Master of Landscape Architecture / Department of Landscape Architecture / Stephanie A. Rolley / The location and type of future development around a light rail transit station has the ability to affect its success of failure. Not only should the location of the future light rail line be carefully considered, but the locations of stops will greatly affect future development of the surrounding areas. The implementation of a light rail system has been proposed for downtown Kansas City as a solution to link its many attractions which are currently spread throughout the metro area. Although the proposal has not been passed by voters, the concept has generated a great deal of interest and brought up challenges Kansas City would need to address such as funding, alignment, space requirements and impacts on future development. The success of such a large scale, public project would require significant amounts of coordination and planning between many people. By using the current proposed alignment and studying seven stations located in the core of downtown Kansas City, the station which would require a station district plan the most could be determined. From there, through inventory and analysis of the surrounding area, guidelines would be written to put parameters on future development occurring as a result of light rail implementation. Planning a transit station district in this way would allow the planner to create a unified district, without confining designers to a singular approach. By completing a comprehensive development plan containing design policies and regulations which outline the desired development, this neighborhood can become a dynamic transit district with a mix of retail, commercial and residential development to support a high quality of lifestyle with access to a wide variety of amenities close to downtown Kansas City.

Master of Landscape Architecture / Department of Landscape Architecture/Regional and Community Planning / Huston Gibson / Over 90 percent of presettlement wetlands in Illinois have been destroyed or impacted, yet wetlands continue to diminish. Sizable, public stretches of Illinois wetlands are lacking. Wetlands are an environmentally and economically valuable amenity, but can also enhance the quality of life of communities of people and organisms. Conservation efforts should be made to preserve natural services wetlands provide. Southwest Illinois was the focus of the study, which encompassed the counties of Jackson, Madison, Monroe, Perry, Randolph, St. Clair, and Washington. Critical areas suitable to sustain wetlands were identified through a suitability analysis utilizing Geographic Information Systems (GIS). Factors that influenced the analysis included soils, hydrology, existing wetlands, natural areas, and infrastructure. Areas ranked most suitable were in close proximity to existing wetlands or hydrologic features, contained hydric soils, and had minimal roadway infrastructure impact. Proximity to wetland and natural areas were informed by the home ranges of endangered and threatened species of Southwest Illinois. Potential suitable wetland areas for palustrine, lacustrine, and riverine wetlands were delineated on individual maps. With suitable areas known, site visits could further verify the suitability of the areas. The state of Illinois can use the specific areas to begin to focus efforts on conservation and rehabilitation to reconnect habitat and provide natural open space for a sustainable community amenity.

Master of Landscape Architecture / Department of Landscape Architecture/Regional and Community Planning / Howard Hahn / Disc golf is on the rise. Disc golf is a sport based on traditional golf but played with a flying disc instead of a ball and club. It was formalized in the 1970s and has grown steadily ever since, particularly in the last decade. Landscape architecture has largely ignored this phenomenon, except for two MLA theses (Plansky, 2013a; Hutzelman, 2012). This seems unusual, considering that landscape architecture has been called the most relevant degree to disc golf course design (DGCD, 2014). This study assesses the relationship between landscape architecture and disc golf. A general research question guides this study: what added benefit, if any, might landscape architects bring to disc golf course design and development? This guiding question is explored through three subquestions: 1) what services might landscape architects offer disc golf course development, 2) how might landscape architectural services be used by the current state of disc golf course development, and 3) how might future course development types take full advantage of the services provided by landscape architects? This project used literature synthesis, analysis of existing data, and three types of exploratory designs to answer the above questions. The results of these methods showed that landscape architects can add value to disc golf course design and development through their skillsets and process. Not every landscape architect necessarily possesses the skills and experience to design a disc golf course, but landscape architects as a whole can propose disc golf courses if they have a basic knowledge of course requirements. A closer relationship between landscape architects and disc golf would be beneficial for the growth of the profession and the sport. This report concludes with recommendations and an action plan to reach this goal.

