Marcela Oliva

Marcela Oliva is the Architecture and Environmental Design Leader for the LATTC Green Workforce Division, a member of the Federal Knowledge Management (KM) Team and Knowledge Architect for the LACCD Sustainable Building Program. She participated with NASA KM as a principal investigator for the Cyber-Physical Systems National Science Foundation Grant, and she is a recipient of the California Governor’s Award in Geospatial Technologies. Professor Oliva runs a high-tech studio as an “atelier,” and the students’ learning outcomes and e-portfolio show 100 percent transfer and 100 percent job placements. The United Negro College Fund and Hispanic Association for Universities and Colleges have identified her program as a role model for Urban Teaching. With local students’ talent and as part of a high-tech team, she facilitated the LACCD e7 Architecture Studio to produce geospatial repository and scientific visualization tools that support decision making. She integrates social, natural, and built environments in creative and participatory learning laboratories, and she has partnered with the Los Angeles Unified School District’s high school iSEE (I’m a Student Exploring Excellence) program to create the first and largest initiative program for students interested in architecture and engineering. Professor Oliva was a three-time competitive presenter for the California Higher Education Sustainable Symposium. As part of her outreach with the Community, Professor Oliva served as a Board Member and Chair for a Non Profit Organizations ONRAMP Arts and member of Bioneer Educators’ Network. She has presented at forums that encompass education, technology innovation, and global crises, including for the University of Southern California (USC) Building Information Modeling (BIM) executives, at USC International AIA Technology Forum; Caixa Forum Barcelona; USC Focus the Nation; the Great Thinker Forum; Enterprise Architecture in Washington, D.C.; Innovative Education at Eureka International Mexico City, IBCon Intelligent High Performance Building and others. Oliva advocates for a self-organizing system that unites the mind, the built environment, and the natural environment — a method towards a CyberONE existence. She believes that through this interdependence, we can find the right relationship and patterns to bring order, balance, and harmony to our planet Earth. Oliva holds a bachelor’s degree in Architecture from USC and a master’s degree in Architecture and Building Science from Columbia University. She is the USC recipient of the Alpha Rho Chi Medal and she was awarded the LATTC’s 2012 Educator of the Year. Professor Oliva was recently a speaker at the 2012 International Open Government Data Conference Co-sponsored by the U.S. General Services Administration, Data.gov, the World Bank Open Data Initiative and the Open Development Technology Alliance. Recently the LATTC Program was identified as a catalyst solution for Higher Education today and a “Thought Leadership” by Climate Neutral Campus Report, UNCF (United Negro College Fund) Building Green and the Kresge Foundation. This fall she presented at AASHE American Association for Sustainability in Higher Education Advanced Track National Conference

Co-Presenter - Michael Rendler AIA

Michael Rendler has taught at various Community Colleges and State Universities in Architecture, CAD/BIM and GIS since 1999. He started his innovative understanding of computer-aided design for the built environment in 1991. His architectural work – projects such as the Venable House and Mariposa Apartment Buildings which has been published in international and national magazines. In 1987, he partnered with Glen Small (founder of the Biosphere) and ran a successful practice in the City of Santa Monica for more than 10 years. During this period, they built structural innovation and spectacular systems, which caught Hollywood’s attention, culminating with “Idol House.” In 1994, he had an installation at the Los Angeles Gallery “LA SEMILLA” (SEED), which gained the attention of the press and the field of higher education. During this installation, he investigated the connection between urban spaces and the neighborhood that need empowered by technology. In addition, Rendler was a keynote speaker at the 2009 National AIA with “Putting It ALLTogether, WhatTools, Which Process.” With local student talent and as part of a high-tech team, he designed the LACCD e7 Architecture Studio to produce the largest geospatial repository and scientific visualization tools that support decision making for a building’s life cycle. Rendler is a national leader with the buildingSMART Alliance, working on how to implement new technologies in the Architecture, Engineering, Construction and Owner-operated (AECO) world. He is also working with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and Safe School project to virtualize educational environments following national standards, energy demands and first-response scenarios. In 1985 he graduate from CI ARC (Southern California Institute of Architecture), Rendler holds an architectural license in California

Ryan Perkl

Ryan Perkl, Ph.D. is an Assistant Professor in the School of Landscape Architecture and Planning and an affiliated member of faculty for both the Arid Lands Resource Sciences Interdisciplinary Doctoral Program and the Institute of the Environment at the University of Arizona. He holds degrees from Clemson University in both Environmental Design and Planning (Ph.D) and City and Regional Planning (MS) as well as a BS in Environmental Science and Land Use Planning from the University of Wisconsin-River Falls.

