Few planning projects achieve the environmental, social, and economic impact the Atlanta BeltLine has achieved for Atlanta. Known as a congested, car-dependent city with anemic public transport and insular neighborhoods, Atlanta has in two decades repurposed nearly 60 percent of the 22-mile rail corridor that encircles its city center. Multi-use public art trails now facilitate broader access to essential goods, services, and amenities while connecting diverse communities along the corridor. A linear arboretum and native meadow species provide vital ecological services. When completed, the public greenway and linked transit will form a continuous loop connecting 45 neighborhoods and 1,300 acres of parks.

A green ring of 4 km, surrounding the walls of ancient Pompeii, is planned as a buffer park where necropolises and extra urban Roman villas coexist with agriculture and forests. The park will highlight the site’s historical character while enhancing the quality of the visit, creating inclusive pathways and resting places for the 4 M tourist who visit yearly and for the residents. The Ring, with its new functional areas, will become the main spine of the connection network between the archaeological site and the territory. New view points will connect the ancient city with the landscape of Vesuvius and of the Gulf of Naples while the ecological corridors of the surrounding ecosystems will be integrated in the new green infrastructure.

Carbon Conscience results from a multi-year investigation into how designers can make informed planning decisions related to climate impacts. This work included a literature review of over 400 sources, including architectural, industrial, ecological, and landscape white papers. Carbon Conscience is the only peer-reviewed dataset and application that brings landscape and architectural land uses together to study planning decisions from a whole project life cycle assessment perspective. It is now being integrated into the next generation of Pathfinder, Landkit, and EPIC tools. Carbon Conscience supports advocacy for investing in living systems for carbon drawdown and reducing embodied carbon in the built environment.

The Topography of Wellness: How Health and Disease Shaped the American Landscape is a chronological narrative of how six historical epidemics had a reciprocal relationship with urban landscapes, reflecting changing views of the power of design, pathologies of disease, and the epidemiology of the environment. From the contagions of cholera and tuberculosis to the more complicated pathways of contemporary chronic illnesses, each disease narrated here, alongside their associated combat strategies of urban quarantine, eradication, and acupuncture has left its mark on the present-day environment. The consideration of this history ends with a call to reframe and reclaim health and equity as central tenets of our profession for the future.

Xochimilco was declared a WHS by UNESCO in 1988, as a unique place to conserve. A Cultural Landscape containing the CHINAMPAS, an intensive sustainable agronomic system; a landscape of prehispanic origin which survives today. The Plan for the 3,000 H. chinampa district included an ecological park, a plant market and sports park. The Park, with wetlands and lakes, an ecosystem sustaining more than 200 species of native and migratory birds.

Opening in 1993, won many awards, published worldwide, becoming an icon in Mexico City. The project showed that ecology and design were not intrinsically opposed. The Park deteriorated in recent years and was subject to an extensive rehabilitation. Today, it has totally recovered and intensively visited.