kg NOX emissions of one truck during 20 days

10

PUBLIC SPACE

new frontiers in funding The barriers to community engagement are many: from a lack of political will to simple indifference. Yet the patio of Market 707, an outdoor marketplace in Toronto’s west end, is an example of a built project that may signal a new era for community engagement around public space.

Marisa Bernstein and Nicolas Koff, two recent graduates of the landscape architecture program at the University of Pennsylvania, sat down with me on the patio of this innovative market, surrounded

12

13 by shipping containers repurposed as food vendors’ stalls. After graduation, their experiences with community-based projects were uninspiring but perhaps typical. Koff and Bernstein found that so many community groups could not connect with a design professional or, if they did, it was never at the right time. Projects got moving with a flurry of excitement, only to be bogged down in bureaucracy and a lack of vision. According to Koff, there were a few reasons for the poor success of these endeavours:

After a few rounds of trial and error, Bernstein, Nicolas Koff, and Jonathan Koff developed Projexity, a crowd-sourcing website dedicated to the mobilization and funding of community-based public space projects. Projexity provides a venue for members of the public to discuss and mobilize around local projects; but it also goes further, providing a funding mechanism that lets locals re-invest in their own neighbourhoods through donations. Access to even a modest budget allows Projexity to leverage social capital to create a platform for design competitions and broad visibility among professionals; according to Koff, this provides the opportunity for “community groups to come together with professionals at the right time over a project, not just an idea. ”

Projexity represents the beginnings of a new institutional framework for communitybased projects. Graham Taylor, OALA, a landscape architect with Baker Turner Inc. and a close watcher of web-based tools, highlights the “micro-local” application of the technology. While web-based tools are generally applied en masse over a global scale, Taylor argues that “it is the perfect time to combine crowd-sourcing with social media to fund projects right around the corner. ” Taylor explains that anyone can “find a local cause, post it on Projexity, get the word out on Twitter and Facebook, fund the transaction through a PayPal account, and create a new community space.

Early results for Projexity are promising. The Market 707 patio campaign successfully raised $6,500 to commission a design competition for the market’s patio and deliver a finished product to the marketplace vendors in just five months. In such a short time frame, most community projects would probably still be floundering in their attempts to pull together political will or financial resources, yet the Market 707 patio harnessed community resources independent of the political actors or granting organizations that usually dictate the pace of a project. Koff explains that “Projexity created the momentum. The money generated excitement around the project. ” And once the designs came in, “it helped people develop their imagination for the site. Without Projexity, it would have taken a lot longer. There would have been less community involvement and more layers of committees. ” Because of this freedom, Bernstein adds, it was “not the cheapest, but rather the most suitable design” that was built.

The winning entry, by the firm G, is an embodiment of the Projexity ethos: it takes what is disregarded or overlooked and, with it, finds a novel solution to complex problems. Here, the patio is based on the

10-13/ Construction of the Market 707 patio IMAGES/ Courtesy of Projexity 14/ Two of Projexity’s three founders: Marisa Bernstein and Jonathan Koff

IMAGE/ Courtesy of Projexity

15/ The Market 707 patio is well used by the community. IMAGE/ Courtesy of Projexity 14 ubiquitous shipping pallet. Yet the lowly skid has been modified into a platform with a series of planters that elevate patrons and create a safe, comfortable environment. It was the winning entry of 15, which included several from students. What was common among all entrants is that they are emerging professionals, trying to make a name for themselves in a conservative field.

Danielle Charlton, a landscape architectural intern with Terraplan and one of those emerging professionals who participated in the design competition, notes that Projexity projects “aren’t the typical developer-driven model that is only concerned with the bottom line; instead they offer landscape architects a chance at making a tangible, positive contribution to the urban fabric. ”

TEXT BY JON WOODSIDE, AN ARBORIST AND LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURAL INTERN WITH BAKER TURNER INC. AND BOARD MEMBER OF SPROUT, A COMMUNITY OF LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTS WORKING PRO-BONO FOR COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT AROUND ONTARIO’S PUBLIC SPACES, LAUNCHING PROJECTS THIS WINTER.

