About
The Landscape Strategies Lab (LAST Lab) is a design research lab affiliated with the Department of Landscape Architecture at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and works on two major issues stemming from 21st-century urbanization.
First, we seek to understand and identify solutions to the negative ecological and social consequences of rapidly emerging freight-related development in North America – the logistics landscapes that support urban areas. Second, we examine and seek solutions to the global decline in biodiversity and rise in urban animal encounters that are in large part a result of urbanization.
Landscape Strategies for Logistics Landscapes
An overlooked but profoundly significant urban geography is the logistics landscape of the 21st Century. These rapidly emerging clusters of inland ports and distribution centers are at the front line of urban growth in North America, and will continue to be so in the coming decades. For example, in Chicago, three new major intermodal centers have been constructed on the outskirts of the city since the early 2000s, which in turn anchor growing numbers of warehouses and distribution centers. The CenterPoint Intermodal Center in Will County, Illinois, a 6,500-acre master-planned development that constitutes North America’s largest inland port (as measured by annual container traffic) and is one of dozens of such facilities that have been built across the country at a rapid rate to accommodate ongoing rising levels of imported goods. The transportation of goods, the speed of e-commerce, and same-day shipping rely on these facilities and their attendant rail and highway infrastructures. But the air, water, noise, and light pollution, along with heavy truck traffic, they produce wreak havoc on local qualities of life. They also fragment and destroy existing habitat and productive cropland. Technological fixes that lower train and truck emissions, and generic landscaped berms can reduce noise and light pollution. However, our work takes a holistic, opportunistic, and ecological approach to the trend and proposes new models for a logistical urbanism that integrates ecological systems, productive landscapes, recreational spaces, and new areas for social interaction.
Our work on this topic is organized into four research areas: Logistical Trends, Logistical Parks, Logistical Futures, and Logistical Strategies.
Designing for Urban Wildlife
North American urban areas are larger and cleaner than they were a century ago, as evidenced by the sharp rise in urban wildlife. As development fragments or displaces existing habitat, resident and migratory species seek new homes. In Chicago, coyote sightings are now a regular occurrence, peregrine falcons nest and breed in New York skyscrapers, and raccoon mania has swept Toronto. Still, worldwide biodiversity is on the decline. According to the 2005 Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, the current species extinction rate is up to one thousand times higher than the rate of the past millennium, and the projected future rate is more than ten times higher. As distinctions between urban and non-urban areas dissolve and take on new forms, it is imperative to design new strategies for integrating urban and natural systems.
We are currently undertaking Wild Zones: Redesigning Chicago’s Landscape Ordinance: The Peterson Avenue Transect Study, which develops changes to the Chicago Landscape Ordinance to accommodate urban wildlife.
Methods
The synthetic capacity of landscape as a lens, method, and medium is foundational to our research and design process, which can involve up to three stages, and ultimately strives to be propositional. First, we synthesize research on issues from across a wide range of fields using diagramming, GIS mapping, interviews, and written descriptions. Second, during site visits we produce aerial and ground level photography to verify secondary information in-person. This research informs the third stage – the design – which is iterative, propositional, non-linear, and allows for incorporation of feedback from peers, students, and collaborators. Finally, using a process of reverse engineering, we glean moments from these broad visions and translate them into actionable policy recommendations.
Inquires
LAST Lab is eager to hear from potential collaborators, student workers, and clients. If interested, please contact Conor O’Shea at ceoshea@illinois.edu.
History
Conor O’Shea founded LAST Lab in 2016 and launched it the following year with the help of graduate research assistants Sam Shui, MLA ’17; Zoey Wang, MLA ’17; and Grant Penfield-Haugen, MLA ‘17. In Fall 2019 LAST Lab moved into 410 Noble Hall.
LAST Lab is indebted to startup funding provided by a fellowship from the College of Fine and Applied Arts Design Research Initiative.
People
Conor O'Shea | Founder and Director
Conor O'Shea is a landscape architect and Assistant Professor in the Department of Landscape Architecture at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign whose teaching, design, and research explore warehousing and logistics development at the urban / cropland interface, the effects of e-commerce on the built environment, the adaptive reuse of outmoded infrastructure, and designing for urban wildlife.
These topics form the basis for his work at his Chicago-based landscape architecture practice, Hinterlands Urbanism and Landscape, and the Landscape Strategies Laboratory.
Conor holds a Bachelor of Landscape Architecture from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and Master in Landscape Architecture and Master in Design Studies degrees from Harvard University Graduate School of Design.
