Case Study #1

o PROJECT - The Wungong Urban Water (WUW) Landscape Structure Plan (LSP)(2004–2007)
o DESIGN TEAM – Landscape architects team from the faculty of the University of Western
Australia
o CLIENT – Armadale Redevelopment Authority (ARA)
We were asked to develop a master plan “as if the landscape really mattered.”

 The WUW LSP = professional consultancy + research project

 Research question - What is the possibility of adapting emergent landscape urbanist theory
to the rigours of suburban master planning.

The application of LU theory to the WUW project has undoubtedly improved the outcome & identified
the need for LU to draw on other urban theory to render itself more directly relevant to suburban
master planning.
Study :
Not conventional case study methodology: a reflection upon the project by one of the authors of the
project with an emphasis on the relationship between theory and praxis.
Project:
o Initial LSP – team from The University of Western Australia Landscape Architecture dept.
Time frame - 6 weeks
 o Detailed LSP (testing and refining initial LSP ideas, resolving all aspects for master plan
approval and sub- divisional development) - a team of over 60 consultants representing 38
different organizations - Coordinated by the ARA.
Time frame – 3 years(2004–2007)
Site :
The site is 3,750 acres (1500 hectares) of damp, degraded, agricultural land on the outskirts of Perth.
The site of the WUW project included a significant water course and a string of wetlands through its
center. 80% of the metropolitan region’s wet-lands—vital organs in the local ecology—have been
destroyed, and its rivers have become eutrophic. Like most peri-urban lands, the site bears
o topographic scar tissue,
o weed-infested fragments of vegetation,
o impeded hydrological systems, and
o unbalanced soils
Brief : A master plan that would accommodate 15,000 homes at low to medium density to house
40,000 people over a 15–year period.
Vital Statistics : Based on population projections (WAPC, 2004) , Perth anticipates the construction
of 3,50,000 new homes in the next 23 yrs., 40% of which are in peri-urban sites such as the WUW
project. The remaining 60 percent are optimistically expected to be transit oriented and built into
existing developed areas.
Mapping shows Perth has 2,95,000 acres (1,18,000 hectares) of degraded rural land that could be
reasonably developed without encroaching upon wetlands or removing vegetation. At a low density,
this land can easily accommodate upto 1.5 million new homes(3.2 million people). Unless an urban
growth boundary is imposed, this city can and probably will sprawl well into the 21st century.
Vision for the creation of the LSP :
o Protect, interlink, and enhance existing vegetation deemed of cultural and ecological value.
o Create a holistic matrix of public open space (POS) that transcends individual property
ownership and is robust, simple, and multi- functional.
o Integrate with the POS matrix a comprehensive storm water management system as a legible
infrastructural component of the project.
o Assert the POS matrix as the primary guidelines for subsequent development.
o Align streets and housing orthogonally (north- south and east- west) to maximize passive solar
access.
o Create an iconic site identity not through suburban pastiche but through the use of substantial
plantings of endemic vegetation.
o Without fill, the water table in this landscape is generally too high for houses built on concrete
pads, the construction technique that dominates the local housing market. This, as well as the
site’s location at the headwaters of Perth’s riparian system, its remnant wetlands, and regional
water shortages made water- sensitive design a dominant theme.
Proposal :
 All the existing wetlands, riparian zones, and stands of significant vegetation were set aside and
buffered.
 A simple system of drainage swales that would collect all the storm water from the future suburban
subdivisions, strip it of pollutants before injecting it back into the aquifer or discharging into the
site’s natural drainage system was worked out.
  This comprehensive drainage system would also function as a POS system ideally forming an
interconnected matrix across the whole site, transcending the boundaries of the many smaller
subdivisions that would form over the next 15 years in order to complete the project.

Regulations :
In Western Australia, in addition to land set aside for
environmental protection, a development must also
allocate 10% of its developable area to POS. This is
derived site-specifically and is flexible, but the industry
to make work consistent they make it inflexible. Initial LSP
for
Wungong
 To create a holistic, interconnected matrix of POS, the Urban
allowable 10 percent POS allocation was stretched Water, UWA
Landscape
into thin “ribbons” across the entire site. Architecture
program

View of the “park avenue”

Final master plan for

Initial scheme Final scheme Wungong Urban Water
POS matrix spacing – 650’0” POS matrix spacing – 1300’0” derived from the LSP

