| Fall 2006 LAEP Colloquium |
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"Neighborhood & Community Green Space" LD ARCH 253 Wednesdays 1-2 pm Each semester the Landscape Architecture & Environmental Planning Colloquium brings together distinguished speakers (professionals, academics, practitioners, and graduate students) to present projects that are relevant to the landscape architecture and environmental planning professions. The colloquium attracts a diverse group of students from the College of Environmental Design, and the entire Berkeley community is invited to attend. Wednesday, September 6, 2006 Christopher (Kip) Harkness Title to be announced. The speaker will present on the intersection of strong neighborhoods and new park spaces in San Jose, CA. Wednesday, September 13, 2006 Kemba Shakur Title to be announced. The speaker will present on urban forestry projects in Oakland and Richmond as well as a collaboration with UC Davis. Wednesday, September 20, 2006 Lyle Oehler Lake Merritt Park Improvement Projects A discussion of the $88 million improvement program for enhancing Lake Merritt Park in downtown Oakland. The projects will expand the park, renovate buildings, calm traffic, improve water quality and wildlife habitat, and improve pedestrian and bicycle access around the Lake and along the Lake Merritt Channel. Lyle Oehler graduated from UC Berkeley with a degree in Landscape Architecture in 1972. He is a licensed Landscape Architect and a certified Project Management Professional. Lyle worked for the State Department of Transportation (Caltrans) for 32 years as a designer, project landscape architect, consultant contract manager and visual impact assessment expert. For the last 12 years at Caltrans, Lyle served as the Chief Landscape Architect for the nine Bay Area counties. Lyle has worked for the City of Oakland as a project manager for Lake Merritt Park projects for about 2 years. Wednesday, October 4, 2006 David Dobereiner The Legacy of Karl Linn
David Dobereiner, who trained at the Architectural Association School of Architecture in England, taught architectural design and related subjects at universities in the USA and Canada. He was an Associate Professor of Architecture at Syracuse University Department of Architecture and has also served on design juries and given seminars and lectures at Harvard, MIT and UC Berkeley. There are significant buildings of his design in Australia and Nepal, in addition to several in California, New York State and Manitoba. In Nepal his work included pioneering solar heating experiments funded by UNICEF, campus plans and educational facilities. In 1990 he won, in collaboration with Dan Chin, an international design competition to build one of 25 bioclimatic houses in the Canary Islands. His team's submission was the only winning entry from USA. Wednesday, October 18, 2006 Susan Schwartz The Santa Fe Right of Way: Rails to Trails at last?* A walk on the former Santa Fe Railroad route from Sacramento Street to University Avenue will explore the history of the route, its effects on how the city developed around it, plans and projects since the city took over the right of way more than 30 years ago, and possibilities for the future. Susan Schwartz is a former journalist and teacher of scientific writing who is active in volunteer "greening" efforts including creek restoration, control of invasive non-natives, and path preservation and creation. Wednesday, November 1, 2006 Jay Banfield Street Parks: The Power of Community-Managed Open Space Wednesday, November 8, 2006 Robert Doyle 75 Years of Parks and Protected Lands - Robert Doyle joined the East Bay Regional Park District as a Ranger and gained over twenty-five year experience in Park Operation, Planning, Real Estate, and Administration. He is now the Assistant General Manager of the Interagency Planning and Land Acquisition Division at the Park District. In his current position, he is an integral part of the District’s long range planning, administration, and implementation of over $280,000,000 in land and trail acquisition projects. He was responsible for development and implementation of the Regional Trails Master Plan and manages local land issues through interagency planning. Bob is a life-long conservationist and a founding Board member of the East Bay Conservation Corps as well as Save Mount Diablo, a non-profit land trust. Bob is responsible for the management of the District’s environmental review process and mitigation and restoration projects through the Resource Enhancement Program (REP) and environmental partnerships with other agencies and non-profit agencies. He is also responsible for the partnership with California State Parks and Recreation Department for the 8.5 mile long urban shoreline park, Eastshore State Park. Wednesday, November 22, 2006 Nino Walker Planning for "Country" in a Gentrifying Landscape: Challenges and Lessons from Waimea, Hawaii Waimea is an unplanned rural community at the center of a pastoral landscape on the island