A TDR Parable: It’s simple. You just go to the farmer whose land you’re trying to preserve and tell him that he can’t develop his land because it is a “sending area” for your new Transfer of Developments Rights (TDR) program. At first, he’s a bit upset. But as town planner you assure him that everything is OK because you’ve found a developer who will pay him for the development potential of his property in order to build a block of new houses on small lots in the quaint village center nearby. Everybody wins! It’s easy, isn’t it?

Well, not really. The farmer has been offered a lot more money by another developer who wants to build the kind of low-density gated community that professional refugees from the city really want. The farmer decides to sue you and the town, claiming that by depriving him of the right to develop his land there has been a “taking.” Also, the villagers have decided that their community is dense enough and they would like you to find a different “receiving area.”

Meanwhile, the original developer has figured out that he can use his development rights to build a new strip mall on a greenfield site outside of town. This was a site you had hoped he would not use, although you had to include it as a receiving area in order to be sure the farmer’s development rights had somewhere to go.

This parable is clearly an oversimplification, but it illustrates many of the challenges that TDR programs face. The allure of the TDR model is its seemingly simple ability to accomplish in one transaction two complementary goals: open space preservation and compact, centered development. However, the promise of TDR has been stalled by a variety of political, economic and administrative obstacles.

The Lincoln Institute and Regional Plan Association (RPA) cosponsored a two-day conference in October 1997 to explore the potential and the limitations of using TDR programs. While the conference addressed a number of legal and planning issues, one of the central questions asked by the group was, “How can TDR programs be used to influence settlement patterns, not only to protect open space, but also to promote compact development?”

A presentation of research by the American Farmland Trust revealed that the use of TDR has expanded tremendously, and many programs are considered successful even though the overall picture is ambiguous. The list of success stories is still dominated by such well-known programs as Montgomery County, Maryland (1980) and the New Jersey Pinelands (1981). A number of more recent programs showing early potential are the Long Island Central Pine Barrens, New York (1995), Bucks County, Pennsylvania (1994) and Dade County, Florida, where TDRs are helping to preserve more than 100,000 acres of everglades ecosystems outside of the Everglades National Park.

Obstacles and Opportunities

Regardless of how many programs may be considered successful, the conference revealed that there are still many obstacles to establishing a working TDR program. Among them are:

• finding communities that will locate receiving areas for higher-density development;
• calibrating values for development rights in sending and receiving areas to insure a market for the rights;
• creating a program that is simple enough to understand and administer, but complex enough to be fair;
• developing community support to insure that the program is used;
• avoiding litigation and evasion;

• Building on the considerable experience of the participants and using an outline provided for the discussion by James Tripp of the Environmental Defense Fund, (1) the conference identified several components of successful TDR programs.
• TDR programs can avoid legal challenges by ensuring that the principles, definitions and language of the program conform with existing local regulations.
• Because the legal issues of TDR are not going to be resolved any time soon (as some who followed Suitum v Tahoe (2) had hoped), conformance will provide the timeliness and certainty the community needs.
• A credit bank, clearinghouse or other financial institution can be extremely effective in promoting the program, facilitating transactions and providing interested parties with hard information about the dollar value of the rights. The “real value” of the rights helps support the legitimacy of the program.
• Effective state enabling legislation may be important in establishing the clear legal authority of the administrating agency. The legislation should be specific enough to provide guidance and clarity, but broad enough to enable localities to tailor their programs to their own circumstances.
• The “takings issue” can be ameliorated by providing multiple options to the landowner (e.g., hardship exemption or outright purchase) and by preserving residual use for the land. However, the issue of preserving land versus the activity on it can also be problematic. How are the uses defined? Is “farming” the traditional “family farm” or an industrial-scale operation? At least in the short term, preserving productive activity on the land may be both politically valuable and necessary.

Impacts on Receiving Areas

The first half of the TDR equation (agreement on the resource to be protected) is generally not difficult. However, the second half (agreement on where the transferred development is to go and how it should be configured) has been extremely problematic.

Conference participants acknowledged that while the goal of transferring density away from preservation areas and into growth areas was being accomplished by a number of TDR programs, the programs have not been effective in influencing the design and character of development in the receiving areas. Local municipalities are, or at least should be, obligated to identify sites for increased density, but the use of that density may not be constrained beyond the existing town zoning bylaws. The unfortunate result is that the increased density is as likely to be used for a suburban strip development as for compact, centered development, thus creating localized sprawl within the receiving area.

In the case of the Long Island Pine Barrens, some towns intentionally spread out their receiving areas to avoid the political fallout of higher-density development. When the TDR program was being developed, the Pine Barrens Commission was working on design guidelines meant to promote compact town planning. However, this layer of complexity and restriction was too burdensome to be incorporated into each of the local town plans.

While there is broad agreement that controlling the character of development in receiving areas is a desirable idea, it also raises a number of questions. First, the administrating agency may not be able to deal with the additional complexity that design controls would bring. Second, the market for new development in the receiving areas may not be strong enough to support the additional burden of cluster design. The need to guarantee a market for the transfer rights also works against the creation of controls that would concentrate development. An advantageous ratio of receiving areas to sending areas (as high as 2.5:1) tends to create large receiving areas.

Conference participants from around the country also confirmed what they perceive as a knee-jerk reaction against higher density. Despite the influences of New Urbanism and neo-traditional planning, the general public and the marketplace do not value centered development. Residents of fast-growing communities might be more receptive to clustered residential designs if they could understand what different types of development would look like by reviewing three-dimensional representations in drawings and models.

Land use attorney Charles Siemon suggested that many town planners seem to want compact, centered development, but are not willing to acknowledge that it can be more expensive to private developers. Perhaps another approach, one that is outside of the TDR marketplace, is needed, such as a fund that buys the development rights and agrees to sell them to developers at a discount if they build in town centers. Lexington, Kentucky, is experimenting with this kind of arrangement.

Evaluating TDR

How do you measure the success of a TDR program? By the amount of open space preserved? The number of acres kept in farming? The number of transactions? The quality of development in the receiving areas? And, over what time period? Charles Siemon suggested that a TDR program might be considered a success even if no transactions take place. How? Because, in the context of a larger land use plan, the TDR program can make a preservation program more palatable by providing the landowner with additional options.

It became clear during the conference that the perceived success or failure of TDR programs was colored by excessive expectations. The notion that a TDR program would, by itself, protect open space, preserve activities such as farming, help create appealing village centers, and do all of this simply by offering a mechanism for moving development around is simply not realistic. Some participants asked, “Why should a TDR program be expected to accomplish more than any other single land use tool, such as zoning?”

This question reflected the most fundamental conclusion of the conference: TDR programs work only when they are part of a larger, long-term land use plan that has the commitment and political will of the community behind it. This commitment to the larger goals of the plan and to the particular resource being protected is the real answer to legal and other challenges. A comprehensive plan is more likely to accommodate multiple avenues of relief for landowners who feel unfairly treated. TDR programs that are created within the context of a comprehensive plan are much more likely to be tailored to the specific political, economic and geographic circumstances of their location. Finally, in terms of creating balanced and centered development, it is within a land use plan that the design guidelines and other controls that result in the best town planning principles may reside.

Robert Lane is director of the Regional Design Program at the Regional Plan Association in New York.

Notes:

1. James Tripp and Daniel J. Dudek, “Institutional Guidelines for Designing Successful Transferable Rights Programs,” Yale Journal on Regulation (Summer 1989).

2. In the summer of 1997, the U.S. Supreme Court heard Suitum v Tahoe, a challenge to a TDR program. Although some of the justices took the opportunity to talk about various legal dimensions of TDR, the case did not address the fundamental legality of TDR. Instead, it focused on the “ripeness issue.” Did Mrs. Suitum have to try to sell her rights through the program before challenging its legitimacy? The Court ruled that she did not. The conference participants felt that in the short term the case may create pressure for TDR programs to assign real dollar values to the rights or credits that are being transferred. This is consistent with the finding that a TDR bank, capable of assigning such values, can play an important role in the success of a TDR program.

Spatial segregation is a feature of metropolises from San Diego to Boston, from Santiago to Cape Town, from Belfast to Bangalore. In some places the segregation is associated primarily with racial groups, in other places, ethnicity or religion, while in still other places, income status. In our experiences with the Americas, we find that international comparative research allows researchers and policy analysts to see both unique and shared characteristics in sharp relief. For example, in Latin America, the public debate around urban spatial segregation typically focuses on socioeconomic issues, whereas in the U.S. and many developed countries the debate centers more on racial or ethnic disparities.

Residential segregation also has different meanings and consequences depending on the specific form and structure of the metropolis, as well as the cultural and historical context. In North America, social and ethnic minorities tend to be segregated in less desirable inner-city locales while the upper- and middle-class majority disperses into small, socially homogeneous urban neighborhoods or suburbs across the metropolis. By contrast, in Latin American cities it is the elite minority that tends to concentrate in one area of the city.

The Forces

The forces that contribute to spatial segregation are many and varied. The apartheid laws of South Africa were one extreme case of large-scale, government-sanctioned spatial segregation. Other cases have garnered less international attention, such as the Brazilian government’s destruction of favelas in the 1960s, when the poor inhabitants were removed to other segregated locations. On a smaller scale, in Santiago, Chile, between 1979 and 1985 during the Pinochet regime, more than 2,000 low-income families were evicted from high- and middle-income residential areas with the stated objective of creating neighborhoods that were uniform by socioeconomic group.

