Another installment of my ongoing chronicle of "Agenda 21" activists and their impact on city and regional planning efforts.

In Sustainability Programs and Smart Growth, Some People See a UN Plot to Take Over Your Community.

I edited and wrote most of this section of LAM, in this and its previous iteration, from March 2008 until February 2013.

In the past few years, Florida has become a bit of a minefield for design professionals. Landscape architects, architects, engineers, and others have been exposed to an unusual level of potential p...

Last week, the Supreme Court released its decision in Decker v. Northwest Environmental Defense Center, a case that considered the ability to regulate stormwater runoff and sediment from logging ro...

A look at a new book about the Oglethorpe Plan and its author, once Savannah's Director of Comprehensive Planning.

A story about the first ARC International Wildlife Crossing Infrastructure design competition.

The gritty New York site was a perfect backdrop to the opening scene of a Law & Order episode: a sunken sliver of land along the Bronx River, hemmed in by two expressways and elevated subway and train tracks. It was littered with tall, rusting gravel silos and other equipment left over from its previous life as a concrete batch mix facility. The soil was badly contaminated beneath the ad-hoc hardscape that covered the whole site at depths of two to three impervious feet, and three-foot cubes made of leftover concrete, known in the trade as ‘Mafia blocks,’ were strewn everywhere. The concrete plant operated from 1945 until 1987; it went bankrupt after its owner was convicted on price-fixing and racketeering charges. The site was acquired by the city and put up for public auction while it languished as a popular spot for illegal dumping. But the South Bronx community, led by savvy and tenacious groups such as Youth Ministries for Peace and Justice, The Point Community Development Corporation, and the Southern Bronx River Watershed Alliance, pushed for something different: they wanted this sad, grimy strip of waterfront space to be a park.

Turf is not an obvious choice for a green roof plant because it requires so much maintenance. It's an especially adventurous bet for an irregular surface like the new green roof at New York City's Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, a roof that one design blogger has likened to a "Pringle."

Redevelopment plans for waterfronts in three East Coast cities.

Picture this: In the mid-1960s, concerned about the implications for a Cold War apocalypse for the cash supply, the United States government establishes a post-nuclear banking bunker in the Virginia countryside. In the quiescent and budget-balancing 1990s the now-anachronistic facility is decommissioned. It's eventually sold, spiffed up, and given a green expansion. The transaction, which meant the facility was no longer central to continued government operations, escapes Al Qaeda's notice, however, and in 2001 the site appears on a list of potential terrorist targets. Back in the hands of the government--in the form of an extremely generous gift--it escapes harm and lives happily ever after.

The green roof on the California Academy of Sciences is a stunning feat of design. What does it take to keep this new icon ready for its close-up?