Karen Firehock in the News
Saturday, November 14, 2009
[From the News Leader]
STAUNTON — The architecture students who strode through downtown Staunton and city parks in September returned on Thursday with sandwich boards singing the praises of the city's beauty and eco-friendliness, and offered some room for improvement.
They invited the rest of town to join them.
For the past two months, students from the U.Va. Green Lands class have been working to assess Staunton's existing green infrastructure, enhancing the city's Geographic Information Systems map, and compiling recommendations for the city. Halfway through compiling their plans to fix the place up, they hosted an open house at Bessie Weller Elementary to share their findings with the steering board of city officials, infrastructure experts and the dozens of city residents.
[for complete article, follow link in headline]
Wednesday, September 9, 2009
[From WVIR-TV, NBC29]
Staunton is already taking green steps like public rain gardens and urban forest areas. But it's also getting some outside help from a group of students from the University of Virginia.
Graduate students in the UVA "Green Lands" program took their first of several field trips to Staunton. They toured two city parks, both of them with heavy forest areas that can improve air and water quality.
The students are also looking at ways that Staunton can build its so-called "green infrastructure."
UVA Green Lands Instructor Karen Firehock said, "We're going to look at the forest canopy, the streams, trails, opportunities for water to infiltrate. So we're going to evaluate your natural resources and figure out ways to make Staunton an even more pleasant place to live."
The students will go public with their research findings and recommendations during a Staunton community meeting in November. They hope to offer ideas that are friendly to the environment and to business. For example, plantings are a natural filter for stormwater, and they point to studies that shoppers spend more time and money in commercial areas surrounded by trees.
Reported by Ken Slack
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
Lynchburg plans city eco-park
By Liz Barry, Lynchburg News & Advance
A boarded-up brick warehouse on Rutherford Street is a faint shadow of its industrial past — the roof sags, vines slink through broken windows and the air smells faintly of chemicals.
Starting in the early 1900s, the 16.9-acre site was home to the Thornhill Wagon Company, one of the largest manufacturers of farm wagons in the east. Later it became the Allen-Morrison Corporation, which produced the ubiquitous metal Coca-Cola signs that now populate antique stores and old-time diners.
When Allen-Morrison went out of business in 1996, the company abandoned a cluster of brick and metal buildings. In 2003, the city of Lynchburg acquired the property through eminent domain and developed a plan to transform the industrial wasteland into a cutting-edge “eco-park.”
“Our goal is that this park will model sustainability, and we want to use green building practices as much as we can as we design this park,” said Parks and Recreation Director Kay Frazier.
The project, referred to as “City Stadium Park,” was one of 16 chosen nationwide for the Environmental Protection Agency’s Brownfields Program. The program provides grant money for the redevelopment of property with hazardous environmental issues. The EPA grant, along with money from the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality, has funded the early stages of the site’s transformation.
For now, the dilapidated buildings remain an eyesore in the Fort Hill neighborhood, which is home to the future eco-park’s next-door neighbors, City Stadium and Lynchburg Grows, an urban farm that grows organic produce and provides outreach programs for people with disabilities, at-risk youth and others.
Soon that will change. The city has secured funding to deconstruct and demolish the buildings as soon as this summer.
The eco-friendly teardown will salvage materials that can be recycled or reused in city projects, such as metal, wood planks and bricks. The aim is to keep the materials out of the landfill, Frazier said.
This spring, the project received additional momentum when graduate students from the University of Virginia completed conceptual plans for the park for their urban and environmental planning class, taught by adjunct professor Karen Firehock.
The plan restores tree canopies and green space to an area that’s dominated by concrete and asphalt. It features a multipurpose athletic field, community center with an indoor gym, playgrounds, trails, picnic shelters and pedestrian access to Lynchburg Grows and City Stadium.
Sustainable design elements, such as green roofs and rain gardens, are central to the concept.
“They really took it to a new level of sustainable practices because they incorporated a lot of low-impact design strategies and were really trying to reduce the amount of runoff that would ultimately leave the site,” said Erin Hawkins, environmental reviewer for the city of Lynchburg.
[article continues at News & Advance]
Monday, November 17, 2008
It?s not just about trees.
Yes, a large tree canopy such as those that exist in parts of Lynchburg can clean the air, take up storm water and keep temperatures cool in the heat of the summer. But that?s only a portion of the city?s green infrastructure.
Those environmental assets ?such as trees, waterways and trails ? are at the heart of a unique partnership between Lynchburg and a University of Virginia urban and environmental planning class. The students, taught by UVa adjunct professor Karen Firehock, are taking stock of that green infrastructure so the city can maximize planning efforts.
Infrastructure generally refers to the gray ? pavement, roads, pipes, power lines, ?all of the built environment that cities need to function,? Firehock said.
?But cities also need green infrastructure. They need tree canopies, clean drinking water, good soil. We need to plan for making sure we are maximizing that green infrastructure just as we do with gray infrastructure.?
The project was started this summer and will be complete by the end of the year. Wednesday, the group will hold a public meeting so city residents can weigh in with their opinions, which Firehock says is a critical part of the project.
[for complete article, follow link in the headline to The News & Advance and also the link below it to read a follow-up article in same newspaper]
Thursday, February 14, 2008
[From UVa News Services]: "The University of Virginia will hold a workshop on Feb. 21 and 22 to explore linkages between sustainability and community health in Charlottesville. The workshop is unique in that it includes multiple schools and disciplines from across University Grounds.
According to Nisha Botchwey, an assistant professor of urban and environmental planning, "today?s problems are too complex to be addressed or solved by any one discipline, so we have created a forum that brings together public health, community planning, law, design and environmental science to take a holistic view of the world...." [for complete article, see UVa News]
Friday, August 17, 2007
The students in Lecturer Karen Firehock's planning applications class Green Cities: Green Lands in Fall 2006 worked on several environmental planning projects in the city of Charlottesville. Students developed a green infrastructure strategy for the city and wrote the new comprehensive plan chapter on the environment in partnership with local firm E2 Inc.
On August 6th, City Council adopted the comprehensive plan as policy including all of the students' suggested strategies. The plan guides the growth and development of the city for the next five years and beyond.
In previous versions of the comprehensive plan, the environment chapter mentioned only climate, soils and geology. This new chapter by the students includes strategies for green building and energy conservation, streams and stormwater, trails and connections, street trees and citywide tree canopy. Data were also digitized in GIS and given to the city.
This past spring, both the students and Firehock were named as Design Professionals of the Year by the City of Charlottesville.
In Fall 2008, students in the next session of the course will prepare strategies for preserving and improving the environment in Madison County, Virginia.
Tuesday, March 27, 2007
IEN Senior Associate Karen Firehock and students received the Eldon Woods Design Professional of the Year Award from the City of Charlottesville in March for the work she and her students completed for the environmental chapter of the city's comprehensive plan. Firehock and her students in PLAC 569 ?Green City: Green Lands? assessed the city's tree canopy and developed a tree protection strategy.
Friday, January 27, 2006
"For the next three months, graduate students in one University of Virginia architecture class will examine ways in which local county and city codes can better benefit the James River?." [Daily Progress, January 27, 2005, p.1]
