<p>In 1996 the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) initiated a five-year scientific research effort to support community-based environmental planning. Because citizen groups in the Willamette River Basin (WRB) in Oregon were already attempting to address complex environmental issues, the EPA selected the WRB as one of its focal areas for the initiative. The EPA formed the Pacific Northwest Ecosystem Research Consortium, which consisted of thirty-four scientists at ten different institutions. The consortium’s studies were focused on accommodating growth while preserving natural resources. Outcomes of this research have resulted in land acquisition (through fee-simple purchase and conservation easements) and on-the-ground restoration of floodplain forest and channel reconnections. These initiatives have led to a decrease in the water temperature, an increase in fish species richness and riparian forest, and a reduction in invasive plant cover.</p>

<p>The population of the Salt Lake City region in Utah is expected to reach 2.7 million by 2020—over a million more residents than in 1995, the year Envision Utah began. Five million residents are projected to live in the region by the year 2050. The region’s growth and developable land are bound, in large part, by a series of natural features—the Wasatch Mountain Range, the Great Salt Lake, Utah Lake, surrounding desert, and federally owned land. A diverse group of community leaders from business and government came together to form Envision Utah, a nonprofit organization committed to facilitating bottom-up, nonpartisan, collaborative decision-making processes to help Utahns plan. Envision Utah organized a series of workshops to broaden people’s understanding of the existing trends and challenges and enable stakeholders to develop four alternative future visions with planner consultants. This was a pioneering approach, and Envision Utah continues to plan for growth with continuing initiatives.</p>

<p>The city of Medellín suffers from extreme inequality that is reflected in its housing types and the broader built environment within the city&rsquo;s valley section. The wealthy tend to live in central, well-serviced enclaves, while the poor live on peripheral steep slopes in self-constructed settlements. Since 2003, the city has undergone an internationally recognized urban transformation, coinciding with a restoration of peace in what was once the most dangerous city in the world. Medellín began rapidly linking what it identified as &ldquo;nodes of development&rdquo; in some of the city&rsquo;s poorest neighborhoods—libraries, schools, and public spaces—to public transportation. These projects are an outgrowth of a philosophical and practical shift in planning was first described in the city&rsquo;s Plan de Ordenamiento Territorrial of 1998, a document that built on existing United Nations efforts to provide basic services to the informal communities,or comunas, on the urban periphery. Though Medellín successfully provided services to informal settlements on its periphery, the question of how informal settlements arise in the first place and whether their growth can be planned is also relevant. The BIO 2030 Plan addresses this larger issue by documenting the geology, hydrology, ecology, and fragmentation of the entire Aburrá Valley, then providing designs for different developments using the layers of physical information as a base. Professors of landscape architecture and urban design David Gouverneur and Christian Werthmann, among others, are developing projects with students related to the social, ecological, and political challenges of designing informal settlements. This work continues in Medellín and other areas.</p>

<p>Like many metropolitan areas, the Barcelona region faces challenges of urban growth, degrading natural land, shrinking farmland, insufficient and contaminated water, traffic congestion, and climate change. In 2002, Harvard landscape ecologist Richard T. T. Forman completed his plan, Land Mosaic for the Metropolitan Region of Barcelona (published in Spanish in 2004 as Mosaico territorial para la region metropolitana de Barcelona). The project&rsquo;s objective was to envision solutions and outline spatial arrangements to enhance natural systems and associated human land uses for the long-term future of the greater Barcelona region. Six years later the Catalan government completed its regional plan, Pla territorial metropolita de Barcelona, which incorporated many concepts from Forman&rsquo;s plan. His land mosaic plan also led to Forman’s book Urban Regions, a delineation and analysis of small-to-large urban regions (including the Barcelona model) on all inhabited continents.</p>

<p>Qianhai Bay is located in the Pearl River Delta, west of Shenzhen on the shore of the South China Sea. This area is a key point in the Pearl River estuary at the crossing of the east-west axis of Shenzhen and the north-south axis of Guangzhou to Hong Kong. Officially approved by China’s State Council in 2010, the Qianhai Shenzhen–Hong Kong Modern Service Industry Cooperation Zone was established to serve as a pilot business zone for closer cooperation between Mainland China and Hong Kong in the financial, logistics, and information technology services sectors. In 2009, James Corner Field Operations (JCFO) won the international competition to develop the master plan for Qianhai Water City. Over an area of 4,500 acres (1,822 hectares) of landfill, the master plan is defined by so called “water fingers.” The water fingers are linear parks designed to collect, retain, filter, and cleanse stormwater in a series of terraces and ponds. Widened and extended from the existing water tributaries, these linear parks define the main zones of public space and delimit future urbanization. When all the fingers are completed, they will provide the public with large linear parks accessible by foot from the center of each district. Guiwan Park is the first water finger to be built. With an opening anticipated in 2021, the park&rsquo;s design naturalizes an existing tidal channel to create various water’s edge habitats within continuous sculpted topography.
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