Elizabeth BrabecUniversity of Massachusetts Amherst | UMass Amherst · Department of Landscape Architecture and Regional Planning
Elizabeth Brabec
JD, University of Maryland; MLA University of Guelph; BSc University of Guelph
About
29
Publications
17,583
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Introduction
Culture and heritage, and how they affect our perceptions of land and nature, land conservation, and sustainable practices are central to my research. I work cross-culturally with communities in the United States and locations around the world including: Canada, the Czech Republic, the Netherlands, Belize, the Bahamas. Understanding other cultures illuminates our own, and understanding indigenous and traditional lifeways can often lead to the reemergence of sustainable practices.
Additional affiliations
January 2014 - present
Position
- Managing Director
Description
- Beyond a concern for preservation of historical structures and artifacts, the Center elaborates on the role of tangible and intangible heritage in placemaking and creating resilient communities and societies.
May 2013 - present
February 2013 - present
Publications
Publications (29)
https://www.icomos.org/en/what-we-do/image-what-we-do/77-articles-en-francais/59522-icomos-releases-future-of-our-pasts-report-to-increase-engagement-of-cultural-heritage-in-climate-action
Tóth, A., Timpe, A., Stiles, R., Damyanovic, D., Valánszki, I., Salašová, A., Cieszewska, A., & Brabec, E. (2019). Small Sacral Christian Architecture in the Cultural Landscapes of Europe, Acta Horticulturae et Regiotecturae, 22(1), 1-7. doi: https://doi.org/10.2478/ahr-2019-0001 ///
Though often overlooked due to its scale, small sacral Christian...
Climate change is projected to have increased temperature and more frequent and intense rainfalls in the northeast of the United States. Green infrastructure has been identified as a critical strategy for stormwater management and flooding mitigation as well as for climate change adaptation. Climate science plays an important role in understanding...
This study focuses on the utility and pitfalls of University community partnerships that are aimed at the improvement of access to open space in cities with diverse cultural and ethnic minorities. As a cross-disciplinary study engaging three disciplinary units-planning, landscape architecture and sports management, the study exposes differences in...
There is a pressing need for municipalities and regions to create urban form suited to current as well as future climates, but adaptation planning uptake has been slow. This is particularly unfortunate because patterns of urban form interact with climate change in ways that can reduce, or intensify, the impact of overall global change. Uncertainty...
Around the globe, the impacts of climate change are increasing the risk of catastrophic events and the resulting loss of human life and communities. Until now, responses to these events and planning for future occurrences have focused on ecological and social impacts, to the almost total exclusion of the impacts on heritage. Cultural heritage inclu...
The last decade has seen the design of numerous infiltration systems along urban streets. With the goal of reducing the impact of runoff on urban watersheds, they have largely been functionally designed with little regard to design aesthetics even though aesthetic value is important to public acceptance and increased use. This paper compares three...
a b s t r a c t There is a dichotomy in the view of wind farms among members of the public: on one hand, there is a desire for renewable energy sources, and on the other hand, there is a major concern about the visual impact of wind turbines used for power production. This concern for visual impact is a major factor in the reaction of the public to...
Urban impacts to water quality and quantity have been a major focus of resource and ecosystem protection efforts since the early 1960s, focusing in the last decade on the impact of impervious thresholds. These are now commonly used as benchmarks of water quality planning and protection in local, watershed, and regional planning efforts. However, th...
Remnants of medieval field patterns, called “pluzina” in the Czech Republic, are valuable historical landscapes, similar in character to the bocage landscapes typical for some countries in Western Europe. The original historical pattern of fields and meadows has persisted due to the stabilizing network of hedgerows. As in other countries, the devel...
Home to the Gullah people, the Sea Islands in the Lowcountry of South Carolina and Georgia contain a culturally and ecologically distinct landscape. Descendents of plantation slaves brought to the United States between 1640 and 1850, the Gullah community has maintained a cultural identity that is reflected in a landscape pattern that is often at od...
