedicated Pokémon trainers. 03

If physical space has never before been so influenced by AR technologies, and if the lifespan of such technologies has never been so short, how might we, as design practitioners and/or policymakers, respond? Perhaps it is simply a matter of acknowledging these technologies, understanding their implications, and, when inspired, actively responding with creativity based on a holistic cultural and design awareness. It would be prudent to remain keenly aware that emerging technologies will be able to reach a much larger audience more quickly, adapt to oscillating conditions with more immediacy, and be updated with minimal resources compared to actual physical environments. Technologies such as Pokémon GO, Uber,

and Google Maps are spawning successors whose consequential effects on how we interact with physical space ask us to remain open with wonderment and to be flexible and thoughtful with new designs, policies, and bylaws as virtual and real worlds collide. Let’s seek opportunities to use emerging AR and other technologies to leverage our work and continuously ponder how future landscapes might unfold given the novelties that culture presents to us. More importantly perhaps, let’s not forget that despite what technology and other cultural phenomena present to us, our work within the built landscape is to create places that are functional, aesthetically pleasing, physically enduring, and ecologically astute. Let’s continue to renew that elusive balance of timeless quality within these quickly changing times while finding equanimity in our cultural emergence. BIOs/ Real Eguchi, OALA, is a Principal of Eguchi Associates Landscape Architects/bREAL art + design.

Kyle Gatchalian is a landscape architectural intern and urban designer at DIALOG’s Toronto studio.

Fraser Vanderwel is a landscape designer at IBI Group in Toronto and a frequent contributor to the Cities Alive podcast.

Letter From… Berlin

.35

01 01/

IMAGE/

A median on Greifswalder Strasse, Berlin Kamila Grigo

02/

A disused post-industrial lot at Andreasstrasse and Lange Strasse, Berlin

03-04/

Berlin wall memorial, Bernauer Strasse

IMAGE/

IMAGES/

Kamila Grigo

05/

Park am Nordbahnhof, Berlin

06/

Natur-Park Südgelände, Berlin

IMAGE/ IMAGE/

Kamila Grigo

02 text by Kamila Grigo

Berlin, a city that has been destroyed, divided, and rebuilt numerous times, a city that confounded the cardinal directions with a wall, is in a sense one of Europe’s oldest cities and one of its youngest. Berlin’s continually evolving urban form is in contrast to other comparatively ossified urban centres, and nowhere is the city’s frenetic dynamism better reflected than in its ruderal landscapes. Conventionally referring to plants growing on waste ground or among rubbish, the term ruderal has been applied to landscapes in discussions on urban ecology, wastelands, and marginal sites, but it may be worthwhile to consider the ruderal landscape as a typology with various sub-types. Making a nonlinear, non-chronological record of Berlin’s landscapes under the ruderal typology offers an opportunity to consider them at a city-wide scale while unlocking their design potential. More than 25 years after unification and both despite and because of gentrification, Berlin contains a seemingly disproportionate amount of vacant lots of varying sizes. This is in part due to Germany’s leading role during the Industrial Revolution, which saw the construction of industrial buildings and accompanying

infrastructure in areas of Berlin that are now more central. These buildings suffered various fates over the decades, leading to the disused sites remaining today; some of the manufacturing buildings have remained disused since WWII, while others underwent various incarnations and fell to economic changes during the 1990s. Other disused lots include spaces not rebuilt after WWII and commercial or residential lots in bureaucratic limbo awaiting redevelopment. Larger, relatively orthogonal lots can be approximately 2 hectares in size and can take up a significant portion of the block on which they are located, while smaller ones are approximately 900 square metres and correspond to the footprint of the building they used to contain. Plant species on these sites include lichens, mosses, sedums, grasses, Solidago, Buddleja davidii, Populus tremula, Pinus sylvestris, Robinia pseudoacacia, Acer negundo, Colutea arborescens, and Daucus carota, with Ailanthus altissima often found on smaller lots near masonry. A number of formerly disused sites have been redesigned and have gained prominence in recent years. In this category fall

