My colleagues Brice Maryman and Nate Cormier, both landscape architects at SvR Design Company in Seattle, are teaching a pair of online courses this Spring and Summer with a focus on Urban Green Infrastructure. These two know the ins and outs of the topic, through their work locally and through the ever-expanding Green Infrastructure Wiki. Check out an overview of the course via an online presentation here.

Some additional info from the online site:

“Discover how strengthening a city’s green infrastructure network increases community health and ecological resilience. Learn to recognize, quantify, and apply ecosystem services and amenities in an urban environment. Explore humanity’s evolving relationship to nature as expressed in biophilia and emerging theories of landscape performance.

Develop integrated and elegant solutions to the complex infrastructural challenges facing growing cities and envision “high performance landscapes” that are multi-functional, yet culturally resonant. Experience the latest advances in urban landscape stewardship, and stay up-to-date with innovative, open source communication technologies, from wikis and social networking media to online collaboration and presentation tools”

The two courses include a Spring session entitled “Planning Urban Green Infrastructure Networks” which “…provides an overview of urban green infrastructure planning, drawing on the methods and techniques from strategic conservation planning, landscape architecture, urban planning and design, landscape ecology, and other related disciplines. You will learn how to organize a holistic planning process and work with the six green infrastructure systems in terms of their functions and services. Through case studies, lectures, and interactive exercises, you will learn to integrate systems into community-wide networks. The course will also cover innovative policy and funding strategies.“

This is followed by a Summer class focusing in more detail “Designing High Performance Landscapes” where participants will “…explore the technical and aesthetic design considerations of high performance landscapes. You’ll gain an appreciation of landscape aesthetics in an urbanizing world. Through case studies and carefully led design exercises you will learn to synthesize diverse programmatic functions into elegant solutions.”

You can course overviews, instructor bios, and more on the site. The courses are developed in partnership with the UW College of Built Environments and the UW Department of Landscape Architecture