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Landscape Urbanism

Chapter · April 2016

DOI: 10.5040/9781472596161-BED-ONLINE-015

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The Bloomsbury Encyclopedia of Design 10/04/19, 1(22 AM

Landscape Urbanism
by Saurabh Tewari
DOI: 10.5040/9781472596161-BED-ONLINE-015
Page Range: 474

Introduction
Landscape urbanism is an emergent discourse adopting landscape as a reference point to
observe the city and urban life. It attempts to think beyond the binary manifestation of man-
nature and architecture-landscape and employs the unison of ecology, urban planning, and
design. Instead of being an end-product, landscape is thus placed at the center of the urban
design-thinking process.

Discourse
Biswas (2017) points out, “Historically, the notion of landscape in a city was associated with
the setting up of grand parks and its flamboyant designs. At the time of functionalist
planning, open spaces, representing distributive quantitative norms for urban health,
became an abstract indication of landscape.” Waldheim (2006) traces the emergence of
landscape urbanism to the postmodern critique of modernist architecture and planning and
its failure to produce a meaningful and liveable public realm.
A range of urban practitioners and designers have contributed to landscape urbanism’s
formation. According to Waldheim (2016), “Landscape urbanist practices evolved to occupy
a void created by urban planning’s shift toward a social-science model and away from
physical design over the past half-century, as urban design committed to neotraditional
models of town planning.” In 1982, the competition entries for the Parc de la Villette in Paris
proved to be one of the first articulations of the discourse. The winning entry by Bernard
Tschumi forwarded landscape as a more suitable option than stylistic built forms. Along with
the second-prize entry of Rem Koolhaas/Office of Metropolitan Architecture, it signalled that
landscape would come to play the role of a medium which can articulate late postmodern
urbanism: layered, non-hierarchical, flexible, and strategic. Landscape urbanism has been
one of the methods of urban rejuvenation practiced by architects in North America for
reimagining brownfield sites, and of the integration of transport systems into open public
spaces by stitching it with urban fabrics.
Landscape urbanism provides strategies for design by providing a lens to see and describe
contemporary cities. It looks beyond the aesthetics of traditional imagery of landscapes as an
analytical tool to reorganize urban spaces. In Julia Czerniak’s (2006) reflective elaboration,
landscape urbanism is all about conceptualization of design and planning of urban

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landscapes through the understanding of its disciplinarity, the functions of ecologies and
economies, formal and spatial attributes, and process-oriented temporal qualities. It also
suggests a particular culture of, and consciousness about, the land.

Examples
The High Line in New York started as a street-level rail line for transporting goods to
factories and warehouses, which was highly prone to accidents. Due to advancements in
transportation, use of the railroad decreased. It was gradually abandoned and disconnected
from the more extensive rail network. Rather than demolish the line it was redesigned as a
“living system”; an elevated park. The redeveloped park offers a break from the chaotic city
streets and gives an opportunity to experience an elevated space with uninterrupted views
of the Hudson River and the city skyline. Now, the High Line’s unobtrusive environment
allows the public to meander and experience the park as they wish. The Cheonggyecheon in
Seoul is a similar project. A stilted site at the center of the city was considered a symbol of
poverty and filth. A landscape-focused approach provided a balance between improving the
urban ecology and safe public access that regenerated significant business activities.
Waldheim (2016) acknowledges the ambiguity in defining the landscape; his proposal of
ecological urbanism, an evolved form of landscape urbanism, has great potential to be a
sustainable planning method for twenty-first-century urbanism. It calls to unite
interdisciplinary practitioners of architecture, planning, policy, science, economics, and
sociology for a collaborative ecological urban design.

References and further reading

Biswas, Suptendu. 2017. “Search Workshop 16.” In Blue Lines of Kolkata, edited by
Suptendu P. Biswas and Saurabh Tewari, 1–3. New Delhi: Trust for Search. Cornor, James.
2006. “Terra Fluxus.” In The Landscape Urbanism Reader, edited by Charles Waldheim, 21–
33. New York: Princeton Architectural Press. Czerniak, Julia. 2006. “Looking Back at
Landscape Urbanism: Speculations on Site.” In The Landscape Urbanism Reader, edited by
Charles Waldheim, 105–123. New York: Princeton Architectural Press. Waldheim, Charles.
2006. “Landscape as Urbanism.” In The Landscape Urbanism Reader, edited by Charles
Waldheim, 35–53. New York: Princeton Architectural Press. Waldheim, Charles. 2016.
“Introduction: ‘From Figure to Field’.” In Landscape as Urbanism: A General Theory, edited
by Charles Waldheim, 2–11. New York: Princeton Architectural Press.

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