With a primary focus in geospatial components of environmental and conservation planning, his past research has involved the development and evaluation of spatial habitat patch models, development of trans-boundary and ecoregion-scale connectivity models and conservation plans, assessing the use of human footprint datasets in corridor modeling, investigating the environmental and social impacts of conservation easements, and the implementation of projection-based modeling in infrastructure planning.

Dr. Perkl’s current research focuses on wildlife connectivity modeling and corridor design whereas he was acknowledged as one of two “Best Lightning Talks” during the 2012 GeoDesign Summit for his work entitled “GeoDesigning Landscape Linkages: Coupling GIS and Corridor Design in Conservation Planning”. In addition to being featured in the 2012 Summer Edition of ArcNews, he has also recently published co-authored work in a book entitled Landscape-scale Conservation Planning with an additional manuscript in-press for the journal “Issues in Ecology”. Dr. Perkl is also a research PI currently under contract with the Arizona Department of Game and Fish where he is leading a team involved in modeling landscape integrity and connectivity for the State of Arizona.

Conservation Planning and GeoDesign: Landscape Integrity and Connectivity Modeling in Arizona

The Arizona Game and Fish Department (AGFD) is currently undergoing efforts to identify crucial areas for wildlife conservation as part of their State Wildlife Action Plan (SWAP). A concurrent effort directed by the Western Governors’ Association (WGA) is also underway to identify crucial habitats and wildlife corridors across the western United States as part of the WGA Wildlife Corridor Initiative. In support of both efforts, AGFD and researchers at the University of Arizona are currently engaged in developing a connectivity linkage assessment for the State of Arizona.

Modeling Arizona’s landscape integrity was a necessary precursor to the statewide connectivity assessment. As such, a hybrid landscape integrity modeling approach was developed which integrated measures of anthropocentric influence, landscape health, and landscape permeability. Additionally, our approach integrated fuzzy logic methodological advancements as a means of addressing implicit and explicit assumptions inherent throughout the modeling process. Once derived, the resulting landscape integrity surface was utilized in the statewide wildlife connectivity assessment. The connectivity assessment employed the usage of least-cost, circuit, and graph theoretic based methodologies and resulted in the modeling of linkages and areas of high connectivity importance throughout the state.

This work aims to support AGFD’s vision of an interconnected landscape by identifying the crucial connections among and between Arizona’s natural areas. Further, this work will complement current conservation efforts by providing resource managers and stakeholders with data critical to the identification and prioritization of statewide linkages early in the planning process, provide a coarse-scale filter from which to evaluate and unify fine-scale assessments, and provide a replicable model and framework for future connectivity efforts as new data become available.

Al Reynolds

Alan Reynolds, AICP has been part of WilsonMiller’s leadership since 1978, as the company grew from a single local office to one of the nation’s leading multi-disciplined planning, design and engineering firms and now as a part of Stantec Consulting Services. He led an ownership transition for WilsonMiller in 1997, and served as its Chairman and CEO from then until July 2010, when WilsonMiller joined with Stantec. During this period WilsonMiller grew from a staff of 200 to over 600 employees, and a ranking of 157 on the ENR list of top 500 Design Firms in the United States. Reynolds now serves as Vice President of Stantec, a firm with more than 10,500 employees and 160 locations and is currently ranked among the ENR Top 25 Design Firms in the United States.

Recognitions that WilsonMiller earned during his tenure as CEO are five time listing on the 100 Fastest Growing Design Firms in the US, the Economic Development Council’s Best Place to Work, the Uncommon Friends Foundation Business Ethics Award, the Community Foundation’s Corporate Philanthropy Award, and numerous awards for its planning, engineering and ecological services.

