Master of Landscape Architecture / Department of Landscape Architecture/Regional and Community Planning / Mary C. Kingery-Page / School environments of today’s urban children are generally inflexible, restricting and uninspiring places for learning and exploration that are disconnected from their surrounding community and nature. Facilities and teaching methods do not keep pace with the evolving needs of the workforce and varying child learning styles (Stanbury 2009). Organized sports, limited free time and standardized testing steal the zest out of childhood discovery once felt by children who grew up with a connection to their surroundings, especially nature. Many adverse effects are seen as a result. “Nature-deficit disorder describes the human costs of alienation from nature, among them: diminished use of the senses, attention difficulties and higher rates of physical and emotional illnesses,” (Louv 2008, 36). Children are left to face the world’s escalating environmental dilemmas with hindered social and cognitive skills, diseases related to association and disassociation from nature and an impaired relationship with their extended community. Programs like University Colorado Denver’s Learning Landscapes and California’s Collaborative for High Performance Schools (CHPS) and have individually worked to improve learning facilities, reconnect students with outdoor curriculum-based learning and establish a bond with their communities. But implemented designs reveal unmet potential, calling for advancement and further evolution of the school learning environment. MontClair Elementary in Oakland, California is a typical urban school with paved schoolyard, restricted boundary, weak link between curriculum and schoolyard, disconnect from the community and disassociation from nature. New CHPS verified facilities are being implemented on their existing campus to accommodate an increase in student population but the link between schoolyard and curriculum has only been minimally addressed in the proposed design. Integrating Learning Landscapes with the Collaborative for High Performance Schools to create a hybrid learning landscape framework will reconnect MontClair Elementary with the surrounding community and nature. Advancement of the CHPS program, through adaptation of their existing scorecard, will allow Hybrid Learning Landscape Framework to be quantitatively applied to MontClair Elementary.

Master of Landscape Architecture / Department of Landscape Architecture, Regional and Community Planning / Mary Catherine (Katie) Kingery-Page / Man has been learning in the outdoors since the beginning of humankind. Modern times have reduced the amount of time people spend learning and exploring outside. This causes humans to be disconnected from the natural environment. By making schoolyards more environmentally focused, conducive to outdoor education and play, formal education can return to the original classroom–nature– and inspire people to reconnect with their environment. Much literature supports the ideas of aligning the efforts of play and education, environmental interpretation and education, and outdoor education with formal education; by incorporating all of these elements in a schoolyard, the potential for enriched learning is greatly increased. This project explores nature interpretation strategies used by public botanic gardens and translates these strategies to an ecological schoolyard. At Northview Elementary School in Manhattan, Kansas, the students face a simple, sterile play-yard with flooding limiting site use after storm events. The design for Northview Elementary will integrate stormwater features with school needs into a new ecological master plan for campus. Interpreting this landscape using the strategies adapted from botanical gardens for educational approaches, methods, and interpretive displays, provides the school and community a resource to enhance their lives, education, and the environment.

Master of Landscape Architecture / Landscape Architecture/Regional and Community Planning / Howard D. Hahn / “There is an alarming gap between awareness and action on [environmental issues]” (Sheppard, 2005). Public awareness of how to cope and change with these issues is lacking (Sheppard, 2004; Nicholson-Cole, 2005; Dockerty et al., 2005), but new visualization technologies can begin to bridge the gap through environmental education. Environmental education focuses on the user exploring an environment, environmental issues, problem solving and ways to mitigate these issues. While the younger generations (middle to high school students) are much more aware of current and future environmental issues than older generations, the solutions to these problems may not be so apparent. By combining the need to educate young adults about climate change, regional ecosystem climate mitigation, and ecological management for technologically driven youth, middle and high school students can better understand their environment’s impact on climate-change regulation. Through literature synthesis, documentation of existing visualization exhibits and technologies, and preliminary technology exploration, a production process, criteria, framework, and technology recommendations were established. These components informed the final storyboards, which visually organized a proposal to build a 3D learning environment focused on the Konza Prairie and its ecological management practices.

Master of Science / Department of Biological & Agricultural Engineering / Stacy Hutchinson / Urban areas have traditionally been managed as separate entities from the natural environment. Recently, urban planners have been interested in reconnecting these areas back to the biosphere to capitalize on ecosystem services restoring damaged hydrologic processes. This study focuses on suburban Johnson County, KS (part of the Greater Kansas City area), which has 62 USEPA 303(d) listed “impaired” or “potentially impaired” waterbodies. Previous studies show that watersheds crisscrossed by multiple politically boundaries see increases in water quantity and decreases in water quality. Using a multi-watershed, multi-city spanning entity like a school district, it is investigated how stormwater best management practices (BMPs) employed over a large entity can help undo the negative effects of watershed political fragmentation. BMP modeling includes simulating grassroots and planning policy change movements across three target watersheds using PC-SWMM watershed model. The grassroots simulation models rain barrels at single family homes and an extended dry detention basin (EDDB) at schools. Planning policy simulation models 10% and 20% reductions in impervious roads and parking lots in accordance to EPA Smart Growth practices. Resulting, it was seen that all three of these BMPs saw the greatest improvements from current conditions at low precipitation events. Ranking from least to most effective across the outlet’s average flow, maximum flow, and total volume and supporting watershed infiltration, surface runoff, and surface storage are as follows: rain barrels + EDDB, 10% reduced, and 20% reduced impervious simulations. All three stormwater BMPs help demonstrate how grassroots movements and planning polices changes can positively impact regional waterbodies in this maturely suburbanized region.

Master of Landscape Architecture or Regional and Community Planning / Department of Landscape Architecture/Regional and Community Planning / Timothy Keane / Kansas City is expecting a 25% growth in population by 2050. This design proposal promotes West Bottoms as a potential area to house some of the new population, and more importantly supply a live and work community for these people. West Bottoms is also home to major industry in Kansas City as well as an up and coming art culture. West Bottoms has great potential for a community that allows the existing and new population to be a part of a live-work-play community with the vacancies in the area. The projected population growth is expected to promote sprawl, further increasing the average driving time to the city. West Bottoms currently has few connections to the downtown and offers few reasons to come to the area. These connections are mainly major bridges or highways. Another issue West Bottoms faces is flooding problems from OK Creek and Turkey Creek, which lead into the Kansas and Missouri Rivers. Finally, post and present industrial soil contamination threatens the groundwater. When mixed with flooding concerns, this contamination is potentially harmful for the health of downstream cities. Drawing inspiration from travels, Kansas City charm, plants, art, and water storage, case studies were researched. Themes from each case study were quantified. These themes paired with inventory and analysis of the West Bottoms provided the basis for the design proposed here. The successional design of the area will progress from a contaminated landscape to a landscape that holds floodwater. The final design holds all of the stormwater from the 100 year 1, 2, 3, 6, 12, and 24 hour rain events. The final design incorporates areas of learning, a variety of paths and seating, a live-work-play community, clean and creative industry, and an art culture that sustains the excitement for the timeline of succession. Overtime this landscape will evolve into a new destination for Kansas City using an integrated solution remediating the soil and holding flood waters as an amenity for the new population.