Letter From… Berlin

.35

border known as the Death Strip. The 4.4-hectare site features a minimalist design language, with corten steel elements that are part art installation and part didactic as they trace underground escape tunnels, destroyed buildings, or segments of former wall. Visitors can peer into slightly subgrade exhibit areas housing preserved infrastructure, or climb an observation tower to look over a portion of the original border strip. The modern design of the park uses aspects of the ruderal in what might be called an honestly artificial way—fenced-off wall elements overgrown with Ailanthus are just as artificially maintained and exhibited as areas that are more meticulously cleaned, and both tell the history of the site. Diagonally opposite is Park am Nordbahnhof, which, like the Berlin Wall Memorial, can be classified as a mediumscale designed ruderal landscape. Also formerly part of the border strip and a rail station prior to that, it is a 5.5-hectare park intentionally designed as a ruderal landscape after budget constraints limited the original design. It incorporates rail and wall infrastructure into paving that hints at the site’s history or into sculptural elements that double as wildlife habitat, and it is executed using a palette of pioneer species typically found on ruderal Berlin sites; grasslands and tree cover that established spontaneously have expanded, and a stunning expanse of Betula now lines both sides of the cobblestone marker that traces the wall’s location.

large-scale projects such as Park am Gleisdreieck (26 hectares) and NaturPark Südgelände (18 hectares). These landscapes correspond to abandoned transportation infrastructure sites that have been redesigned as public parks as a result of local activism and much political debate. Park am Gleisdreieck, conceived as an inner-city park, is the most urban and scripted, with well-defined areas for passive and active programming, as well as protected areas of ruderal vegetation. Natur-Park Südgelände hosts arts programming in a former locomotive hall and has retained the most of its original ruderal form; visitors can interact with the park by way of intimate paths and elevated steel walkways, while vegetation—a mix of native and exotic species ranging from substantial stands of Robinia pseudoacacia to Betula pendula, Populus tremula, Quercus robur, Acer platanoides, and Rosa acicularis—remains protected. Impressive for its importance to local citizens and its biodiversity, the park is successful on cultural and ecological levels and is a valuable case study that offers design strategies and planting palettes for resilient, lower-maintenance urban parks.

Against the background of these more publicized projects are landscapes that are so incorporated into daily use that they go unnoticed. These ruderal sites undergo

At the medium scale of designed sites is the Berlin Wall Memorial on Bernauer Strasse, now a memorial complex that includes a preserved segment of the 1.4-kilometre stretch of the double-walled 05

Letter From… Berlin

.35

comparatively regular modification due to continual human use, underscoring the cultural dynamism of ruderal landscapes once they are recognized as more than vacant lots. For example, the landscape that comprises Berlin’s tram and commuter rail network, which runs approximately 500 kilometres in length, includes significant vegetated segments. The commuter rail network features sunken, densely treed, or at-grade corridors that create a very immersive experience for commuters as trains travel between the trees. Species in these corridors include Acer campestre, Acer negundo, Acer platanoides, and Robinia pseudoacacia, while platforms and tracks are bounded by grasses and mounds of Ailanthus, Salix, or Populus. Meanwhile, the tram network is made up of vegetated medians covered with spontaneous herbaceous species and allées of Tilia cordata; it is also common to see Tilia or Platanus acerifolia saplings selfseeding down the medians.

08 07/

IMAGE/

On a smaller scale are the playgrounds that dot residential neighbourhoods. These pocket parks or small plazas are often located on lots left vacant due to wartime destruction, but they also occur on spaces converted from industrial uses, upon demolition of dilapidated residential buildings, or simply as renovated playgrounds. While they clearly read as designed landscapes, these playgrounds can be designated as ruderal due to their provenance, the form they take, and the typical vegetation they contain (whether by design or spontaneously). Standardissue Berlin playgrounds adhere to a more naturalistic materiality, one that, with its rougher wood and natural stone elements, approximates the appearance of a ruderal site. Abstract brick sculptural play elements not only reflect Berlin’s industrial brick buildings and suggest rudimentary wall structures, but, due to their abstracted form, also connote those same structures

08/

IMAGE/

Natur-Park Südgelände, Berlin Kamila Grigo Playground, Marienburger Strasse, Berlin Kamila Grigo

09/

Playground, Marienburger Strasse, Berlin

10/

Berlin wall memorial, Bernauer Strasse

IMAGE/

Kamila Grigo

in decay, suggesting that the ruderal is so ingrained in the cultural and design psyche as to manifest itself in even these small sites for children.

Highly popular, Berlin’s public parks— Volksparks—may at first glance appear to be like typical 19th-century urban parks, but they are ruderal landscapes par excellence. Created in the mid- to late 19th century for the working class as a response to crowded urban conditions, they were often located along the commuter rail network and were modified to include whatever passive and active programming was in favour with each generation. During WWII, they were the site of flak towers, bunkers, and, in some instances, labour camps; tree canopy was drastically reduced due in part to fuel shortages during unusually harsh winters. Flak towers and bunkers were destroyed after the war and, along with rubble from destroyed buildings in surrounding neighbourhoods, piled up in parks to create hills—the Volksparks are literally made of rubble. 07