Mr. Reynolds areas of expertise include land use planning, ecological design and rural land stewardship. He is member of the American Institute of Certified Planners and Urban Land Institute. During his 32 year career, Reynolds has served as the Principal Planner or Principal-in –charge for numerous projects and communities in the United States and Caribbean Basin. From 2000 to 2003, Reynolds led a collaborative public/private planning process to create Florida’s first Rural Land Stewardship Plan, now recognized as a model for incentive driven conservation, agricultural protection and sustainable development. This plan has won the Sustainable Florida Best Practices Award, the Economic Development Council’s Excellence in Industry Innovation Award, as well as awards from 1000 Friends of Florida, Florida Chapter-American Planning Association and the Florida Planning & Zoning Association.

Mr. Reynolds is actively involved in a number of State and National Organizations, including the Florida Chamber Board of Directors, the Florida Council of 100, and the Urban Land Institute.

RURAL LAND STEWARDSHIP: A study in responsible land use

In many regions of the U.S. growth, antiquated zoning and market pressures are rapidly converting rural landscapes to residential subdivisions. In turn, natural resources become fragmented; infrastructure fails to keep pace, and economic balance is disrupted; meanwhile taxpayer funded environmental land acquisition programs are severely constrained.

Such was the case in Southwest Florida a decade ago, when growth occurring in the coastal areas of Naples and Fort Myers began to reach inland, and hundreds of thousands of acres that nurture vital agricultural and environmental resources, including critical habitat for the Florida Panther, was threatened.

So when Florida’s Governor Jeb Bush mandated that Collier County create a new plan to protect agricultural areas, direct incompatible uses away from wetlands and upland habitat, and guide the growth of its rural lands, a daunting challenge lay ahead. Following a three year science-based and collaborative process, an innovative new planning protocol emerged, called Rural Land Stewardship or RLS. Incentive-based, it rewards landowners for conserving and managing environmentally important lands while enabling the creation of self-sustaining communities in appropriate locations. Florida has now adopted legislation based on the concept which will enable new RLS Areas across the state, and many leading environmental and agricultural organizations believe that this is a significant new tool to further the long term protection of the Florida’s natural resources and agricultural heritage.

A foundation of the study was a GIS database that enabled accurate information to be used to design and test long range planning options and also form the backbone of a natural resource index to drive a sophisticated market based credit system. Natural resource characteristics are indexed with specific factors (e.g., panther-occupied habitat), and a worksheet establishes a formula for determining the number of credits a landowner gains by agreeing to a Stewardship Easement. Landowners then can transfer or sell Stewardship Credits, from sending areas (for protection of natural and agricultural resources) to receiving areas (where new communities would be permitted). Property rights are protected and landowners are rewarded for the public benefits of protecting agricultural and environmental resources, rather than penalized for owning them.

Nearly two thirds of the 300 square mile RLS Area is targeted for protection and the RLS Plan accommodates the 2025 and 2050 population in compact, mixed-use villages or towns that will require less than one tenth of the footprint otherwise required for conventional subdivisions.

In the decade since the program was adopted, 56,000 acres of private land has been protected as Stewardship Areas, based on prevailing land acquisition costs, the public savings are approaching an estimated $800,000,000. This ranks the RLS among both the newest and the most successful TDR programs in US history, and is a potential model for other regions of the U.S.

(Alan Reynolds was the principal planner that led a multidisciplinary team and the public through the process of creating Florida’s first Rural Land Stewardship Plan.)

Jen Sheldon

Jennifer Sheldon is an ecologist, writer, and program manager specializing in terrestrial ecology and wild dog ecology. Her research emphasis includes development of spatial models of carnivore competitive interactions, as well as the demography of coyotes during gray wolf restoration in Yellowstone National Park. Her expertise includes working with multi-disciplinary and stakeholder teams on research efforts. She is the co-founder of Yellowstone Ecological Research Center, and was vice-president for 16 years. She is currently is taking a sabbatical year in Victoria, British Columbia working on a book about ecological systems, the human dimension, and resilience.

Yellowstone: Ferocious Wild

As we enter the Anthropocene Era (the geological period of human domination of earth’s systems) we teeter on the brink of irrevocable ecosystem alterations. How do we frame this situation rationally, scientifically, and ethically? Can the handful of remaining intact ecosystems inform us in more than a symbolic/spiritual way? Using Yellowstone National Park as a benchmark ecosystem, we can build a fully attributed integrated ecosystem model. Geodesign principles provide guidelines for visualization of system interactions, parameterization of ecological models, and measurement of the attributes of resilience. We use visualization, mathematical, and narrative models to specify ecosystem ‘well-normal’ levels. In turn, these are used to define a non-partisan ecological bio-ethics frame informed by transparent, auditable metrics of ecosystem health.

