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Architectures and Ecologies of Amazonia is an interdisciplinary international symposium and exhibition highlighting the agencies that have shaped and are shaped by Amazonia. Threatened by deforestation, fire, and drought, the Amazon rainforest, which spans nine countries, is home to more than thirty million people. It is the ancestral homeland of more than one million Indigenous peoples and supports the greatest concentration of biodiversity on Earth. In the face of the widespread socio-environmental challenges we currently face, along with the existential threat of crossing the environmental tipping point of the Amazon rainforest, the symposium aims to share lessons that the study of the Amazon can teach us about climate action, coexistence, and the built environment. 

The symposium was organized by Vanessa Grossman, Assistant Professor, Department of Architecture, and Catherine Seavitt, Meyerson Professor of Urbanism and Chair, Department of Landscape Architecture, in collaboration with Fernando Lara, Professor, Department of Architecture and Kristina Lyons, Associate Professor of Anthropology. A parallel exhibition of student work is on display in the Mezzanine Gallery of Meyerson Hall through May 1, 2025. The exhibition is designed by Jonathan Bonezzi and Ryan Lane Thomas.

Architectures and Ecologies of Amazonia is co-hosted by the Department of Architecture, the Department of Landscape Architecture, and the McHarg Center for Urbanism and Ecology. The symposium also received generous support from several programs and initiatives across the University, including the Perry World House International Visitors Grant Program, the Department of Anthropology, the Center for Experimental Ethnography, the Center for Latin American and Latinx Studies, and Native American and Indigenous Studies at Penn.

On September 27 and 28, 2024, the Department of Landscape Architecture presented Landscape Futures: Centennial of the Department of Landscape Architecture. The program included keynotes from James Corner (MLA’86) and Anne Whiston Spirn (MLA’74), as well as three panels moderated by landscape architecture faculty, all of which can be streamed on YouTube. 

The Naturalist 
With Jared Farmer, Sally Willig, Tessa Lowinske Desmond 

Moderated by Sean Burkholder Jared Farmer, PhD, is the Walter H. Annenberg Professor of History at the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Arts and Sciences. Sally Willig, PhD, is a lecturer and program advisor in the Master of Environmental Studies program at the University of Pennsylvania’s College of Liberal and Professional Studies and Weitzman’s Department of Landscape Architecture. Tessa Lowinske Desmond is a research specialist in the School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University, where she directs The Seed Farm at Princeton. Sean Burkholder is the Andrew Gordon Assistant Professor of Landscape Architecture at the Weitzman School of Design.

The Astronaut
With M. Christine Boyer (MS’64), Andrew Zolli , Alvin D. Harvey  
Moderated by Azzurra Cox

M. Christine Boyer, PhD, is the William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of Architecture and Urbanism at Princeton University’s School of Architecture, where she directs the undergraduate urban studies certificate program. Andrew Zolli is Chief Impact Officer at Planet, a space and AI organization that has deployed the largest constellation of Earth-observing satellites in history. Alvin D. Harvey, PhD, is Diné of the Navajo Nation and a postdoctoral fellow at MIT’s Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics, with a focus on Indigenous Research Methodologies and Methods. Azzurra Cox is an assistant professor of landscape architecture at the Weitzman School of Design.

The Household of Nature 
With Sonja Dümpelmann, Lydia Kallipoliti, Rob Holmes 
Moderated by Nicholas Pevzner (MLA’09) 

Sonja Dümpelmann is Professor and Chair of Environmental Humanities at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, where she co-directs the Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society. Lydia Kallipoliti is an associate professor and director of the Master of Science in Advanced Architectural Design program at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation. Rob Holmes is an associate professor and chair of the undergraduate landscape architecture program at Auburn University, where he leads the Landscape Infrastructure Design Lab. Nicholas Pevzner is an assistant professor of landscape architecture at the Weitzman School of Design.

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1. Green spaces in urban areas—like remnant habitat, parks, constructed wetlands, and street trees—supply multiple benefits.
2. Many studies show green spaces in and near urban areas play important roles harbouring biodiversity and promoting human well-being. On the other hand, evidence suggests that greater human population density enables compact, low-carbon cities that spare habitat conversion at the fringes of expanding urban areas, while also allowing more walkable and livable cities. How then can urban areas have abundant green spaces as well as density?
3. In this paper, we review the empirical evidence for the relationships between urban density, nature, and sustainability. We also present a quantitative analysis of data on urban tree canopy cover and open space for United States large urbanized areas, as well as an analysis of non-US Functional Urban Areas in OECD countries.
4. We found that there is a negative correlation between population density and these green spaces. For Functional Urban Areas in the OECD, a 10% increase in density is associated with a 2.9% decline in tree cover. We argue that there are competing trade-offs between the benefits of density for sustainability and the benefits of nature for human well-being. Planners must decide an appropriate density by choosing where to be on this trade-off curve, taking into account city-specific urban planning goals and context.
5. However, while the negative correlation between population density and tree cover is modest at the level of US urbanized areas (R² = 0.22), it is weak at the US Census block level (R² = 0.05), showing that there are significant brightspots, neighbourhoods that manage to have more tree canopy than would be expected based upon their level of density. We then describe techniques for how urban planners and designers can create more brightspots, identifying a typology of urban forms and listing green interventions appropriate for each form. We also analyse policies that enable these green interventions illustrating them with the case studies of Curitiba and Singapore.
6. We conclude that while there are tensions between density and urban green spaces, an urban world that is both green and dense is possible, if society chooses to take advantage of the available green interventions and create it.