Billy Fleming Annie Palone John Rigdon

Environmental READINGS 2012 Editors Billy Fleming Annie Palone John Rigdon csd Center for Sustainable Development Table of Contents Environmental Readings 2012 Foreword The Legibility and Language of Landscape: Kevin Lynch’s Image of Editors Frederick Steiner 4 the City and Anne Whiston Spirn’s Language of Landscape Billy Fleming Annie Palone 94 Annie Palone PART I: Environmental Theorists John Rigdon Rural by Design: Analysis of Theory Frederick Law Olmsted and Shlomo Aronson John Rigdon 102 © 2013 Center for Sustainable Development Billy Fleming 7 Published by: The Language(s) of Landscape Center for Sustainable Development Gifford Pinchot: Father of Conservation and Sustainability in the The University of Texas at Austin Travis Glenn 109 School of Architecture United States 310 Inner Campus Drive B7500 John Rigdon 19 Austin, TX 78712-1009 Terry Tempest Williams and Bio-Regionalism: Co-Evolutionary Thought, Re-inhabitation, and the Musings of Laconic Literature Designed by Samuel Dodd Aldo Leopold: A New Land Ethic Billy Fleming 115 All rights reserved. Neither the whole nor any part Travis Glenn 26 of this paper may be reprinted or reproduced or PART III: Crafting Critical Theories in Environmental Planning quoted in any form or by any electronic, me- chanical, or other means, now known or here-after Rachel Carson: Writer, Scientist, Activist invented, including photocopying and recording, Eliza Bober 33 The Planner as Fulcrum: Facilitative Fatalism, the Discourse of or in any information storage or retrieval system, Development, and Third-Law Urbanism without accompanying full bibliographic listing and reference to its title, authors, publishers, and date, J. B. Jackson Billy Fleming 125 place and medium of publication or access. Abby Wiltse 41 Magic, Technology, and Landscape: A Primer on the Practice of Ian McHarg: His Life and Ideas Contemporary Topomancy Mark Teschauer 47 Travis Glenn 137 Italo Calvino Dimensions of Landscape Storytelling Dimitra Theochari 55 Annie Palone 144 Alice Waters and Chez Panisse: Revolutionizing the American Planning a New Land Ethic: An Argument for the Return of Foodscape Productivity to the Urban Landscape Annie Palone 64 John Rigdon 155 PART II: Critical Theory and the Evolution of Environmental Thought Understanding Sustainable Design Through Ecological Humanism and Cultural Ecosystem Services Civilization for Apocalypse: Derrick Jensen on the Destruction of Mark Teschauer 161 Our Planet Eliza Bober 75 Landscape Architectural Education: Thoughts of a Young Architect that Decided to Work with Landscapes Carl Steinitz: A Framework for Theory, A Process for Change Dimitra Theochari 167 Abby Wiltse 81 Intentional Landscapes The Theory and Environmental Perspectives of Regionalism and the Abby Wiltse 177 Regional Plan Association of America Mark Teschauer 87 Environmental Readings 2012 Environmental Readings 2012 The University of Texas at Austin - School of Architecture The University of Texas at Austin - School of Architecture Foreword Frederick Steiner Each spring for the last several years I have taught the Environmental Readings course in urbanizing North American continent to address pressing urban issues. Arguably, the the School of Architecture at The University of Texas at Austin. The course attracts graduate planning profession in the United States also began with the senior Olmsted. Charles Eliot students from landscape architecture, community and regional planning, architecture, was a protégé of Olmsted’s. Eliot pioneered the use of comprehensive, scientific landscape sustainable design, urban design, history, and public administration. I especially enjoy this inventories; originated the concept of land trusts; and designed the first metropolitan cross-disciplinary aspect of the class. regional open-space plan. Educated in both landscape architecture and city planning, Ian McHarg influenced both fields in the late twentieth century. He urged us to better The course was inspired by my Arizona State University colleague Laurel McSherry, now understand natural processes and how people use space. director of the Master of Landscape Architecture Program at Virginia Tech. She originated a class for landscape architecture and environmental planning students to explore classic The second part of the course critically explores current theories in environmental planning writings about nature, using Harvard Professor Lawrence Buell’s Writing for an Endangered and landscape architecture. Topics include: frameworks for cultural landscape studies, Planet as the organizing text. When she went on sabbatical as a Rome Prize recipient, I the future of the vernacular, ecological design and planning, sustainable and regenerative inherited the class for that year. After I moved to Austin, I began