"Landscape Urbanism" by James CORNER

This article wants to give an answer to the question WHAT IS LANDSCAPE URBANISM?

INTRODUCTION

landscape + urbanism to suggest a new hybrid discipline. Divers examples can be sited to explain what landscape urbanism (LU) is: from "new high-tech eco-metropolis" to "a more postindustrial 'meta-urbanism'".

"Landscape urbanism [...] it is an ethos, an attitude, a way of thinking and acting." It offers alternative approaches to the traditional urban design and planning, which are not able anymore to operate effectively in the contemporary city. LU =

- dissolution of old dualities eg. nature - culture

- dismanteling the classical notions of hierarchy, boundary and centre

- shifting view of the city as a static entity towards a "living ecology"

- cross-disciplinarity

Five general themes in LU as a practice are:

1. HORIZONTALITY

During 20th century: shift of social structures from vertical to horizontal, it means from hierarchical to polycentric and interconnected (example of LA where the horizontal spread is palpable). It influences a shift of the emphasis in LU. Some keywords: networks, fields (instead of objects), many (instead of many).

=> structuring of the horizontal surface becomes a predominant concern in LU

Surface strategies:

- land division

- establishing pathways and services across the surface supporting future programmes

- permeability to allow future permutations

2. INFRASTRUCTURES

In LU infrastructures are dynamic structures and processes that engender future development. On this point LU distinguishes itself from landscape and planning disciplines:

In landscape terms: drainage, soil cultivation, land management...

In planning terms: roads, utilities, airports...

3. FORMS OF PROCESS

Urban relationships are shaped by the processes of urbanization rather than by spatial forms. "The search for new organizing structures and cities ought to derive from a Utopia of process rather than a Utopia of form." More a "pragmatic impulse, but less a generic"

4. TECHNIQUES

Projects today demand collaboration and interdisciplinarity to get to a new synthesis and insights. For this we need the capacity of imaging and projection. The imaging is needed to query, explore, reorganize perceptions and synthesize different insights. Combining different techniques may act as a "new art of instrumentality" which will serve to better comprehend the complex urban issues.

5. ECOLOGY

"Ecology teaches us that all life is bound into dynamic and interrelated processes of codependency." A particular spatial form from this viewpoint is merely a provisional state of matter. Taking it further, it means that cities and infrastructures are as 'ecological' as rivers and forests.

A more integrative term would be 'soft system'; it is a system able to evolve, response and adapt. It has the capacity to absorb, transform and exchange information with its surrounding => opens up the opportunity to think about cities and landscapes as flexible. And in the design practice it points to a practice of new production of combinatory mixes.