While government evictions and legal frameworks are explicit mechanisms for creating urban spatial segregation, more subtle mechanisms also have been used to create or enforce spatial segregation. In Colombia, the contribución de valorización (a kind of betterment charge) was imposed on inhabitants of an informal settlement in Bogotá located on the edge of a new circumferential highway. Officials knew the charge was higher than most inhabitants could afford to pay and would likely lead them to “choose” relocation. By setting land use standards that the poor could not meet, the government virtually forced them toward the informal, peripheral areas. The U.S. is no stranger to such mechanisms to create segregated housing markets. For example, some real estate agents shun racial and ethnic minorities or persons from lower social classes who do not fit their target markets, and many small landlords rely on informal networks to find the kinds of tenants they prefer.

Voluntary segregation has become a new force, with the proliferation of gated communities in both northern and southern hemispheres. This trend seems to have several motivations, including both supply and demand factors. On the demand side, residents might be attracted to the perception of security or a new lifestyle. On the supply side, builders and developers find tremendous profitability with the large-scale internalization of externalities in these highly controlled developments.

The complexity that stems from the combination of coercive and voluntary segregation leads us to a deeper question: What is the relationship between social differences and spatial segregation? It is commonly assumed that the former are “reflected” in the latter. Social groups sometimes resort to segregation in order to fortify their weak or blurred identity, as in the case of emerging middle-income groups or immigrant communities in search of social recognition. To a great extent, the post-war suburbanization process in U.S. cities can be interpreted as a means of homogeneous sorting to strengthen social identity.

The Consequences

In the U.S., spatial segregation is a serious policy issue because of the complex interactions between land and housing markets on the one hand, and their connection to local revenues and the distribution and quality of local services on the other hand. Disparities in school quality may be one of the more dramatic examples of the variations in public services between places.

The combination of residential segregation by class and by racial or ethnic groups and the systematically uneven spatial distribution of quality schools results in poor inner-city enclaves where children attend substandard schools, which in turn limits their life chances. Other services, such as access to transportation and health care, also vary spatially, as do such measurable factors as air quality and neighborhood infrastructure.

In other countries, spatial segregation of the poor often occurs within informal settlements. These areas once were viewed as aberrations, but scholars increasingly understand informality as a result of the normal functioning of land and housing markets, not as part of a duality of formal versus informal economies. In this view, illegal, irregular, informal, or clandestine activities to access and occupy urban land are the way that the market provides housing for poor people. Nevertheless, these arrangements are not always “chosen” for their low price or relative conveniences, but rather because they are one of an extremely limited set of choices available to the poor.

Traditional segregation patterns in Latin American cities are changing due to the proliferation of new gated communities for expanding high- and middle-income groups and the emergence of shopping centers and office complexes in more “modern” areas beyond the former urban enclaves. In São Paulo, Santiago, Buenos Aires and Mexico City, to name a few of the biggest and most dynamic cities, these developments are appearing even next to lower-income areas. Segregation of uses and access is becoming more intense, making the growing social inequalities of the last decades more apparent. Yet, at the same time, these changes in the patterns of segregation are reducing physical distances among socioeconomic groups, and are bringing “modern” commercial facilities and improved public spaces closer to the poor.

The consequences of segregation are probably changing due to this reduction in its geographical scale. Some of the negative effects of large-scale segregation of the poor (i.e., their agglomeration in the periphery of the cities) could be fading in this new, more diverse urban landscape. Recent empirical studies carried out in Santiago support this contention.

Policy Responses

Spatial segregation is both a reflection of the existing social structure and a mechanism to enforce that structure, thus raising the question of how and when segregation should be addressed. Is the problem in the U.S. context that poor minority children live among others of the same income and racial group, or is it that by living in poor, segregated areas the children’s life opportunities are limited because of their inaccessibility to good schools? Is the answer to improve the schools, to integrate the neighborhood, or to initiate a combination of these and other responses? In the context of developing countries, is the problem of informal settlements that they are often dangerous (due to risky environmental conditions or street violence) or that the residents are isolated from good jobs, transit and other services? Is the answer to reduce or eliminate the danger, to improve transit, to bring jobs to the neighborhood, or to try all of these programs?

We need to improve our understanding of the social problems in these segregated areas in order to adequately design and implement appropriate policy responses that are necessarily multidimensional. Should change come in the form of corrective programs (e.g., regularization or upgrading of informal settlements) or more fundamental policies that would involve the massive provision of serviced land at affordable prices? One “corrective” option contrasts the informalization of formal arrangements (e.g., deregulation) with the formalization of the informal (e.g., the redefinition of zoning codes or the regularization of alternative tenure systems).

A more fundamental solution would be either piecemeal implementation or mandatory designation of social housing developments in high-income areas. A different sort of tool is to open up decision making around the allocation of public investment, as in the successful orçamento participativo process used in the municipality of Porto Alegre, Brazil, where the budget is determined with extensive public participation. Other responses could address the radical upgrading of existing low-income peripheral settlements, more extensive use of linkage fees, or the elimination of land markets altogether, as was done in Cuba. However, we need more information regarding the efficacy of these varied programs and tools, and careful analysis of the necessary conditions to increase the chances of success.

Globalization has fostered the movement of labor and capital, bringing both the positive and negative experiences of developed and developing countries closer together. Immigrants to the U.S., particularly undocumented ones, tend to settle in urban enclaves, but their lack of legal status reverberates beyond those settlements. Access to jobs and credit is limited, which in turn restricts the immigrants’ mobility and reinforces existing spatial segregation.

On the other hand, as U.S. financial and real estate corporations extend their operations overseas, they introduce U.S. protocols, conventions, expectations and ways of operating. The exportation of such U.S. norms to developing countries may lead to new patterns of geographic discrimination (e.g., redlining) by race and/or ethnic group, where such practices previously were less explicit.

We know from past research and experience that segregation can increase land revenues for developers and landowners. We also know that the profitability of housing development is dependent upon public investments in roads, facilities and services. At the same time, we acknowledge that segregation has both negative and positive impacts on city life, ranging from social exclusion that makes life harder for the poor to strengthened social and cultural identities that contribute to the city’s diversity and vitality.

The face of segregation varies both within and between metropolises. However, comparative international work has demonstrated that there are important trends of convergence between U.S. and Latin American cities. We have much more to understand regarding the effect of interacting land and housing markets and the regulatory structure on spatial segregation and the life chances of urban residents.

Rosalind Greenstein is senior fellow and director of the Lincoln Institute’s Program on Land Markets. Francisco Sabatini is assistant professor in the Institute of Urban Studies at the Catholic University of Chile in Santiago. Martim Smolka is senior fellow and director of the Lincoln Institute’s Program in Latin America and the Caribbean.

In the United States we are used to thinking about the university within the context of its host city. The University of Wisconsin in Madison, the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill and the University of Illinois in Urbana play major roles in driving the economies of those traditional college towns. Stanford University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology are examples of research universities that have served as incubators for new industries that have had significant economic and industrial impacts in Silicon Valley, California, and metropolitan Boston. The Julliard School in New York City, the Chicago Art Institute, and the film departments at the University of California (UCLA) and University of Southern California (USC) in Los Angeles also have had a significant effect on their local cultural landscapes.

After more than five years of focusing on the real estate development activities of U.S. colleges and universities, Lincoln Institute researchers are now investigating the roles that universities play in their host cities around the world. Will the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), a 733-hectare campus in the middle of one of the world’s largest cities, be able to maintain autonomy from the federal government through its land policies? Can a university that serves Northern Ireland’s Catholics and Protestants succeed in building a new campus in an area known for poverty and intractable political violence? What lessons can we learn from the redevelopment of a German military barracks by the University of Lueneburg that might be applicable to other universities’ development efforts?

Universities are major players in many activities not traditionally associated with the ivory tower. They are employers, purchasers, engines of economic growth, innovators, cultural meccas, branders of place and, increasingly, major real estate developers. This last role creates a web of opportunities and challenges that are not only important to the future of universities but also extend throughout the politics and economics of cities.

Formal examinations of the university’s role in acquiring, managing, selling and developing real estate have not been a topic of academic and professional inquiry in the U.S. until recently, but these issues are even less frequently discussed in international circles. There are few comprehensive case studies and literally no multi-continent examinations of how urban universities operate in real estate and land development, even though there is widespread agreement over its growing importance. The contributions of universities to their cities, the nature of state higher education policy and the increasing role of private market actors in university expansion are all important features of urban land development today, although they are realized differently in various places.

To facilitate further exploration and comparison of these issues, a dozen international scholars from Europe, South America, Asia and Africa gathered at the Lincoln Institute in March 2004 to present papers and engage in a critique of their work. They quickly moved the discussion beyond the case studies into a broader conversation about the role of the university in the history and the future of national policy toward cities and how such policy is affecting and is affected by the global economy.

The Role of the State

Outside the U.S., the university is almost always a public institution; therefore university land development is closely intertwined with and often an integral part of local and/or national planning and development policies. The levels of autonomy in real estate development decision making experienced by international universities are also dramatically different from those of U.S. universities, because of their relative attachment to the state as both an agency and public institution.

Anne Haila of the University of Helsinki pointed out the strong history of planning in Finland, for example, where plans are laws that carry great weight and supply clear direction to university land use planning. All university real estate in Finland is owned and managed by the national real estate company, which strives for efficiency in all of its real estate strategies. Conflicts between universities and the property manager became especially prevalent after 1999, when university departments were ordered to pay the full price of rent for their premises; if departments increased their space they had to pay more, but if they decreased it they were compensated. The reasoning behind the policy was to abolish the idea of “free space” and to make university departments aware that bringing in new research and other revenue-generating projects would help them pay for additional space.

