I’m typically not one to focus on my own doings terribly often on the blog – but I had to laugh at the fortune of this press double-play today from my home city of Portland. First, from writer Sam Bennett from the Oregon Daily Journal of Commerce – investigating the potential of the Sustainable Sites Initiative for landscape architecture. The article “SSI works toward certification of landscape architecture: Sustainable Sites Initiative seeks to address issues not completely covered by LEED”, provides a good overview of the system and it’s potential for the field in elevating the discussion of sustainability to the outdoors.
Check out the full text of Bennett’s article here on the GreenWorks blog.
:: The Headwaters at Tryon Creek in Winter – image via DJC
And second, a shout out, or more correctly a “Prémio lawn Dardos” from Tim duRoche, blogger for the newish and much needed local magazine Portland Spaces… in his blog post “King of all he Surveys” (oh I like that… 🙂 – duRoche was kind enough to give some nice words to the Landscape+Urbanism blog “… a thoughtful melding of observation, local-to-global context and rigorous praxis.”
As well as the most concise statement I think I’ve ever encountered regarding the Sustainable Sites Initiative: “Goals? To levate the value of landscape (through a LEED-like set of benchmarks) by outlining the economic, environmental and human well-being benefits, to connect place/space/landscape to buildings more resolutely, provide certification/recognition for high performance, and to high-five innovation around the regeneration of natural resources and ecosystem health.”
:: Prize Darts – image via Portland Spaces
So on to the darts… 15 is both of lot, and not enough people to recognize… so I will focus on the landscape oriented, in no particular order… just because I’m happy there’s 15 blogs to mention. Anyone left out – my apologies:
1. Urban Greenery
2. Topophilia
3. City Farmer News
4. Land8Lounge
5. Vulgare
6. World Landscape Architect
7. Urbanarbolismo
8. Pruned
9. The Dirt
10. outofdoors (a new one to me)
And I can’t forget the locals:
11. Green Infrastructure Wiki
12. Portland Architecture
13. Dialogue (Oregon DJC)
14. Building Green (Seattle DJC)
15. … And last but not least… Portland Spaces… thanks Tim.
Thank you very much, we are honored to appear in your list.
Thanks Jordi… keep up the thoughtful and insightful work!
YAY! Thank so much for mentioning my blog! Always appreciated.
By the way, I wrote about Sustainable Sites in the Seattle DJC in early January and discussed it on the blog in my post ‘What gets ignored in green buildings?’ http://www.djc.com/blogs/BuildingGreen/2009/01/06/what-gets-ignored-in-green-building/ . I think the comments are interesting. I also ran a poll relating to that post – about what gets ignored in green building. And the most popular choice was ‘measuring building performance,’ followed by ‘historic preservation.’ Interesting…..
Thanks Katie – and keep up the great posting – definitely keeping me up on the goings-on up north!
I agree that for architects, sites are still not a priority – so the inclusion of elements of SSI into the existing LEED framework is probably going to have the best impact to avoid another certification system to juggle. The real beauty I think is being able to certify non-building sites… places where LEED didn’t apply can have the same level of rigor and marketing cache as the buildings do.
Changing people’s priorities… well that’s a longer process, and something landscape architects are going to need to step up our game and dialogue.