Join us as we take a look at the industry ’s cutting edge, through the lens of digital tools

Our panel of experts looks at what’s already possible and what might be in store for landscape architects in a digital world

CO-MODERATED BY DENISE PINTO AND VICTORIA TAYLOR, OALA

BIOS/ YASSER ANSARI IS THE CO-FOUNDER OF NETWORKED ORGANISMS, A NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC-BACKED SOFTWARE COMPANY FOCUSED ON CONNECTING PEOPLE TO THE NATURAL WORLD. HE STUDIED MOLECULAR BIOLOGY AND BIOINFORMATICS AT U.C. SAN DIEGO AND EARNED HIS MASTER’S DEGREE FROM NYU’S INTERACTIVE TELECOMMUNICATIONS PROGRAM, WHERE HE IS CURRENTLY AN ADJUNCT FACULTY MEMBER.

MARISA BERNSTEIN IS A LANDSCAPE AND URBAN DESIGNER AND CO-FOUNDER OF PROJEXITY, AN ONLINE PLATFORM THAT ENABLES PEOPLE TO DESIGN, FUND, AND BUILD PROJECTS IN THEIR NEIGHBOURHOODS. WITH A MASTERS OF LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE FROM THE UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA, MARISA’S INTERESTS RESIDE IN FINDING INNOVATIVE WAYS TO RESTORE AND RE-IMAGINE THE DYNAMIC RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN COMMUNITIES AND THEIR ENVIRONMENT.

RUTHANNE HENRY, OALA, IS AN ARBORIST AND LANDSCAPE ARCHITECT WORKING FOR TORONTO PARKS, FORESTRY AND RECREATION, SPECIALIZING IN POLICY AND STRATEGIC PLANNING RELATED TO THE URBAN FOREST AND COORDINATING CAPITAL PROJECTS WITHIN PARKS. RUTHANNE IS ALSO A GRADUATE OF RYERSON UNIVERSITY’S MASTERS IN SPATIAL ANALYSIS PROGRAM, WHICH FOCUSES ON SPATIAL DATA INTERPRETATION AND VISUALIZATION, AND IS A MEMBER OF THE RYERSON URBAN FOREST AND ECOLOGICAL DISTURBANCE RESEARCH GROUP.

SVETLANA LAVRENTIEVA, OALA, IS A SENIOR ASSOCIATE, LANDSCAPE ARCHITECT, AND LEED-ACCREDITED PROFESSIONAL AT SCOTT TORRANCE LANDSCAPE ARCHITECT INC. WHO COMBINES HER PASSION FOR THE PUBLIC REALM WITH AN ECOLOGICAL AND SUSTAINABLE DESIGN APPROACH. AS A TRAINED FINE ARTIST, SHE FINDS HER INSPIRATION IN VARIOUS CREATIVE DISCIPLINES AND USES HER KNOWLEDGE OF COLOURS, TEXTURES, AND COMPOSITION TO BRING PLAYFULNESS TO ALL HER DESIGNS.

MARK LINDQUIST IS A GRADUATE OF THE INAUGURAL YEAR OF THE MLA PROGRAM AT THE UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO AND HAS PRACTISED AND TAUGHT LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE AND URBAN DESIGN IN CANADA, NEW ZEALAND, THE USA, AND THE UNITED KINGDOM. HE IS CURRENTLY ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF ENVIRONMENTAL DESIGN AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CALGARY, WHERE HE RESEARCHES PEOPLE-ENVIRONMENT RELATIONSHIPS MEDIATED BY DIGITAL MEDIA.

IAN MALCZEWSKI IS A WRITER, URBAN PLANNER, AND TEACHER INTERESTED IN THE INTERSECTION OF CITIES, TECHNOLOGY, STORYTELLING, AND CIVIC ENGAGEMENT. HE'S AN ASSOCIATE WITH SWERHUN FACILITATION, A PUBLIC ENGAGEMENT FIRM, AND A MEMBER OF URBAN+DIGITAL, A GROUP FOCUSED ON EXPLORING THE INTERSECTION OF CITIES AND DIGITAL TECHNOLOGIES.

LIAT MARGOLIS IS AN ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE AT THE UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO, JOHN H. DANIELS FACULTY OF ARCHITECTURE, LANDSCAPE, AND DESIGN. SHE IS ALSO THE PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR OF GRIT LAB (GREEN ROOF INNOVATION TESTING LABORATORY), WHERE SHE EXAMINES THE ENVIRONMENTAL PERFORMANCE OF GREEN ROOFS, GREEN FACADES, AND SOLAR TECHNOLOGIES.

