The Versailles Landscape Planning Organization: Landscape Planning as Advocacy

The systemic nature of environmental racism has historically led to the exclusion of racial minorities from environmental decision-making. This design research project explores New Orleans East’s history as a sacrificial landscape and proposes the creation of a more equitable community through landscape planning that incorporates environmental data and community self-determination. This proposal aims to create economic and ecological benefits through landscape planning strategies. The site of focus is the neighbourhood Versailles, which is home to the densest Vietnamese diaspora population in America. The design proposal outlines an operational framework for a community-based organization, The Versailles Landscape Planning Organization (VLPO), that allows the residents of Versailles to determine the environmental uses of community land, to monitor the health of these lands, and to bring this data to that table with regional authorities so that their voices can be directly heard in environmental decision making in the future.

https://doi.org/10.35483/ACSA.AIA.Inter.21.18

Volume Editors
Rico Quirindongo & Georgeen Theodore

ISBN
978-1-944214-39-5