Daily Double + A Flurry of Darts

I'm typically not one to focus on my own doings terribly often on the blog - but I had to laugh at the fortune of this press double-play today from my home city of Portland. First, from writer Sam Bennett from the Oregon Daily Journal of Commerce - investigating the potential of the Sustainable Sites Initiative for landscape architecture. The article "SSI works toward certification of landscape architecture: Sustainable Sites Initiative seeks to address issues not completely covered by LEED", provides a good overview of the system and it's potential for the field in elevating the discussion of sustainability to the outdoors.

Check out the full text of Bennett's article here on the GreenWorks blog.




:: The Headwaters at Tryon Creek in Winter - image via DJC

And second, a shout out, or more correctly a "Prémio lawn Dardos" from Tim duRoche, blogger for the newish and much needed local magazine Portland Spaces... in his blog post "King of all he Surveys" (oh I like that... :) - duRoche was kind enough to give some nice words to the Landscape+Urbanism blog "... a thoughtful melding of observation, local-to-global context and rigorous praxis."

As well as the most concise statement I think I've ever encountered regarding the Sustainable Sites Initiative: "Goals? To levate the value of landscape (through a LEED-like set of benchmarks) by outlining the economic, environmental and
 human well-being benefits, to connect place/space/landscape to buildings more resolutely, provide certification/recognition for high performance, and to high-five innovation around the regeneration of natural resources and ecosystem health."




:: Prize Darts - image via Portland Spaces

So on to the darts... 15 is both of lot, and not enough people to recognize... so I will focus on the landscape oriented, in no particular order... just because I'm happy there's 15 blogs to mention. Anyone left out - my apologies:

1. Urban Greenery
2. Topophilia
3. City Farmer News
4. Land8Lounge
5. Vulgare
6. World Landscape Architect
7. Urbanarbolismo
8. Pruned
9. The Dirt
10. outofdoors (a new one to me)

And I can't forget the locals:
11. Green Infrastructure Wiki
12. Portland Architecture
13. Dialogue (Oregon DJC)
14. Building Green (Seattle DJC)
15. ... And last but not least... Portland Spaces... thanks Tim.