Carlos Morales-Schechinger presented another example of the relationship between university land policies and the state in his review of UNAM in Mexico City. UNAM has been autonomous from the federal government for more than 50 years and has “abandoned any intention of becoming a developer.” Instead, UNAM considers the land’s use value as a sanctuary, an area secure from government intervention, and a place for study, natural spaces and public art. Approximately 29 percent (212 ha) of the land has been declared an ecological zone due to its unique flora and fauna.

Morales-Schechinger suggests that UNAM’s reluctance to engage in current real estate development is related to its past history, when some of its land was acquired from the territory granted to the peasants after the 1910 Revolution. The university serves nearly 260,000 students from all socioeconomic groups and thus views itself as an independent and often vocal critic of the federal government.

Shifting City Growth Patterns

Changes in the nature and structure of the nation-state brought on by economic restructuring, new political alliances, changing demographics, and the decentralization of governmental responsibilities and mandates can bring about radical changes in the real estate development policies of universities. Three participants focusing on universities in Portugal, Germany and Finland described the conditions of student demand and changes in the technology of work that were forcing both expansions and relocations of universities (or parts of them) in an increasingly decentralized urban environment.

Isabel Breda-Vazquez, speaking about the University of Porto (UP), noted the demographic shift in the city center, where UP was originally located, when it decided to expand and relocate its engineering and science facilities outside of the city, due to increasing demand for those courses of study and changing employment patterns. Problems associated with the subsequent decline of the city center included physical degradation, social vulnerability problems, functional obsolescence of buildings and spaces, reduced economic activity and consumption, and relocated student housing.

Changes in political alliances and the fall of the Iron Curtain reduced Germany’s need for military barracks, according to Katrin Anacker, and this has resulted in the large-scale conversion of one such facility to university property in Lueneberg. Increased student enrollment, a shortage of classrooms and the fact that university buildings were scattered throughout the city were important factors in the University of Lueneburg’s decision to take advantage of the military’s abandonment of a nearby barracks. Although dealing specifically with the conversion of military property into university buildings, Anacker’s paper may be read for its insights into the reuse of other types of obsolete or abandoned industrial buildings.

The growth demands on public universities and the decentralization of governance are occurring in the face of competing issues of demographic shift out of the city and revitalization efforts focusing on older parts of cities. Many workshop attendees identified the theme of abandonment during these discussions, in the contexts of either the state or local government or the university abandoning the city. Universities almost everywhere are placed in critical positions as they actively develop land themselves, and thus can be seen as agents of urban change—to both the benefit and the detriment of the city.

David Perry argued that to discuss the university as an engine of growth may be only part of the picture. The modern university may be an engine of the city’s development by dint of attrition, becoming even more important to central city renewal by filling the vacuum created by the withdrawal of once dominant agents in both the public and private sectors.

University Development Zones

Several papers addressed universities that are their own “zones of development” or “cities unto themselves.” Abner Colmenares presented the case of the Central University of Venezuela, a public institution in Caracas, and its Rental Zone (Zona Rental) Plaza Venezuela project dating from the 1940s. The notion of the Zona Rental dates back to 1827, when Venezuelan President Simon Bolivar granted real estate properties and farms to the university, to support its faculty and provide for its upkeep.

Adopting as its model Columbia University’s approach to the development of Rockefeller Center in New York City, Central University created and transferred the land to an independent foundation (Andrés Bello Fund Foundation for Scientific Development of the Central University of Venezuela–FFABUCV), which was mandated to promote scientific research by generating financial resources through the development of rental zone properties. By late 2004, more than 40 million square feet of construction had been completed, creating public spaces for the city, a subway center and numerous rental income sites, including a mall.

Wilmar Salim presented a similarly expansive project, the relocation of four universities in Indonesia to rural land formerly occupied by a rubber plantation. The government’s decision to relocate the universities from the capital city of Bandung to the Jatinangor area 23 kilometers distant resulted in the development of a new town to service the large campus. While the planning for the university was carefully conceived, such was not the case for the town that grew up alongside it. Salim notes several serious problems resulting from this relocation: environmental deterioration of the rural area due to the increased population and construction; lack of adequate planning in terms of infrastructure; and negative effects on community institutions caused by the influx of a population much larger than and culturally different from the indigenous residents.

Contested Space

The topic of the university as a contested space was addressed by Haim Yacobi of Israel and Frank Gaffikin of Northern Ireland, both of whom spoke of the challenges for urban universities located in places of conflict. In the Northern Ireland case, an attempt was made to set up a branch of the University of Ulster in an embattled area of Protestant-Catholic conflict and economic deprivation in Belfast. Although U.S. President Bill Clinton and British Prime Minister Tony Blair were present at the groundbreaking, the project faltered due to the lengthy development time and turnover of leadership, coupled with the existing problems associated with a historically contested space. The result was a distinct loss of credibility for the university in the community. Gaffikin stressed that when universities enter into these kinds of situations, they have to see the projects through with strong civic leadership.

Yacobi discussed the siting of Hebrew University on Mount Scopus in Jerusalem, a decision made by the government rather than the university, as was the case in Belfast. According to Yacobi, relocating the university after the 1967 war had a fundamental role in judaizing Jerusalem.

Fabio Todeschini of South Africa also examined the roles and responsibilities of the university in shaping urban space in a place that was already contested. He noted that the University of Cape Town has undergone enormous change since the apartheid era; currently more than one-half of the student population is black, although the majority of professors are white. The development and real estate practices of these and other universities have both created and been affected by significant symbolic, economic and cultural changes in their countries.

The workshop participants agreed about the seeming contradiction between the importance of universities to their cities and political economies and the lack of formal study of this phenomenon. The meeting confirmed that, both locally and globally, universities have enduring, indeed even increasing, levels of importance in their cities and regions. It is also clear that land development policies are equally important to the universities, to the development futures of cities and to the policy relationship with the private market.

Barbara Sherry is a doctoral candidate at the University of Illinois at Chicago in the Department of Urban Planning, a research assistant at its Great Cities Institute (GCI), and an attorney.

The City and the University Project

The Lincoln Institute of Land Policy launched The City and the University Project five years ago, to study the changing relationships between universities and their immediate neighborhoods, cities and the society at large. The Lincoln Institute shares this interest in the role that universities play in their cities with many other organizations. However, our attempt to understand this role is motivated by questions regarding urban assets and the use of those assets.

According to the currently dominant paradigm of enlightened self-interest, universities engage the city with the realization that the economic well-being of the abutting community is directly correlated to its own health. Through this project we are attempting to articulate a philosophy that universities should serve society as a whole, not just their abutters. Our goal is to extend the thinking, conversation and actions of university-community-city relations beyond this paradigm.

Under the leadership of Rosalind Greenstein of the Lincoln Institute, David Perry of the Great Cities Institute (GCI) of the University of Illinois at Chicago, and Wim Wiewel of the University of Baltimore, key actors from every conceivable side of university real estate development practices (including university administrators and faculty, developers, city planners and managers, journalists, nonprofit groups, and members of federal and state agencies) have been invited to participate in workshops sponsored by the Lincoln Institute. Perry and Wiewel have edited a book of U.S. and Canadian case studies contributed by some of these participants. Titled The University as Urban Developer: Case Studies and Analysis, this book is being published this spring by M.E. Sharpe, Inc., in association with the Lincoln Institute.

As a natural outgrowth of their work in North America, Perry, Wiewel and Greenstein expanded their research collaboration with an international seminar built on case studies from several continents. The workshop in March 2004 generated papers that will become part of a new edited volume, tentatively titled The University, the City and the State: Comparative Studies of University Real Estate Development.

In 2005 the Institute will convene a roundtable of practitioners and scholars to examine the university-city relationship in a variety of dimensions, including political, historical and philosophical. Another course is intended for neighborhood groups located near universities that face impressive challenges because of the particular role universities play in their district and their city. The course offers such groups the opportunity to learn how to best use their resources, relative to their university neighbors, to improve their urban environment.

The Institute will also offer a professional training opportunity for private-sector developers who work with and for universities that are extending their boundaries as demand increases for new laboratories, residential spaces, athletic facilities and other amenities. In addition, we are developing a special Web site for the urban university project that will facilitate communication among and between practitioners, policy makers and scholars.

In 1921, a loquacious, part-time public servant named Benton MacKaye proposed, in the Journal of the American Institute of Architects, the creation of an “Appalachian Trail,” an effort that he saw as “a project in regional planning” (MacKaye 1921). His vision evolved over several decades until, under the leadership of a lawyer named Myron Avery, the nonprofit Appalachian Trail Conference helped to bring into being a continuous system of locally, state and federally owned lands, managed cooperatively by a collection of volunteers, nonprofit organization employees and National Park Service personnel (Bristow 1998). The A.T., as the trail is often called, today stretches from Springer Mountain in Georgia to Mt. Katahdin in Maine, and the idea of extending the trail into Canada has been discussed repeatedly.

The initiative first proposed by MacKaye more than 80 years ago has proved to be a landmark in conservation innovation, characterized by: novelty in its design and implementation; lasting significance to landscape planners around the world; measurable effectiveness in trail upkeep and monitoring, achieved through collaborative efforts along the trail’s 2,100-mile length; transferability to other projects, such as the Pacific Crest Trail; and an ability to endure as a symbol of what can be accomplished, across ownerships and political boundaries, to achieve conservation-oriented purposes—primarily recreational purposes in the case of the A.T.

Despite the example provided by the Appalachian Trail and similar initiatives, regional planning generally fell out of favor during the last half of the twentieth century. While greenways, trail systems, water resource management districts and habitat conservation areas have appeared on the North American landscape from time to time, broadly defined efforts to form cross-sectoral, cross-boundary districts for the achievement of conservation objectives are not standard practice today in the United States and Canada.

