THE LANDSCAPE ARCHITECT AS URBANIST OF OUR AGE
fy CHARLE:
THE ULTIMATE
URBAN FIGURE
ISA
NOT THROUGH
D
THROUGH THE
JALONEIM, HONORARY ASLA
Tite ti ough Lana
scape Architecture Foundation and the orig.
inal LAF declarations invites us to revisit the
identity and aspirations ofthe field itself The
founders of the “new art” of landscape archi
tecture specifically identified architecture as the
‘most appropriate cultura identity for the new
professional. In so doing, they proposed an in-
novative and progressive professional identity
This new liberal profession was
founded during the second half
of the agth century in response
to the social, environmental, and
cultural challenges associated
With the industrial city, In this
milieu, the landscape architect
‘was conceived as the professional
responsible for the integration
of civil infrastructure, environ:
TAI
ED
IGN BUT
Ji ‘mental enhancement and public
AGENCY OF improvement in the context of
ECOLOGICAL. ossingindustialzaton, Ameri
ECOLOGICAL car eestrs ofthe new ar af
PROCESS. landscape committed the nascent
190/LAMOSCAPEARCATTECTURE MAGAZINE
profession to an identity assoc
ated with the old art of architec:
ture, This decision to identify architecture (as
opposed to art, engineering, or gardening) as the
proximate professional peer group is significant
for conternporary understandings of landscape
architecture. This history sheds compelling light
on the subsequent development of city planning
as a distinct professional identity spun out of
landscape architecture in the fist decades of the
2oth century, as well as on debates regarding
Tandscapeasa form of urbanism atthe beginning
of the 2st century
Thisline ofinquiy points toward thelong standing
lineage of ecologically informed regional planning
that grew out of the origins of landscape archi
tecture in the first half of the 2oth century. That
tradition manifests itself in the reformulation of
landscape architecture asa highly technical and
specialized branch of environmental science in
the second half of the 2oth century. twas in part
based on this sense of landscape architecture's
potential as a scientific activity that many ofthe
original declarations were framed. Over the past
half century this position has come to stand for
‘an empitically informed planning process depen-
dent upon a robust welfare slate for implemen-
tation. For a generation of landscape architects
trained primarily as environmental advocates,
this approach proved tobe an unfortunate detour
en route to the anticipated enlightened future of
rationally informed ecological planning of urban
form. In to many contests, the project of rational
«ecological planning came to be perceived, rightly
or nol, as antiurban, It was equally received in
many contexts as transcendentalist, and ulti-
‘mately rather anti-intellectual, This commitment
of the identity of the field to a subdiscipinary
sphere of environmental science also came to be
seen as ess than pragmatic in the context of the
withering ofthe welfare state andthe rise ofthe
neoliberal economy.
The recent renewal of landscapes relevance for
discussions of contemporary urbanism has ite to
dowith the project of ecologically informed regional
planning, Ithas rather much more to do with an
understanding ofcontemporary design culture. To
day, the challenges of urbanization have seemingly
Jess todo withthe strengths of empiri Inowledge
and scientific method, but rather more to do with
the political failures of a culture that has largelyabandoned welfare-state expectations of rational
informed ecological planning, Landscape’ recently
renewed relevance in questions of urbanism, rather
than originating in the long-standing tradition of
cavironmentally informed regional and urban plan
ning has mach more odo with landscape’ recent
rapprochement with design culture.
In many ways, the contemporary interests of
the most recent generation of leading landscape
designers canbe found to have originated within
architectural discourse during the past quarter
century, aif postmodemism has finally come to
landscape. Not surprisingly, many of those lead
ing landscape architects began thei education in
landscape ecology only to have that knowledge
catalyzed by architectural theory. The generation
of landscape architects and urbaniss trained in
this way exhibits a tendency to combine several
seemingly contradictory understandings of ecol-
ogy. Among the diverse modes for deploying eco-
logical subjects, many contemporary landscape
designers deploy ecology as a model of urban
forces and flows, as a medium for deferred au
thorship in design, and as a rhetorical device for
public reception and audience participation. They
«also reserve recourse to the traditional definition
of ecology as the scientific study of species in
relation to their habitats, but often in service of
larger cultural or design agenda, In addition toits
status as model, ecology has come to be an equally
effective metaphor fora range of intellectual and
disciplinary pursuits. Ecology has been found re
cevantasan epistemological framework operating
at the level of a metaphor in the social or human
sciences, the humanities, history, philosophy,
and the ats. This metaphorical understanding
‘of ecology has been particularly significant for its
subsequent absorption into the discourse around
design. While landscape architecture and urban
planning have historically tended to view ecology
asa kind of applied natural science, architecture
and the arts have received ecology asa metaphor
‘imported from the social sciences, humanities,
and philosophy. In the most intriguing of con-
temporary urban projects conceived through this
understanding, urban form i given not through
planning, policy, or precedent but through the
autonomous self-regulation of emergent ecolo-
ses. In many examples, the timate urban fig
ure is attained not through design but through
the agency of ecological process directed toward
social, political, and cultural ends,
Asurvey of contemporary landscape design prac
tices internationally offers a provisional thesis
In many instances, landscape design strategies
precede planning, In many ofthese projects,
ecological understandings inform urban order,
and design agency propels a process through a
complex hybridization of land use, environmen-
tal stewardship, public participation, and design
culture. In these projects, 2 previously extant
planning regime is often rendered redundant
through a design competition, donor's bequest, or
community consensus, In many ofthese projects,
the landscape architect operating 2s an urban-
ist reconceives the urban field, reordering the
economic and the ecological, the social and the
cultural in service of a newly configured urban
condition, Collectively, these practices represent
the landscape architect acting as the urbanist of
our age
CHARLES WALCHETM HONORARY ASLA, 5 THE IE ANG
PROFESSOR OF LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE AT HARUERO U
\ERSITPS GRADUATE SCHODL OF DESIGN, HE ALSO DIRECTS
“HE SCHOOLS OFFICE FOR URBANIZATION
LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE 714/138