Letter From… Berlin

.35

11 11/

Berlin wall memorial, Bernauer Strasse

12/

Playground, Boxhanger Strasse and Weserstrasse, Berlin

IMAGE/

Kamila Grigo

Today, the hills appear fully naturalized and function as lookouts or toboggan hills, and the canopy has recovered with common Robinia, Acer, Sorbus, Carpinus, Fraxinus, Betula, Populus, and Quercus species. Berlin’s ruderal landscapes reflect the youthful, rebellious aspect of this still hippy-arty-punk-activist city, and just like the poplars and goldenrods that pop out of every porous nook, they are where the city’s whimsy peeks out. Berlin is a laboratory that is harnessing the design potential of ruderal landscapes and

testing their ecological significance while reminding us that the urban condition is ultimately one of disturbance. In such a context, ruderal sites challenge our expectations of how to design adaptable, resilient urban landscapes and force us to confront the end goals of our interventions. BIO/

Kamila Grigo is a Master of Landscape Architecture Candidate at the University of Toronto and recently completed a landscape architecture internship in Berlin.

Notes

Notes: A Miscellany of News and Events

.35

exhibitions On tour from the Natural History Museum in London, England, the Wildlife Photographer of the Year exhibition will be shown at the Royal Ontario Museum from November 12, 2016 to March 19, 2017. One hundred award-winning photographs of animal behaviours and wild landscapes are on view from the competition, which received roughly 50,000 entries from 96 countries. For more information, visit www.rom.on.ca.

courses 02

The University of Guelph’s Arboretum has been providing workshops for adults and professionals for more than twenty years. Among the upcoming sessions that may be of interest to landscape architects are “The Art and Practice of Pruning” (to be held on March 15, 2017), taught by Polly Samland, and “Invasive Species Workshop: Animals and Plants” (to be held on June 3, 2017), taught by Dirk Steinke. To see the full list of workshops or to register, visit www.uoguelph.ca/arboretum or phone (519) 824-4120, ext. 52358. 01/

IMAGE/

Audun Rikardsen

02/

From the Wildlife Photographer of the Year exhibition at the Royal Ontario Museum

03/

From the Wildlife Photographer of the Year exhibition at the Royal Ontario Museum

IMAGE/

From the Wildlife Photographer of the Year exhibition at the Royal Ontario Museum

IMAGE/

Dhyey Shah

Sam Hobson

Notes

.35

environment

05 04/

Elizabeth Street Playground at the corner of Elizabeth and Louisa streets, Toronto, 1912

05/

Elizabeth Street Playground, Toronto, 1913,

IMAGE/

playgrounds

Courtesy of City of Toronto Archives

A recently opened exhibition at the City of Toronto Archives, From Streets to Playgrounds, reveals rarely seen images and demonstrates how social reformers of the time used photography to help move children from the streets into structured, supervised, and purportedly safer playgrounds. Also included are contemporary images meant to raise questions about how our current attitudes towards children and their independence may have changed during the ensuing 100 years. For more information, visit www.toronto.ca/archives. 06/

Dave Harvey

07/

Eric Davies

IMAGE/

Courtesy of Toronto Botanical Garden

On November 17, 2016, the Toronto Botanical Garden (TBG) will be celebrating three extraordinary individuals who embody the TBG’s mission to transform the city by connecting people to plants and the natural world: environmental activist/singer Sarah Harmer, parks advocate/Park People founder Dave Harvey, and urban ecosystem researcher Eric Davies. For tickets to the Aster Awards reception, the proceeds of which support the TBG, visit www.torontobotanicalgarden.ca.

competitions Fanshawe College School of Design in London, Ontario, is celebrating Canada’s future and history with the Canada 150 Environmental Design Competition. College and university students enrolled in an environmental design curriculum are invited to create a design of a local place/ natural environment celebrating Canada’s 150 anniversary. The adjudicators will select one winner from each region and invite 12 of the best submissions to present their designs on May 6, 2017 at Fanshawe College in London. The submission deadline is Friday, March 31, 2017. For more information, visit www.fanshawec.ca/programs-andcourses/academic-schools/school-design/ urban-design-competition.