of Hawaii. Over many decades, its popularity with retirees and paradise-seekers has been redefining the rural outpost as an increasingly exclusive – and suburban – community that is quickly losing what most residents hold dear: its diversity, its history through agriculture, and its landscape. This presentation will consider a set of tools and strategies to balance the competing goals for Waimea to, "Keep the Country, country," and, "Shape a community that lives aloha." Nino Walker is a recent LAEP graduate and Project Urban Planner at DC&E in Berkeley. The presentation will explore aspects of his master's work to mobilize the community in Waimea, his hometown, and begin developing a vision for equitable and sustainable growth. Wednesday, November 29, 2006 Jesse Roseman Transboundary Environmental Planning between Israel and the Palestinian Authority: Preserving the Watershed and Springs of Wadi Fuqeen This talk discusses my last three summers of field research on cooperative environmental planning efforts between Israelis and Palestinians and in particular the case of Palestinian Wadi Fuqeen and Israeli Tsur Hadassah. These two communities have begun developing several joint plans for their region that set aside political divisions, with the aim of preserving sensitive open space within and around the village core while expanding the area for Palestinian urban development in less environmentally sensitive areas. Central to the process is preserving the health of the springs in Wadi Fuqeen that feed traditional terrace agriculture in the valley. The springs depend on rain infiltration from the open space surrounding the valley, which is controlled by Israel and where the separation barrier, several new neighborhoods, and a new road are planned. This increase in impervious surface could decrease water flows to the springs. Working together on the planning process has resulted in a buildup of trust, but it has not yet resolved such difficult issues as unequal power dynamics between partners and giving full voice to the concerns of the residents of Wadi Fuqeen. Jesse Roseman is a third year Environmental Planning Masters student in the City and Regional Planning/ Landscape Architecture and Environmental Planning concurrent degree program. He currently serves on the board of Butters Land Trust, an urban land trust working to save a creek in the Oakland Hills from development. For the past three summers, he has visited Israel, the Palestinian Authority and Jordan to support the efforts of NGOs that are using environmental cooperation as a bridge to peace building efforts. In the summer of 2005 he participated in a delegation that visited Israeli and Palestinian communities participating in the Good Water Neighbors program of Friends of the Earth Middle East. This program organizes cooperative efforts to resolve shared water issues. His thesis focuses on one of these sets of partnered communities, the Palestinian village of Wadi Fuqeen and the Israeli town of Tsur Hadassah. These two communities outside of Jerusalem lie along the proposed path of the separation barrier, and are developing a joint land use plan based on environmental, social, and economic considerations. Wednesday, December 6, 2006 John Steere The “Re-Storying” of the Commons and the Future of Urban Open Space Just as our communities are becoming more multi-cultural, our experience of public open space and urban “greening” is become more multi-dimensional and participatory, reflecting an appeal to many purposes and sensibilities. Could we be entering a new era of the commons?….a deepening of our collective perception of public space to encompass the environment and its renewal? In the past half-century, we’ve expanded its definition from city parks, plazas, and playgrounds to a more vitalizing field of wildlife and creek corridors, wetlands and habitat restoration, greenways and paths, and community gardens. Why has this shift occurred….and how is our understanding of the commons evolving? What does it mean to the experience of community? What are the implications for the future of public open space? The presenter will reflect on these questions in the context of the restoration and “re-storying” of the commons and will draw on examples from his own city, Berkeley, and others in the East Bay. John Steere is an environmental planner whose 20-year career spans public, private, and non-profit sectors of land use and resource management planning. An environmental planning consultant, he is the author of the award-winning Restoring the Estuary and numerous articles on habitat partnerships. He received his B.A. degree from Harvard College and a joint Masters degree in city and regional planning and landscape architecture from University of California at Berkeley. Active in urban habitat, greening, and park issues, he has helped develop a couple parks in the community, is the founder of East Bay Citizens for Creek Restoration, and serves on the boards of Livable Berkeley and Berkeley Partners for Parks. |