Research
Land and Community Design Case Study Books
LAF Case Study Book Wins 2010 Great Places Award
The Environm
ental Design Research Association (EDRA) recognized Greening Cities, Growing Communities: Learning from Seattle’s Urban Community Gardens with the award for a recently published book.
The goal of LAF’s Land & Community Design Case Study Books is to provide a legacy of rigorous, in-depth research and critical thinking that will advance enlightened planning and development in the classroom, in practice, and in policy.
The series is based on three unique study types:
- Issue-based case studies
- Site-based case studies
- Hypothetical case studies for teaching
Through the series LAF hopes to provide professionals and their clients with information on emerging issues and innovative projects, support community and environmental advocates, inform public policy, and integrate the case study method into design education, thereby training current and future designers and policymakers with a systematic documentation and research method.
Support for the Land and Community Design Case Study Books was provided by the JJR Research Fund, the Graham Foundation, the CLASS Fund Ralph Hudson Environmental Fellowship, the AILA Yamagami Hope Fellowship, and the William Penn Foundation. At this time, LAF is not accepting proposals for new case study publications.
Case Study Publications
Greening Cities, Growing Communities: Learning from Seattle's Urban Community Gardens
Greening Cities, Growing Communities: Learning from Seattle’s Urban Community Gardens,” focuses on cases of community gardens in Seattle where there has been a strong network of knowledge and resources. These case studies reveal the capacity of community gardens to serve larger community issues, such as community food security; urban ecosystem health; demonstration of sustainable gardening and building practices; active living and pedestrian-friendly neighborhoods; and equity concerns.
2009
Biodiversity Planning & Design: Sustainable Practices
This publication shows how an interdisciplinary approach led by planners and designers with conservation biologists, restoration ecologists and natural and social scientists can yield successful results and sustainable practices and minimize habitat loss and degradation. According to the authors, “The state of biodiversity is of increasing concern around the world. There is considerable agreement among scientists that habitat loss and degradation are among the leading causes of global biodiversity decline.
2007
The Paris-Lexington Road: Community-Based Planning and Context Sensitive Highway Design
The Paris-Lexington Road, located in the heart of the historic Kentucky Bluegrass Region, is a scenic, twelve-mile corridor between Lexington and Paris. Beginning in 1969, the state of Kentucky set out to widen the road and improve safety and capacity, a plan that lead to a bitter twenty-year battle pitting local conservationists, historians, and property owners against motorists and pro-development interests. The objections resulted in a 1979 federal court injunction that halted the project for fourteen years.
2003
Urban Open Space: Designing for User Needs
Successful public spaces respond to the needs of their users, are democratic in their accessibility, and are meaningful for the larger community and society. While numerous publications offer fragments of research on user needs and conflicts in open space, this Land and Community Design Case Study integrates all this knowledge and makes it available to professionals, students, and researchers. Mark Francis draws on archival research, published case studies, site visits, and interviews with scholars, designers, facility managers, and open space users.
2003
Village Homes: A Community by Design
The Village Homes neighborhood in Davis, California, built in the 1970s, is one of the few long-standing examples or sustainable community design. Mark Francis has been studying Village Homes for more than two decades. In this Land and Community Design Case Study he brings together new information-studies about children of the community and interviews with Village Homes designers, residents, and maintenance staff-as well as existing research. The author takes a critical look at Village Homes, addressing its contributions as well as its limitations.
2003
Looking for our web-based case studies?
See the Landscape Performance Series Case Study Briefs.