Notes

.35

trees A recently published book, The Hidden Life of Trees by Peter Wohlleben (Greystone Books), is making a splash on best-seller lists. Gracefully written, the book explores the science of tree communication and is full of surprises. For more information, visit www.greystonebooks.com.

honours Mark Cullen, well-known to many as a writer, radio host, and retailer, was recently awarded the Order of Canada. According to the office of the Governor General, Cullen’s appointment as a Member recognizes his important contributions to promoting and developing horticulture education in Canada and for his commitment to environmental education. Cullen is the author of more than twenty books.

scholarships The Landscape Architecture Canada Foundation (LACF) recently announced the 2016 recipients of the Schwabenbauer Scholarship, which is named in honour of former Canadian Society of Landscape Architects president Andre Schwabenbauer and recognizes selected students for excellence in design. Faculty in each of the six accredited landscape architecture programs in Canada nominated candidates entering the final year of their programs who best exemplify the objectives of the award. The 2016 award recipients at accredited programs in Ontario are Andrea Graham (University of Guelph BLA), Julia Taucer (University of Guelph MLA), and Rachel Salmela (University of Toronto MLA). For more information on the LACF, visit www.lacf.ca.

in memoriam Chantal Gaudet The OALA is saddened to announce the passing of Chantal Gaudet on July 6, 2016, in Gatineau at the age of 53. Chantal joined the OALA in 2010, and was a Full Member for six years. She was also a member of the AAPQ and practised in the profession for more than 25 years. Working as a consultant, Chantal brought fresh ideas to her clients throughout her career. Prior to completing her Bachelor in Landscape Architecture at the Université de Montréal, Chantal had trained as a nurse. She had noted to colleagues that this interest in people transferred to her design ideas. Chantal’s meticulous work led to award-winning results. Her designs received the CSLA’s regional award in 2003 for the Gateway to Sussex Drive North and in 2009, a Merit Award from the City of Ottawa for her work on the Sandy Hill Flood Control and Park Rehabilitation. Chantal was a devoted mother to her daughter, Isabelle, and also served the community, teaching at local colleges and donating her time to local schools. Chantal created a landscape plan for a daycare play area, and took on the role of Environment Committee Co-ordinator at a local school. Always friendly, welcoming, and energetic, Chantal will be sorely missed in her community. As is OALA’s custom, a book will be added to our library and a memorial tree will be planted at the Guelph Arboretum Wall-Custance Memorial Forest in Chantal Gaudet’s name.

awards 08/

IMAGE/

09/

IMAGE/

Chantal Gaudet Courtesy of OALA Marjorie Hancock Courtesy of OALA

Congratulations to University of Toronto student Jordan Duke, whose project “The Digital & the Wild: Mitigating Wildfire Risk Through Landscape Architecture” recently won a 2016 ASLA Student Award in the General Design Category.

in memoriam Marjorie Hancock Shortly after her 84th birthday, nurserywoman, artist, and former OALA member Marjorie Hancock passed away on June 4, 2016. Marjorie was raised and lived most of her life at her beloved Hancock Woodlands in Mississauga, a landscape of which she was a stalwart steward. She worked with her father, Leslie, and alongside her brothers Macklin and Don at Woodland Nurseries, as well as Project Planning Associates. Skilled in horticulture, she had a lifelong interest in progressive architecture and landscape design and brought much beauty to her life and community. Up until her death, she had been collaborating with the City of Mississauga, which acquired the property to preserve the Hancock Woodlands as a city park for future generations. Her depth of knowledge, keen eye, and sharp wit will be sorely missed by her wide community of friends and family.

books In Last Child in the Woods, author Richard Louv brought widespread attention to the alienation of children from the natural world, coining the term nature-deficit disorder and outlining the benefits of a strong nature connection—from boosting mental acuity and creativity to reducing obesity and depression. His new book, Vitamin N: The Essential Guide to a Nature-Rich Life (published by Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill in paperback), is a practical guidebook with tips on how to share nature with kids.

on any project: from specialized sports fields to any sod installation Experience a touchdown with Greenhorizons’ Professional Turf team. They have the know-how and extensive experience to properly build sports fields, or carry out any sod installation RIGHT the first time. They also understand that budget restraints exist at all levels. Based on the project and its proposed uses, Greenhorizons can provide a range of budgetary options for the best fit.

ProXstablishmentTM Service

As any experienced turf manager can tell you, site preparation and laying the sod is only half of the job. How the turf is managed immediately after installation can drastically affect time-touse of a site. In recent years, the

Greenhorizons team have taken what they know about turf and developed the ProXstablishment service to take the hassle and worry out of the site preparation, sod installation, and also the required maintenance until establishment. From specialized sports fields to any sod installation, Greenhorizons has the right sod variety for the job. Couple that with extensive experience through successful installs and their ProXtablishment turf management program to guarantee establishment, and you’re in line for a TOUCHDOWN!! Call today. It’s a win-win with Greenhorizons.

Serving Ontario & Surrounding Areas | 1-800-367-6995 | GreenhorizonsSod.com/sportsfield

Actual photo of real grass temporarily installed at the Rogers Centre

Touchdown!

