Biography

Career Narrative 

I’ve long been intrigued by purposeful approaches to places and landscape networks that are attuned to their local contexts while being inclusive, convivial, resiliently adaptive, and biodiverse.

I started out in professional practice: 3 years with the multi-disciplinary AE firm of Totten Sims Hubicki Associates, and +5 years with the well-known Toronto-based environmental design firm of Hough Stansbury Woodland. Particularly formative was my work with HSW principals Michael Hough and Jim Stansbury. Daily practice was guided by notions of design with first principles, interdisciplinarity, critical contextual research, and inclusive and reflective design through time.

We led many ground-breaking projects. For instance, Michael Hough and I led two master planning projects (Don River Restoration, Toronto Brickworks) that were named "Most significant and influential landscape architectural projects, decade 1988-1998” (OALA, Ground, vol. 43)—two of only 4 projects that were so honored. Jim Stansbury and I led on the Massasauga Provincial Park management plan for a 131 sq. km. Precambrian Shield archipelago, since designated a Category II Protected Area by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. And I was primary author/designer on the inaugural plan for what would become Toronto's Rouge National Urban Park—with 79 sq. km. of committed land, the largest park of its kind in North America. 

My interest in regenerative urban ecosystems was further honed while collaborating with Carnegie Mellon University colleagues on Pittsburgh's Nine Mile Run, a seminal implemented stream restoration and brownfield reclamation project in the US.

By nature I'm a generalist. As landscape complexity is better understood and socio-cultural diversity increases, the usual arguments for disciplinary boundaries lose coherence. At the same time, the dizzying succession of branded trends contributes little to effective and meaningful environmental design. In my experience, robust, equitable, and catalytic ideas are most likely to be generated when open-minded professionals are engaged with people in their places. In these contexts we make progress in becoming (to quote David Orr) “specialists at things whole.”

My appointment at Penn State in 1993 provided an opportunity to focus on several linked themes that seemed underdeveloped in the academy: the interplay between environmental design and the synthetic ecologies, and socially inclusive green urban/community design that welcomes the empowered and mingled imaginations of all stakeholders—generating the landscape insights that precede good design and robust interventions.

Much of my work has been interdisciplinary, exploring idea spaces between fields—John Elder calls them “dangerous ecotones.” I've partnered with scholars in the natural and social sciences, humanities, education and the arts. Since 2005 I've contributed as ecological designer to climate change and globalization discourses that promote local-level creativity, justice and resilience. Throughout, we sought design not just 'of' and 'for' but 'in' and especially 'with' underserved communities. These ideas have played out on extended research collaborations in northern India and south-central Nepal, central Ghana, northeastern Tanzania, Rio de Janeiro, European countries, and, of course, the Pittsburgh studio.

Allied organizations have included: Penn State Center-Pittsburgh, PSU Center for Watershed Stewardship, PSU and State College Borough Tree Commissions, Penn State's Graduate Ecology Program and Alliance for Education, Science, Engineering, and Design with Africa (AESEDA), Carnegie Mellon's Studio for Creative Inquiry and CREATE Lab/Robotics Institute, Chris Hoadley's dolcelab, Akademie für internationale Bildung (AiB Bonn), Barcelona Architecture Center, Queen's and York Universities, and Universities of Rio de Janeiro, Oregon, Florida and Wageningen, among others.

Fellowships, Appointments, Commissions

Distinguished Professor Emeritus status granted by PSU president, July 2024–current

Commissioner, University Park Tree Commission, PSU, 2012–2024

Distinguished Honors Faculty, Schreyer Honors College, Penn State  University, 2021–2023

University Faculty Scholar Medalist Review Panel, 2022–2023

Arts & Architecture Distinguished Professor Nominating Committee, 2022

Evan Pugh University Professorship Committee, 2019–2022

Lead author, departmental Diversity, Equity and Inclusion draft statement, 2020

Commissioner, State College Borough Tree Commission, 2005–2016

Astorino Fellow (sabbatical), L. Astorino Endowment, Penn State University, 2014–2015

Fine Outreach for Science Returning Fellow, Robotics Institute, Carnegie Mellon University, 2010–2013

Public Scholarship Fellow, Provost appointment, Penn State University, 2011–2012

Fine Outreach for Science Fellow, Global Connections Project, Robotics Institute, Carnegie Mellon University, 2009–2010

Visiting Scholar Readership (brief sabbatical), Ross Library at the American Academy in Rome, Spring 2008

Heinz Faculty Fellow, Center for Watershed Stewardship, Penn State University, 1999–2000; 2002

Research Fellow: Nine Mile Run, Studio for Creative Inquiry, Carnegie Mellon University, 1997–1999

CMHC Graduate Fellow, Queen's University, 1984–1986

Prior Affiliations

Professional Landscape Architect, Province of Ontario (with seal)

Registered Professional Planner, Ontario Professional Planners Institute (with seal)

Full Member, Ontario Association of Landscape Architects

Full Member, Canadian Institute of Planners

International Member, Canadian Institute of Planners

Society for Ecological Restoration

Council of Educators in Landscape Architecture

Constructed Environment Research Network

International Association of Community Development