Location
Room 302
Start Date
2-7-2012 3:00 PM
End Date
2-7-2012 4:40 PM
Description
The global population has become ever more urbanized since the 1972 Stockholm Conference on the Human Environment, yet there has not been a corresponding focus of environmental law during this period on environmental issues of a particularly “urban” nature. To address this aspect, in 2010 Golden Gate University School of Law launched its Center on Urban Environmental Law (CUEL). CUEL’s inaugural project focuses on “urban greenspace”, on the opportunities to expand and improve open space and parkland holdings in cities, particularly greenspace that would be accessible to and used by low-income communities with traditionally limited access to such environmental amenities.
The centerpiece of CUEL’s urban greenspace work has been the dispute over the future of the former Alameda Naval Air Station (NAS). The former NAS is located on the western edge of the island of Alameda (near the City of Oakland, California) and contains more than 700 acres of unbuilt land surrounded on three sides by San Francisco Bay. There are also significant wetlands and waterfowl resources on the site, including a colony of the endangered California Least Tern. At present, land use jurisdiction over the NAS has been split between the federal government and a local city government, and these jurisdictional boundaries have been a significant obstacles to developing an ecologically and scenically coherent and integrated vision (in terms of open space and habitat) for the broader area. CUEL has partnered with the landscape architecture department at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) to articulate a plan for the former NAS that looks beyond jurisdiction to reveal the full potential of the site.
In the course of this work, CUEL has found the 2000 Hannover Principles (developed in conjunction with the 2000 World’s Fair held in Hannover, Germany) to be of great assistance. In regard to land use, the Hannover Principles emphasize the need to design parks/open space at the scale of natural ecosystems rather than jurisdictional boundaries, as well as the need to not “overdesign” or “mirco-design” such spaces – to allow flexibility for plants and species to find their own self-sustaining equilibriums. The land use provisions of the Hannover Principles have proven an effective framework for explaining a broader vision of what the former NAS could be, and may be similarly useful to other cities around the world that are addressing the question of how to better integrate habitat, open space and parkland into the urban landscape.
Presentation
Included in
A Remedy for Fragmented Urban Open Space- the Hannover Principles on Land Use
Room 302
The global population has become ever more urbanized since the 1972 Stockholm Conference on the Human Environment, yet there has not been a corresponding focus of environmental law during this period on environmental issues of a particularly “urban” nature. To address this aspect, in 2010 Golden Gate University School of Law launched its Center on Urban Environmental Law (CUEL). CUEL’s inaugural project focuses on “urban greenspace”, on the opportunities to expand and improve open space and parkland holdings in cities, particularly greenspace that would be accessible to and used by low-income communities with traditionally limited access to such environmental amenities.
The centerpiece of CUEL’s urban greenspace work has been the dispute over the future of the former Alameda Naval Air Station (NAS). The former NAS is located on the western edge of the island of Alameda (near the City of Oakland, California) and contains more than 700 acres of unbuilt land surrounded on three sides by San Francisco Bay. There are also significant wetlands and waterfowl resources on the site, including a colony of the endangered California Least Tern. At present, land use jurisdiction over the NAS has been split between the federal government and a local city government, and these jurisdictional boundaries have been a significant obstacles to developing an ecologically and scenically coherent and integrated vision (in terms of open space and habitat) for the broader area. CUEL has partnered with the landscape architecture department at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) to articulate a plan for the former NAS that looks beyond jurisdiction to reveal the full potential of the site.
In the course of this work, CUEL has found the 2000 Hannover Principles (developed in conjunction with the 2000 World’s Fair held in Hannover, Germany) to be of great assistance. In regard to land use, the Hannover Principles emphasize the need to design parks/open space at the scale of natural ecosystems rather than jurisdictional boundaries, as well as the need to not “overdesign” or “mirco-design” such spaces – to allow flexibility for plants and species to find their own self-sustaining equilibriums. The land use provisions of the Hannover Principles have proven an effective framework for explaining a broader vision of what the former NAS could be, and may be similarly useful to other cities around the world that are addressing the question of how to better integrate habitat, open space and parkland into the urban landscape.