From LARCH-L, the Landscape Architecture mailing list:
The University of Washington, Department of Landscape Architecture, is convening over 300 academics, professionals, students and community representatives in a Green Futures Charrette to envision Seattle's open space system for the next century. The charrette on Feb. 3 + 4 is the centerpiece of Open Space Seattle 2100, an initiative to create a 100-year open space vision that builds on the 1903 Olmsted Plan and looks to innovative, integrated multi-functional spaces to provide amenities required for a successful urbanist planning strategy. Over the last months, Open Space Seattle 2100 has sponsored nationally renowned speakers on social, ecological, and equitable open space, by Mark Childs, Mike Houck, and Robert Garcia as well as local technical experts. Patrick Condon of UBC will give the charrette's keynote lecture on Feb. 2, titled "Green Urban Infrastructure for the 21st Century." The project website features useful resources developed by UW graduate students on open space planning and design, lecture recaps, open space planning principles developed by the project's guidance committee, and links to a blog and project presentations.
For more information about the initiative, visit the website and contact me at nrottle@u.washington.edu.
Nancy D. Rottle, RLA, ASLA
Assistant Professor, Department of Landscape Architecture
Adjunct Assistant Professor, Department of Architecture
Box 355734
University of Washington
Seattle, WA 98195-5734
voice 206.543.7897
fax 206.685.4486
nrottle@u.washington.edu
BOB JACOBSON is fascinated by the experience of experience. A planner and technologist, Bob has a Ph.D. in Urban Planning & Design from UCLA. He's been a policy researcher, technology CEO, science writer, and consultant. As a Fulbright Scholar, he studied cellular telephony's impacts on transborder communities in the Nordic Arctic Circle. Bob edited Information Design (MIT Press 2000) and is now writing a book on the theory and practice of creating edifying, transformative experiences.
PAULA THORNTON says, "Understanding human behavior (economics), optimizing interactions (design) and facilitating conversations (markets), are the means to achieve strategic differentiation. This is the focus of our discipline. It is not a 'nice to have'‚ and is not, like documentation once was, an afterthought. It is the means by which to start a strategic discussion and the means by which to drive a tactical initiative. All design should be evidence-based."
