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Reports: Landscape design

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Research: trees make streets safer, not deadlier
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New Urban News Article with images, table, sidebar, 9/1/2006
Proposals for planting rows of trees along the roads — a traditional technique for shaping pleasing public spaces — are often opposed by transportation engineers, who contend that a wide travel corridor, free of obstacles, is needed to protect the lives of errant motorists.
Increasingly, however, the engineers’ beliefs about safety are being subjected to empirical study and are being found incorrect. Eric Dumbaugh, an assistant professor of transportation at Texas A&M, threw down the gauntlet with a long, carefully argued article, ”Safe Streets, Livable Streets,” in the Summer 2005 issue of the Journal of the American Planning Association. A follow-up article by Dumbaugh, in the 2006 edition of Transportation Research Record, will present further evidence that safe urban roadsides are not what the traffic-engineering establishment thinks they are.

New Urbanism moves toward ‘low-impact’ infrastructure
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New Urban News Article with images, 12/1/2006
Natural drainage systems and other ecologically advanced technologies are coming to walkable communities.
A new urbanist-led charrette in November recommended that New Orleans be redeveloped with “natural drainage systems” — techniques allowing stormwater to soak into the ground rather than be piped, sometimes full of pollutants, to bodies of water like Lake Pontchartrain.

As street trees die, cities search for ways to stay green
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New Urban News Article with images and sidebars, 1/1/2005
Toronto, its tree cover rapidly thinning, is one city looking for solutions.
Toronto residents are upset. Through-out the 2.6-million population Ontario city and especially in its center, thousands of street trees are dying prematurely, many within a year or two of being planted. Public concern is so strong that last fall the government organized a conference in which 200 municipal personnel spent an entire day discussing the problem with tree experts from throughout North America.

Landscape
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Chapter 26 of the New Urbanism Best Practices Guide
This chapter looks at difficulties that trees encounter in the urban environment, such as poor soil, compaction, inadequate drainage, utility trenches, undersized tree grates, and excessive paving. The text then explains recommended practices, such as installing trenches with a “structural soil volume” allowing roots to grow beneath sidewalks. An excerpt and illustrations from the Verano [Texas] Community Design Book provide recommendations governing continuous tree planting, planting in grates, medians, and promenades, and planting along park drives. Agricultural urbanism — the integration of farms and gardens of varying scales into a community — is explored.

Natural drainage systems can cut NU’s development costs
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New Urban News Article with images, table, sidebar, 1/1/2007
In a South Carolina case study, “light-imprint” infrastructure reduced anticipated engineering expenses 31 percent.
In the December issue, we reported that new urbanist developers are increasingly turning to “natural drainage systems” — techniques that allow much of a community’s stormwater to soak into the ground rather than be piped to rivers, lakes, treatment plants, or large, unsightly detention ponds. A newly completed study led by Tom Low shows that these more natural methods could sharply reduce engineering costs for traditional neighborhood developments (TNDs).

Stormwater management as civic art
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New Urban News Article with images, 12/1/2006
How to handle rainwater in ways that accentuate placemaking
In times past, engineers often integrated elements of civic art, architecture, and history into a city’s parkways, bridges, and other public necessities. In doing so, they enhanced the character of the urban environment. Today, when engineering often deals with the environment, there is an opportunity once again to serve civic purposes — by handling rainwater well.