DENISE PINTO IS THE DIRECTOR OF JANE'S WALK, AN ANNUAL FESTIVAL OF URBAN EXPLORATION CELEBRATING THE LEGACY OF ACTIVIST AND WRITER JANE JACOBS. SHE HAS A PASSION FOR URBAN ISSUES, CITY PARKS, PLACE MAKING, AND PUBLIC DIALOGUE, AND AN UNWAVERING BELIEF IN THE POWER OF WEB-BASED TOOLS TO PROMOTE CIVIC PARTICIPATION. DENISE TEACHES AT THE INSTITUTE WITHOUT BOUNDARIES AND IS THE CHAIR OF THE GROUND EDITORIAL BOARD.

VICTORIA TAYLOR, OALA, IS IN PRIVATE PRACTICE TO DESIGN SPACES INFORMED AND INSPIRED BY CONTEXT ECOLOGY, COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT, AND SOCIAL AND HORTICULTURAL POSSIBILITIES. VICTORIA IS AN EDITORIAL BOARD MEMBER OF GROUND AND A LANDSCAPE CRITIC AT THE UNIVERSITY OF WATERLOO SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE.

Denise Pinto (DP): In this issue, we’re exploring the ways that new media intersect with landscape architecture. Digital technologies are shaping not only community outreach, participation, and engagement, but also transforming the tools we use to create landscape forms. Think back twenty years ago. The technological jump we’ve taken since then is pretty incredible. And now think forward twenty years; how can we imagine a more equitable future in which there is not only more information but also equal access to it? Could each of you provide a description of what you work on that’s pertinent to this discussion?

Yasser Ansari (YA): I’m based in New York, and I started a company in 2010 called Network Organisms. I was finishing my Master’s degree in the Interactive Telecommunications Program at the Tisch School of Arts at NYU. The program involves technologists, artists, and designers working together to dream up future scenarios. I combined some of my greatest passions— the outdoors, nature, science geekery, biology—with the power of mobile devices.

Network Organisms launched a project called Project Noah, which is basically a digital butterfly net. I was reading a lot about how technology was disconnecting and dehumanizing us, and how we were all heads-down text-messaging instead of talking to people. The experiment was: well, can we turn that around? Can we turn technology into the most powerful window that’s ever been created to unlock and learn about the natural world? So, Project Noah has created a community that’s over 225,000 members strong now. The way it works is that you share photographs of your encounters with wildlife with this digital community. If you know what it is you’re looking at, it becomes a catalogue of species you’ve encountered. But if you have no idea what you’re looking at, you can farm it out to the community to help you identify the species, using a collaborative, crowdsourcing process. We also have specific data-collecting tasks you can participate in. Many of them are for fun, such as “let’s document animal architecture” or “animal mimicry. ” But others are for scientific data collecting: tracking invasive species, learning more about the distribution of particular species. With all of these observations, there is a photograph and a location attached to everything. We are basically creating a crowd-sourced, location-based field guide. When you launch the app in Toronto or Texas, you will see all the wildlife that the community has documented in and around where you happen to be. We were able to get National Geographic on board very early, so they are a part-owner of the company I created and they are the financial backer that’s allowed us to really build out and scale the platform. We’ve built services and tools on top of the Project Noah platform for organizations like the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to help people document their encounters with wildlife in fish and wildlife refuges. We’re launching an Android-based tablet that’s going out to 25,000 students in North Carolina, and Project Noah is included in that as a way of getting kids engaged. The project is geared towards being welcoming to people who don’t know much about the natural world and who don’t really have other places where they can go to ask questions. Many communities that exist today are very specialized or expect you to have some sort of baseline knowledge of the natural world; I’m trying to change that and become more of a gateway drug for the next generation.

Ian Malczewski (IM): I work with two different organizations: Swerhun Facilitation and Urban+Digital. I’m interested in the intersection of urbanization and technological innovation, the increasing ubiquity of technology in all aspects of our life, and how that’s influencing the way cities are governed, managed, and designed. I’m also interested in the way people connect stories to place.