Master of Landscape Architecture / Department of Landscape Architecture/Regional and Community Planning / Richard H. Forsyth / This study focuses on the waterfront redevelopment process associated with small town redevelopment projects. The goal of this study will be to identify common and/or unique factors limiting and/or creating opportunities in the creation of small scale waterfronts. Many waterfronts of today have evolved from the unfriendly working waterfronts of the past, to a post-industrial environment sensitive to users needs. With the inception of these user friendly waterfronts, many communities have experienced positive results influencing economics, community image, increased socialization in addition to many other positive attributes. Unfortunately, smaller communities looking to take advantage of these desirable features often lack the resources needed to incorporate a waterfront redevelopment. Many professionals involved in these unique projects are often challenged by the constraints associated with small scale riverfronts. The goal of this research topic will be to gain a better understanding, from a professional perspective, what issues challenge the redevelopment process and why these challenges often curtail small scale waterfront projects. In an effort to better understand waterfront redevelopment, research involved background studies highlighting historical aspects, design, and implementation. In addition to background studies, case studies of the successful Owensboro and Atchison Riverfront projects were developed enabling the identification of key factors essential to small scale redevelopment. Furthermore, an annotated outline was developed as a guide for future communities to utilize as a foundation necessary in the successful implementation of a small scale waterfront redevelopment.

Master of Landscape Architecture / Department of Landscape Architecture/Regional and Community Planning / Mary C. Kingery-Page / Our water bodies have functioned as a critical transportation network, moving people, raw materials, products and goods across countries and continents. Starting as hubs of shipping, trade, and commerce, water bodies were the center of social and economic life of early cities. Technological advances in freight transport spelled the eventual demise of urban ports. This transformation has left vast swathes of vacant, urban waterfront property under-used, neglected, and disconnected from cities that once thrived along the water. This under-utilized land is now seen as a resource for revitalizing urban cores. Cities are looking to reclaim their once prosperous waterfronts (Fisher et al. 2004). Detroit’s riverfront has long been plagued by industry and pollution. For the past 25 years, Detroit has been striving to turn its dilapidated shoreline into a thriving public asset. Today, three and a half miles of the Detroit RiverWalk stretching from Joe Louis Arena east to Gabriel Richard Park have been completed and is open to the public (Brown 2007). Designs are currently being developed to extend the RiverWalk west to Ambassador Bridge, but no studies are planned for the east end toward Water Works Park and beyond(Brown 2007). The existing eastern terminus of Detroit’s RiverWalk does not allow access to the riverfront from neighborhoods that lie to the north and east. Residents have expressed growing interest in extending the RiverWalk and greenway connections to promote use (The Villages Community Development Corporation 2010). How can the Detroit RiverWalk be configured to extend eastward in order to connect neighborhoods and communities to the waterfront, provide amenities in waterfront parks, and create pedestrian greenway linkages? The Detroit riverfront will be accessible to surrounding neighborhoods with the east extension of the RiverWalk, redesign of waterfront parks, and greenway linkages which connect communities with the waterfront and amenities. Humans have a natural attraction to water; therefore “the public increasingly desires and expects access to the water’s edge” (Brown 2007). Pedestrian access is fundamental, particularly linking outlying areas to the water’s edge (Marshall 2001). The RiverWalk extension consists of research of waterfront theory, greenway practices, and the existing riverfront. Critical theory principles and contextual information will be extruded and organized into key components: Extend, Connect, and Provide. These components will outline the analysis, programming, and design phases in order to create a coherent master plan. Detroit can be a precedent for greenway and waterfront development in residential neighborhoods. The Detroit riverfront can be transformed into a public amenity for residents and visitors to benefit, enjoy, and appreciate the power of our fundamental resource: water.

