An interview with Patrick Miller, president of the American Society of Landscape Architects

For the second year in a row, The American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA) has made Design for Active Living the theme for its National Landscape Architecture Month. From Manhattan’s Central Park to Disney’s Celebration Village, landscape architects play a crucial role in promoting active living, says Patrick Miller, president of ASLA.

Landscape architects design for health

“Human welfare in our design has always been important to us. I think the obesity epidemic has brought it to the forefront, but even when you go back to the traditions of Frederick Law Olmsted in the 1800s, the design of Central Park had a lot to do with providing opportunities for workers to get into a healthy environment, get fresh air and exercise…In addition to that, one of his most famous designs is the Emerald Necklace, the park system around Boston, a whole series of connected parks. It’s always been part of our tradition to be concerned about human welfare.”

Active living is not a luxury

“When you see the statistics on the obesity epidemic and what it’s costing our country every year, it really drives home that it’s not just something that’s nice to do on a Saturday afternoon, but this is important for the health of our citizens. This whole movement has brought attention to the obesity epidemic and how we can, through everyday activity, help fight it.

Something people don’t realize about the projects we’re involved in — in terms of leveraging planning for greenways, housing developments, parks, trail systems — there’s a broad range. Often times in the past people have seen the value of those [projects] in terms of recreation and aesthetics, but perhaps haven’t realized how important they are to human health.”

Landscape architects must help promote active living

“When I see a housing development or subdivision approved by city or county governments, those governments need to ask, ‘Are there walkways in this community, and do these walkways connect to any place? Can children get to school using these walkways? Do these walkways connect to shopping areas so that the facilities provide opportunities for everyday activity?”

“We might be hired by a developer to develop housing or an industrial park — so they might not be thinking active living, but we need to be bringing that up and talking about, ‘Well, this may be an industrial park, but there’s an opportunity for a trail to run across the site and connect up areas.’ We need to be advocates looking beyond just the immediate needs of the project.”

It’s not just icing on the cake

“We know that if we build our developments more densely, people are closer to schools, closer to shopping, and that encourages them — makes it possible for them — to walk. ‘Delightful density,’ where you have street trees and paving and you make it a really enjoyable environment to be in, is what really causes people to want to walk and ride their bikes…that’s what landscape architects do. A lot of times in the past I think that’s been thought of as frosting on the cake. Now we’re going back and saying, ‘No, this isn’t just something that would be nice, this is important for the health of the people who live in this community.’”

Creating places where people want to walk instead of drive

“I think that some of the New Urbanist communities, they’re not done in the name of active living, but I think that now we’re seeing [examples] like ‘Celebration’ in Florida, Disney’s community. They put walkways in — which some of the new communities don’t — and they put porches on houses and they put them closer to the street. The idea is that they create this kind of environment where people enjoy walking down the street and waving at a neighbor and saying, ‘Good afternoon’ — creating that environment for people to get out and walk instead of getting into their cars and driving someplace.”

Taking it to the schools

“We’re organized so that we have chapters in almost all of the states. What we’re encouraging them to do this year is work with school groups. We have materials posted on the national Web site that the chapters can use in working with children from grammar schools evaluating the walkability of their community. We want to bring this to the attention of not only the children and their parents, but also school officials, so that people are aware of the importance of the obesity problem and of design solutions for helping to combat that problem.”

Preparing the next generation of designers

“I would argue that we need to promote active living in every design project that we do in design studios. That’s how we teach landscape architecture — we have design studios and we give the students real projects to work on. And while the driver may be ‘This is a housing development,’ or ‘This is a park for the city,’ we need to make sure we are addressing active living in whatever the project is doing.

“This is something that the American Society of Landscape Architects sees as a really important to what we do, and we really want to be behind it. And as president and spokesperson for this society, it’s great to have such a great cause to be able to speak to.”

Patrick A. Miller, Ph.D., FASLA, is president of the American Society of Landscape Architects and a professor at the College of Architecture and Urban Studies at Virginia Tech.

Learn more about Design for Active Living during National Landscape Architecture month.

“I would argue that we need to promote active living in every design project that we do in design studios.”
– Patrick Miller, ASLA president
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