However, prodded in part by the insight of biodiversity scientists that large, unfragmented corridors will be necessary for the long-term survival of some species living in the wild, enthusiasm among land conservation professionals for “landscape-scale” initiatives has reemerged in recent years. Accordingly, those concerned with such widely varying purposes as biodiversity conservation, the future of working farms and forests, the protection of water resources, the provision of outdoor recreational opportunities, and economic development linked to both natural and cultural amenities have shown a renewed interest in conservation initiatives of relatively large scale and comprehensive scope. At gatherings of conservation volunteers and professionals, such as the annual Land Trust Alliance Rally, multiple, well-attended sessions are devoted to the consideration of landscape-scale initiatives and planning techniques.

With this fresh interest in regional land and biodiversity conservation efforts in mind, the Lincoln Institute, with the support of the U.S. National Park Service Conservation Study Institute (NPS CSI), the Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy (GGNPC) and the Quebec-Labrador Foundation (QLF), invited more than two dozen senior executives of public, nonprofit, academic and private sector organizations to the Presidio of San Francisco for a two-day conference in June 2003. The purposes of the meeting were to: advance our emerging understanding of what, in concept, landscape-scale initiatives are, and why they may be necessary; better understand how such concepts are (or are not) being realized in the field; and identify which innovations and advances appear necessary to more fully realize such large and comprehensive initiatives.

The Necessity of Landscape-scale Initiatives

The broad concept of a landscape-scale conservation initiative, as framed by the conference steering committee, includes three basic ideas: (1) such initiatives should encompass some regional system of interconnected properties; (2) such efforts are in some way organized to achieve one or several specific conservation objectivescooperate or collaborate in some concrete fashion to achieve those objectives. Several individuals at the conference thoughtfully articulated the necessity for landscape-scale initiatives. Chip Collins explained that conservationists who were once focused on success in “conserving individual tracts of land” now see many of the efforts launched over the past 50 years as “piecemeal and incomplete, often failing to comprehensively address the inputs that affect ecosystems and their component parts.”

Ted Smith, in explaining why the Kendall Foundation has made philanthropic investments in landscape-scale initiatives, noted: “Ample evidence convinces us that land fragmentation is a threat to most species…. We are seeking to promote reconnections along, [for example], a large stretch of the Rockies at a scale that reflects the needs of keystone species…. Because fragmented land ownership works against nature, we are funding conservation strategies that embrace approaches to integrating the management of public and private lands. Not surprisingly, private lands often hold the greatest biological wealth and represent key corridors for wildlife movement.”

While present-day discussions of landscape-scale initiatives may sometimes start with biodiversity concerns, they frequently go well beyond that focus. Nora Mitchell stated: “To protect remaining wild lands and sustain working landscapes, many conservation efforts today operate at the landscape scale. To be successful at this large scale, these efforts must integrate ecological, cultural and recreational values with economic and community development. As a result, the practice of landscape-scale conservation is complex and challenging… It requires working across political and ecosystem boundaries, adopts an interdisciplinary perspective, and involves the collaboration of many organizations.”

It is important to note that landscape-scale efforts may be directed not only toward relatively undeveloped and rural landscapes, but also to urban environments, reflecting, as Reed Holderman pointed out, “the diversity of relationships that exist between people and land.” In urban settings, the purpose may be as much about providing essential ecosystem services (for example, flood control and water purification) or recreational opportunities as they are about protecting wildlife habitat.

In short, landscape-scale conservation initiatives call upon our limited human capacities to understand and manage complex systems, as we are challenged to steward natural and built physical systems over long periods of time. Douglas Wheeler, former California Secretary of Resources, reminded the group that we are also challenged to build enduring “institutional ecosystems” that will sustain focus on achieving key conservation objectives across decades and the tenures of multiple political administrations.

Implementation of Landscape-scale Concepts

Participants had several opportunities to consider the effectiveness of landscape-scale conservation initiatives in practice, through both pre-conference field trips and case studies examined during the meeting. Field trips included visits to rural and urban protected landscapes in the San Francisco metropolitan area that help to comprise the region’s assemblage of “green matrix” sites. Subsequent case study discussions focused on the San Francisco Bay area; the Yellowstone to Yukon (Y2Y) Initiative stretching from the state of Wyoming to the Yukon Territory; and a recent effort to encourage sustainable agricultural practices into the Cerrado region of Brazil. Given the relatively recent reemergence of interest in landscape-scale regional conservation efforts, their inherent complexity, and the range of possible conservation objectives that they might entail, it was not surprising that many of the initiatives we considered were seen more as “works in progress” than as successfully completed projects.

San Francisco Bay

Within the patchwork of protected landscapes distributed across the San Francisco Bay region, the most prominent property is the Golden Gate National Recreation Area (GGNRA), a regional-scale National Park Service unit first established in 1972. It now stretches from the Santa Cruz Mountains in the south, to prime parkland on both sides of the Golden Gate Bridge, to the Marin Headlands and northward. Billed as “the largest urban parkland in the world,” the GGNRA, at 75,500 acres (more than 30,500 hectares), offers such gems as Crissy Field, a breathtakingly beautiful bayside tidal marsh and educational center located within the Presidio of San Francisco on a former military airstrip.

Brian O’Neill and Greg Moore relayed the story behind the establishment of the 30-year-old GGNRA and the recently completed Crissy Field Center. Their story is a model case history of how, working together with the help of funding from both the federal government and private philanthropic sources, their organizations have brought to life a highly valuable recreational, educational and ecological resource for Bay-area citizens. In addition to enticing visitors, ranging from local school children to great blue herons and peregrine falcons, to make repeated visits to the site, the public, private and nonprofit partners at the Crissy Field site have recently linked food service operations at the park with the noted agricultural resources of the region. Visitors to the Crissy Field Café and Bookstore today can dine on some of the best organic produce grown in the Bay area, helping to build important ties between the area’s spectacular scenic amenities and its working farms.

Lands protected by the federal government within the GGNRA are complemented by extensive protected landholdings in the area that are owned by other governmental units, including: the State of California and various county and local governments; the academic sector, including the University of California and Stanford University; the nonprofit sector, including the Peninsula Open Space Trust (POST) and the Marin Agricultural Land Trust (MALT); and the private sector, including agricultural lands under conservation easements held by both public and nonprofit entities.

While the region’s array of protected landscapes is indeed impressive in scale and distribution, enduring coordination among the managers of these lands, for the purpose of achieving specific conservation objectives, is often lacking. For example, the manager of a local nonprofit land trust was asked if strong bonds around achieving biodiversity conservation or water quality objectives linked the management of agricultural properties protected by land trusts with the lands protected by federal agencies. His answer was instructive: “Actually, the relationship between local, state and federal conservation organizations is not always smooth. There are some threads that are starting to tie one piece of the quilt to another, but they are only threads today.” He explained that what may look like some sort of coordinated picture on a map really was built “from the grassroots up,” starting with a variety of “piecemeal efforts”; any “regional vision” emerged later.

Bay area conservationists at the conference took in stride the idea that a regional vision regarding the achievement of management objectives was still being worked out. Greg Moore noted that he and his colleagues are in some ways just now refocusing on stewardship challenges, but he offered a hopeful perspective: “Each era of success generates a new generation of ambition.” Audrey Rust pointed out that it can be a struggle just to get public and private funders to focus on stewardship issues, particularly when they are inundated with land protection funding requests. But both Moore and Rust agreed that, over the next several decades, focusing substantial resources on the achievement of stewardship objectives is a job that needs greater attention. Bob McIntosh concurred, noting that similar challenges face conservationists active on the eastern seaboard.

Yellowstone to Yukon (Y2Y)

Progress toward the realization of a continuous, well-stewarded corridor of protected lands in the Y2Y region is at an even more formative stage. Ted Smith described Y2Y as a “bottom-up” effort that has biodiversity conservation at its center. Among other objectives, Y2Y seeks to establish core areas and connecting corridors that will sustain healthy populations of grizzly and black bears along a long spine of mountains that crosses the U.S.-Canadian border.

The Y2Y Initiative website (www.y2y.net) offers a brief overview of the effort. The community of interest that has gathered around the Y2Y idea has grown over the past decade to include more than “340 organizations, institutions, foundations and conservation-minded individuals” that have “recognized the value of working together to restore and maintain the unique natural heritage of the Yellowstone to Yukon region and the quality of life it offers.”

The community has played a key role in achieving numerous visible and important conservation projects. For example, Y2Y member organizations, including the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society (CPAWS), helped lead the successful effort to establish in northern British Columbia the Muskwa-Kechika Management Area (M-KMA), a nearly 16 million acre (6.4 million hectare) district; about 25 percent of the M-KMA is designated as parkland, with the remainder included in special management zones where certain resource development activities will be allowed. While the establishment of the M-KMA is a significant success for the conservation community, its ongoing management has proven to be a real challenge. George Smith explained: “In the M-KMA, progress has been made and problems solved; some industry is occurring while the wilderness remains essentially intact. Yet, much of the integrated management system has not been created, causing line-agency power struggles and inefficiencies.”

South of the U.S.-Canadian border, the conservation community is working hard to expand on the gains made over the past two decades to conserve both public and private lands for the public benefit along the Y2Y corridor. The Trust for Public Land, for example, was successful in 2002 and 2003 in helping to protect the Taylor Fork drainage in Montana, filling in some of the checkerboard pattern of land ownership in the Gallatin National Forest. However, with various property rights groups spearheading organized opposition to both public and private land conservation efforts, the realization of landscape-scale initiatives is far from assured in the Rocky Mountain region. Many years of concerted effort lie ahead if the gaps are to be spanned between the disparate protected landscapes appearing on regional maps. Dan Sayre commented that to achieve ambitious goals, the conservation community will have to be extraordinarily persistent in making its case that careful land stewardship is in the interest of local communities, is in our national interest, and is part of a tradition with deep roots in American history.