At Swerhun Facilitation, we design and deliver public consultation processes to help connect public agencies with their constituents. We’ve worked with Metrolinx, the City of Toronto, and the Province of Ontario to deliver projects ranging from public transportation to urban design guidelines to public realm master plans. Right now I’m part of a team developing a parks, open space, and streetscape master plan at Yonge and Eglinton in Toronto. We’re using Ushahidi’s Crowdmap platform to solicit place-based stories about Yonge and Eglinton’s public spaces. The data will be part of the background analysis to understand how people are using the public realm in that community and, through that data, generate some ideas about the area’s potential future public realm.

At Urban+Digital, we’ve hosted two events. The first was Open Data Day, which brought together people interested in technology and people interested in cities to talk about the possibilities open data could have for the city. Our second event was focused on transportation, specifically how technology is enabling new forms of urban mobility.

01 My specific interest is in informatics: tapping into environmental data to create unique interfaces. There are really interesting opportunities for landscape architects, planners, designers, and artists to leverage data and present it back in creative ways. A good example is the work of Natalie Jeremijenko, whose project “Amphibious Architecture” installed arrays of lights in the East River and Bronx River in New York City. The light arrays measured and displayed data about water quality by changing colour depending on the quality of the water. The lights would also blink if there were fish underneath. That accomplished two things: it told people about the quality of the water and raised awareness about the fact that there are actually fish in this very polluted body of water. So often technology separates us from our environment, but if used right, it can actually bring us closer to it.

Liat Margolis (LM): In 2010, I started a research lab, with a number of colleagues at the University of Toronto’s Daniels Faculty, called Green Roof Innovation Testing Laboratory (GRIT Lab). The idea was to develop a hands-on, practical approach to understanding environmental technologies. We typically study environmental technologies and products from textbooks or industry brochures; we don’t really know whether they’re effective or optimal. Our approach at the GRIT Lab is to integrate sensor technology and real-time data acquisition to investigate that. More specifically, what prompted this current phase of GRIT Lab is Toronto’s green roof by-law, which came into effect in 2009 and mandates the construction of green roofs on all new construction above 2,000 square metres. The industry has grown tremendously in Southern Ontario, and there are still a lot of technical questions around what the ideal construction standard should be.

Our approach is to investigate such technologies contextually in terms of the regional climate and ecological conditions and also in terms of the infrastructural priorities of urban management; what are the city’s priorities in managing environmental systems? Is stormwater the most critical point and so we should gear all of our specifications and efforts towards retention of water during rain events, or is biodiversity as critical?

These are the kinds of issues we want to consider with regard to green roof technology specific to Southern Ontario and Toronto’s climate, and to figure out what is the most effective construction standard.

Another thing that’s really important for us is that the GRIT Lab is conceived as a teaching tool, a new form of pedagogy in architecture schools. It’s a hands-on, practical, and evidence-based approach to understanding environmental technologies, and it is centred around multi-disciplinary collaboration. Within our lab we have a biologist and a number of people from the civil engineering department whose expertise ranges from hydrology to energy modeling. We collaborate with industry members who bring in very specific expertise and also their concerns about the way the industry is shaping

up. We also have government funding and, as we establish our findings, we can have a direct conversation with the City about policies and guidelines. For us, this kind of platform, which engages in a multi-disciplinary and multi-institutional conversation, is a way to actually change the siloed educational model that we’re used to within our universities.

We’re also thinking about tools for visualizing the digital data. We have 270 sensors to date that record data every five minutes. Over the next three to five years, we will have huge amounts of data and will be looking at ways to convey that information to the general public, to professionals, and to academics.

Ruthanne Henry (RH): I have worn a few different hats with Toronto Parks, Forestry and Recreation. Right now I am working as a capital project coordinator on several projects in our parks that are revitalizing different areas of the city. Before this position, I was working on urban forestry policy and, within this role, two years ago I initiated a project inspired by the New York City mobile app Trees Near You, which is for increasing awareness of tree benefits. This project was adapted for Toronto as part of the event Random Hacks of Kindness, which is a worldwide group of software engineers and IT specialists who volunteer on social/environmental projects for the public good. The event was very exciting; there were code writers working on the data, IT specialists remotely connecting from Europe, and others creating websites to temporarily host the data. Unfortunately, we did not get that far with the app, and the beta website developed by volunteers has since expired. All the data for approximately half a million Toronto street trees is still available, hosted on Toronto’s Open Data portal, and all that is needed is application designers to come on board again. If developed, this application would provide detailed tree information such as size, species, and condition for all street trees and could be linked with other existing websites that provide a summary of the economic value of the environmental benefits offered by trees. It could be a powerful public education tool.

