Click on the image to find out more
This map provides links to many stories about the West Philadelphia Landscape Project and to information on other WPLP Web sites. Each marker on the map is a link; click on the marker to see more, then click on the image within the marker to explore further. Click on the plus (+) and minus (-) signs in order to zoom in to see more detail or to zoom out to see a larger territory. Expand the map to the entire screen.
This timeline gives an overview of the West Philadelphia Landscape Project and provides links to many stories about WPLP and to information on other WPLP Web sites. Highlighted icons and text within each year are links. Click on them to explore further.
No project emerges from a vacuum. The West Philadelphia Landscape Project is grounded in many precedents and prior activities. Sheldon Hackney, Penn's president in 1986, was impressed by the dramatic positive impact on the university of a recently implemented Landscape Architecture Master Plan. A landscape master plan for West Philadelphia might have a similar catalytic effect, he reasoned.
The community gardening movement, from the 1970s on, also provided a foundation for WPLP. Philadelphia Green , partner with WPLP from 1987-1991, had been established thirteen years before, in 1974.
Anne Whiston Spirn, founding director of WPLP, had worked with Boston Urban Gardeners from 1984-1986, and West Philadelphia was the focus of her master's thesis in landscape architecture at the University of Pennsylvania in 1974. Her Boston work in on vacant land as a resource for reclaiming urban neighborhoods is described in "Reclaiming Common Ground: Water, Neighborhoods, and Public Places" and in "Shaping the City to Nature's Laws."
University of Pennsylvania's President's Office submits proposal to J.N. Pew Charitable Trust for West Philadelphia Landscape Plan and Greening Project, a collaboration among Penn's Department of Landscape Architecture and Regional Planning and Fels Institute, Philadelphia Green, and the West Philadelphia Partnership
Anne Whiston Spirn returns to Penn as Professor and Chair of Department of Landscape Architecture and Regional Planning and becomes co-principal investigator for WPLP & GP, with Gerri Spilka as co-principal investigator.