offering the class and design, the languages of landscapes, and evolving views of landscape aesthetics and ethics. evolved it on my own. In the third part of the course, students build on the readings to develop their own theories Each year, the students write three papers – one on a theorist, one on existing theory, for ecological planning or, alternatively, landscape architecture. While literacy and critical and one on their own theory. These papers have been interesting and thought-provoking inquiry are addressed throughout the course, critical thinking is especially important for and I believe worthy of a broader audience. For several years I offered the students the this final section. opportunity to publish the papers from the course. This trio of ambitious, bright students— Billy Fleming, Annie Palone, and John Rigdon—took up this challenge and produced the The goals of the Environmental Readings course are, first, to make students aware of work contained here. the rich theoretical tradition and literature in landscape architecture and environmental planning and, second, to equip them with the critical thinking abilities to theorize about A long, deep green thread exists in American literature, from Ralph Waldo Emerson the future of these two interrelated disciplines. To achieve these goals, the objective is to and Walt Whitman through Herman Melville and William Carlos Williams on to Terry develop the writing skills necessary for students to express an understanding of theory Tempest Williams and Wendell Berry. This literature has influenced how we perceive and theorizing. The papers collected here from the 2012 Environmental Readings course our environments. In addition, many planners, designers, conservationists, and social illustrate how that objective has been fulfilled. reformists, including Jane Addams, John Muir, Aldo Leopold, Lewis Mumford, Frank Lloyd Wright, Rachel Carson, Lawrence Halprin, and Anne Whiston Spirn have been influenced. In this seminar, we explore this green thread and analyze its influence on how we shape our January 23, 2013 environments through design and planning. The Environmental Readings course has three parts. Throughout, the influence of literature on design and planning theory is explored. The first part focuses on the three most important theorists in environmental planning and landscape architecture: Frederick Law Olmsted Sr., Charles Eliot, and Ian McHarg. The senior Olmsted pretty much created the field of landscape architecture, adapting the English landscape aesthetic for the rapidly 4 5 Environmental Readings 2012 Environmental Readings 2012 The University of Texas at Austin - School of Architecture The University of Texas at Austin - School of Architecture Frederick Law Olmsted and Shlomo Aronson Billy Fleming “The mountain ranges, valleys, and great waters of America all trend north and south, not east and west. An arbitrary political line may divide the north from the south, but there is no such line in nature and there can be none socially” ‘Yeoman’, 1852 Frederick Law Olmsted scrawled this fleeting thought into his journal as he concluded his year-long sojourn through the Southern States preceding the Civil War. His political skills sharpened, Olmsted’s commentary on natural and social processes in this journal would go on to embody the values expressed through his design interventions. Less than a year after returning from the journey, he inauspiciously won the commission to design Central Park and irrevocably altered the worlds of planning and Landscape Architecture through his fascination with nature, public health, and social interactions. Nearly a century later, Shlomo Aronson would encounter similar political strife in the Middle East. Immersed in conflict and confronted with a nation rapidly shifting from an agrarian economy to an urbanized and technological powerhouse, Aronson found himself caught between the past and the future and, at times, unable to reconcile the tension. Like Olmsted, Aronson’s design philosophy was acutely attuned to the pressing issues of his era and his ardent work helped establish Landscape Architecture as a profession in Israel. Their experiences as young men forged their design values, and the various convergent and divergent threads between them help elucidate how and why they became iconic figures in the brief history of Landscape Architecture. The century separating their lives is transcended by their shared concerns of re-introducing urbanites to nature, and their belief that engaging public spaces have the ability to narrow the gap between social classes. In the end, each changed their profession, their nation, and a rising generation of designers for the better. Frederick Law Olmsted’s Early Life and Influences

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