Restoration of Natural Systems
Site developments alter and often disrupt existing natural systems. Developments that suppress, rather than work with, the underlying natural systems are more expensive to build and require continual interventions to keep running.
As cities change, restoring and protecting the natural systems both within and outside urbanized areas is essential to repair past abuses and to reestablish healthy relationships with nature. Through restoration, we aim to make an enduring landscape framework for the built environment, in which the underlying system can sustain itself without further interventions. Restoration design is based on an understanding of natural processes and a belief that human settlements and nature can enrich each other.
No site is too small to encourage a little of nature’s wildness to reenter the city, but a balance must be struck among the natural processes, the constraints on building at a particular site, the urban design context, and the interests of property owners and public agencies.
Successfully completed ecological restoration projects include the following:
• creeks
• salt and freshwater wetlands
• forests and forest understory
• grasslands and meadows
• coastal and inland scrub
• quarry reclamation
• landfill reclamation