Innovations to Advance New Initiatives

Recognizing that the concept of landscape-scale conservation is still in some respects nascent, the assembled conservationists offered a number of ideas regarding innovations that may advance its development. Story Clark pointed out that in the area of stewardship U.S.-based conservationists have a great deal to learn from their international colleagues, especially regarding “community-based conservation methodologies.” Jessica Brown agreed, based on her experience in building support for conservation initiatives in Central Europe by focusing on the role of the local community.

Glenn Prickett offered the group a short presentation on how Conservation International (CI) is helping a community-based effort in the Cerrado, a massive savannah that covers more than one-quarter of Brazil’s land area. Since World War II, the Cerrado has been intensively developed for agricultural purposes, including soybean cultivation. The region is important for its own biodiversity attributes, and because it feeds water into Brazil’s Pantanal, home to one of the globe’s most significant freshwater ecosystems. In working to build a 370-mile biodiversity corridor that connects the Cerrado and the Pantanal, CI has forged a relationship with some of the region’s most important soybean processors to develop purchasing guidelines that encourage local soybean growers to use “best practices” in their operations. Such practices include the protection of natural habitat on agricultural lands as well as careful management of riparian zones to make a measurable difference in local stream and habitat quality. By working with the community, and leveraging the reach of key industrial processors in the area, CI hopes to considerably improve the odds that a regional biodiversity corridor will be sustainable. The approach, Prickett pointed out, is transferable to North American initiatives that will depend on wildlife corridors adjacent to, or even woven into, the fabric of local agricultural and industrial properties.

In addition to working closely with communities and local industry to achieve conservation objectives, participants stressed numerous other opportunities for innovation. Gretchen Daily addressed the need for new financing mechanisms to underwrite large-scale conservation initiatives. She discussed with candor the challenges of accessing potential streams of income associated with the provision of ecosystem services (for example, funding to support forest protection and other “carbon sequestration” efforts that would help to control the levels of gases that are released into the earth’s atmosphere and contribute to global warming).

Participants also discussed the need for increasingly powerful ways to monitor large-scale easements, especially on initiatives that incorporate working forests and farmlands. Peter Stein noted that methodologies for improving both the accuracy and cost-effectiveness of monitoring protocols are under development. At the New England Forestry Foundation, for example, novel applications of remote sensing technology, combined with more traditional aerial photography techniques and on-the-ground inspections, are being leveraged to monitor new landscape-scale easements. Seasoned conservationists including Mike Soukup, Bob Bendick and Philippe Cohen underscored how advanced information technologies, such as those used in detailed, multi-scalar Geographic Information System (GIS) mapping applications, can be particularly useful in thinking through regional conservation strategies.

In conclusion, however, the focus turned from exciting new technologies to the human element. Armando Carbonell summed up the sentiment of the group, noting that a “green matrix is not just land represented by green on a map, but also a set of lasting social relationships.” Like the effort sustained by the diverse group of men and women who brought the Appalachian Trail into existence and have cared for it as a national treasure, it will take the long-term attention of present and future generations to bring today’s expansive conservation concepts into reality.

James N. Levitt is director of the Program on Conservation Innovation at the Harvard Forest, Harvard University, and is a faculty associate at the Lincoln Institute. He organizes the Institute’s annual Conservation Leadership Dialogue, and reported on the March 2002 program in the July 2002 issue of Land Lines.

References

Bristow, Robert S. 1998. Volunteer-Based Recreation Land Management: Appalachian National Scenic Trail Management Model. Parks and Recreation. National Recreation and Park Association, August 1.

Levitt, James N. 2002. Land and Biodiversity Conservation: A Leadership Dialogue. Land Lines 14(3): 1–4.

MacKaye, Benton. 1921. An Appalachian Trail: A Project in Regional Planning. Journal of the American Institute of Architects 9 (October): 325–330.

——. 1990. The New Exploration: A Philosophy of Regional Planning. The Appalachian Trail Conference, Harpers Ferry, WV, and the University of Illinois Press, Urbana-Champaign.

Conservation Leadership Dialogue Participants and Correspondents, 2003

Elizabeth Bell, Land Conservation Advisory Services, Seattle, WA
Robert Bendick, The Nature Conservancy, Altamonte Springs, Florida
Robert Berner, Marin Agricultural Land Trust, Point Reyes Station, CA
Jessica Brown, Quebec-Labrador Foundation, Ipswich, MA
Armando Carbonell,* Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, Cambridge, MA
Story Clark, conservation advisor, Wilson, WY
Patrick Coady, Coady & Company, Washington, DC
Philippe Cohen, Stanford University/Jasper Ridge, Stanford, CA
Charles E. (“Chip”) Collins, Forestland Group, Inc., Cambridge, MA
Gretchen Daily, Stanford University, Stanford, CA
Julie Early, Island Foundation, Marion, MA
Ralph Grossi, American Farmland Trust, Washington, DC
Jean Hocker,* Land Trust Alliance, emeritus, Arlington, VA
Reed Holderman, Trust for Public Land, San Francisco, CA
James N. Levitt,* Harvard Forest, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA
Nick MacPhee, Land Conservation Advisory Services, Seattle, WA
Robert McIntosh, National Park Service, Boston, MA
Nora Mitchell,* National Park Service Conservation Study Institute, Woodstock, VT
Greg Moore, Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy, San Francisco, CA
Brian O’Neill, National Park Service Golden Gate National Recreation Area, San Francisco, CA
Glenn Prickett, Conservation International, Washington, DC
Will Rogers, Trust for Public Land, San Francisco, CA
Audrey Rust, Peninsula Open Space Trust, Menlo Park, CA
Dan Sayre, Island Press, Washington, DC
George Smith, Canadian Parks and Wilderness Association, Gibsons, BC
Ted Smith, Kendall Foundation, Boston, MA
Michael Soukup, National Park Service, Washington, DC
Peter Stein, Lyme Timber Company, Lyme, NH
Douglas Wheeler, Hogan & Hartson, LLP, Washington, DC

* Conference Steering Committee

This article is adapted from a keynote address delivered by President Gregory S. Prince Jr. of Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts, at a Lincoln Institute–sponsored conference in May 2003 at Lincoln House. Focusing on the topic “Universities as Developers,” the conference brought together some 40 college and university presidents and administrators who deal with real estate and development issues for their institutions.

“How do you build a relationship between an institution and the community in which it lives, in all of its forms?” This is a topic that I have struggled with for more than the 14 years I’ve been at Hampshire; building these relationships is an incredibly interesting process. I’m going to describe some of the salient points that have influenced the way I work on Hampshire’s community relations. It is not coherent. It does not start with a grand design. Rather, it’s inductive, based on my experiences and my observations. In addition, this interaction, this back and forth between thoughts and actions, between the college and the community, has been an important part of my own ongoing education about this critical topic.

This process for me began when I worked at Dartmouth College for 19 years. One of the things I found extraordinary at Dartmouth, which is so different from Hampshire, is that Dartmouth is taxed like any other institution, for profit or not, in the state. Because New Hampshire does not have the income tax or the sales tax, the town of Hanover is permitted to impose a property tax on all nonacademic facilities at the college. This tax policy has been in effect for decades, so it is an accepted part of life. People struggle over all the same issues that any academic community faces, but the conversation in town meetings is quite different when the college is paying just like anybody else. Granted, in Hanover tax dollars go to the schools where the faculty send their own children, so they have a vested interest. But, I saw a relationship between the college and the community that I found very healthy.

When I came to Hampshire College in 1989, everyone was talking about PILOTS (payments in lieu of taxes). I hadn’t thought much about PILOTS until I found out that the University of Massachusetts was making these payments to the town, and the town manager wanted Hampshire and Amherst College to start paying as well. So I learned to talk about PILOTS, but I felt there was something intrinsically shortsighted about the arrangement because it was based on a very narrow conversation about money and not about needs. Both Hampshire and Amherst colleges have made contributions to the town of Amherst for certain items, but we have not called them PILOTS, and we have not made them on a regular basis. Now, I am not saying that when a college or university does make a payment in lieu of taxes to a city it is necessarily a sign of an unhealthy relationship. All too often, however, the negotiations about what universities and colleges ought to pay to their host communities focus on the cost of police protection or snow removal, for example, rather than what it means to be part of a community with the rights and obligations that accompany citizenship, what are some of the critical needs of the community, and which ones could the institution most effectively address.

As I tried to figure out how to change the conversation, I wanted all of us to understand that we were having a dialogue. That is, when I’m having a conversation at Hampshire about the town, or with the town about Hampshire, I need to acknowledge that UMass and Amherst College are also part of the conversation. Wherever possible, we try to make sure that all three of us are communicating with the town; admittedly, this four-way conversation is complicated. I found in the process that the real discussion was about how to build sustainable communities. At Amherst College or UMass, sustainability is viewed differently than at Hampshire, a 33-year-old institution with little endowment. We need to figure out how to sustain our college over the long term within these different, complicated relationships. The PILOT conversation never seemed to quite get at that issue, so we’ve tried to expand it.

Broadening the Conversation

Two very different sets of experiences influenced my thinking about how to broaden and enrich the conversation with the community.

