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The first installment of the American Society of Landscape Architects’ Ecology + Restoration Roundtable presents four different answers to one question: if you could travel through time to preserve a place forever or enact an irrevocable regulation, what would you choose? Published May 28, 2015, the professional conversation ranges from restoring native plants to limiting metropolitan growth, protecting a personally formative stream, and preventing infrastructure development in a national park. It is a set of hypothetical proposals—not a scientific study or evaluation of which approach works best.
What is the Ecology + Restoration Roundtable?
ASLA described the series as a hypothetical discussion with members of its Ecology and Restoration Professional Practice Network. In this first installment, contributors were asked: “If you could time travel and preserve one place in perpetuity or put one irrevocable regulation into place, when and where would you go and what would you do?” The prompt combines two distinct choices: protect a particular place, or change the rules that shape what can happen to places.
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The four responses make that distinction visible. Barbara Z. Restaino proposes a broad restoration program; Falon Mihalic imagines changing the development pattern of Miami-Dade; Davie Biagi recalls a specific stream and waterfall; and Devon Santy proposes a legislative intervention to protect Hetch Hetchy and national parks. Their answers can be compared by the kind of intervention they imagine and the geographic scale they address, but the roundtable does not rank their likely effectiveness.
Read ASLA’s Ecology + Restoration Roundtable, Part 1 for the original responses and their full context.
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How would Barbara Z. Restaino restore native plants?
Restaino’s proposal is a nationwide task force that would coordinate regional removal of harmful invasive plants and replace them with native species. It is the broadest operational program in the discussion: rather than protecting just one landscape, it imagines a repeatable restoration effort across regions.
Her proposed sequence begins with public land and rights-of-way. Once those areas are addressed, incentives could encourage work on private property. The practical work she describes is not simply pulling out unwanted plants: it includes planning, soil restoration, replanting, and coordinating a workforce. She envisions physical removal crews alongside growers, landscape architects, scientists, and contractors.
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Restaino cites Japanese barberry (Berberis thunbergii) in New York as an example of a plant she says has spread widely. The ecological and public-health concerns in her response should be understood as her stated rationale, not as findings established by this roundtable. The installment supplies no supporting research or independent assessment of those claims, and it does not provide a regional species list, removal protocol, cost estimate, or measurement of outcomes.
For a construction or landscape project, the response is useful as a way to think about the work surrounding planting decisions: who plans the effort, how soil and replacement planting fit in, and what expertise and labor would be needed. It is not a technical specification or a prescription for a particular site. A reader considering actual removal or restoration would need site- and region-specific evidence beyond this conversation.
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What growth boundary did Falon Mihalic imagine for Miami-Dade?
Mihalic would return to Miami in 1945 and establish an urban growth boundary before later highway-driven sprawl. Her answer treats land-use regulation as a way to limit peripheral development, protect habitat, and encourage a denser, walkable street grid and affordable housing within the city.
The intervention is metropolitan in scale. Rather than restoring plants on individual parcels, Mihalic’s hypothetical boundary would constrain where development expands and would direct attention toward the urban area within it. Her proposal connects that limit to a preferred pattern of growth: a walkable grid and housing she describes as affordable. In her account, the point is not simply to stop building, but to shape where and how development occurs.
The timing in her response is part of the counterfactual. She selects 1945 because she wants the boundary in place before the later sprawl she associates with highways. That is a retrospective policy proposal, not an evaluation of a boundary adopted in Miami-Dade. The roundtable offers no separate data analysis of the habitat, water-quality, housing, transportation, or development effects mentioned in her response.
For readers interested in construction and land use, this answer highlights a choice that precedes individual project design: whether development is accommodated at the urban edge or directed toward a more compact pattern. But the roundtable does not explain how a real boundary would be drawn, administered, or reconciled with housing needs and development pressures. Those are questions a policy analysis would have to answer rather than conclusions supplied by Mihalic’s hypothetical.
Why did Davie Biagi want to preserve a Kentucky River waterfall?
Biagi’s answer is personal rather than regulatory. She would preserve a stream and waterfall at a camp along the Kentucky River—a place she remembers through its ferns, moss, geodes, wildflowers, forest canopy, and water. She describes the landscape as formative to her design sensibility.
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That response gives the roundtable a different kind of preservation argument. The other contributors describe interventions in terms of a program, a growth pattern, or a law. Biagi explains the importance of a particular place through remembered experience and the way it shaped how she sees and designs landscapes. Her answer suggests why an individual site can matter even when the response does not propose a comprehensive policy or restoration plan.
The limits of the account are equally important: it is a personal recollection and design reflection, not a site assessment. The installment does not identify a formal conservation status, provide ecological inventories, or evaluate threats to the stream. It also does not describe a specific mechanism for securing the place in perpetuity. Its contribution is to make the value of place legible through an individual’s memory, not to document the site’s condition.
What did Devon Santy propose for Hetch Hetchy?
