bio


Since 1985 I’ve been intrigued by purposeful ideas and approaches that promote places and landscape networks that are convivial, resiliently adaptive, and supportive of a full range of life.

I started out in professional practice: 3 years with A/E firm of Totten Sims Hubicki Associates, and 5 years with the Toronto-based firm of Hough Stansbury Woodland. My interactions with HSW principals were most formative. The daily working out of notions of design from first principles, interdisciplinary and participatory relationships, deeply contextual research, reflective and iterative design-through-time — these were fair game as part of a productive, yet critical, practice.

By nature I'm a generalist. As landscape complexity is better understood and societal diversity increases, standard arguments for disciplinary boundaries lose coherence. At the same time, the proliferation of branded methods / movements / manifestos seem more a distraction than a contribution to effective and timeless environmental design and scholarship. My experience has been that inspired and relevant ideas are most likely to be generated by engaged professionals who are (to quote David Orr) specialists at things whole. 

My appointment at Penn State in 1993 allowed me to focus on several linked themes that seemed underdeveloped in the academy:
  • the interplay between planning/design and the synthetic ecologies (landscape ecology, conservation biology,  restoration ecology)
  • ecological restoration at the larger landscape and regional scales
  • the regeneration of degraded urban landscapes, rivers and waterfronts, spearheaded by empowered communities.
These efforts to interweave design, land planning, and ecology have taken place at various campus venues over the years: my home Department of Landscape Architecture, the Center for Watershed Stewardship, the Graduate Program in Ecology, the DolceLab, and AESEDA.

My work tilts toward the interdisciplinary space between fields (referred to by writer John Elder as “that dangerous ecotone“).  I've enjoyed collaborations with individuals from such areas as:
wildlife and plant ecology: Markham's Plan for the Environment, Providence Bay, Millbrook Marsh, many others ¦ soil science: Rohm&Haas, Nine Mile Run, Lime Lakes ¦ learning technologies: The Mountain Project ¦ art: Tensions of Change, Nine Mile Run ¦ participatory action research and meteorology: NSF-Africa project ¦ botany: Rouge Park, Nine Mile Run, Providence Bay, Hewlett-Packard ¦ hydrology: Don River restoration, Nine Mile Run, Lake Erie Shoreline, Killoran Creek, Toronto Outer Harbour Marina, many others ¦ literary critique: Tensions-of-Change ¦ social learning systems: The Mountain Project, NSF-Africa ¦ forestry: Markham, Marsh-Billings Nat'l Historic Park ¦ archaeology: Don River, Toronto Brickworks, Grand River Corridor ¦ urbanism: Ballet-Opera House/East of Bay, Toronto Portlands, City of Reading, Pittsburgh studios ¦ architecture and engineering: many ¦ economics: Manitoulin Island projects, Nipigon Visitor Center ¦ among others.

 research interests
  • design and policy translations from the synecologies
  • ecological restoration
  • pre-emptive ecosystems planning
  • regeneration of brownfields and other post-industrial sites
  • designed ecosystems: woodland gardens, wetlands, rivers & riparian lands, grasslands & meadows; native plants in general
  • green networks: urban wildlands, greenways, riverways, big parks, reuse of disused spaces & civic infrastructure
  • communities that pursue both sustainability and  conviviality
  • creative responses to climate change, particularly by indigenous communities in their working landscapes
  • pedagogy of ecologically-informed design
why I like edges
"...Yet if you are like me, you will actually enjoy this experience of boundary. There is something disquieting, humbling at times, yet exciting and attractive about such close encounters with the unknown, with the experience of "otherness": a chance to explore the edge of your competence, learn something entirely new, revisit your little truths, and perhaps expand your horizon...
Learning at boundaries is likely to be maximized when experience and competence are in close tension...
Deep expertise depends on a convergence between experience and competence, but innovative learning requires their divergence."
Etienne Wenger, 2003
in Knowing in Organizations, 84-85
personal
  • Canadian / American dual citizen
  • married; 3 children
  • Home town: Toronto, Canada



Toronto skyline from Centre Island

my bike: '04 KLR650
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