Urban Conferences

When I first arrived at Hampshire, I received a phone call from the chief counsel for the Transit Police in New York City, whom I had taught years before. He asked if Hampshire College would host a conference in association with the International Association of Chiefs of Police, bringing together representatives from several large urban communities. My first question was, “Great, but why Hampshire?” The response was that at that time, in 1989, people like Lee Brown (former police commissioner in New York City and now mayor of Houston) and Bill Bratton (former police chief of Boston and New York City, and now police chief of Los Angeles) felt that America had lost its cities but didn’t know it, and they were trying to figure out how to talk about it. They wanted to meet at Hampshire because it was the last place in the United States one would think would work directly with the police. The partnership that emerged between Hampshire and the International Association of Chiefs of Police did send a signal, and people noticed.

The conference brought together not just law enforcement officials but also the heads of all the major departments of ten major U.S. cities. Los Angeles dropped out at the last minute because of the Rodney King incident, but Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, New Haven, New York City, Phoenix, Seattle, Springfield and Tulsa were involved in the first group; other cities attended subsequent meetings. The police chiefs did not want mayors to come, because they wanted free and open discussion across professions and across cities. Because Hampshire paid for the conference, we were able to bring students into the process.

Among the most important outcomes of these conferences over several years was the creation of a forum for people involved in community schools, community policing, community health and other areas who never had a chance to converse, and that included the Hampshire students who contributed to an intergenerational discourse. In the first conference, we divided all the participants into groups, mixing professions and cities, and we gave them a four-block area of a fictitious city. Each group had three hours to write a proposal to a foundation on how they would use those city blocks to restore or revive the most problematic part of the city. They had access to unlimited funds, but out of the process came two critical principles that actually had very little to do with money and had everything to do with how people talk to one another and collaborate: (1) the need to have conversations across professions and across community boundaries; and (2) the need for every older adult committee or commission to have a younger counterpart organization. Guess who thought that one up? The students wanted to find a way to generate networks and initiate conversations in which common plans could be developed; they understood that no plan was going to succeed without that kind of cross-generational ownership. They came away with the realization that there is no single answer to what gets done; what is most important is how it gets done. Having conversations across boundaries, be they professional, historic, generational or institutional, may be the core value and core practice of community building.

We had three of these conferences over three years, and I think they had a profound effect on the strategic ways that people like Bratton and Brown and other law enforcement officers and community leaders changed their communities. These same principles of open conversation should be built back into relationships between colleges and universities and their communities. It’s not just about PILOTS or taxes. It’s about how you generate a conversation so that everybody is part of the process, respects the outcome and is committed to the sustainability of the community.

Cultural Village

The second set of experiences also began in my first year at Hampshire, a lovely campus of 1,200 students surrounded by 800 acres of farmland in Amherst, a small New England town in the western part of the state. Amherst also hosts the University of Massachusetts, a major state land-grant university with over 20,000 students, and Amherst College, with 1,600 students. A bus system links the colleges with the town, but many students complained that they were “in a little teenage encampment.” They wanted older adults and more activity around them so they could feel more connected to the community.

As I talked with people in the town and attended meetings on economic development issues, I learned that Amherst was fairly hostile to development. Lack of development intensified the feeling among town leaders that PILOTS were the possible recourse. As I began to understand that perceptions, strategies and concerns about development underlay the conversation about PILOTS, I began to look at land. Could land possibly help the community, since Hampshire had an abundance of land relative to available cash? Our land actually held the seeds for new possibilities in the form of creating a “cultural village.”

After many years of planning and negotiating, the grounds of Hampshire College are now being transformed into a center for nonprofit cultural and educational institutions that create more activity for the students and more economic activity for the town. The National Yiddish Book Center became the first new development when, in the early 1990s, it was looking for a new home. The center’s director, Aaron Lansky, is a Hampshire alumnus and he wanted to stay in Amherst where he had started the center. It took six years to persuade the boards of the college and the center to agree, but the center now has an absolutely gorgeous building with 40,000 volumes in the library. It runs tremendous events, bringing people together from all over the world. Hampshire College didn’t pay for it; the Book Center paid for it. But its building, its facilities, its activities and its staff are on our campus, enriching our life, putting people into our dining room, creating a more interesting intellectual environment for our students, creating economic activity for the town, and not using land that could otherwise be taxed.

The second member of the cultural village, the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art, opened in the fall of 2002. One may well ask, “What does it do for Hampshire College to be the site of the first picture-book art museum in the U.S.?” The 40,000-square-foot building sits on land that Hampshire donated, but Eric Carle, the author of The Very Hungry Caterpillar, endowed the museum. It employs 18 people, including some of our students. So we’re enriching the faculty and cultural resources for our students, and the town of Amherst gets a large museum to sustain its economic base while limiting environmental impact on its land resources. Only 25,000 museum-goers were expected in the first year, but more than 40,000 attended in the first four months, bringing vitality to both the town and the college.

Intergenerational Viewpoints

These two experiences—developing the cultural village and learning from the urban conferences years before—make me feel that even though Hampshire is in a rural area, the principles that have guided community outreach are replicable even for large universities in urban environments. The key is to generate a conversation that crosses boundaries and in so doing weakens those boundaries. The process is ongoing and has led to many interesting new conversations.

Recently the town of Amherst approached me about developing open space on the edge of the campus for a commercial village center. The area now houses a well-known farm stand, but the town wanted to expand the amount of commercial activity. Through open conversation with the community, college trustees, students and residents, the land was purchased and given to Hampshire with the proviso that it be used to generate income to support the college. At the first public hearing on what to do with the land, we invited the entire community. All ages were present. A group of Hampshire students came to the meeting intending to argue against development; they wanted the area kept as open space. However, the first citizens to speak were in their 70s and 80s; they tore us apart about how terrible it would be to develop this area and how they had bought their apartments nearby because of this open beautiful land. In truth, their retirement community had been built while I was the president of the college, so I knew it, too, had been built on open land. Their attitude was, “we’re here and now we don’t want any more development.” The students understood these arguments, but found themselves thinking about how they wanted to behave when they were 75 years old. They didn’t want to imagine themselves as being opposed to growth and change, so this intergenerational conversation made a difference in their attitudes. Talks have continued and the plan is still in development, with a target date of spring 2004 to present it at town meeting.

Principles of Sustainability

Developing the cultural village and new developments in academic curricula converged to make sustainability an increasingly important issue. Suddenly, the cultural village was also becoming a laboratory. When the faculty, in response to issues in the cultural village, proposed seeking funds to do a sustainable campus plan focusing on the natural environment, I suggested that the most important principle in the plan be sustaining Hampshire College. My statement generated a very constructive conversation about what sustainability should mean for Hampshire. Let me summarize the principles that we developed.

1. The core goal in planning for the college must be the school’s long-term sustainability as an educational institution committed to providing students with the most constructively transforming liberal arts education possible.

2. In pursuing the first goal, the college must strive for human sustainability—for maintaining and enriching our capacity to live well together, for providing for the economic well-being of those who work at the college, and for nurturing their creative spirit and sense of fulfillment that comes from working at the college.

3. In pursuing the educational and social goals, we must recognize the fundamental relationship between the goals and the physical environment, and strive to achieve the sustainability of that physical environment to the greatest extent possible.

4. In pursuing the core goals of sustaining the college as an educational institution, we must strive to ensure that as an institution, independent of what its graduates accomplish, what we do makes a difference locally, nationally and internationally. Success in achieving the first three goals will ensure that we take a significant step in achieving the fourth goal. In effect, our primary aim is to provide the best education we can. We must model the behavior we expect of our graduates.

5. In pursuing educational and social sustainability, we must encourage entrepreneurial activity, invention and innovation, even if it entails the risk of failure.

6. In sustaining the human spirit of the college community, economic needs must be met, but with the recognition that we must also offer a meaningful mission, a stimulating and creative intellectual environment, and a supportive and enriching physical environment.

7. In seeking to create a sustainable, healthy and enriching social environment, the practical must be balanced with the artistic, the physical and rational with the contemplative, the values of individualism with those of community, and the needs of the college with those of the larger community.

8. In seeking to create a sustainable physical environment, efficient use of energy should be the highest priority, followed by other resource uses and resource disposal. Appropriate land use must be made another high priority. In maintaining the physical plant, we should consider the ease and efficiency of maintenance in terms of those who perform the work, as well as the level of resources needed to carry it out.

9. Wherever possible, physical infrastructure changes should include visible demonstration or interactive educational displays designed to educate about sustainability.

10. The cost of innovations in programs or in the physical environment should include the endowment required to ensure that those who follow us will not be burdened with their maintenance. The projects should be designed so they can be converted to other uses, removed or terminated.

The Board of Trustees reviewed the ten principles of sustainability, then challenged us on how we will interpret and implement them. In the process of working on these tasks, additional guidelines began to emerge:

1. Process is important: conversation and explorations can uncover interests as opposed to positions.

2. Geography matters. It may not be destiny, but it has a great deal to do with it and how you have to build and grow.

3. Focus on the culture, the economy and the environment comprehensively, not as separate subjects in conversations and plans, and involve them early.

4. Involve the community.

5. Involve young people, especially high school students, in any community planning.

6. Promote interdependence.

While these guidelines answer some questions, I struggle with other questions. One of particular importance to me currently is the issue of contiguity. Do our endeavors need to be within our current campus or town or can we successfully move into other communities? The five colleges in the region (Amherst, Hampshire, Mt. Holyoke, Smith and UMass) already work together on many joint programs and all of us have done a great deal of work in Holyoke, a small city about 15 miles south of Amherst that exemplifies all the problems of urban America.

We spent a lot of time trying to encourage UMass to move its art department to an old warehouse in Holyoke. We felt it would be a major boost to the community, but it looks as though it will not happen for equally legitimate reasons. Moving an academic department geographically from the rest of the academic community will increase intellectual isolation and fragmentation. Other ideas include building a five-college dormitory in Holyoke, and that possibility raises equally complex questions related to contiguity and community citizenship.