Master of Landscape Architecture / Department of Landscape Architecture/Regional and Community Planning / Mary C. Kingery-Page / The landscapes that surround our elementary schools today do very little to support the education being taught in the classrooms, and often fail to meet the most basic needs of children. This is due to a myriad of different reasons, such as budget-tight school districts spending very little of their resources on outside learning environments, fear of litigation leading to sterile and lifeless schoolyards, and lack of time and resources for educators to implement desired changes. Children learn through direct interactive experience and, as a result, they need complexity and variety in the landscape to stimulate their imaginations and promote self-guided learning. A natural outdoor environment is ideally suited for both interactive learning and a diversity of experiences. Many schools are missing an opportunity to make their outdoor spaces into interactive learning environments. This report explores the issues and opportunities to create stimulating environments at Frank V. Bergman Elementary School in Manhattan, Kansas. Numerous studies have identified the benefits of interactive natural environments on children’s development and academic performance(Moore and Wong 1997; Louv 2008; Bell and Dyment 2006;Fjortoft 2001; Malone and Tranter 2003). Building upon this research, goals and objectives for Bergman’s schoolyard are outlined that focus on creating a positive learning environment for all students, supporting school curriculum, encouraging interaction with nature, and linking the schoolyard to the surrounding community. A master plan for Bergman’s schoolyard is presented. The plan addresses the current needs of the schoolyard to improve accessibility. In addition, the master plan presents ideas for strengthening the circulation pathways to connect all areas of the schoolyard together, developing outdoor classroom spaces with connections to state academic standards, and incorporating community amenity features into the landscape. Recommendations for construction, maintenance, and phasing are suggested.

Master of Landscape Architecture / Department of Landscape Architecture/Regional and Community Planning / Lee R. Skabelund / Throughout the history of Kansas City, the Brush Creek Corridor has experienced severe flooding which, on numerous occasions, has resulted in loss of life. This urban stream supports a high profile area of the city. It is located adjacent to what is considered Kansas City’s most elite shopping district, the JC Nichols Country Club Plaza, the University of Missouri - Kansas City urban campus, as well as numerous high density residential units. The stream corridor has been confined due to the encroachment of the surrounding urban environment which has minimized many opportunities for the future management of Brush Creek. There have been many flood control projects but these solutions have not been effective in reducing along the entire corridor. Previous projects have been done in a way that alienates urban dwellers from Brush Creek and does not allow pedestrians to utilize the stream corridor as an effective urban green space. The Brush Creek Corridor can be redesigned to revitalize the existing area by embracing natural ecological processes in order to create a more sustainable urban stream system. Brush Creek can be envisioned in a way that will enhance visitor experience by exposing and revealing the ecological processes to the users without inhibiting the functionality of those natural processes. Four project goals have been identified through research: improve, connect, and educate. In order to achieve the project goals, a set of sites are to be selected from the corridor. A corridor study is done to identify sites by assessing factors related to the site’s ability to improve, connect, and educate. Once the sites have been identified and defined, programming and site design strategies will be implemented to relate to the project goals. The selected sites within the Brush Creek Corridor will be models for experience oriented urban stream design. The project area will harbor healthy ecosystems with integrated pedestrian oriented spaces that connect the corridor, improve environmental conditions, and support environmental education. These projects will be catalysts for experience oriented ecological design solutions throughout the Brush Creek Corridor in the future.

Master of Landscape Architecture / Department of Landscape Architecture/Regional and Community Planning / Lee R. Skabelund / Urban agriculture is an industry located within or in close proximity to a town, city or a metropolis, which grows, raises, processes and distributes a diversity of food to that urban area (Mougeot 2000). Traditionally, agricultural practices have been viewed as fringe or rural activities that do not belong in urban centers. As cities continue to grow, the distance between food production and consumers increases. On average, a meal eaten in America has traveled approximately 1,500 miles from field to plate (Hill 2008). This distance creates a system that requires food to be imported to cities and removes physical connections between urban populations and their source of food. Increased distances raise concerns of food security as urban areas are now dependent on outside sources. It will continue to be an issue in the future with fossil fuel depletion and the influence this will have on transportation costs and the cost of food. The quality of life in urban areas has also been compromised as centers grow. Individuals get lost in the fast-paced lifestyle of cities and lose the ability to interact socially. As urban populations continue to grow, it will be crucial to create centers that provide potential for a prosperous future. The placement of integrated productive landscapes in cities focuses food production locally while providing public spaces that encourage community interaction, helping transform the urban environment. Like many cities, Kansas City, Missouri has created an urban structure void of food production, relying on food from outside sources. Additionally, the city lacks public spaces deterring community and social interaction. Integrated productive landscapes are presented as opportunities to introduce agriculture into the urban fabric using suitable sites located in the very heart of the city. In this report, the Interstate 670 Corridor is re-envisioned as a productive landscape used to connect the community to local food and encourage social interaction. The corridor demonstrates the seamless integration of agriculture into Kansas City’s urban core, creating a multi-functional productive space that fuses with the public realm in a way that can be appreciated by those who experience it.