Santy imagines returning to 1872 to organize against the Raker Act. In his account, the Act authorized the O’Shaughnessy Dam, which created a reservoir in Hetch Hetchy Valley in Yosemite National Park. His hypothetical is both place-specific and legislative: prevent the Act, then seek stronger protection against public infrastructure projects inside national parks, with exceptions for infrastructure serving park operations.
The proposal differs from Biagi’s personal preservation choice because Santy identifies a law and a broader rule for future projects. It also differs from Restaino’s nationwide restoration program: instead of coordinating land work, it would restrict a category of public infrastructure in a defined type of protected place. The exception he includes recognizes that his imagined rule would not prohibit every piece of infrastructure; it would permit projects serving park operations.
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As with the other proposals, Santy’s policy preference is hypothetical. The roundtable reports his position; it does not independently assess the legal history, infrastructure needs, or likely effects of the protection he would enact. Readers should not mistake a contributor’s imagined rule for a formal ASLA position or a legal analysis.
How do the four preservation proposals differ?
The proposals address different problems at different scales. The table below is a descriptive comparison of what each contributor chose, not a judgment about which intervention would produce the greatest benefit.
| Contributor | Intervention type | Scale | Central idea |
|---|---|---|---|
| Barbara Z. Restaino | Ecological restoration | Nationwide program, implemented regionally | Remove harmful invasive plants, restore soil, and replant with native species, beginning on public land and rights-of-way. |
| Falon Mihalic | Land-use regulation | Miami-Dade metropolitan region | Set a growth boundary to limit peripheral development and encourage a denser, walkable city with affordable housing. |
| Davie Biagi | Place protection | A stream and waterfall site along the Kentucky River | Preserve a personally formative landscape remembered for its water, vegetation, and forest setting. |
| Devon Santy | Legislative protection | Hetch Hetchy and, more broadly, the national-park system | Prevent the Raker Act and strengthen limits on public infrastructure inside national parks, with an operational exception. |
One useful way to read the discussion is to distinguish a restoration response from a prevention response. Restaino’s proposal focuses on changing vegetation and restoring sites already subject to invasive plants. Mihalic and Santy focus on rules intended to shape or prevent development and infrastructure decisions. Biagi’s answer centers on safeguarding a place because of its meaning to a person. The categories overlap in their concern for landscapes, but they are not interchangeable strategies.
Scale is another important difference. Biagi names one site; Mihalic focuses on a metropolitan region; Restaino imagines a national effort carried out regionally; and Santy moves from one valley to protections across national parks. Scale affects what a proposal would need to address, but the installment does not compare implementation costs, political feasibility, or ecological outcomes. Those cannot be inferred from the fact that one answer is broader than another.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.What can construction and landscape readers take from the roundtable?
The conversation is most useful as a set of questions about the decisions that precede and shape work on the ground. Restaino’s answer draws attention to the full chain of a restoration effort: planning, removal, soil work, replacement planting, and coordination among workers and specialists. Mihalic’s answer moves the question upstream to the boundary between urban development and surrounding land. Biagi’s response asks what makes a particular place worth preserving. Santy’s proposal raises the question of which public infrastructure should be allowed in protected landscapes.
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These are different decision points. A planting plan cannot, by itself, settle whether development should occur at a particular edge. A metropolitan growth boundary does not supply a restoration plan for a disturbed site. A memory of a valued place does not specify a legal protection mechanism. And a broad infrastructure rule needs to define its scope and exceptions. The roundtable does not solve these practical questions; its value is in making the range of possible interventions visible.
For a real project or policy decision, the article should be treated as a starting point for discussion rather than evidence of efficacy. Its claims about ecological and public-health effects, water quality, habitat, and policy outcomes are not independently evaluated in the installment. Project decisions require relevant site information and current scientific, legal, and policy sources appropriate to the location.
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1Fix the driver behind crashes, sound loss and screen glitches2Clear out junk files and repair common Windows errors3Scan for outdated or missing drivers - takes under a minuteWhat the 2015 discussion does—and does not—establish
The roundtable establishes what four landscape-architecture professionals said they would preserve or change under a time-travel hypothetical. It shows that preservation can be imagined as active ecological restoration, regulation of urban expansion, protection of a formative place, or restrictions on infrastructure in national parks. The range is the main insight: “preservation” does not name one method or one scale.
It does not establish that any proposal was adopted, that the contributors’ claims were tested, or that one intervention is superior. There are no research statistics or outcome comparisons in the installment. The most accurate reading is therefore as a professional conversation about priorities and imagined choices, not as a scientific review, policy recommendation from ASLA, or implementation guide.
Frequently Asked Questions
Who published Ecology + Restoration Roundtable, Part 1?
The American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA) published it as part of a series prompted by its Ecology and Restoration Professional Practice Network. The installment is dated May 28, 2015.
Does the roundtable recommend one preservation proposal over the others?
No. It presents four individual hypothetical responses and does not evaluate or rank their effectiveness. The proposals reflect different priorities and scales rather than a shared recommendation.
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Where does the John Muir quotation in the Hetch Hetchy response come from?
The ASLA installment attributes the quotation to Muir and places it in Santy’s response, which also mentions Muir’s book The Yosemite. The installment does not identify the quotation’s original publication context.