In both projects the issue is contiguity. Must you always maintain your place as a central, unbroken whole, or can you move outside of your special place? That’s the challenge. I think Hampshire has to somehow build a presence in Holyoke. We have made a huge investment there already, and I believe the city has incredible potential. I think we have to face the issue of opening ourselves up physically, not just maintaining the boundaries of our space but carrying ourselves outside of the institution as well. But others resist. What is exciting is the conversation and the process of engaging all of the related communities in that dialogue.

Gregory S. Prince Jr. is president of Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts.

Este artículo es una adaptación de la introducción a Nature and Cities: The Ecological Imperative in Urban Design and Planning (La naturaleza y las ciudades: El imperativo ecológico en el diseño y la planificación urbana), una compilación de ensayos e imágenes realizados por arquitectos paisajistas, arquitectos y planificadores internacionales de reconocido prestigio, de quienes se presentan aquí algunos trabajos. La publicación de este libro por el Instituto Lincoln de Políticas de Suelo, en asociación con la Facultad de Arquitectura de la Universidad de Texas en Austin y la editorial George F. Thompson, está programada para junio de 2016.

Todo parece tan claro desde el aire, donde los detalles no estorban. A 10.000 metros de altura podemos ver los resultados de nuestra obra por todo el suelo que se abre bajo nosotros, como si el paisaje fuera nuestro reflejo en el espejo. Como sabemos, los paisajes no mienten; son la expresión de todo lo que hacemos aquí en la Tierra.

Algunos caminos corren paralelos a los ríos y valles: no hace falta mucho ingenio en este caso. Otros caminos convergen sobre asentamientos, como si de sendas de vacas que llevan al depósito de agua se tratase, o pueden seguir los pasos de ciervos y otros senderos de animales o contornos topográficos, y pronto se asemejan a la majestad orgánica de una tela de araña. Imaginen la ciudad donde El Greco (1541–1614), se estableció y trabajó, Toledo, España, vista desde el aire: perfección en forma urbana orgánica.

La vieja pradera norteamericana, virgen hasta hace dos siglos, muestra ahora las cuadrículas de grandes granjas que no dejan espacio para ninguna otra vegetación que no sean los cultivos, y una fina línea de árboles a lo largo de riberas de los ríos y las orillas de los arroyos, como si fuera el diezmo simbólico a la naturaleza y la vida silvestre. Y los círculos de pivote central de 16 hectáreas de maíz, soja o alfalfa (la trifecta de la agricultura industrial) se ven como si alguien hubiera lanzado, en perfecta simetría, enormes monedas sobre el suelo. Como pavimentos de cultivos que se extienden hasta el horizonte, incluso de un estado a otro, toda esta obra humana es consecuencia de una política agrícola federal en completo desequilibrio con la naturaleza. No es de extrañar entonces que las mariposas y un sinnúmero de otras criaturas y plantas tengan que luchar contra estos paisajes tan fuera de toda lógica.

Nuevos sitios de extracción de gas natural han aparecido de manera tan súbita y generalizada, permeando gran parte de las Grandes Praderas y el interior del Oeste de América del Norte, como si enormes perros de pradera alimentados con esteroides hubieran excavado estas grandes extensiones de terreno. Es como estar reviviendo los Viajes de Gulliver. Mientras tanto, minas a cielo abierto generan depresiones inmensas en el suelo como si allí hubieran chocado meteoritos del espacio exterior. Las espectaculares tonalidades rojizas, rojas, doradas y arenosas de estas minas contrastan fuertemente con el terreno circundante, como si ellas, también, fueran obras de arte grabadas, pobres intentos de recreación de un Coliseo romano subterráneo o de un Gran Cañón del Colorado en miniatura. Al tiempo, nuevos aerogeneradores de color blanco brillante, algunos con una envergadura de 126 metros y 90 metros de altura, aparecen como si un cirujano gigante hubiera aplicado puntos de sutura de diferentes longitudes y formas en el suelo y el mar, a pesar de que un sinnúmero de pájaros mueren por el impacto.

Pueblos y ciudades se concentran a lo largo de la costa frente al mar, con pocas defensas para proteger a las comunidades de unas marejadas que probablemente dentro de un siglo serán por lo menos 90 centímetros más alta que ahora. Este mismo riesgo es aplicable a los pueblos y ciudades que se encuentran a lo largo de los ríos, ya sean de caudal grande como pequeño, que por supuesto desean bajar y subir como la marea, desbordándose y, de tanto en tanto, anegando las calles. Aun ciudades de categoría mundial, como Chicago, Sídney, Tokio o Toronto, vistas desde el aire parecen construcciones de LEGO, y, desde el suelo, códigos de barras, por las que automóviles y camiones circulan como hormiguitas atareadas, y los trenes se deslizan como serpientes por el cemento.

Los desiertos, durante largo tiempo avanzadillas yermas de bíblica desolación, están ahora moteados de oasis en forma de pueblos, ciudades y centros turísticos nuevos, con sus casas anidadas entre piscinas azul marino, como si estas fueran un requisito de entrada al vecindario. Lagos relucientes son absorbidos por embalses gigantes, y el agua se evapora en el cielo seco y sin nubes. Un rompecabezas de jardines de un verde improbable destaca entre extensos campos de golf de un verde aún más absurdamente exuberante. Se podría pensar que una nueva escuela de arte llamada “cubismo paisajista” hubiera realizado dibujos torcidos sobre el suelo.

Sin embargo, también hay extensiones excepcionales de suelo sin desarrollar. Caminos como el de los Apalaches, el Continental, el de la Edad de Hielo, el Grande Randonnée, el de la Gran Patagonia, el Natchez, el del Macizo del Pacífico, el Te Araroa y el Tokai brindan la oportunidad de adentrarse durante largas distancias en el corazón y el alma de sus respectivos países. Hay bosques que cubren miles y miles de kilómetros cuadrados, aliviando a un planeta con urgente necesidad de nuevos pulmones para procesar los crecientes niveles de dióxido de carbono (CO₂). Cuencas y humedales todavía intactos conservan su lugar natural entre la tierra y el agua, de un valor incalculable como suministro de agua a los pueblos y ciudades corriente abajo, y un hábitat para peces, insectos, pájaros y otras formas de vida silvestre. La agricultura de cercanía prospera en armonía con el terreno y los principios vivificantes de la Ley de Conservación del Suelo del 27 de abril de 1935. Y cada vez más ciudades hacen alarde de sistemas integrados de parques, espacios abiertos y vías verdes, demostrando que la naturaleza puede volver al escenario urbano y mejorar las comunidades tanto biológica como socioeconómicamente.[1]

El suelo nos dice tantas cosas. Y la arquitectura de paisajes, la planificación y el diseño urbano, y la arquitectura tienen que continuar con su tarea pionera de ofrecer un enfoque ecológico al diseño, la planificación y la gestión de nuestros distintos paisajes: urbano, suburbano, rural, regional, social y silvestre. Todo comienza en el suelo, en la naturaleza y en nuestras comunidades, en las múltiples ecologías y economías y culturas que encapsulan nuestro propio terreno, dondequiera se encuentre.

Pero gran parte del suelo ya es urbano, y ese patrón extendido y en expansión de asentamientos no parece tener fin. Así que, ¿cómo podemos hacerlo mejor? Este escenario y estas cuestiones constituyen el tema de La naturaleza y las ciudades: El imperativo ecológico en el diseño y la planificación urbana.

Aun cuando el uso del suelo parece relativamente claro y simple desde el aire, desde el terrero el panorama se hace más complicado, debido a los inevitables detalles. Todos los aspectos de la vida —seres humanos entrelazados con la naturaleza, con mayor o menor éxito— aparecen ante nuestros ojos, penetran en nuestros oídos, se depositan en nuestra piel y nuestra ropa en forma de punto de rocío, humedad, aire seco, luz del sol, brisas vespertinas y temperaturas frescas o cálidas. Esta es mucha información para comprender, incluso dentro del alcance limitado de nuestros sentidos.

Quizás este panorama abarque su jardín o su calle; el único pozo de agua del que usted y su comunidad obtienen agua; un lugar predilecto de reunión; el lugar de vacaciones favorito; una región devastada por sequías, inundaciones o incendios; un lugar que se está recuperando de un terremoto, un desprendimiento, de la delincuencia o la guerra. La imaginación nos puede transportar a cualquier lugar que queramos, pero hay un balance final para esta indagación. Al imaginarse o caminar o viajar o manejar por el paisaje que lo rodea, absorba todo lo que contiene: cada brizna de césped que adorna su jardín o sobrevive en la grieta de una acera; cada campo, plaza o pradera que puede formar parte de su vida cotidiana; cada choza, condominio o mansión que le da albergue; cada árbol, vía verde o parque que embellece su espacio; cada entidad y actividad económica que se le presenta; cada aroma que emana de una panadería o fundición; cada aliento que inspira, que inevitablemente es un cóctel inhalable de los elementos naturales de la Tierra (arena, polen y polvo) y todos los productos químicos provocados por el ser humano, demasiado numerosos para poder enumerarlos.

Ahora que ha visto, escuchado y sentido ese paisaje, imagine que repentinamente está a cargo de la escena. Toda su familia, todo su barrio, aldea, ciudad, región y país dependen de usted. Primero, para que explique cada aspecto de lo que percibe y le dé sentido, ya sea en una asamblea, en un aula o, incluso, en un consejo de dirección de empresa. Y segundo, para vislumbrar, comunicar, planificar y diseñar mejoras a lo que está viendo. ¿Por dónde empezaría? ¿Qué haría? ¿Bajo qué circunstancias haría o podría implementar cambios? ¿Y cómo? ¿De abajo arriba, o de arriba abajo? ¿De manera diplomática, democrática o dictatorial? ¿Cómo piensa mantener, nutrir y quizás cambiar con el tiempo su visión y su cadena concomitante de acciones? ¿Y quién lo hará, bajo qué circunstancias o autoridad?