Human medical research provides a template: Outcomes driven, with an a priori code of ethics, success in medicine/public health is defined by attainment of measurable goals (increases in individual and cohort survival and quality of life). Why shouldn’t we, as a global culture specify, a priori, the health goals we set for ecosystems? In their entirety? For their geologic lifetimes? Why not explicitly state that a suite of extant native species be present for the next 500 years, an eye-blink in geological terms? Using templates taken from functioning and integrated ecosystems, we circle back to our first frame: managing for all existing species, components, and ecological processes in perpetuity using healthy systems as our benchmarks, and moving Resilience from foggy aesthetic inexactness into the domain of science.

Frederick Steiner

Frederick Steiner is dean of the School of Architecture, University of Texas at Austin. He received his Ph.D. and M.A. degrees in city and regional planning and a Master of Regional Planning from the University of Pennsylvania. Dean Steiner earned a Master of Community Planning and a B.S. in Design from the University of Cincinnati. His most recent books are Urban Ecological Design. A Process for Regenerative Places (with Danilo Palazzo) and Design for a Vulnerable Planet.

Bushwick, You’re Beautiful

Since Darwin’s time, we have learned that intelligence and strength are not as important to a species survival as an ability to adapt to change. We humans are a most adaptive and resilient species. Design is one of our most powerful tools of adaptation. Design in this first urban century demands a new aesthetic that recognizes the complex human ecological system we inhabit. A new ecological aesthetic involves sensual connections to natural and cultural processes. Such connections elevate our understanding of relationships in our surroundings and enable us to adapt to change based on knowledge. A new aesthetic requires fresh ways of representing the world.

Carl Steinitz

Carl Steinitz is the Alexander and Victoria Wiley Professor of Landscape Architecture and Planning, Emeritus, at Harvard University Graduate School of Design. In 1967, Steinitz received his PhD degree in City and Regional Planning, with a major in urban design, from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He also holds the Master of Architecture degree from MIT and a Bachelor of Architecture degree from Cornell University. In 1965 he began his affiliation with the Harvard Graduate School of Design as an initial research associate in the Laboratory for Computer Graphics and Spatial Analysis. He has been Professor of Landscape Architecture and Planning at the Graduate School of Design since 1973.

Professor Steinitz has devoted much of his academic and professional career to improving methods to analyze large land areas and make design decisions about conservation and development. His applied research and teaching focus on highly valued landscapes that are undergoing substantial pressures for change. Professor Steinitz has directed studies in as wide ranging locales as the Gunnison region of Colorado; the Monadnock region of New Hampshire; the Snyderville Basin, Utah; Monroe County, Pennsylvania; the region of Camp Pendleton, California; the Gartenreich Worlitz in Germany; Muskau in Germany and Poland; the West Lake in Hangzhou, China; the Upper San Pedro River Basin in Sonora and Arizona; Coiba National Park in Panama; the regions of La Paz and Loreto in Baja California Sur, Mexico; Cagliari, Italy; the Tajo River and Henares River corridors in Spain; and the regions of Castilla La Mancha and Valencia in Spain.

Professor Steinitz has lectured and given workshops at more than 140 universities. In 1984, the Council of Educators in Landscape Architecture (CELA) presented Professor Steinitz with the Outstanding Educator Award for his “extraordinary contribution to environmental design education” and for his “pioneering exploration in the use of computer technology in landscape planning, especially in the areas of resource management and visual impact assessment.” In 1996 he received the annual “Outstanding Practitioner Award” from the International Society of Landscape Ecology (USA). In 2002, he was honored as one of Harvard University’s outstanding teachers.

Professor Steinitz is author of A Framework for Geodesign (Esri press, 2012) and principal author of Alternative Futures for Changing Landscapes (Island Press 2003). He has received several honorary degrees. Professor Steinitz is currently the External Academic Adviser to the European Union funded LE:NOTRE program to rationalize landscape education in Europe and Honorary Visiting Professor at the Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis at University College London.

A Framework for Geodesign

Carl Steinitz will lead a discussion about his recent book A Framework for Geodesign (Esri Press, 2012). He will especially focus on the implications of his framework for professional practice, research and education in geodesign.