Urban agriculture during my baby boomer childhood in New York City, when postwar agricultural production became increasingly industrialized, amounted to simple school projects like rooting an avocado pit or a potato in the base of a sawn off milk carton. Today, however, we have home food production, urban farming, productive...

In his later years, you could find Dan Kiley with his wild hair and pants hiked up to his waist always brimming with opinions and ideas - or as the celebrated landscape architect Laurie OIin once observed: "Dan's thoughts are like rabbits - they just keep...

There are many reasons why landscape architecture "has gained stature in the public's imagination," as Alan Brake, Executive Editor at The Architect's Newspaper recently editorialized. In sorting through the many notable developments in landscape architecture this year, it's clear that the repercussions of Hurricane Sandy on the Northeast...

As Nasher Sculpture Center landscape architect Peter Walker sees it, the intense light reflecting off Museum Tower, the 42-story, $200 million condominium complex across from the center, is an "attack on the garden and on the building and on the art." According to Walker,...

John Paulson's recent $100 million gift to New York's Central Park, the largest bequest ever to a city park, has drawn considerable praise and, surprisingly, some blowback (the old "no good deed goes unpunished" scenario). The 843-acre park, originally designed by Frederick Law Olmsted,...

I know that it may come as a shock to some, but New York's Central Park is not an act of God.

It might seem that way, especially in the woodlands, which appear so authentically, well, natural. But, no - Frederick Law Olmsted, Sr. and...

From mobile phones to Starbucks beverages, we are used to having lots of options. So, when it comes to the disposition of historic resources, why do governmental officials so often offer us false choices? For example, the city of Minneapolis, as I've previously written, says there are no...

The success of New York's High Line -- a stretch of abandoned elevated railroad on New York's West Side that has undergone a Phoenix-like resurrection to become one of the city's most popular destinations -- has generated much conversation about the so-called "High Line effect." Several cities are...

UCLA occupies an esteemed position in the world of higher education and has many generous supporters. In fact, on March 16, 2012, a Chronicle of Higher Education headline trumpeted their fundraising prowess -- In Education: UCLA Endowment Is Fastest-Growing Among Major U.S. Schools -- and on March 15,...

Modernism, despite the popularity of Mad Men and shelter magazines like Dwell, is under assault. Iconic works of architecture and landscape architecture from the 1960s and 1970s have a particularly high mortality rate, though because of cultural and other biases, it's usually the endangered buildings we hear about and not...

Good news for landscape architects: Your employment prospects are better than those of building architects and your work is appreciated more than ever -- think of the High Line.

Bad news, you don't always get the credit -- think of the High Line.

Pop quiz:...

Grand civic gestures, courtesy entrepreneurial public-private partnerships, and some deep-pocketed donors are pumping new life into some old guard cities, among them New York and Philadelphia, where urban parks are "in" and planners speak of the "Highline effect" as they once did of the "Bilbao effect."...

It's year-end list-o-mania time and the email carpet-bombing of "best," "worst" and "top 10" lists, etc. is straining global server capacity. The architecture community's seemingly endless thematic round ups include buildings that are green, nature-inspired and spooky, along with free-range, macrobiotic and gluten-free.

OK, I made up those last...

Excitement has turned to disappointment in Minneapolis, and what's happening there should be a warning about safeguarding transparency in public process and civic debate. Right now, Minneapolis has a golden opportunity to revitalize Peavey Plaza, an award-winning modernist masterwork recently determined eligible to the National Register of Historic...

If you think disco diva Cheryl Lynn is about to pop up and start singing "... to be real" everywhere you go, it's probably because the concept of authenticity is now almost ubiquitous as a brand attribute, personality description, advertising slogan and travel experience.

Indeed, authenticity is not just for...

The transformation of the urban core, as I've written before, is hot, hot, hot. Currently, there's a great deal of attention focused (justifiably) on the much-talked-about opening of the second phase of the much-talked-about High Line in New York, which has put yet more vim into that city's...

There's good news and bad news for landscape architecture. On the positive side, employment prospects look very strong for the next few years. The National Endowment for the Arts report Artist Employment Projections through 2018 projects a 20% growth rate for the profession (compared with a 10% overall...

Nostalgia is suddenly under siege -- particularly in the guise of historic preservation. Nostalgia, once roused by the demolition of New York's Penn Station, was a great motivator in saving Grand Central Terminal. Today, however, the form of nostalgia we know as historic preservation is getting beaten up on all...

This week saw the passing of a distinct American icon -- it wasn't a movie star, stage actor, trusted political confidant or mysterious artist -- it was an elm tree in Brookline, Massachusetts. Upending that old phrase about not seeing the forest for the trees, this tree does help us...

When it comes to wowing an audience, few can touch Frederic Edwin Church, the grand master 19th century Hudson River School painter whose jaw-dropping landscape panoramas rank among the nation's great cultural icons. Church's paintings were big on view -- really big on view -- with cinematic showstoppers like "Heart...