From parking lot to Piedmont habitat: restoring ecosystem services and creating a living laboratory in urban Atlanta – Georgia Tech EcoCommons

Background/Question/Methods

In Midtown Atlanta, the Georgia Institute of Technology has been implementing a core component of a vision established in its 2004 Campus Master Plan: an 80-acre green corridor. Within this larger corridor, a seven-acre EcoCommons has been designed as an ecologically and socially conscious pedagogical site. The landscape presents native regional ecosystems while daylighting the difficult and nearly forgotten natural conditions of the site, and the human events that took place there. Land holds memories of the past. At what is now the EcoCommons, historical research revealed environmental and social injustices that occurred during the last century. The natural terrain and its two small stream valleys were filled, flattened, and eventually paved for parking. A barely visible plaque denoted an important civil rights landmark. The revelations provided powerful insights that shaped the design and the project’s goals. In order to be an authentic commons, the site needed to reflect its history and reconcile with painful social truths, while merging with the present and future needs of the Georgia Tech community. The revelations provided powerful insights that shaped the design and the project’s goals.

Results/Conclusions

An overall theme for the site design emerged from historical research: a theme of healing. Where a national civil rights injustice occurred, a contemplative grove acknowledges the event and signals quiet reflection—a service all too absent in urban commons. To restore ecological functions and pre-urbanized landforms, the design mimics historic topography and water courses. Primarily a woodland landscape, plantings reflect native Georgia Piedmont plant communities, which in time are expected to attract greater wildlife diversity. Former parking lots and buildings are now early successional forest and meadow. The landscape is now a dynamic, living system. The site is outfitted with wireless sensors to monitor performance at delivering specific ecosystem services in real-time. This Internet of Things approach is aimed at cultivating the EcoCommons into a living laboratory and classroom. Extending beyond the student body, the ecological performance of this restored urban landscape will be shared as part of the informational commons. We learned:1. Historical research can inform ecological and culturally relevant themes that inform the design.2. An Internet of Things approach is useful to monitor and document environmental services. 3. Creating dynamic, living ecological systems in urban landscapes requires management strategies that mimic and catalyze natural succession.