Master of Landscape Architecture / Landscape Architecture/Regional and Community Planning / Mary C. Kingery-Page / Literature shows that walkable neighborhoods have the potential to significantly decrease the carbon footprint of cities by lessening the need to drive, as well as providing many health, economic, and social benefits to society. The goal of this research, therefore, was to devise a practical strategy to create walkable places in the car-oriented city of Wichita, Kansas. A necessary component of this strategy is an “urban triage,” described by Jeff Speck in Walkable City as identifying streets with the most existing potential and concentrating limited resources to their improvement (2012, 254). This report employed an urban triage of Wichita at two scales based on three central characteristics of walkability: urban fabric, dense street network and connectivity. Comparing block length and link to node ratio, I built a case for downtown, which is organized on a traditional grid of streets, over a typical shopping district organized around the more modern hierarchical pattern of streets. Within downtown, I further narrowed the study area primarily based on urban fabric, the degree to which streets are enclosed by buildings. I created a method to measure urban fabric, using aerial imagery and street views, taking into account the consistency of the street wall, height of buildings and foreground. The strongest complete corridor, in terms of urban fabric, and three potential links between that corridor and downtown’s largest event space, became the study area for further analysis. A rubric, based on characteristics of walkability extrapolated from literature, served as the instrument to measure the attributes of each block in the study area. Each attribute, as well as the characteristics that they create, yielded a map, contrasting strong and weak blocks. This analysis provided the detailed information necessary to create an informed conceptual strategy to resolve these weaknesses. Selective building infill resolved gaps in the urban fabric, road diets and improved crossings restored modal balance to the street, and a new pedestrian corridor completed a broken street and activated an existing park.

Master of Landscape Architecture / Department of Landscape Architecture/Regional and Community Planning / Blake M. Belanger / Urban play is a type of play: it is an emotionally engaging act where players take part in fun within definable spatial parameters (Huizinga, 1944; Caillois, 1961). Urban play is unusual, though, because it occurs at the human scale, and uses the city fabric as the setting. As atypical reappropriations of space, urban play activities like parkour, flash mobs, and geocaching layer diverse experiences at specific city sites. This layering may ultimately develop place phenomena such as insideness. It is also possible that pre-existing concepts of place may influence where people choose to play. The subject of this investigation was to understand the relationship between urban play and place for players. Understanding this relationship can inform landscape architects and urban designers about urban play and how to design for playability. I used informed grounded theory (Thornberg, 2012) and autoethnography (Ellis, Adams, & Bochner, 2012) to structure a mixed-methods study of urban play and place. I myself engaged in play and wrote field notes to gather data and inform my other data collection and analysis. I played with many other players, and conducted on-site, walk-along interviews with six of them. Recordings of the verbal exchanges, maps of the paths of the interviews, and photographs of landscape conditions identified as salient to play or place were collected during the interviews. This variety of data was understood through several memoing strategies, including note-taking, mapping, and sketching. Memoing and reflective “memoing-on-memos” abstracted the data enough for me to construct overarching themes, or findings (Thornberg, 2012; Glaser & Strauss, 1967; Strauss & Corbin, 1990). Data collection and analysis were situated within an extensive literature review. Four primary findings resulted from my investigation. First, that the physical landscape influences play. Second, that play influences the social landscape. Third, that play develops sense of neighborhood. And fourth, that play relates to the physical and social landscapes at multiple scales. My findings can help designers understand what playability is and design for urban play.