SS 14
Aligning Ecology with Cultural Landscape Studies and Community History to Improve Urban Ecosystems
In this special session we will be bringing together urban historians with ecologists, local designers, and community leaders concerned with the environmental outcomes of community-based planning. As part of the centennial meeting of ESA and in conjunction with the Mellon Program in Urban Landscape Studies at Dumbarton Oaks, this session will highlight how designers, ecologists, and humanities scholars can contribute to the understanding and improvement of the built environment. As part of the Baltimore Earth Stewardship Initiative, we will explore the planning and design issues of three sites visited during the ESA Field Trip: Baltimore's Upper Middle Branch area, the Pigtown area of Watershed 263, and the Gay Street green corridor. We will identify ways of fostering the integration of historical interpretation with landscape design, engineering, and urban planning, in order to facilitate the synthesis of community interests with ecological research. We will illustrate how humanities scholars, ecologists, local designers, and grassroots leaders can collaborate to align biological communities with community structure, urbanization, and urban form. The program is funded through the Mellon Foundation's initiative in Architecture, Urbanism, and the Humanities.