Debate on the sustainability of human settlements has recently been focused primarily on the urban portion of the land use pattern. However, urban areas rely on suburban, rural, and other less densely settled lands for their existence. In order to quantify the impacts of various land patterns on their supporting resources, these exurban lands must...
Impervious surfaces have for many years been recognized as an indicator of the intensity of the urban environment and, with the advent of urban sprawl, they have become a key issue in habitat health. Although a considerable amount of research has been done to define impervious thresholds for water quality degradation, there are a number of flaws in...
Fragmentation of agricultural land by urban sprawl affects both the agricultural production capacity of the land and its rural scenic quality. In order to assess the resulting fragmentation of the three most common types of agricultural land conservation tools in the United States, this study analyzes the spatial form of three land protection strat...
Past efforts to define, describe, and advocate the spatial pattern of sustainable cities and towns have rested largely on the urban core. However, discussion of the relative effects of sprawl and sustainable development patterns must rest on a regional perspective since sprawl, by definition, includes land area other than the traditional urban core...
Clustering new development, and as a result retaining protected open space, has been a simultaneously much touted and much maligned planning tool. Its relative merits as a tool to preserve farmland, open space and rural character have been debated for the past 40 years. To place this debate in context, this study presents a detailed, on the ground...
Impervious surfaces have for many years been recognized as an indicator of the intensity of the urban environment and, with the advent of urban sprawl, they have become a key issue in habitat health. In addition to the direct impacts to water quality, impervious surfaces fragment open space and habitat and are therefore a primary land use indicator...
The report presents a planning strategy for protecting Waterford, an historic community located in Loudoun County, Virginia. The Waterford Historic District, including the village and surrounding farmland, was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1970. In 1986, the National Park Service determined that Waterford was threatened by proposed new...
In order to assess the efficacy of the three most common types of agricultural land conservation in the United States, this study analyzes the spatial and visual quality of a purchase of development rights program and two regulatory programs — cluster and the transfer of development rights. The study compares the effectiveness of programs that have...
Thesis (M.L.A.)--University of Guelph, 1984. Includes bibliographical references.
In the cultural 'melting pot' of a world economy, traditional, culturally-defined landscapes are being modified under a myriad of international influences. In this context, it is often difficult to identify the landscape and design forms that are key to maintaining local identity and a sense of place. Identifying these forms is critical in the plan...
Since 1978, studies by the International Joint Commission (the bi-national commission mandated to protect the Great Lakes) have shown increasing water quality stress due to urban non-point source pollution. The key question for the IJC today, as an international commission with no direct enforcement power, is how the IJC can be effective in getting...
This paper studies the remnants of medieval pluzina, a historical Central European field pattern dating to the 13th or 14th century A.D. In medieval Czech, pluzina meant the crop fields, meadows, pastures and roads belonging to one village. Today, pluzinas are visible as patterns of long, narrow fields defined by hedgerows. Due to the hedgerows mak...
Understanding culture and its attitudes and values towards space, place and nature is a critical aspect in determining appropriate approaches to a wide variety of planning actions. Actions such as gaining support for protected areas, designing new developments, and integrating tourism facilities in existing communities all depend on an understandin...
Climate change means two things for local stormwater managers – that storm events will become more severe, and rainfall will, in many instances, become more erratic, causing enhanced periods of drought and flood. Two approaches are needed to deal with the eventualities: mitigation and adaptation. While urbanization increases stormwater runoff and d...
To date, the debate on the sustainability of human settlements has focused on the urban portion of the land use pattern. Since urban areas rely on suburban, rural, and other less densely settled areas for their existence, these areas must be included in any sustainability assessment. This need for a regional view has resulted in a typology of regio...
Questions
Question (1)
I am looking for research (books, journal articles, reports) on Baroque era hermitages. I am primarily interested in those in Italy, Germany and Central Europe, however I would also like to hear about sites in other areas of Europe. I am primarily interested in locations and their landscape settings, but history and architecture are also of interest. Renaissance sites, and a general history of hermitages would also be of interest.