I’ve also just finished a Masters in spatial analysis as part of the Urban Forest and Ecological Disturbance Research Group at Ryerson, which looks at environmental research or spatial analysis techniques to help us understand information about the urban forest in an applied way. My research used spatial analysis (ArcGIS and Vectorbased landscape analysis tools) to simulate future scenario implications of trail impacts within environmentally significant areas in Toronto.

Another project completed as part of my Masters (with two other students—Chris Scarpone and Noel Damba) used the Google API technology for mapping and

04 the city’s tree canopy data to look at the correlation between housing prices and the amount of tree canopy across different areas. Our statistical conclusion was that there is a significant correlation between canopy cover and house values.

In general, I think there is a lot of opportunity to use technology, particularly mapping technology, to increase data sharing with the public and stakeholder communities that could be increasingly relevant to landscape architecture.

Svetlana Lavrentieva (SL): As a Senior Associate at Scott Torrance Landscape Architect Inc., I’m not a stranger to using digital tools for schematic designs,

01/ Natalie Jeremijenko’s Amphibious Architecture project IMAGE/ Chris Woebken

02/ Thermal and infrared sensors at the GRIT Lab planting beds IMAGE/ GRIT Lab

03/ Rendering of the GRIT Lab roof IMAGE/ GRIT Lab

04/ The GRIT Lab website includes information about plants that are being tested on the roof. IMAGE/ GRIT Lab

03

05

05 Toronto Public Health’s heat vulnerability map IMAGE/ City of Toronto

06 Digital crowd-sourcing can be used by landscape architects to engage communities in design. IMAGE/ Scott Torrance Landscape Architect Inc. presentations, and construction documents. Ability to move through three-dimensional digital spaces allows us to immediately understand what will work in a particular space. As more architectural firms started to use Revit, we found ourselves producing more and more work using the same program. Now our collaboration process is much easier, as all the sub-consultants are able to see the central model and note deficiencies right away. Three-dimensional modeling is definitely an important work tool, but it can also be fun and creative. Last year we were asked by Luminato’s Education and Community Outreach sector to work with Regent Park Focus Youth Media Arts Centre. We had ten weeks of workshops where the kids of Regent Park were able to visualize what the revitalization would look like if they were designers. We taught them basic Sketch-Up skills and we tried to take them on walks and do photography and hand-sketching. At the end of the day, of course, they knew more than we did in terms of how-to. It was great to engage the generation of 10- to 15-year-olds. Not only were the kids able to learn a new skill, but they were exposed to the landscape architecture profession as well. We have also been working with app developers to integrate open-source technology and crowd-source information in our design process, like an app for public consultation.

Marisa Bernstein (MB): I’m cofounder of Projexity, an online platform that enables people to design, fund, and help build projects in their neighbourhoods. The crux of Projexity is to get new ideas out there, give designers of all levels and abilities the tools to get involved in shaping their city. My co-founders and I had seen a lot of projects fizzle out or get value-engineered to death. We were frustrated by the status quo, so we brainstormed and came up with a platform that would give people an easy way to crowd-source all facets of a project. We launched in April of this year with two pilot projects, one in Philadelphia and one in Toronto at Scadding Court Community Centre’s Market 707 (located at Bathurst and Dundas). Market 707 is comprised of a strip of shipping containers turned streetfood vending vessels. The market has been around for a couple years but because of its orientation to the street, it doesn’t get much visibility. Dundas Street does this weird curve, and you don’t see the market until you’re right there, and traffic zips around really quickly. The street-food vendors had some tables set up right along the street

edge, but it was pretty precarious; there wasn’t a place for their patrons to sit and eat comfortably away from the street. We met with Scadding Court and suggested they launch a design competition and crowdsource the entire project because they didn’t have ideas of what they wanted, other than a comfortable seating space. So in April they used Projexity to run a design competition, crowd-fund the cost of building the patio, and gather volunteers. They ended up raising $6,500, filled four volunteer positions, and received 15 design competition entries. The design proposals were then narrowed down through a public vote in which people could choose their favourite concept, and

06