ASLA's New Sustainable Landscapes Online Showcase?

The American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA) has launched a new Sustainable Landscapes Online Showcase to highlight great examples of sustainable landscape design and the benefits they provide to the environment and our quality of life.  The initial offering includes 10 case-studies spanning a range of project types and regions.  Each case study includes project images, key benefits, a downloadable project fact sheet, and relevant links to learn more about the project. 

All told, the new initiative is a great start to publicizing sustainable landscape design for the public and professionals alike, but LA and western residents will find themselves appropriately disappointed in the lack of broad regional representation in the initial case studies (residents of the Midwest and South will find themselves equally underrepresented).  Of the ten initial projects, four come from the Pacific NW (two in Seattle, WA and two in Portland, OR),  and two come from the Northeast (one from NYC and one from Wellesley, MA).  In contrast, the West has only one project listed, a small residential project in SF, and the Southwest has no projects presented.  In other words, none of the case studies provide a true example of semi-arid or arid landscape design. 

Is it that no one is doing any sustainable design in the West, or that no great projects exist of semi-arid or arid design?  Hardly - in fact, recent project winners highlight the great sustainable design work going on in California, Arizona, and Texas.  Perhaps it is an example of regional bias, or a lack of proper exposure to the work going on outside of the Pacific NW or East Coast (some might argue the same problem of regional coverage in Landscape Architecture Magazine), but as someone that has lived and worked in California, Arizona, and Chicago, it is distressing to see none of the great worked from these regions represented on par with the Pacific NW or East.  If sustainability is truly a metric based largely on compatibility with one's surrounding ecological context, then we need to promote projects that respond to the many diverse ecological contexts that make up the US.

While Portland and Seattle certainly deserve a lot of credit for their innovative approach to environmental design, it is a disservice to the number of dedicated professionals throughout the country that none of their hard work is properly represented.  Hopefully with future iterations, the ASLA will showcase this work as well.