Este es el terreno que hereda el arquitecto paisajista, el arquitecto y el planificador. Vuelva ahora a su “visión” de lo que quiere que sea el lugar, y considere un proceso por el cual el cambio se busca y concreta prestando atención a tres temas fundamentales y dominantes: la necesidad humana de agua limpia, comida abundante y segura, y cobijo; la necesidad humana de bienestar económico; y la necesidad natural de cuidar y sanar el suelo, la naturaleza en sí. ¿Cómo se puede trabajar con estructura, propósito y significación para brindar satisfacción, valor y bienestar público? ¿Cómo se agrega valor al lugar, las comunidades, ciudades y regiones con diseños y planes que nos liberen del pensamiento único, y nos permitan adquirir una guía de referencia en sus múltiples manifestaciones? De gran importancia también: ¿Qué hacemos, como ciudadanos, como parte de una población urbana cada vez mayor, para reconectarnos con el mundo natural del cual seguimos dependiendo, y cómo adaptamos los beneficios de la ecología a la vida biológica y socioeconómica?

Aunque la naturaleza es el centro de nuestro ser y de cualquier otra forma de vida —planta, árbol, suelo, agua y roca— sobre la Tierra, con demasiada frecuencia nuestras conexiones humanas con la naturaleza pasan a segundo plano frente a los intereses preponderantes de todo tipo que compiten por obtener ventajas sociales y económicas sin estar sujetos a una ética del suelo, como la promovida por Aldo Leopold.[2] Cuando miramos los variados paisajes del suelo, nos preguntamos cómo es nuestro desempeño como seres humanos en el cuidado de este generoso planeta.

Si uno viaja lo suficiente en tiempo y distancia, todavía puede encontrar comunidades y culturas antiguas que viven en contacto íntimo con los sistemas naturales que las rodean Las casas en el Amazonas siguen construyéndose sobre pilotes para permitir las fluctuaciones anuales y estacionales del segundo río más largo y la cuenca hídrica más grande del mundo. Las casas sureñas de los Estados Unidos han usado tradicionalmente los porches delanteros y laterales para proporcionar sombra y cierto alivio del notable calor y la humedad de la estación estival, permitiendo al mismo tiempo la socialización entre vecinos, como se puede observar cualquier día de la semana en Vicksburg, Mississippi, en cuyas calles se alinean las tradicionales “casas escopeta” con umbríos porches delanteros animados por la conversación. Muchos escandinavos todavía usan ingeniosamente la madera y la fina artesanía del tallado para construir unas de las cabañas-casa térmicamente más eficientes del mundo, aun cuando los inviernos nórdicos son de los más duros del planeta. Y cada vez más, las iniciativas LEED (sigla en inglés de Liderazgo en el Diseño Energético y Medioambiental) están ayudando a transformar la nueva arquitectura del mundo en estructuras térmicamente eficientes, desde el Centro Aldo Leopold en Baraboo, Wisconsin, alimentado por energía geotérmica y ganador del Premio LEED de Platino, hasta la revitalización del Área de Mejores Prácticas Urbanas (UBPA) de Shanghái Expo, primer proyecto fuera de América del Norte en recibir un Premio LEED de Platino al Desarrollo Vecinal.

Además de LEED, los arquitectos paisajistas, planificadores, ecólogos y otros diseñaron la Iniciativa de Sitios Sostenibles (SITES). SITES, ahora administrado por Green Building Certification Inc., fue concebido como LEED para el aire libre. SITES fue desarrollado por medio de proyectos pilotos, como los de Andropogon, OLIN y James Corner Field Operations. Entre los proyectos piloto que recibieron certificación se encuentran Shoemaker Green de Andropogon, en el campus de la Universidad de Pensilvania y el Centro Phipps de Paisajes Sostenibles en Pittsburgh, Pensilvania, el Canal Park de OLIN en el Distrito de Columbia y Woodland Discovery Playground de James Corner Field Operations en Shelby Farms, Memphis, Tennessee.

Sin embargo, con el paso de cada generación, cada vez más urbana, las conexiones directas con la naturaleza y sus beneficios se reducen a toda velocidad. En demasiadas ciudades del mundo, la naturaleza se deja para el final. La siguiente historia es más que común:

Hace no mucho tiempo, diez años más o menos, leí en un periódico un artículo que me llamó la atención: Se le pedía a un niño de Harlem, en la ciudad de Nueva York, su opinión sobre la naturaleza. El niño dijo que la brizna de césped que crecía a sus pies, emergiendo de una grieta en la acera de cemento, era para él la encarnación de la naturaleza. Era todo lo que él necesitaba del mundo natural. He aquí un signo de vida silvestre en su calle, su lugar en el mundo. La brizna de césped verde, que de alguna manera se las arreglaba para sobrevivir ocho cuadras al sur del Central Park, proveía de la presencia elemental de la naturaleza en el mundo urbano que era su zona de confort.[3]

Incluso en ciudades agraciadas por representaciones más exuberantes de naturaleza, estos espacios verdes parecen con demasiada frecuencia zonas aisladas para el uso diario o el visitante ocasional, como pequeños museos o zoológicos. No es necesario que sea así, no hace falta que esta sea una aspiración no intencional o una consecuencia de la ignorancia de los múltiples beneficios que la naturaleza nos concede cuando se integra más plenamente en la trama urbana de cualquier pueblo o ciudad, ya sea en Jerusalén o Medellín o Stuttgart, Arkansas. Sabemos cómo hacer mejor las cosas. Los arquitectos paisajistas, arquitectos y planificadores nos han mostrado frecuentemente el camino.

Entonces, ¿cómo es posible que pueblos, ciudades y condados sigan ignorando las llanuras inundables y el nivel del mar, y permitan a propietarios, emprendedores y centros turísticos construir y reconstruir en áreas que sufren regularmente los embates de inundaciones crónicas y marejadas ciclónicas? ¿Cómo es posible que una empresa de servicios públicos viole las reglas de planificación más elementales y de sentido común, y se le permita construir un gasoducto de gas natural de 900 kilómetros por una ruta que no sólo penetra y divide el hábitat crítico de especies raras y en peligro de extinción en bosques nacionales, sino que también atraviesa un área conocida por su soberbio paisaje cárstico y profundas dolinas, poniendo en peligro el acuífero que se encuentra bajo su trayectoria, fuente de capital importancia para el suministro de agua fresca de ciudades, pueblos y granjas de toda la región? ¿Cómo es posible que las compañías mineras no estén obligadas a cerrar el ciclo, contemplando la restauración ecológica y la recuperación de las áreas de proyecto como parte de su negocio? ¿Cómo es posible que se haya elegido a Rio de Janeiro como sede de los XXXI Juegos Olímpicos (agosto de 2016), sabiendo a ciencia cierta que los eventos acuáticos se van a llevar a cabo en la Bahía de Guanabara, cuyas condiciones a veces son equivalentes a aguas residuales sin tratar? Obviamente, quienes han tomado estas decisiones no tienen en cuenta los principios y prácticas del diseño y la planificación ecológica en su visión del mundo, y cuidado con las consecuencias de haber optado por ignorancia y codicia.

La promesa de un diseño y planificación ecológica para beneficiar la salud y el bienestar de nuestras comunidades y ciudades en todo el mundo es suficiente para que nos pongamos en acción, la pongamos en práctica, comencemos a cuidarla. Pero con demasiada frecuencia, al concebir como ciudadanos el diseño y la planificación urbana, dejamos de lado lo obvio: nosotros, los seres humanos, por nuestra mera presencia en casi todas las esferas de la Tierra, somos los participantes esenciales no sólo de la danza eterna con la naturaleza que es parte de la vida y de la condición humana, sino también de la salud y el bienestar general de nuestro propio suelo.

Los ensayistas de La naturaleza y las ciudades revelan que se ha realizado, y se sigue realizando, una labor monumental en el diseño y la planificación ecológica de nuestras ciudades y comunidades en general. Puesto que los arquitectos paisajistas, arquitectos y planificadores lo han hecho repetidamente y en todo el orbe, nosotros, como sociedad, podemos afirmar que sabemos cómo trabajar colaborativamente con todos los demás participantes para proporcionar agua potable, comida y cobijo; reducir la escorrentía en las calles de la ciudades; adaptar áreas propensas a inundaciones y marejadas ciclónicas; ubicar en forma segura un corredor para servicios públicos y diseñarlo para otros fines que no sean sólo un gasoducto de gas natural obtenido por medio de la descontrolada práctica turbulenta del fracking

Pero hace falta progresar aún más, sea cual fuere el lugar donde vivamos, porque el mundo se está haciendo más urbano y las consecuencias del cambio climático y la pobreza, enfermedades, conflictos y guerras son reales. Aquí también, los arquitectos paisajistas, arquitectos y planificadores se han dedicado históricamente al proceso de comprender el mundo natural a nuestro alcance y sus múltiples manifestaciones prácticas, donde los detalles y las interconexiones son importantes. Y con sus diseños y planes, algunos ya centenarios, podemos ver ejemplos de trabajos terminados que han mejorado este mundo. Los paisajistas, arquitectos y planificadores han ofrecido históricamente visiones alternativas a la práctica fallida de la serendipia y el pensamiento único que ha dominado durante demasiado tiempo el punto de vista público y privado.