The concept of Landscape Urbanism (LU) was developed in the 1990s; formally shaped and introduced at an exhibition curated by Charles Waldheim in 1997 at the University of Illinois, with significant contributions made by landscape architect James Corner and architect Mohsen Mostafavi. Landscape Urbanism seeks to reverse the modernist rational planning agenda by designating landscape as predecessor to building; conflating the design and ecology disciplines, rendering the nature-versus-culture ideology of modernist rhetoric as largely naïve and responding to the inevitable ebb and flow of our postindustrial economy by forgoing the traditional masterplan in favor of adaptable systems that are defined instead as territories or potential.
Modernism, which for the purposes of this discussion is defined as beginning in the 16th century era of discovery and reaching its apex with 20th century European fascism and World War II, has left a legacy of thought and procedure that has determined the development of architectural process. The scientific method articulated by Francis Bacon in his 1620 treatise on logic, Novum Organum, brought not only a new respect for empirical data, but also the desire to create overreaching theoretical frameworks built through what Bacon described as a “discovery of forms.” Bacon’s ideas are echoed in the positivism of August Comte (1798-1857), which applied the scientific viewpoint to social organization.
Ideal geometric forms—the circle, square, and triangle—have determined mainstream architecture and city planning; from Pierre L’Enfant’s 1791 designs for Washington, DC and Haussmann’s overlay of boulevards in Paris under Napoleon III to late 20th century efforts at urban renewal. While this has been abundantly evident, a concomitant bias has also prevailed. Not only has geometry guided prescriptive thought in both architecture and urban planning, but the assumption that population centers consist only of buildings regulated by static forms is also implicit in the acceptance of formalism. Modernist thought, though arguably beneficial for delivering the theoretical underpinnings that made possible the rapid growth in technology and social organization throughout half a millennium, carries with it a privileging of formal structure over the more messy and disparate details of the day-to-day world and as a result has often created consequences characterized by dysfunction and malaise.
Landscape Urbanists argue that over the last half century the need for remediation in cities has led to a succession of procedures—none of which have served to successfully address the resultant building residue left behind in our rapidly de-industrializing postmodern milieu. Clearly, there is a need for a radical break from our Enlightenment heritage; to counter the modernist tendency to discover yet newer, truer forms and to view urbanity not solely as a built environment, a concatenation of shapes, but as an ever-changing terrain. According to Landscape Urbanism supporters, any attempts at intervention that proceed from pure formalism merely replicate the totalizing worldviews of the 20th and prior centuries that have mandated the wholesale effacement of entire districts, resulting in the destruction of our inner cities and their social matrices.
Landscape Urbanism has raised interest within the fields of landscape architecture, urban planning, and architecture because the practice seeks to effectively move the focus of thought on urbanity from building to terrain. Architects and urban planners have relied historically upon a privileging of geometry and static form with coinciding planning regulatory practices. On the other hand, ecologists have historically concentrated on natural systems, inadvertantly neglecting the needs of human habitation. These fields are separately functional, but each has limitations. Landscape Urbanism has the potential to serve as a synthesis of the design and ecology disciplines, transforming the largely marginal role of landscape architecture from a purely aesthetic function to predecessor of building development.
Earlier 20th century urban theorists such as Lewis Mumford, Patrick Geddes, Ludwig Hilberseimer, Benton MacKaye, and Kevin Lynch laid down much of the groundwork for theories now espoused by Landscape Urbanism believing that the increasingly dispersed city needed a vision that did not impose order but cultivated regional cultural distinctions with landscape underlying the urban order; they did not treat this form of environmentalism as designated wilderness but connected with the expanding city landscape. Additionally, Landscape Urbanism carries the work of Carl Troll’s concept of Landscape Ecology (1939) and the work of such Landscape Ecologists as Richard T.T. Forman and Wolfgang Haber, who both spoke of bridging the gap between ecology and human ecosystems.
Its practices have been recognized as suitable for de-industrialized frameworks, sites experiencing abandonment, and other social pathologies left in the wake of (de)industrialization with the development of several significant projects in Europe and North America. Examples include the IBA Emsher Park, country; Duisburg Nord, Germany and the Schiphol Airport Landscape, Amsterdam built in the 1990’s; the Trinitat Cloverleaf Park, built in a highway intersection for the 1992 Barcelona Olympic games; the High Line and Fresh Kills park, New York; and Downsview park, Toronto.
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