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 largelyabandoned 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