urban ecology and design laboratory

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.”

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.

NYT Noise Pollution Is Changing Forests

Using a motion-activated camera, scientists studied bird activity in northwestern New Mexico. Scientists found that in noisy areas, scrub jays avoid pinyon seeds. Normally they gather many seeds and fail to return to some of their hiding spaces. These seeds can grow into seedlings. In noisy areas mice eat most of the seeds, they tend to eat all they seeds they find.