Damian Holmes

Over the past two years with the Global Financial Crisis hit nearly every nation across the globe and as a result landscape architects where laid off in large numbers. This was hardest felt in the USA due to lack of work and collapse of the home building market.

Governments from USA, UK, Canada, Australia, China and many other countries kick-started their economies with Financial Stimulus packages which has given some firms more work but has created just enough work to sustain the staff they had kept on.

At World Landscape Architect, however I have noticed in recent weeks that results for tenders and competitions seems to appear on the web more and more frequently.

Will there be a shortage of landscape architect with economies picking up and more work coming into companies? Well if we go back to late 1990’s to mid 2000’s there were many reports of shortages of experience staff at landscape architecture firms in UK, Australia, New Zealand, UAE, North East Africa and some parts of Asia which was driving up salaries and as a recent article by Mark Smulian at Planning Resource raised the issue that CABE has fears that a shortage will occur again….

Like planning, landscape architecture has never really recovered from the 1990s recession. People left the profession or chose not to enter it, leaving a gap in experience. CABE fears a repeat in this recession and say a minimum of 550 new entrants a year are needed on landscape courses.
[SOURCE: Planning Resource]

Will there be a shortage remains to be seen but the outlook looks good for landscape architects currently unemployed with more work and projects appearing daily and the growth in sustainable design and trend of developments and cities incorporating ratings systems such as LEED ND and Sustainable Sites. Also there is a large amount of work that will be generated with the explosion on new cities in Asia and North Africa and the renewal of many towns and cities throughout the UK and USA. Therefore, if your unemployed there is hope yet and if your employed help push your local Universities and Professional Institutions to keep promoting the profession even more so during the current times of stagnant or slight growth to encourage more students to go into the profession and encourage those thinking of leaving to rethink their long term careers.

By Damian Holmes

SIDENOTE: The article by Mark Smulian at Planning Resource titled ‘Greening our cities‘ is a great article that looks at the role of landscape architects, our strengths and weaknesses.

CROSS POSTED AT WORLD LANDSCAPE ARCHITECT

Susan Szenasy posted on Metropolis an article titled “United We Stand” in which she recalls some government officials giving encouragement at a recent NeoCon East annual trade show that there is “a new day for government design”. Szeasy goes on to talk about the importance to design of the recent $5.5 billion allocation to General Services Administration and the Department of Defense’s $7.4 billion reconfiguration funding.

However the point I found most interesting in Szenasy’s article was the GSA signing of a new accord with AIA, ASLA, IIDA; in which they have pledged to collaborate to achieve design excellence. I find this encouraging that professional associations have come together.

Currently, there is change occurring not just in the short-term with the Global Financial Crisis, but it seems more and more that sustainability, the environment, and climate change is becoming more important to the world. I feel that we need to move forward with new ideas and be armed with new tools especially in the area of urban design where cities are shrinking in the USA, new eco-towns are being built in the UK and new mega-cities are being designed and constructed in China, India, and Africa. Now is the best time to seek out other disciplines for collaboration not just for the networking and possible work opportunities but for the greater good of the profession. As Landscape Architects I know we often seek collaboration with other disciplines whether they are internal or external of our companies, however I think that as we head towards a new decade we should make more of a commitment to further collaborate with other professions to improve your knowledge and their knowledge so that together we can create a better future.

By Damian Holmes

Read the full article that inspired this post at the [SOURCE: Metropolis - United We Stand]

Wow, time flies. I didn’t realise its been 3 months since I posted something. Funny thing is that I have posts in draft form on here but they are mainly rants.

Also I haven’t been able to find the time to get my thoughts together as running three industry blogs (worldla.com chinalandscapearchitect.com UAElandscapearchitect.com) and trying to start-up a new business is not ideal and running Tweetups & Shanghai Twitterville (although thats not that time consuming)

Something is going to give soon, think it will be one or two of the blogs as they haven’t made me any good money in a long time. Not that is what I started them for originally I had another 4 landscape architecture blogs but closed each one due to time.

However, maybe its time to get serious about getting them to the next level as ezines or pro blogs like inhabitat or treehugger. But, these have teams of people and companies behind them. Something to think about and will make a decision about by the end of 2009.

Also I took some interesting photos of the USA while was there and of the ever changing Shanghai which i have to add to a Picasa stream and place on here.

The decline of large USA industrial cities has received  media attention recently in articles such as the Forbes Fastest Declining cities, which have caused a great amount of emotion and despair among the named city’s citizens. This was evident from the city meeting last weekend in Dayton, Ohio reported by Wall Street Journal – ‘Fastest Dying Cities’ Meet for a Lively Talk.

Many cities may have declining populations and reduced levels of employment within the city, however it does not mean that they are necessarily going to die and become ghost towns. Many of these cities have large amounts of cheap residential and commercial buildings that could be reused for other uses within the city. The office tower, big box stores, abandoned schools and office parks could once again come to life.  There is time for these cities to act and draw up plans on how to reinvigorate the city. However, its not just a city level or county level problem – state and the federal governments need to work together with citizens to find solutions. These solutions need to be found and acted upon quickly and decisively to change policy and zoning within cities.

These cities have an opportunity to reinvigorate through gaining new residents and businesses that need access to cheap affordable housing and office space. It is a can be achieved with a two level approach. The first level is the small scale businesses such as artists, architects, engineers, web developers, and other entrepreneurs all need somewhere cheap to start up as they go from being unemployed to small business owners and our priced out in their home city. Many of these people can work on their ventures by remote through the internet. With small budgets they can make their dollar go further as the rent is lower for the office space and also make their budget go further as the salaries of employees can be lower due to a lower cost of city living.

The second level is the large MNC’s who currently are hurting but will start to look for bargains and cheap places to start production. Although a large amount of production has been moved off shore, this will change. As peak oil is not too far in the future and with rising costs of production in places such as China and South America some companies will decide that it is better to localise their production. They may lose on salary costs but will gain on reduced shipping costs.  The other MNC’s that these cities should focus on is the new ‘green’ industries such as solar, wind, transportation (cars, buses, trains) as they shift from dirty technology produced overseas to localised clean technology that can be exported to the world.

However these cities have to lobby and work with the state and federal governments to steady the decline and reinvigorate the city. It will not be just about jobs, industries and people it will also be about maintaining infrastructure and improving the name of the city.  Although I have given some ideas on how cities can reinvigorate, the problems they face are multi-faceted which require fast solutions through working with the citizens of the cities. The ideas need to cohesive and an overall vision and not just white elephants such as multi-million dollar ‘look at me’ buildings or public art works.

I have hope as I read the article at NPR  titled ‘Despite Tough Times, Some See Opportunity In Detroit’ that this could happen for at least some of the 10 cities named in the Forbes article.

As landscape architects we have to be apart of the conversation in making these cities reinvigorate whether as a citizen or contributing through newspapers or research or just writing comments on website to stimulate ideas.

Feedback is welcome in comments or email to the author Damian Holmes

REPOSTED FROM WORLDLANDSCAPEARCHITECT.COM