Ford has begun to implement several projects that start to take advantage of the specific opportunities for better interrelationships between office parks and local contexts.
Office parks often have much open space between buildings that can be coordinated in their design to create larger natural 'fragments' that increase in value to natural systems and wildlife habitats in areas that are typically very urbanized. Office parks are also usually developed over a period of several years, so that they often have expanses of vacant land around and between developed properties.
Sunflower Fields
Instead of treating these areas with the typical groundcover of grass, a few of the remaining vacant sites at Fairlane and the open land that surrounds the Ford World Headquarters have been experimentally planted with sunflowers for the past 3 years in an effort to provide a stopover zone for migrating birds in the winter. The area of the project has expanded continually over the three years, with 18 acres planted at first, 40 the second year, and now around 95 acres of sunflower fields. The flowers are left unharvested through the winter so migrating birds may feed on the seeds. The nearby Environmental Interpretive Center at the University of Michigan-Dearborn campus has documented the increase of bird species and the related health effects over the course of the project. In addition to birds, other animals such as foxes, deer, and coyote have been spotted among the fields. The planted areas are near the convergence of three branches of the Rouge River in Dearborn, an important wildlife habitat. The fields provide an extension to the feeding and habitat area offered by the River.
In addition to their natural benefits, the sunflower fields reduce the maintenance and costs that would be required to maintain a grass landscape in these areas. The sunflower crops are planted twice yearly, once in the spring, then they are plowed in July and replanted in the late summer and left unharvested through the winter. The twice yearly planting and plowing constitutes much less labor and time than weekly mowings throughout the spring and summer months.
Improving the Freeway
The freeway can be considered part of the office park typology, as office parks typically develop along exit routes to maintain access to city centers and employee homes in other suburbs. The Southfield freeway bisects the Fairlane development through its entire area. Recently, the grass groundcover along the freeway suffered from lack of maintenance. Because the freeway is considered by Ford to be an important threshold to the Fairlane development, they applied to the Michigan Department of Transportation for a grant to improve its condition. Ford was granted a budget, and proceeded to plant wildflower grasses and over 1000 trees along 6 miles of the freeway. Ford's interventions improve the appearance of the freeway, improve the erosion prevention capacity of the groundcover, and decrease maintenance requirements and therefore cost of maintenance.
The Wildlife Habitat Council
The Fairlane development has been a Wildlife Habitat Council certified site since 1999. The Wildlife Habitat Council is a non-profit organization of corporations, conservation organizations, and individuals that helps corporations achieve environmentally responsible practices with their private properties. The Council works in collaboration with corporate employees and management, local community groups and members, and larger conservation groups in the specific regions involved, along with local, state, and federal agencies. (information from Wildlife Habitat Council website)
Activities with the Wildlife Habitat Council:
Fairlane has participated in the WHC's Nest Monitoring Program, where corporate employees build and maintain bluebird boxes and bat and butterfly houses throughout the properties. They also are working to control invasive plant species in the region and protect an aquatic habitat in a creek near the Headquarters building.
Corporate Lands for Learning (CLL)
The Ford Motor Company in Dearborn has been a pilot corporation for the development of the Corporate Lands for Learning program through the Wildlife Habitat Council. Corporate Lands for Learning is a program intended to bring together corporations and local schools and community groups to use the corporate land as a hands-on learning resource for the study of local plants and natural systems for both adults and youths. Since Fairlane occupies the largest amount of open land in Dearborn and surrounds or is adjacent to the Rouge River that runs through the city, it can provide the local community with a diverse landscape for on-site learning.
Daniel Ballnik, Ford Fairlane's Environmental Control Engineer, has led community demonstration projects with wetlands that exist on the Fairlane properties for Dearborn residents and local schools. Students learn about riparian corridors along the local Rouge River and do plantings of their own. Ballnik has also developed other service efforts with the Ford employees, such as leading a Ford Rouge River Cleanup that was attended by over 600 employees, and storm water management projects.
Network Impacts
Ford's involvement with the Wildlife Habitat Council and Corporate Lands for Learning has lead to other projects within the Ford Motor Company in sites across the United States (for instance, Ford properties in the Twin Cities and in Norfolk have recently joined the Corporate Lands for Learning project) and to other agencies and corporations. For example, the Wildlife Habitat Council in Michigan often brings tour groups composed of other corporate leaders and government agencies such as the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality to the Fairlane development to demonstrate the initiatives that Ford has taken in Dearborn, with a goal that Ford's innovations and experiments might be emulated in other contexts.
The Urban and Natural Context
Fairlane in Dearborn
Reasons Behind the Fairlane Projects
Evaluations
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