UEDLAB | Urban Ecology and Design Laboratory

Nov 3 2012

10/27/2012 Coastal Adaptation workday in Bridgeport, Connecticut

Yale’s UEDLAB built green infrastructure working with The City of Bridgeport, the local community of Seaside Village, EPA, YUDW, UCONN, and al fresco.

On Saturday The Nature Conservancy came out just before Hurricane Sandy to mound earth and plant red maples in part of a constructed floodplain.

Oct 31 2012

For Years, Warnings That It Could Happen Here

On Tuesday, city and state officials took their first tentative steps toward considering major infrastructure changes that could protect the city’s fragile shores from repeated disastrous damage.

Oct 18 2012

Visualization of greenhouse gas emissions

Climate scientists are creating a three-dimensional carbon dioxide emissions map of the city of Los Angeles that will detail greenhouse gas emissions for individual buildings, road segments and power generators over time. The map uses computer modeling, traffic conditions, local air pollution reports, tax assessment records and other public data. Eventually, authors say, the maps will incorporate data from satellites, as well as measurements taken on the ground and by aircraft.

(via Scientists mapping Los Angeles sources of greenhouse gas emissions)

Felson Comments: Here is a It represents our best guess at this hidden urban condition. The maps were based on various data but no physical measurements.

Sep 15 2012

Alex’s planting idea for the front of Kroon Hall.

Planted as a successional garden with Rhus typhina (Staghorn Sumac) planted around large boulders with an understory of warm season native grasses and oak saplings.

See the blog on Sage Magazine http://sagemagazine.org/a-boulder-vision-for-kroon-hall/#comments

Sep 12 2012

Regenerative Adelaide

“Cities must abandon historical linear metabolisms, in which resources are shipped in and waste shipped out, and instead adopt more natural and resource-efficient circular metabolisms, according to the author.”

Will regenerative design succeed where sustainability fails in its watered-down ubiquity? Or will it become increasingly compromised due to wider attempts to implement?

The greatest challenge with rewilding especially within suburban areas is the human-wildlife conflicts as represented in this article on suburban lions in Nairobi Kenya. This issue could be solved through an integration of land planning and site design strategies similar to an expanded suburban zoo.

The cover of the August 27th, 2012 New York was Bruce McCalls’, “A Greener, Greater New York,” illustrates a rewilding concept for the city. It is an interesting juxtaposition of western land use practices and wildlife on Times Square, NY. The image raises one of the biggest challenges with rewilding, the compatability of land uses. It also highlights the attraction to pastoral conditions and wilderness as a component at least conceptually, of public park land. Regardless of how urban, the idea that natural communities could co-exist is a repeated discussion among urbanites and designers.

Aug 9 2012

Overview article of the shortcomings of land development practices presented as conservation development.

“One of the biggest issues, Reed concluded, is the quality and type of data used to create the conservation design. Her preliminary results show that only 13 percent of the West’s conservation development ordinances mandate a study of the property’s ecological attributes. “There’s no reason to believe that (the land that) got protected is any better than what got developed,” Reed says. In contrast, she points to Routt County, which specifically requires developers to identify and avoid “Critical Habitat of Threatened and/or Endangered species, including nesting, roosting, mating, birthing and feeding areas.”

May 13 2012

To Repair the Shore, or Retreat?

This article reviews the challenges of negotiating changes along Connecticut’s coast. As a core member of The Nature Conservancy’s Coastal Resilience Team, we are learning about this issues from small towns on the coast. Rather than being skeptical, most homeowners are seeking more information and looking to the town for ideas on coastal adaptation.

May 9 2012

Kids Who Get Driven Everywhere Don't Know Where They're Going

It turns out vehicular traffic does something else, too, more subtle but equally pernicious: It changes the way children see and experience the world by diminishing their connection to community and neighbors.