REintroducing

PlayCubes

™

We are delighted to partner with Richard to re-introduce PlayCubes to today’s children, and allow them to discover play on their own terms and in their own way. To see PlayCubes in action, go to Playworld.com/PlayCubes

42 Woodway Trail Brantford, ON N3R 6G7 (519) 750 3322 info@newworldparksolutions.ca

Battery life Introducing The Battery Collection A NEW WAY TO ENERGIZE YOUR OUTDOOR SPACE

The Battery Collection—featuring the exclusive chair design for New York’s The Battery Conservancy—delivers the perfect combination of fresh, unique design and comfortable, flexible ease. Exclusively from Maglin.

CHAIR DESIGN BY ANDREW JONES

maglin.com 1.800.716.5506

ALUMINUM PLANTERS

‘City’ & ‘Urban’ Collections • Bolt-down or Free-standing • Recessed or Flush mount base • Custom sizes available • Liners included • Drainage system

800-268-7328 hausersite.com

D E L I N E AT E

ENCLOSE

PROTECT

BEAUTIFY

YOUR SOURCE FOR HIGH QUALITY CLAY PAVING BRICKS

• “Genuine Clay Brick Pavers”- Hard fired, tested, proven to endure and enhance any landscape design. • Available in over 100 colour ranges, 30 sizes, and thicknesses from 25 mm to 75mm • Permeable Clay Brick Pavers - For rainwater conservation and stormwater management. ue & Catalog Samplesle on Request Availab

9-5115 Harvester Rd., Burlington, ON L7L 0A3 Burlington: 905-637-6997 • Toronto: 416-252-5811 • Ottawa: 613-739-5850 • Toll-Free: 800-567-5800

www.ThamesValleyBrick.com

PLANT A BIG IDEA. WATCH IT CHANGE A CITY. We don’t just want more urban trees – We want them to last.

The Silva Cell’s open, modular design protects soil under paving, providing maximum rooting area for the tree and allowing

water to permeate the entire soil column.

This means healthier, longer-lived trees and a truly sustainable urban landscape. www.deeproot.com

Metro Toronto Convention Centre, North Building

Wed.Nov.30 - Thu.Dec.1

connect

#iidex16

iidexcanada.com

2016

CEC 4-Day Course: Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design (CPTED) November 24-27, 2016 from 9:00am to 4:00pm The Richmond, 477 Richmond St. W., Toronto

$425.00 + HST To register visit www.oala.ca or call (416) 231-4181 x2 This course is eligible for Continuing Education Credits

Artifact

.35

03 text by Kamila Grigo

The renovation of Prague’s paved surfaces over the past decade or so has brought about new applications of traditional materials and techniques. Blackand-white granite cobblestone pavers are being deployed throughout the city by way of a palette of varied geometric patterns. The effect is a unifying and identity-building element that complements the relatively coherent architecture of this historic, tourist city. With some modifications, the traditional, dry-laid granite cobblestones nonetheless lend themselves to contemporary applications such as accessible, expanded sidewalks, tram stop bump-outs, and traffic islands. BIO/

Kamila Grigo is a Master of Landscape Architecture Candidate at the University of Toronto and recently completed a landscape architecture internship in Berlin.

06 01-09/

IMAGES/

A selection of street pavers in Prague Kamila Grigo

discover...

eterna

DOVER

NICKEL

ONYX

Eterna is the most modern and advanced paving system from Oaks, featuring our Elite Finish™ and ColorBold™ technologies to deliver the ultimate blend of aesthetics and performance in a sleek pavement system. Eterna is manufactured in a 100mm (3.94”) thickness, and its three modular sizes and individual packaging offer vast patterning possibilities, for a complete solution in a dependable interlocking pavement system.

OAKSpavers.com | 1.800.709.OAKS (6257)

SEE ETERNA ONLINE >

THE POSSIBILITIES ARE ENDLESS.

Our team has been trusted for over 40 years to provide technical expertise and project support in the exploration of segmental paving product options. Optimizing color, finish, texture and size, we have what it takes to bring your vision to life.

PROJECT: Halifax Central Library. Halifax, NS DESIGN: Gordon Ratcliffe Landscape Architect Fowler Bauld & Mitchell Ltd. / schmidt hammer lassen architects PRODUCT: Series 3000®

Contact your Unilock Representative for samples, product information and to arrange a Lunch & Learn for your team.

UNILOCK.COM

1-800-UNILOCK

Ground 35 – Fall 2016 – Edges

Articles inside

gJ 113,860 60W light bulbs for one hour

kg nOx emissions of one truck during 20 days

trees