West Philadelphia Landscape Project

West Philadelphia Landscape Project is an action research program integrating research, education, urban design, environmental planning, and community service since 1987. Goals include development of strategic landscape plans to enhance environmental quality, implementation of landscape improvements to stimulate community development, and mutual strengthening of university and secondary public school education.

WPLP has brought together teachers and students at universities and public schools, members of neighborhood groups, and public officials on a wide range of activities. Initiatives include the design and construction of community gardens, proposals for watershed management, an online community database, a new curriculum for an inner-city middle school, and the use of the Internet for planning, implementation, and education. WPLP initiatives have been recognized internationally.1

Although WPLP has been sustained over many years, the level of activity has not been constant, alternately intensifying and waning in response to challenges and to fluctuations in funding and other forms of support. Two periods of most intensive work were 1987-1991 and 1995-2000. From 1987-2000, WPLP was based in the Department of Landscape Architecture and Regional Planning at the University of Pennsylvania (Penn) in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. In 2000, WPLP director, Anne Whiston Spirn moved to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Massachusetts.2 Since then, WPLP has been based at MIT and is launching an online community of all those who have been involved with the project since 1987.3

Overview

Mission

Accomplishments

ignificance

The Place

West Philadelphia

West Philadelphia’s landscape has evolved over several hundred years from wooded hills and valleys, to farms and estates, to streetcar suburbs for working- and middle-class families, to inner-city neighborhoods. In its broad outlines, the story of West Philadelphia is the story of many other urban neighborhoods across the United States.

West Philadelphia is primarily a residential community, but is also home to several large institutions, including the University of Pennsylvania. The population is mostly African American, with a large Caucasian population living near the University of Pennsylvania, and a growing Asian-American population. There are many middle class families and many others living in poverty.

Mill Creek

History

First phase

The West Philadelphia Landscape Plan and Greening Project, a collaboration among Penn's Department of Landscape Architecture and Regional Planning, Philadelphia Green, the Organization and Management Group, and the West Philadelphia Partnership, began in 1987, funded by a grant from the J. N. Pew Charitable Trust to support “greening” projects, landscape improvements intended as catalysts for community development. Built projects ( [community gardens] and streetscapes), five monographs, and a digital [database] were produced between 1987 and 1991.4 WPLP has continued to build on that early work.

econd phase

Third phase

Challenges

Initiatives

Organization

taff

Staff have included faculty and students at MIT and the University of Pennsylvania and interns from Sulzberger Middle School. Anne Whiston Spirn has directed the project since 1987, but many others have contributed.

Partners

Aspen Farms is a large community garden in the Mill Creek neighborhood. The Aspen Farms/WPLP partnership dates from 1988 and includes many projects.6

Sulzberger Middle School is a public school in the Mill Creek neighborhood, in the heart of the West Philadelphia Empowerment Zone. The partnership with WPLP began in 1995.7

Mill Creek Coalition (MCC) brings together neighborhood organizations and community, political, religious, and business leaders active in the neighborhood. MCC and WPLP undertook several joint projects between 1999-2000, including research on flooding and subsidence of houses in the neighborhood.8

Since 1995, WPLP has been affiliated with Penn's Center for Community Partnerships (CCP). The CCP is recognized internationally as a leader in academically-based community service, or service learning.9

The Philadelphia Water Department (PWD) is responsible for providing the city's water, for managing its wastewater and stormwater, and for operating and maintaining the infrastructure that supports these services. In 1999, WPLP and PWD produced a proposal for the Mill Creek watershed, which ultimately led to state and federal funding for joint projects between PWD, SMS, and MCC.10

Philadelphia Green, a community gardening program of the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society, was a partner in the first phase of WPLP. Though it has not been an active WPLP partner since 1991, Philadelphia Green has an ongoing relationship with Aspen Farm. The WPLP monograph, Vacant Land: A Resource for Reshaping Urban Neighborhoods, had a fundamental influence on Philadelphia Green’s subsequent work.11

ponsors

Major Initiatives

West Philadelphia Landscape Plan & Greening Project (1987-1991)

Digital Database (1988-2000)

Mill Creek Project

WPLP Website

The WPLP website has been recognized as a pioneer in use of the Internet for education and planning.12 The first-generation website, launched in early 1996, included maps from the WPLP digital database. It was rapidly succeeded by a second-generation website with summaries of WPLP publications and university students’ designs for the Mill Creek watershed. The third generation website of 1997 introduced a section authored by students at Sulzberger Middle School; this version, updated through 2000, is archived online.13 A new website was produced in 2002 at MIT by a group of students who reorganized material from the old site and added new stories.14 Both the 2000 and 2002 websites can be reached from a portal. A new Web-based community-generated social network is in development.15

Research

Buried Floodplains

Top-Down/Bottom-Up

Teaching

MIT

University of Pennsylvania

Recognition

Further reading

*Paul Bennett, "Landscape Organism: The West Philadelphia Landscape Project," Landscape Architecture (March 2000): 66-71, 82.
*Campbell, Glenn, "Learning Gets Real With Service." Philadelphia Daily News, May 7, 1998.
*Steve Curwood, “Nature in the City: Redesigning the Granite Garden,” Living on Earth, National Public Radio, 1993
*Anne Whiston Spirn, “Restoring Mill Creek: Landscape Literacy, Environmental Justice, and City Planning and Design,” Landscape Research 30:5 (July 2005): 359-377.
*Anne Whiston Spirn, The Language of Landscape, Yale University Press, 1998.
*Keiko Takayama, “The West Philadelphia Landscape Project,” Bio-City 17 (November 1999): 57-67. In Japanese.

External links

* [http://web.mit.edu/wplp/index.html WPLP Site]
* [http://web.mit.edu/spirn Anne Whiston Spirn]
* [http://www.beslter.org Baltimore Ecosystem Study]
* [http://www.eslarp.uiuc.edu East St. Louis Action Research Project (ESLARP)]
* [http://partners.upenn.edu/wp/plan/ The Plan for West Philadelphia]
* [http://westphilly.home.att.net/ West Philadelphia on the Web]