Appleyard worked with children in two suburban communities. One had light traffic and infrastructure that allowed children to walk and bike on their own. One had heavy traffic and children traveled almost exclusively by car. Using a technique called cognitive mapping, Appleyard asked groups of nine- and 10-year-old kids to draw maps of their neighborhoods, showing destinations such as school and friends’ houses, and marking places they liked or disliked. The results were revealing:

In the Heavy [traffic exposure] neighborhood, the children frequently expressed feelings of dislike and danger and were unable to represent any detail of the surrounding environment. Newell Avenue, the main road in front of the school, is a tree-lined street and yet few of the trees were drawn; instead, red (danger, cars) and orange (dislike) dominated. Participants from the Light [traffic exposure] neighborhood, on the other hand, showed a much richer sense of their environment, drawing more of the streets, houses, trees, and other objects, and including fewer signs of danger, or dislike and fewer cars. The children also drew many more places in the street where they liked to play and areas that they just simply liked: they noted playing in 43 percent more locations in their streets relative to the children in the heavy-trafﬁc-exposure neighborhood.

In sum, as exposure to auto traffic volumes and speed decreases, a child’s sense of threat goes down, and his/her ability to establish a richer connection and appreciation for the community rises.

May 1 2012

The Decline of Suburbia

Excellent infographic from ArchDaily on the declining state of the American Suburb:

The Burbs – more at ArchDaily.com

Apr 26 2012

We propose to construct an amphibian habitat mesocosm that links seasonal
ponds and upland habitats constructed on our site as designed ecosystem
gardens with multiple adjacent parcels to become a “rehabitation zone.”
The zone is connected to the surrounding urban ecosystems through our
proposed Constitution Mall Habitat Corridor.

UEDLAB participated as a team member with the Snohetta AECOM design team for the National Mal Union Square Competition.

For the National Mall Exhibit the UEDLAB proposed amphibian habitat as an ephemeral wetland and sound garden with specific species introductions (American toad, spring peeper and spotted salamander). The amphibian ecology concept is intended to enhance the overall biodiversity of the system. Constructing an ephemeral wetland on site would create a seasonal intensified ecological community providing habitat for a wide variety of species. We propose to construct an amphibian habitat mesocosm that links seasonal ponds and upland habitats constructed on our site as designed ecosystem gardens with multiple adjacent parcels to become a “rehabitation zone” The zone is connected to the surrounding urban ecosystems through our proposed Constitution Mall Habitat Corridor.To create these habitats we propose to construct three elements:seasonal wetlands, salamander crossings, and upland habitat.Amphibian mesocosms allow research on constructed habitats to study the impact of hydrology and changing vegetative communities to achieve habitat and aesthetic value while promoting safety and limited maintenance.

MoMA

Foreclosed: Rehousing the American Dream

February 15–August 13, 2012

Architecture and Design Galleries, third floor

Alex Felson and the UEDLAB served as team members with Zago Architecture to develop a proposal the MoMA exhibit Foreclosed: Rehousing the American Dream. Their project, Property with Properties, included concepts of constructed ecosystems through rewiliding.

See the website for the project http://www.moma.org/interactives/exhibitions/2012/foreclosed/rialto

For a blog on the rewilding approach of the project see:

http://www.moma.org/explore/inside_out/2011/12/21/foreclosed-the-role-of-the-team-in-the-design-process

Foreclosed: Rehousing the American Dream is an exploration of new architectural possibilities for cities and suburbs in the aftermath of the recent foreclosure crisis. During summer 2011, five interdisciplinary teams of architects, urban planners, ecologists, engineers, and landscape designers worked in public workshops at MoMA PS1 to envision new housing and transportation infrastructures that could catalyze urban transformation, particularly in the country’s suburbs.

Apr 24 2012

So Much Life on a Little Patch of Earth

The author discusses the diversity of species within a given housing lot in Washington State noting the discovery of a rare species. It is interesting that even with the focus of the article mostly on insects, the drawing of the animals on the lot includes all of the fury and large signature animals, revealing the issue of highlighting and valuing the mostly hidden species that we all take for granted and disregard.

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