Biography

Professor Ryan, FASLA is the Landscape Architecture and Regional Planning Department Chair. His courses have an interdisciplinary framework integrating landscape architects, planners, and allied professionals in order to give students the skills to deal with the increasingly complex interdisciplinary environmental problems. His course, People and the Environment, shows students from a variety of disciplines how to apply environment and behavior research to design and planning. He also teaches a sustainable green infrastructure seminar that has an emphasis on climate change adaptation.

Professor Ryan's research addresses the question: what motivates people to become engaged in sustainable landscape design, planning and management practices that benefit the environment and how does that affect their attitudes and behaviors in the landscape? His studies in urban parks, rural and suburban landscapes, and national forests have shown that people’s connection to nearby nature or landscape is critical to developing better land stewardship. A key part of this work has been to understand the landscape patterns that are both ecologically beneficial, as well as perceived as beautiful by local residents. In addition, his research has shown that place attachment can help promote connections between local residents and urban parks, particularly those undergoing ecological restoration. His research focuses on visual resource management, greenway and green infrastructure planning, and sustainable site design.

Recently, his research focuses on using urban green space to ameliorate the challenges facing inner-city residents in cities. He has also studied local residents' attitudes toward landscape water conservation and stormwater management practices in the Ipswich River Watershed.

Presentation

Greenway are for People: Building Connections for the Future

Creating greenways requires detailed planning, assessment, and implementation. Public policy to promote greenways from the top-down or government sponsored greenway plans have run into opposition from local residents, suggesting the importance of building greenways from the bottom-up grassroots initiatives. While both approaches have merit, the planners’ vision of a large-scale greenway system is in keeping with historic plans including those by Olmstead, Manning, and of course, Julius Gy. Fabos. However, I argue that the sustainability of greenways rely on the support, stewardship, and adoption by local residents and other users. Without a connection between people and greenways, grand visions will come to naught, and greenways will be underutilized, neglected and even, abandoned. Greenway planners need to tap into people’s innate need to have a psychological connection to place. This underlying need for place attachment is at the root of both support and potential opposition to greenways, as well as other related urban greening efforts such as green infrastructure. This talk will focus on transformations for both people and the environment that can result from community-centered greenway and green infrastructure projects.