Issue 3 – 2020 landscapeinstitute.org

Bringing nature into the city Place and health in the age of COVID-19 FEATURE

By Ed Wall Manifesto for future relations of landscapes

Is there a way landscape architects can avoid the duality of nature and city through more inclusive definitions of landscape that reframe design within planetary contexts? Ed Wall opens up questions for designers seeking to ground their work in the wider, interconnected ecosystem and suggests some potentially useful references

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1. Valley Project, he valley section drawings Model 1 (2019). © Ed Wall and Emma Colthurst / by Patrick Geddes allow us Project Studio Tto understand a world of 2. Valley Project, relations, between people, the Drawing 7 (2019). © Ed Wall / Project Studio tools of their work and the places that they transform through their endeavours. These longitudinal sectional drawings, first published in 1909, also illustrate dynamics between mountains, woodlands, farmland, villages, cities and seas. Regarding the question of ‘bringing nature into the city’ or ‘making the city more natural’, Geddes’ regional approach counters a dualism that distances urban conditions of cities from landscapes considered more natural. It also has the potential to point to future relations of landscapes that could afford rights to all species, respect all entities and recognise the interconnectedness of all ... few ingrained assumptions planetary conditions. will look so From the hills to the sea we can wrongheaded understand the landscapes of the valley or as globally section as worked in varying ways, destructive as through intensities of urbanisation, the separation concentrations of populations and of society and differing availability of resources. The nature concept of the valley section allows the extraction of minerals to be related to cities built from these materials and river waters to be considered 2 as core urban infrastructures. Looking closer we can read tensions to understand relations between our assumptions will look so wrongheaded between agricultural fields that feed contemporary societies and the worlds or as globally destructive as the growing populations: fields that are around us. Changing practices of work, separation of society and nature.” simultaneously under threat from the new architectural forms, advanced By distancing ourselves from other need to expand urban settlements. agricultural technologies and planetary species and entities, we deny the Despite including landscapes that urbanisations could be understood ecosystems of which we are all a could be considered more urban and in context with each other through part. To imagine nature as external others accepted as more natural, it is updating, expanding and adapting the to society (and to cities) has resulted impossible to separate society from valley section. The impact of our work in intensely commodified and nature in the valley section. Sparsely practices and daily lives on the evolving destructively exploited landscapes. populated landscapes are urbanised climate crises, changing storm While recognising that this exploitation through their relation to human actions, patterns and biodiversity loss could of nature did not begin with capitalism, from tourism to farming and from also be drawn forth. And the uneven Smith points out that “Capitalist transportation to industry. Villages, distributions of power that have societies externalize nature to an towns and cities – as well as suburbs, resulted in massive ecological damage unprecedented extent (even if they conurbations and less densely built and social disadvantage could be internalize it in the commodity form).” environments – are situated and illustrated in relation to concentrations (Ibid, p.xii) grounded by the bedrock on which they of wealth and resources. In The Landscapists: Redefining are constructed, in their watersheds Writing in “In The Nature of Cities” Landscape Relations, a recent issue of that provide essential resources and (2005, p.xi) the late geographer Neil Architectural Design (AD/Wiley 2020), within weather patterns that inform Smith claims: “When we eventually a grouping of architects, landscape erosion, growth and decay. look back at the intellectual shibboleths architects, artists, geographers and Through studying Geddes’ valley of the high capitalist period – say the scientists frame a discourse around the section drawings, we can also begin last three centuries – few ingrained socially constructed form of landscape.

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Rather than focusing on the projects undertaken, the articles emphasise practices of individuals and collectives: the way people engage in their work and their interactions with the worlds around them. Patrick Geddes’ valley section is an important reference in this particular framing of landscape: it is adapted, stretched, dissected and reconfigured to explore contemporary challenges and future practices. While the 1909 valley section emphasises a human perspective, a critical re-evaluation of Geddes’ concept can raise questions of who is and who is not represented. Geddes’ drawings privilege paid labour, traditionally undertaken by men, over domestic work that is unremunerated and less visible inside of private homes. It overlooks the work of economics, education and even leisure – all ways of working that 3 have important landscape relations. Geddes’ valley section also ignores places as well as opportunities to build interconnectedness of all conditions 3. The Landscapists: Redefining less visible structures of power – such them, should be central to landscape could address many important Landscape Relations as political systems, land ownerships projects. Approaches to landscape that issues. For example, the impact on (Architectural Design/ resist dualistic approaches, that deny and of humans on the climate crisis; Wiley 2020), cover and employment contracts less easily image. represented in such drawings. prevailing tendencies to commodify gentrification of urban neighbourhoods; © Richard Mosse This distinctly anthropocentric and seek other ways of relating to the loss of biodiversity, and concentrations world view also needs to be world are urgently required. of wealth. We must constantly seek challenged. Where are the other Landscape provides a means to redefine landscape relations. As the animal species in the valley section? through which “the destructiveness geographer Matthew Gandy explains Is the work of agricultural animals of this deep-seated presumption of in “Concrete and Clay: Reworking accounted for? Are the ecological society separated from nature” as Nature in New York City”: “A broad and contributions of ancient forests Smith describes “will become fully inclusive definition of landscape allows recognised? How are these other lives and tragically apparent.” (2006, p.xi) the urban experience to be explored related to human activities? Oyster Landscape, when defined as the in relation to changing conceptions of beds employed for mitigating storm relations between people and the nature without separating the technical, surges, as in the designs of Kate worlds around them, allows the political, and aesthetic dimensions of Orff’s studio Scape, or the impact of interactions between species, entities urban space.” (2003, p.6) methane from domesticated cattle, and conditions to be the way in which point to an entanglement of human our cities and remote landscapes are and non-human processes, entities understood, despite being socially and species. The capacity of oceans to constructed. The planetary dynamics absorb carbon and winds to produce that produce places of intense wonder, References: Neil Smith (2006) energy, bind us in complex systems of whether more or less designed, as well Ed Wall is Academic Portfolio Foreward. In: Nik which we are only a part. as sites of extraordinary destruction, Heynen, Maria Kaika, Lead for Landscape Architecture Erik Swyngedouw Rather than ‘bringing nature into must be first understood before new and Urbanism at the University of (2006) In the Nature of the city’ or ‘making the city more practices and projects can be imagined. Cities: Urban Political Greenwich and Visiting Professor Ecology and the Politics natural’ a recognition of the nature Landscapes embraced as a at Politecnico di Milano. Ed has of Urban Metabolism. of cities within larger planetary multiplicity of situated practices – that Taylor & Francis written widely, most recently he ecosystems should be at the core recognise humans as only a part of a Matthew Gandy (2003) guest-edited an issue of Architectural Concrete and Clay: of landscape practices. Mapping the wider ecosystem – have the potential Reworking Nature in Design (AD), The Landscapists: origins of building materials and their to tell new stories that contrast with New York City. MIT Redefining Landscape Relations Press impact on the lives and environments those still claiming a separation of (Wiley 2020), and co-edited, with Ed Wall (2020) of remote regions; calculating the nature and cities. Future landscapes The Landscapists: Tim Waterman, Landscape and true cost of designed landscapes that afford rights to all species, Redefining Landscape Agency (Routledge 2017). Relations. Architectural and accepting the need to unmake respect all entities and recognise Design. Wiley

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