How to Prioritize Justice and Community Through Landscape Architecture: Lessons Learned - 1.0 PDH (LA CES/HSW)

Laura Marett, RLA, LEED AP, is Director of Landscape Planning at SCAPE. Her practice includes landscape design and systems planning with an emphasis on resiliency. Laura’s work encompasses a range of scales and project types, from the design of public parks, streetscapes and waterfronts to large-scale landscape planning and campus master planning. Laura has particular interest in the design of vibrant urban public spaces through an engaged public process and resilience planning with communities. Laura holds a Master’s in Landscape Architecture from the Harvard Graduate School of Design and a Bachelor’s in literature from Harvard College.

Deb is a landscape architect and partner at Mithun in Seattle, an integrated design firm with additional offices in San Francisco and Los Angeles. She designs high performance landscapes and works on climate resilience with Environmental Justice communities to support their self-determination. Passionate about co-design, she applies what she learned exploring “Design in Kinship” during the Landscape Architecture Foundation’s 2021-22 Innovation and Leadership Fellowship. She will share research done with Catherine De Almeida, ASLA, associate professor of landscape architecture at the University of Washington College of the Built Environment, regarding the range of interpretations of trust, power, and kinships among designers, academics, community leaders, public agencies, and nonprofits and how that can be considered to advance relational work. Current projects include the Commencement Bay Resilience and Restoration Plan in Tacoma, WA; co-design with the South Park neighborhood in Seattle for a water quality facility and shoreline park on the Duwamish River; and resilience and equity-based model codes for jurisdictions for new light rail station areas in the Seattle region. 

José is a truth-teller and landscape architect who believes laughter is powerful preventative medicine. His personal and professional journeys are deeply spiritual, grounded in the understanding that he remains a lifelong student with a deep passion for learning. As Co-founder and Director of MIG’s Native Nation Building Studio, he nurtures the power of co-creation through inclusive, community-driven design and planning that honors cultural identity and placeknowing. Through landscape architecture, José advocates truth and healing as a better path forward, while simultaneously creating space for individual and collective transformation to help us do and be better.

Dr. Cheng is the Director of Stuckeman School and Professor of Landscape Architecture at Penn State University. Previously, Dr. Cheng directed the Hydro-GI Lab and applies a Climate Justicescape framework to identify spatial and systemic injustice associated with climate change impacts in vulnerable communities and to evaluate social-ecological outcomes of green infrastructure design. Dr. Cheng’s work on Climate Justice Design informs planning and design with community-centered natural-based solutions for climate actions and urban resilience. Dr. Cheng serves on the ASLA Environmental Justice PPN as past Co-Chair, Member of Climate Actions Committee and Climate Action Plan Advisory Group, and CELA President. 

Amy Syverson-Shaffer is passionate about connecting people to nature and to each other. Her past work as a landscape architect and in business development frames her collaborative approach to taking on big challenges. Today, she is lending her design acumen and contextual understanding to leading sustainability for the modern craft manufacturer, Landscape Forms. Since 2023, she’s served on the ASLA Biodiversity and Climate Action Committee, working to bridge between key efforts by Landscape Architects and their industry partner community. On any given day, you'll most likely find her working in the garden.