Welcome 

Here you'll find an overview of my work in landscape architecture, urbanism, and teaching. I focus on contextual and ecology-informed design, inclusive green places in cities, and novel and restored ecosystems at multiple scales. 

I retired from Penn State in 2024 but remain active in the field. I continue to study convivial greenstreets in urban cores, and recently led Penn State's Barcelona 2026 Summer Studio. My book, Sustainable | Sustaining City Streets, explores how the street canyon and urban life intertwine. Most of my publications are available in PDF form.

From 2000 to 2013 I collaborated with action research colleagues and local partners on resilience-building projects in Brazil, south Asia, and sub-Sahara Africa—places that struggle, to varying degrees, with impacts from a colonial past, economic globalism, weak governance and, increasingly, climate change.

While on tenure track (1993-1999) I focused on scholarly applications of ecological design and restoration as an extension of my professional work in Canada. Original  contributions explored the intersection of design, planning, and the synthetic ecologies. Highlights included collaborations with CMU colleagues on Nine Mile Run restoration in Pittsburgh, a handful of scholarly papers on regenerative strategies at the (bio)regional scale, a core role in the Shire Conference and resulting book Ecology and Design: Frameworks for Learning, and involvement with the Society for Ecological Restoration. Throughout my tenure, I grappled with how all of this relates to pedagogy.

From the mid-80s to 1993 I practiced landscape architecture and urban & regional planning in Ontario, Canada. I was fortunate to have some talented role models, including landscape architects, planners, ecologists, engineers, archaeologists, artists, architects, economists, and soil scientists. We took on challenging and progressive projects that remain exemplars to this day: Don River restoration, Rouge National Urban Park, HP headquarters, the Toronto Brickworks, Massasauga Provincial Park, Toronto Outer Harbour marina, bioregionally regenerative strategies in the Greater Toronto Area, and many others.

1993 was the pivotal year in which I discovered the joys of working with students in studio and out on forays near and far. My teaching portfolio includes graduate colloquia and advising, a wide range of MLA and BLA studios, applied ecology and plant-based courses, and study abroad modules. In particular, our studio work sought to: 

• craft welcoming and inclusive places

• incorporate natural processes that sustain biodiversity and human life

• tap into intrinsic links between region, landscape system and site

• be sensitive to cultural and historical contexts

• confront wicked problems (climate change, social polarization, etc.) to the extent possible in each commission, and 

• make space for beauty, all while tending to the daily task of creative and technical competency. 

Community-engaged learning has always been a key tenet of my teaching philosophy. I led or co-led over 40 public scholarship courses that challenged students with messy and exhilarating community-based projects. These ranged in scale from small landscape installations to neighborhood regenerative strategies to longer term territorial and peri-urban visions. 

Most notably, from 1996–1999 and 2008–2023, my award-winning Pittsburgh Studio introduced students to a relational process of designing in and with underserved post-industrial communities. Free of the conventional client-consultant model, and through the Franco Harris Pittsburgh Center, neighborhood organizations invited us in as working partners. Our mutually-beneficial collaborations thrived on reciprocal learning and creative co-authorship. Our partners experienced the power of design and were inspired to further action. And studio alums entered professional practice with unusual fluency in, and commitment to, engaged and democratic design. 

Last Fall I was inducted as Academy Professor into the Penn State Emeritus Academy.