 Rule 1 (self-imposed) : No future resident should ever be more than 650’0” from this POS matrix.
 Rule 2 (self-imposed) : The degree of thinness – width - to which an open space in a suburban
context could be reduced before it was no longer visually and functionally viable was around 85’0”.
 The risk was that if the POS was lesser in width than 85’ then it would be perceived as a drain
rather than a linear park. This resulted in the superimposition of 85’0” of POS strips spaced 650’0”
from one another across the whole site. These strips of POS became known as park avenues.
 Park Avenues : Each 85–foot- wide park avenue is defined by four rows of trees which frame a
central (35–foot wide) grassed open space (refer section 1). This open space functions as both a
passive recreational area and a swale system. In what is a hot site in a hot climate, the avenues
 also work to channel cool air through the residential zones, and in summer they function as
windbreaks filtering harsh easterly winds. Rear- loaded housing is prescribed to address the
avenues, encouraging community ownership and passive surveillance. Adjacent to one side of the
avenue is a small road, ensuring general public access.
 By virtue of their linearity, avenues encourage people to move along their length, an important
consideration with regard to high obesity rates. People will also be enticed along the avenues
because each one leads to the Wungong River and, as a rule, to a 200–square foot community
park, situated at the heart of each neighbourhood. Similarly, each of the eight schools in the LSP is
connected to a park avenue, making the POS matrix a safe and effective system for children.
 Some roads necessarily cross the avenues, but they are kept to a minimum. The avenues convey
storm water and people & wildlife can also utilize this interconnected matrix. The avenues are
visually clear, functional and provide a distinct & binding character in an appropriate scale to the
development in place of a raw suburban feel.
 The simple, low- maintenance typology of the avenue thus achieves a lot with very little.

Section thro’ a “park avenue”

Section thro’ a “road avenue”

 An archaeological survey of the site revealed a plethora of important Aboriginal sites and these
were (rightly) included in the overall POS calculation, the total POS figure was well over the
mandatory 10% of the developable land.
 Consequently, every second avenue became a “road avenue”, meaning it retained its form as an
avenue defined by four rows of trees, but a road replaced the internal open space(refer section 2)
The continuity of the avenues as the structuring device for the whole development was thus
maintained, but in the final scheme, residences are up to 1300 feet from the nearest park avenue.
 To enable a degree of flexibility, an avenue could be adjusted to a distance of 100 feet so as to fit
topographic nuances, but each development must ensure that the avenue enters and leaves any
particular sub- division as demarcated on the master plan.

Arguments
1. The avenues cut across 35 different land holdings comprising the site area, and were
understandably perceived by developers as complicating the orthodox development process.
2. Striated by the avenues, the LSP was criticized as over-determined, inflexible, and hegemonic.
Counter-argument : Indeed, to an extent it is, but not without reason: the avenues guarantee an
overall drainage system, a holistic matrix of interconnected POS, and help create a large- scale
sense of place—all of which is unlikely to occur in their absence.

1. Developers and their design teams were irritated as they found that the patterns of roads and
housing that they generally superimpose on sites wouldn’t fit. They argued that the avenues limited
their ability to create a distinctive “sense of place” for their particular project.
Counter-argument : Within the bandwidth set by the avenues, developers were free to brand their
project in any way they wished and that they needn’t rely on road patterns to create identity. The
larger sense of place created at the master plan scale was more important than the branding of
individual sub- divisions.

 As opposed to curvilinear road networks or more eclectic new urbanist patterns what functions best
within the structure of the avenues are simple grids. This too was intentional because simple grid
layouts would maximize orthogonal housing orientation, in turn maximizing passive solar energy
opportunities. The LSP aimed to ensure that 90 percent of homes would be orthogonally oriented
whereas many sub- divisions achieve only 60 percent. Developers complained that this, again, was
restrictive.

Compromise
In the final master plan, the avenues on the northern side of the Wungong River are inter-cardinal, not
orthogonal.
The reason for this design
o drainage was better served this way
o the cadastral boundaries of the existing land ownership of the site are inter-cardinal
To ensure that the avenues would link from one subdivision to another was difficult. Cutting across
the existing grain of land ownership would make construction absurdly complicated.
Therefore, the consultant team resolved the problem by manipulating subdivision design within the
inter-cardinal orientation of the avenues so as to maintain orthogonal orientation for the house lots
without incurring a significant loss of yield for developers.

THE WUW PROJECT IN RELATION TO THEORY

The underlying intention to link theory and praxis prompts two key questions of this project:
1) What can we draw out from it in relation to the discourses of smart growth, new urbanism, green
urbanism, and critical regionalism? &
2) How does this project embody or reflect back on to the emergence of landscape urbanism?

1. Smart growth arguments….

o Against residential development in the WUW project site.
o The development cannot claim to be transit-oriented, nor does it include within its bounds any
significant employment sources.
o This development is extending sprawl, not resisting it. (approx. 30min. drive from CBD of Perth
& average building density of 8homes/acre)

2. Regional (smart growth) perspective

o The addition of 40,000 new residents in the WUW site will contribute significantly to the vitality
of the adjacent township of Armadale affirming Calthorpe’s image of a network city or
polycentric urbanism.
o If such degraded land is not developed, then development will push further into richly bio-
diverse vegetation north of the city. Additionally, because of the change of land use from
unregulated small- scale agriculture to well- designed and managed sub- division,
considerable money will infuse the site’s degraded ecosystem. Consequently, the quality of
WUW site’s waterways would improve, in turn resulting in beneficial downstream effects.

