Biodiversity

WED-C02: In Defense of Urban Habitat: Biodiversity in the Los Angeles Basin

Wednesday, September 16, 2026

1:15 PM - 2:30 PM PT

1.25 PDH, LA CES/HSW, AICP, ISA, FL

Speaker(s)

Julia L. Prince, ASLA, PLA (she/her/hers)

Associate Landscape Architect
Design Workshop
Los Angeles, California
Travis Longcore

Adjunct Professor
UCLA Institute of the Environment and Sustainability
Los Angeles, California
SP

Scot Pipkin, MLA (he/him/his)

Director of Education and Engagement
Santa Barbara Botanic Garden
Santa Barbara, California

What if every project in Los Angeles helped repair one of the world’s 36 biodiversity hotspots? As housing mandates, invasive species, and climate extremes fragment habitat, discover how multi-scalar, multidisciplinary strategies—from ecological mapping to planting design—can transform development into restoration, producing resilient landscapes with measurable performance and cultural meaning.

Learning Outcomes:

Evaluate a multi-scalar, interdisciplinary method for advancing biodiversity from region to site, from spatial modelling to on-the-ground experience, and through creative collaboration between Landscape Architects, habitat designers, and ecological researchers.
Analyze how historic ecological mapping and the mapping of early human-landscape relationships reconstruct pre-urban systems and serve as infrastructure for contemporary habitat design in the highly developed Los Angeles Basin.
Apply habitat-based planting design strategies to create dynamic, ecologically rich, and beautiful urban gardens that respond to Southern California’s unique biodiversity challenges.
Integrate historic ecological mapping and regional ecosystem sectioning into a design framework that aligns habitat performance with cultural and social values, producing landscapes that are environmentally functional and experientially meaningful.