Every week, we bring you the latest news in placemaking, landscape architecture, the nature-mental health link, and much more. Check back each week for new roundups and items.
‘Wild Urbanism’ in the Middle of Putin’s Moscow
“Just beyond Moscow’s Red Square, past the iconic domes of St. Basil’s Cathedral and the walls of the Kremlin, a new landmark is planned for Russia’s largest metropolis. In a nod to the city’s increasingly globalized identity, the new landmark will not come solely from the church or government. Instead, it will be a 13-acre park open to everyone and developed by a team of internationally renowned architects best known for designing the glam High Line in Manhattan. Inspired by the ecological diversity of Russia, Zaryadye Park will be the first new park built in Moscow since 1958, rising on a former Jewish ghetto once slated for Stalin’s tallest skyscrapers… Under the vision hatched by Diller Scofido + Renfro and Putin’s administration, free-flowing walkways and permeable pavers will encourage exploration through park areas designed to recall Russia’s varied landscapes of tundra, steppe, forest and wetlands.”
Prince George’s children learn where their food comes from at Hard Bargain Farm
“The 28 fifth-graders from Adelphi Elementary School, most of whom are growing up in apartments, had never seen a river so close before. Or plucked a fresh egg from a hen’s nest. Or encountered real-life sheep. For many of them, farm animals were creatures out of storybooks. For nearly 60 years, the Alice Ferguson Foundation, a nonprofit created in 1954, has been providing outdoor classrooms for Washington area students. Forty minutes south of Washington, just off Indian Head Highway and up a winding gravel lane lies a two-story white clapboard farmhouse that looks like it has been lost in time. Hard Bargain Farm sits on land that was purchased as a summer retreat in 1922 by Alice Ferguson, an artist, and her husband Henry Ferguson, a geologist.”
Boston’s Evolving Urban Wilds
“In the 1970s, landscape architect Elliot Rhodeside, FASLA, Rhodeside & Harwell, created a program with immense, lasting value for Boston: the 1,400-plus-acre urban wilds program. Not quite parks, urban wilds are in-between natural open spaces — wetlands, shorelines, hilltops, meadows, woodlands — saved from development. To this day, they have a “unique hybridity,” and are still not part of Boston’s official park system…As a young landscape architect, Rhodeside said Boston’s wild urban spaces had a “profound effect on me.” He felt that “developing these natural areas was the wrong way to go,” because only in Boston can “someone walk out of their house and come across a Puddingstone rock cropping right in the middle of their urban backyard.”
Global Warming Impacts Our Mental Health
“The impacts of climate change aren’t limited to changes in the environment. Researchers are beginning to learn how climate change may affect our mental health. A 2009 report from the American Psychological Association predicts that the “effects of climate change are likely to be profound”: “Heat, extreme weather events, and increased competition for scarce environmental resources—compounded by preexisting inequalities and disproportionate impacts among groups and nations—will affect interpersonal and intergroup behavior and may result in increased stress and anxiety. Even in the absence of direct impacts, the perception and fear of climate change may threaten mental health.” A report from the National Wildlife Federation estimated that 200 million Americans will be subject to stress due to climate change.”
