Green Streets and air pollution
Those interested in actually tackling the issue of high levels of particulate pollution in city streets can measure particulate levels by taking part in the ISPEX scheme, between 1 September and 15 October 2015, and measure particulate levels on their mobile phone (iPhone 4, 4S, 5, 5S). You receive a fitment to place over your mobile phone and take photographs of the sky (best in the morning and evening), an app translates the light to particulate figures.
Cities involved are : Athens, Barcelona, Belgrade, Berlin, Copenhagen, London, Manchester, Milan, and Rome (pity Istanbul and Moscow are not covered).
iSPEX-EU is part of a LIGHT2015, a project funded through the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme. In Britain the Institute of Physics (IOP), is leading the local campaign activities, working closely with the Science & Technology Facilities Council, Rutherford Appleton Laboratory (STFC-RAL) and the iSPEX team at Leiden University in the Netherlands. The University of Manchester is collaborating as well. In London you can just collect the mobile phone fitment at the Institute of Physics, 80 Portland Place, London W1B 1N
It would be good if landscape architects supported the project by taking readings outside their homes and offices and on their journeys to work. Landscape architects can help ameliorate particulate pollution by planting urban street trees and vegetating buildings and can reduce particulate levels by promoting alternatives to hydrocarbon fuelled movement in cities, e.g. walking and cycling
Info generally on http://ispex-eu.org/
and for London write to:
Robert Holden is a London-based landscape architect who read architecture & landscape architecture at the University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne. On graduating he worked for the Dutch Staatsbosbeheer (State Forestry Service) on a visual survey of Oostelijk Flevoland and for Allain Provost in Paris on recreation planning of the French coastline east of Dunkerque. In London he has worked for Derek Lovejoys (1971-75) and Clouston (1976-89) including extensive work in the Middle East. • In the 1980s he was particularly known for his work on business park masterplanning such as Aztec West near Bristol, Capability Green Luton and Colchester Business Park. He was a Clouston director responsible for bureau d’étude work at EuroDisneyland in 1988-9; • since the 1990s he has been involved in smaller practices (including Clifton Design 1990-91 and Holden Liversedge 1991-99), and Cracknell Ferns (1999-2009). • projects have included work in France, Germany, Kuwait, Libya, The Netherlands, Saudi Arabia, Spain, UAE, and Russia as well as the UK. • he was lecturer, latterly Head of Landscape & postgraduate landscape architecture programme leader at the University of Greenwich, 1992-2013. • Currently he serves on the Landscape Institute Council having previously served 1983-86; he was Education Vice President of the European Foundation for Landscape Architecture (2001-4) & from 2005-2008 was EFLA Secretary General. EFLA is now IFLA Europe. • From Feb.-June 2014 he undertook a Tübitak (Turkish Science Research Council) scholarship, at Istanbul Technical University, looking as sustainability & public domain in Istanbul. In 2015 he taught at Corvinus University on their MLA. Interests include sustainability & landscape architecture, post industrial landscapes, landscape construction, the European landscape profession, and aspects of C18th landscape gardening, especially the ferme ornée. HIs latest book (joint with Jamie Liversedge) is "Landscape Architecture as a Career": Laurence King (Feb. 2014) in English and Spanish.