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Showing posts from October, 2009

In the spirit: Paradise Lost…And Found garden

Monkey puzzle tree Photographs taken during the 2009 San Francisco Flower & Garden Show The garden was designed by Joleen and Tony Morales of Redwood Landscape in Millbrae, California. Read our essay about some of the show's gardens at Human Flower Project.

Untitled architecture installation

Wurster Hall, Department of Architecture, UC Berkeley, May 2009 Question: What is it? A sun catcher? A sun dial?

Jane's houses

In the span of a year, I visited Jane Jacobs's New York and Toronto neighborhoods. During a 2008 research trip to Toronto, I walked through Spadina and photographed Jane's former house. This summer, inspired by Anthony Flint's Boston Globe article about Jane "wrestling" with Robert Moses, I visited Hudson Street in Greenwich Village, site of the famous "intricate sidewalk ballet." I did not observe a sidewalk ballet when I walked Hudson between 11th and Perry Streets on a September afternoon. The ballet described by Jacobs's in Death and Life of Great American Cities occurred on a weekday evening.

Four in a million trees - Million Trees NYC

First, a quote from the MillionTreesNYC website about the tree planting campaign: MillionTreesNYC, one of the 127 PlaNYC initiatives, is a citywide, public-private program with an ambitious goal: to plant and care for one million new trees across the City's five boroughs over the next decade. By planting one million trees, New York City can increase its urban forest—our most valuable environmental asset made up of street trees, park trees, and trees on public, private and commercial land—by an astounding 20%, while achieving the many quality-of-life benefits that come with planting trees. We've been eyeing four trees on West Broadway (not to be confused with the western section of Broadway) planted as part of the city's million tree-planting campaign. The trees are a mix of pin ( Quercus palustris ) and red ( Q. rubra ) oaks which can attain mature heights of up to 75 feet (with a 40 foot canopy) and 90 feet, respectively. Note the gardens planted in the tree basins.

Cooling parking lots - trees face competition from PV carports

The Sacramento Parking Lot Ordinance, passed in 1983, has a 50% shading requirement for off-street, surface parking lots within 15 years of their development (Sacramento City Code, Title 17). Sacramento was one of several California cities that passed "cooling" ordinances in response to the energy crisis of the 1970s (McPherson 2001). Sacramento's shading requirement mandates tree planting. McPherson (2001) writes that not only is "tree planting is one of the most cost-effective means of mitigating urban heat islands and associated expenditures for air conditioning" (after Huang et al., 1987; Akbari et al., 1992; Simpson and McPherson, 1998), tree planting is "considered essential to moderating the heat gained by asphalt parking lots" (after Asaeda et al., 1996). S Street, Sacramento Despite the effectiveness of tree planting in moderating elevated temperatures of surface parking lots as well as in providing associated benefits such as stormwater r

Conventional versus expanded tree basin, San Francisco style

Image: Dolores Street, San Francisco We're back from our California research trip where I conducted field work in Sacramento and San Francisco. In yesterday's post, I featured a photograph of an assessment of Sacramento's urban heat island. Today's post features two types of street tree planting areas in San Francisco: a conventional tree pit and an expanded tree basin. The former is typically 3 feet by 3 feet. The expanded basin in the photograph is 54 feet by 6 feet! Image: Valley Street looking east towards Dolores Street, San Francisco Providing expanded tree basins in San Francisco's neighborhoods is a project of the Friends of the Urban Forest (FUF). Using the city's Permeable Sidewalk Landscaping Permit , FUF staff and neighborhood residents remove sidewalk concrete blocks to provide greater planting and growing space and other environmental benefits. The replacement of concrete by plants allows for the absorption heat instead

Sacramento's Urban Heat Island, circa 1998

Photograph taken at the Sacramento Municipal Utility District (SUMD) Customer Service Headquarters This map of surface temperatures is the product of a 1998 NASA flyover of Sacramento. The hottest temperatures are represented by red, orange and yellow while cooler temperatures are represented by green, blue, and purple. The map illustrates the city's urban heat island . Impermeable, dry surfaces, more common in urban areas, have elevated temperatures which contributes to greater energy use and emissions, poor water quality, and reduced human healthiness (see Eric Klinenberg's Heat Wave: A Social Autopsy of Disaster in Chicago ).

Smell the flowers all week

We are on a week-long research trip. While we're away, we encourage you to read our contributions to the Human Flower Project . Matchmaking on the Wedding Day A Legacy of Jamaican Fruits HFQ#9: What Thrives in Qatar? A photo: Escalator Garden HFQ#8: Fungi Need Names Kings, Queens and Mangosteens Listen Up: SF Garden Show 2009 HFQ #6: Fit for Foraging? Oops a Daisy ~ Plant Idioms The Florists of Telegraph Avenue Walking with 'Sharp-eyed' Margot Bookends: Native and Ornamental Gardening in Prison Street Trees: Let’s Think Outside the Wires A photo: Slow Down for Quince A photo: Quatrefoil—Flower of Andalusian Architecture Pollen-feld: A Bee Movie Review Georgia’s News Bouquet: 3rd Week of Oct. Bringing City Trees to Fruition

Wildlife could "takeback" the Holbeck Urban Village in Leeds

From the Garnett Netherwood website Spotted in the October 2009 issue of Landscape Architecture Magazine, the proposed Urban Takeback project by architects at Garnett Netherwood consists of Green Tower Structures designed "to cater for the wildlife of Holbeck Urban Village" in Leeds, England.

Funky nest identified...almost!

Could the "funky nest" we wrote about in our May Bird Watch be the nest of a Bullock's Oriole? We received an email from Cornell's NestWatch that identified the nest as that of a Baltimore Oriole but NestWatch was not aware that the nest was photographed in Berkeley, California. California is not part of the Baltimore Oriole's range, but the state is part of the Bullock's Oriole's range. However, the Bullock's Oriole is "a bird of open woodlands in the American West, the Bullock's Oriole is especially fond of tall trees along rivers and streams" ( All About Birds ). Our nest was located in a front yard, adjacent to the sidewalk, with no water in (human) sight. (The nest has been found in urban parks, near water.) But, the Bullock Oriole's nest resembles the Baltimore Oriole's nest.... What do you think?

Scenes from the road - Singapore, Malaysia, Hong Kong

On a ped. bridge above a highway near National Univ. of Singapore In a tram on Hong Kong Island Kuala Lumpur's Petronas Twin Towers ahead, Malaysia Watching trishaws and scooters on Lebuh Light in Georgetown, Penang (Pinang), Malaysia In a trishaw going through an intersection near Khoo Kongsi in Georgetown, Penang (Pinang), Malaysia

Festival of the Trees #40, the benefits of trees

Northern New England autumn leaves, courtesy of Letters from a Hill Farm Aspen gold by Priscilla Stuckey, PhD of this lively earth is the perfect kick-off to this edition of Festival of the Trees . First, it feels like fall in New York City where this edition was written. Second, Priscilla's post perfectly captures some of the psychological benefits of trees. She writes, A photo cannot capture the sensation of being surrounded by a thousand twinkling prisms of golden light. and And then there is the special aroma of aspens. Sniffing an aspen grove sometimes makes me imagine that I’ve discovered an ancient wooden chest that sat empty for centuries, and I suddenly lift the lid. After all, trees are usually preserved and planted because of their appeal to our senses. DN Lee of Urban Science Adventures! is working on her PhD dissertation; she's 72% there according to her dissertation progress meter. Lee writes about the shade-giving Mimosa Tree in her paternal grandmother&#