“Will spaces set aside for environmental protection and habitat linkages achieve viable
ecological corridors in the midst of suburbia?”……………to be assessed

3. New urbanist planners arguments……

o The buffers around wetlands and riparian corridors + the 10% POS provisions, are excessive
o The landscape spaces set aside in contemporary suburban developments are hard to
maintain, fragment clear urban form, dissipate density, and ultimately lack genuine ecological
functionality
In the WUW project - the clear civic form of the avenues reduces fears of more amorphous,
degraded POS characteristic of suburbia.
WUW’s New urbanist principles
o Residential areas are organized in accord with walking distances to neighbourhood centres
o Streets form interconnected grids as opposed to cul-de-sacs
o No buildings back onto POS &
o Generous streetscapes are prescribed - the New urbanist strategy of developing prescriptive
aesthetic codes (Place Codes) has been adopted in a bid to regulate urban form.
In this regard, while landscape urbanism may well reject new urbanism’s aesthetics, it can
nonetheless find solid grounding in some of its broadly accepted structural principles.

4. Similitude to Critical regionalism - The WUW master plan’s

o use of avenues bears some connection to the surrounding rural landscape
o avid protection and enhancement of existing wetlands
o retention of remnant vegetation, and restriction of all plantings to species of provenance
- forms a coherent registration of local landscape character.
o Furthermore, retaining sites of Aboriginal significance adds to the project’s site specificity.

5. Green Urbanism principles

The master plan’s insistence on a comprehensive storm water filtration system, orthogonal
solar orientation, and an interconnected matrix of public open space as the dominant
determinants of form, however, does shift this project a few degrees from new urbanism
toward green urbanism.

6. Landscape Urbanism…
“The landscape architect plays a role commensurate with that of a “system builder” (Reed
2006, 283).
LU characteristics found in the WUW project
o the methods and scales of planning with design
o landscape as an infrastructural system
o appreciates the contemporary city as a hybridized, denatured ecology
o aims for structural influence over contemporary urbanism
Being restrictive rather than liberating & formal the WUW master plan differs from current landscape
urbanist discourse on one key point: it rejects landscape urbanism’s penchant for indeterminacy.

WUW project ……... justified

In the suburbs, the city is not “out of control” (Corner 2003, 59); it is the result of rational decisions,
which may have scant regard for the landscape. These decisions can be contested, resisted, and
deflected to more holistic ends only if the landscape architect is able to devise suitable design
strategies.
In this project, there is need to impose an unambiguous and overarching landscape structure to
ensure the protection and creation of landscape systems (habitat, drainage, and POS) that
necessarily transcend individual sub-divisional interests.

In suburbia, to merely “irrigate territories with potential” (Koolhaas 1996, 969), would mean simply
connecting the internet and the sewerage and letting development loose. Suburbia doesn’t have
much potential in the sense of vibrant urbanity that Koolhaas meant earlier.

The big plan or the master plan is therefore important!!!.......in suburbia.

Approach to the WUW project is paradoxically best exemplified by Andres Duany & his
colleagues as:
“Consultants thrive in a swamp of unpredictability. A master plan that offers clarity is their mortal
enemy as it immediately diminishes the value of their services. When such a plan is completed, they
begin to stir, warning their developer clients, “Watch out—if that plan is passed you’ll lose your
flexibility!” Eventually the master plan is rejected and the status quo prevails. (2000, 180)
What is needed in suburbia???
Greater freedom at the level of individual expression with regard to built form and private property, but
greater limitation with regard to broad scale ecological site conditions.

Valuable Suggestion?!!!
LU needs to find its own voice somewhere between the polarisations that Koolhaas and Duany have
come to represent in contemporary urbanism.

CONCLUSION
James Corner, presents the contemporary problem thus:
It is both tragic and ironic that city planning is done as a service profession in a typically
unimaginative and uncritical way. Visionaries with provocative and interesting ideas are utopian
continually evading the problem of an operative strategy.

The WUW master plan is not utopian, but with landscape urbanist theory, it has attempted to
deploy a simple, pragmatic and operative strategy.

Logic derived from an established tradition of landscape architects bringing open space networks to
the fore in suburban planning. Examples are :
 Olmsted and Vaux’s Riverside in Chicago (1869) integrates a generous POS system
 Griffin’s Castlecrag in Sydney (1920s) related roads and buildings to topography
 McHarg’s -The Woodlands (1973) paid careful attention to hydrological systems
 Village Homes in Davis, California (1975) created a strong sense of community through the
agency of its open spaces
Landscape urbanism principles add to McHarg’s teachings rather than replacing it.
- both operate at an urban scale, are driven by the meta- narrative of ecology, and both prefer to
ground the design process in empirical data.
- Together they form powerful theoretical and practical tools that could relate equally to smart
growth, new urbanism, and green urbanism

Anne Spirn lists 3 key, unresolved areas of McHarg’s legacy:

o How to reconcile environmental values and human needs?
o How to give material form to ecological processes and values?
o How to conceive of local actions within a regional context?