For whom? Exploring landscape design as a political project

Today, cities are redefining their relationships with the natural world, spurring a new dynamic between the built environment, man-made landscapes, and nature. Nature is no longer seen as the antithesis of the city and civilized life, or as something simply to support urban dwellers’ social life, but also as a means of fighting challenges such as climate change, urban health and well-being within the city. This approach to landscape and nature in cities has evolved as a response to the human–nature crisis and the need to limit urban development in open areas of ecological importance. In terms of planning, this approach called for the preparation of pre-development surveys, including a comprehensive land survey that relates to climate, geology, hydrology, flora and fauna as means to better planing the built environment. In addition, and in parallel, to the discussion on the conservation of land resources outside urban space, there was also recognition of the need to address the natural systems in cities (Scheer, 2011). This recognition led to investigation of flora and fauna in the city and examination of the city’s ecosystems, which in turn led to new design strategies viewing landscape as a key component in creating new hybrid ecosystems (Mossop, 2006). At the beginning of the twenty-first century this ecological emphasis in cities is associated with two prominent concepts: landscape urbanism (Waldheim, 2006) which emerged from architecture and planning, combining design with ecological approaches, and urban ecology (Mostafavi and Doherty, 2016; Steiner, 2011) whose roots are in ecological positivist studies. Viewing landscape and nature as a means/tool that can ‘solve’ some of the major challenges of contemporary urbanization also contributed to their presence in our daily life. Recycling, greening and rehabilitating nature in the city have not been merely theoretical-utopian ideas but rather translated into practice through policy documents, designated campaigns, and legal initiatives. This condition contributed to the centrality of landscape in our daily city life and also, as suggested by W.J.T. Mitchell (2002), contributed to the use of landscape as a verb. As he further argues, landscape is not just an object to be seen, or text to be read, but a process by which social and subjective identities are formed; as such, landscape is not merely signifying power relations; it is an instrument of cultural power, perhaps even an agent of power that is independent of human intentions (Ibid., p. 1).

In common literature the relationship between urban planning and landscape architecture has retrospectively often been described as an antagonistic one. The impression can be gained that only recent projects re-discover the importance of existing natural features as guiding design themes, and that earlier generations ignored them in favor of grand urban schemes. Architectural hardware against green software. Tabula rasa against incremental change. Starting from this hypothetical premise of two contradicting philosophies, the authors decided to dwell deeper into the historic context and to investigate how existing landscape systems have had a major impact on masterplan principles, informing a built reality that could otherwise have taken a different form and turn.

ACE: Architecture, City and Environment, 2020

For several decades, the notion of landscape has been instrumentalised by various fields of study and with the most diverse views and interests. This is a notion that brings together all the features of liminal spaces, areas characterised by their mediating nature. The success and rapid extension of the concept of landscape, however, has not yet seen a similar development in the methodological field nor is it achieving sufficient consensus to be applied to the administrative scope. In this contribution we will adjust our reflection around the idea of historic urban landscapes, highlighting the need to address the “change management” approach demanded by 21st-century cities. To this end, we shall delve into some new urban management initiatives, in which the “prosumer citizenship” is beginning to be a key element in the construction of the identity of the spaces inhabited. In the same vein, the scope and content of the emerging discipline of tactical urbanism will also be discussed, paying special attention to the limitations of “design thinking” in historic city centres; areas affected by environments that are frequently problematic, where the complex regulations of individual or collectivetutelage that cultural assets require come into play.

This paper focuses on the emergence of landscape urbanism and the discourse on it in the world of landscape architecture the latest years. It is examining the regenerative correlations between this recent term and the long-established approach since the 1970s in the discipline of landscape architecture as well as their impact on the way the modern city is conceived. On the one hand, the necessity for a new urban planning model is answered by landscape urbanism through the idea of a process-orientated landscape working as a structural medium of urban space. On the other hand lies the European practice and theory of the last decades in the field. Through a combined socio- ecological and perceptual approach, urban landscape works as a living document and a mirror for society’s intentions, playing an important role in the formation of the European city scene. Both sides taken into consideration, it is not a matter of choice of the most efficient term between landscape urbanism and urban landscape architecture but rather a matter of a dialectic coexistence where landscape urbanism can advance in the wider frame of landscape architecture

Proceedings of the 2016 European Council of Landscape Architecture Schools (ECLAS) Confernce. Organized by HSR Hochschule für Technik Rapperswil hepia, haute école du paysage, d'ingénierie et d'architecture de Genéve; Paul Bauer, Maria Collender, Michael Jakob, Lea Ketterer Bonnelame, Peter Petschek, Dominik Siegrist, Christian Tschumi (Eds.)

Built Environment

a b s t r a c t "Landscape" refers both to a conceptual field that examines how humans affect geographic space and to real places, and the word has both analytical and experiential implications. Pairing the analytical and the experiential enables landscape to be a catalyst for synthesis in science and for insight in urban ecological design. Emphasizing that science is fundamental to ecological design, this essay broadly interprets urban ecological design to include intentional change of landscapes in cities, their megaregions, and resource hinterlands. The essay offers two laws and two related principles for employing landscape as a medium and a method for urban ecological design. The laws observe that landscapes integrate environmental processes and that landscapes are visible. Two related principles explain how these inherent characteristics can be used to effect sustain ability by using landscape as a medium for synthesis and in a method that invites creative invention.

SPOOL: Criticising Practice – Practicing criticism, 2018

On January 2016, a joint consortium of the Flemish and Brussels Chief Architects published Metropolitan Landscapes. Espaces ouvert, base de développement urbain/Open ruimte als basis voor stedelijke ontwikkeling. Based on the assumption that open spaces have the potential to spur and structure future urban development and surpass administrative boundaries, Metropolitan Landscapes presents research by design, authored by four prominent design firms with the intention of jumpstarting conversations about a shared spatial vision for the fragmented territory of Brussels and its periphery. In this article, we examine the methodology and definitions put forth by Bureau Bas Smets & List, explore the historical context that has rendered the landscape approach so promising in Brussels, and perform a thematic and critical reading of the four projects and their underlying rationale. These projects demonstrate the potential of landscape to engender novel territorial solutions. However, by choosing to ignore competing spatial claims and tending towards a techno-managerial rationale based on infrastructural and ecological systems, these designs raise questions as to the capacity of the landscape approach to deal with ever-present socio-political concerns in Brussels.

ACE Architecture, City and Environment, 2020

Abstract e-ISSN 1886-4805 For several decades, the notion of landscape has been instrumentalised by various fields of study and with the most diverse views and interests. This is a notion that brings together all the features of liminal spaces, areas characterised by their mediating nature. The success and rapid extension of the concept of landscape, however, has not yet seen a similar development in the methodological field nor is it achieving sufficient consensus to be applied to the administrative scope. In this contribution we will adjust our reflection around the idea of historic urban landscapes, highlighting the need to address the “change management” approach demanded by 21st-century cities. To this end, we shall delve into some new urban management initiatives, in which the “prosumer citizenship” is beginning to be a key element in the construction of the identity of the spaces inhabited. In the same vein, the scope and content of the emerging discipline of tactical urbanism will also be discussed, paying special attention to the limitations of “design thinking” in historic city centres; areas affected by environments that are frequently problematic, where the complex regulations of individual or collective tutelage that cultural assets require come into play. Keywords: Historic Urban Landscapes; Prosumer Citizenship; Tactical Urbanism; City Prosperity Initiative (CPI)