Water, water management, and climate change accelerated urban flooding are of paramount import and concern to residents and decision makers in Southern California. The daylong conference organized by The Cultural Landscape Foundation (TCLF) in partnership with the University of Southern California (USC) and the SWA Group on Friday December 5, 2025, at USC’s Bovard Auditorium that will focus on landscape architecture’s leadership role in addressing critical urban flooding and water management issues. It will feature international leaders in the landscape architecture profession, as well as academics, critics, and journalists who will address current challenges and solutions in Los Angeles along with global perspectives and strategies.  The conference will be preceded by a reception on Thursday, December 4 featuring an opening keynote at the SWA Group Los Angeles studio by Lauren Bon, Metabolic Studio in Los Angeles, and followed on Saturday, December 6 by mobile workshops. The American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA) Southern California chapter is a partner in education. 

This event is part of the programming associated with the Cornelia Hahn Oberlander International Landscape Architecture Prize, a biennial honor with a $100,000 award. The work of the current laureate, the Beijing-based landscape architect Kongjian Yu, which centers on the “sponge cities” concept for mitigating urban flooding, is the impetus for this conference. The “sponge cities” concept has captured the attention of and is being implemented by landscape architects, urban planners, elected officials, and other key decision-makers around the world.

Recognizing the unprecedented and more frequent climate events that have taken place in Southern California (and internationally); public and private sector interest in exploring sponge cities as a water management tool; the need to tame the Los Angeles River; and, perhaps most critically, the successful voter’s measure that approved “Measure W,” which generates $300 million annually to capture and treat stormwater for water security and improve water quality, Los Angeles is an ideal laboratory to explore advancing water-management and design strategies through a contemporary landscape architecture lens. Taken together, positioning Los Angeles municipalities to become “Water First” cities where water infrastructure is an integral part of creating nature-based solutions for people and nature to co-exist.

Panels will look at how the Los Angeles River and water sources, more broadly, have been managed, and the current challenges and solutions being implemented; and, at global strategies and perspectives offered by international leaders in the field, including Oberlander Prize winner Kongjian Yu. The daylong event will be preceded by a Thursday evening reception and opening keynote and followed on Saturday by mobile workshops.