Landscape as a Tool for Healing and Restitution @ Landscape Justice Initiative

Image credit: Luis Mota, MLA ’23
Image credit: Luis Mota, MLA ’23
Image credit: Luis Mota, MLA ’23
Image credit: Eliana Ramirez, MLA ’23
Image credit: Shengan (Gloria) Gao, MLA/MUP ’23, and Jiawei Luo, MLA ’23
Image credit: Yixuan Li, MLA ’23
Image credit: Lucia Bayley, MLA ’23 and Hannah Flynn MLA/MUP ’23
Image credit: Lucia Bayley, MLA ’23 and Hannah Flynn MLA/MUP ’23
Image credit: Lufan Hu, MLA/MUP ’23
Image credit: Lufan Hu, MLA/MUP ’23
Image credit: Lufan Hu, MLA/MUP ’23

Farre Nixon, PI

With students: Lucia Bayley, Hannah Flynn, Gloria Gao, Lufan Hu, Yixuan Li, Jiawei Luo, Luis Mota, and Eliana Ramirez

Project Partners: Redeemer Community Partnership, Los Angeles Neighborhood Land Trust

Supported by USC School of Architecture’s Grant & Shaya Kirkpatrick Landscape Architecture + Urbanism Leadership Fund

2022

Justice by Design: Landscape as a Tool for Healing and Restitution (2022)

“Justice by Design: Landscape as a Tool for Healing and Restitution” is a project that explores the various ways landscape as a medium, and practice can address the disproportionate and unjust exposure of negative environmental burdens on disadvantaged communities within Los Angeles. These burdens and their associated impacts such as air and soil pollution are often the results of extractive or hazardous landscapes placed within poor and vulnerable communities, often without their knowledge or permission. The project focuses on the rehabilitation of one such site–a 2-acre lot formerly used for oil extraction located within Adams-Normandie, a predominantly low-income Latinx neighborhood within walking distance of USC’s Watt Hall. We are proud to call Redeemer Community Partnership and the Los Angeles Neighborhood Land Trust (LANLT) partners and primary supporters of the study.

Through consultation with experts from the public, private, and non-profit sectors on the latest innovations in site remediation, including bio-, phyto-, and myco-remediation techniques used to remove or stabilize toxins within the environment, USC students prescribed their own unique site remediation strategies to apply to the project site.

After a workshop on community engagement best practices, students interacted with the surrounding community to understand the needs and desires of the local residents, business owners, and other stakeholders. From this feedback, students came up with a range of design proposals which are intended to provide Redeemer Community Partnership and the LANLT with ideas on how to move forward with this site that will include housing and public space.

SPONSORS

The Master’s Program in Landscape Architecture + Urbanism and the Landscape Justice Initiative would like to acknowledge the The Grant & Shaya Kirkpatrick Landscape Architecture + Urbanism Leadership Fund for sponsoring this important project.