michael slater

Urban Planning, Landscape Design & Arboriculture

Cultivating successful spaces

My work explores how planning, landscape, ecology, and the built environment come together to shape the places where we live.

I am a planner, landscape designer, and ISA Certified Arborist based in Salem, Oregon. This site brings together my professional practice, civic and policy work, and writing about landscapes, communities, and the places we inherit and shape over time.

I work independently and in collaboration with architects, landscape architects, public agencies, property owners, and facilities staff, bringing particular attention to how landscapes develop and perform over time.

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Professional Practice

Urban Planning

Landscape Design

Landscape
Stewardship

Arboriculture & Urban Forestry

Planning for neighborhoods, parks, streetscapes, plazas, and other public spaces, including master planning, urban design, and assistance with municipal comprehensive planning.

Planting plans, plant selection, landscape renovation, and the mapping and planning of trees and plant collections for public, institutional, commercial, and other landscapes.

Landscape evaluations, landscape care plans, plant collection management, and strategies for improving the health and long-term performance of established landscapes.

Urban Forestry Plans

Tree Inventory & Mapping

Management Plans

Risk & Health Assessment

Selected Work

Planning and landscape challenges rarely fit neatly within a single discipline. These projects illustrate an approach that brings together planning, design, plants, trees, ecology, and long-term stewardship.

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Grounded

My recent writing on how we shape the places where we live—from city policy to the plants outside our front door — and why.

Cougars Save lives, New Study Finds

Cougars save lives. That is the counterintuitive finding of a recent study published in Current Biology (paywall). Researchers working with several local tribes on Washington’s Olympic Peninsula tracked cougar and deer movements and then overlaid those data with automobile collision data. They found that the presence of cougars influenced the movement of deer, resulting in substantially fewer crashes —a striking example of how the ecological effects of predators can translate

Book cover of Simon Mustoe’s Wildlife in the Balance

Our Future Is Dependent on Wildlife

A Discussion of Simon Mustoe’s Wildlife in the Balance Abundant, diverse wildlife creates the conditions for human life on Earth. This thesis animates Simon Mustoe’s Wildlife in the Balance: Why Animals Are Humanity’s Best Hope, published in 2022. Mustoe builds his argument from established concepts in thermodynamics, mathematical biology and ecology, but combines them into a more provocative proposition: that abundant wildlife is a critical part of the planetary system. Wild

City Delays North Waterfront URA

The Truitt Brothers Cannery, active railroad, and nonconforming public street represent existing redevelopment challenges and opportunities within the proposed North Waterfront URA. Salem City Manager Krishna Namburi told the City Council, “I want us to take the time to get this right,” as she asked the Council to delay consideration of the North Waterfront Urban Renewal Area (URA) at last night’s Council meeting. The Council had been expected to adopt the plan and have a fir

About Me

I am an urban planner, landscape designer, and ISA Certified Arborist based in Salem, Oregon. My professional and civic experience includes urban and regional planning, landscape design, arboriculture, natural-resource conservation, public landscape management, nonprofit leadership, and community involvement.

I serve on the Salem Planning Commission and I am actively engaged in questions about how Salem and the Willamette Valley grow and change.

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Contact Me

Email: michael.k.slater@gmail.com

Phone: 202.425-5493