This month’s Landscape Architecture Magazine features the Planning Matanzas project in “Think or Swim,” by Jonathan Lerner. Some of you may remember Lerner, who attended our Spring 2013 professional stakeholder workshops. In his exposition of our project, Lerner does a wonderful job of capturing the unique and vulnerable beauty of the Matanzas Basin as well as the complexity of the planning task at hand.

Click on this image to view a PDF of the article.

First to set the scene, Lerner describes watching the role-play game. He draws comparisons between the role-play game and a childhood favorite, Monopoly; except in our game, “raging competition” detracts from a successful outcome. Lerner then goes into describing the challenges with moving populations and development away from the coast. Not only is the potential impact of sea level rise almost incomprehensible, but long-term coastal residents feel a profoundly strong sense of place. And, as Lerner points out, society continues to privilege coastal living. Ed Montgomery sums it up in the article, “We’re just willing to take the risk to be where we are because it’s absolutely gorgeous.”

The article includes some of our project’s SLAMM maps and Lerner provides a good explanation of how these maps give useful information for planning. He covers the challenges with predicting sea level rise impacts, including the need for a diverse group of individuals working together on this effort.

The article closes with Lerner’s experience traveling around the Basin with Ed Montgomery, a member of our steering committee and director of real estate marketing and sales at Rayonier. He reflects on the issue of habitat conservation given the anticipated migration of natural systems and human systems. As Dr. Dawn Jourdan explains at the article’s conclusion, our project is about providing information and education to the community. It will ultimately be up to the local decision-makers, leaders, and residents to decide which planning course they would like to chart.

Landscape Architecture Magazine is the monthly magazine for the American Society of Landscape Architects. The magazine, which has a readership of 60,000, features planning and design projects across North America. View the November 2013 issue of Landscape Architecture Magazine here.