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The

Landscape
Urbanism
Reader
" Intcrdisciplinarity is not the ca lm of an casy security; it
b egin s clJcctivcly ... when th e solidarit y of the old disciplines
breaks down-perhaps even violently, via the jolts of fash-
ion- in the interests of a new object and a new langua~e ... "

- Rol a nd lIarthes

Across a range of disciplines, la nd sca pe ha s b eco me a len s throughl


which the con te illporary city is represented and a m edium through wh ich it is;
constructed 11'1(; I I. These sentiment s arc evi d e nt in the emergent notion off
"landscape urbanislll.~'
-Ibday, in the context of global capital , post - I:ordist models of flexible pro- ·
du ctioJ1 , ;1 nd infofl11dllabor relations , urba ni zati on continues to decrea se th e:
d e nsit y " fN orth Al11crican scttlem ent. The architectural objects left in the wake:
of this process are otten absorbed by to urism an d culture, offering man y build--
in gs iln a lte rnati ve post - indu s trial narrati ve ~' s pa rt of lei s urel y dcs t"inatiol1l
e nvironm e nt s. Many c itie s in No rth A m e ri ca formerl y known for th e i n
autochthonous architectural culture arc presc ntl}' engaged in rebrandin g them -·
se lves for larger economics of tourism , rl'C ITa tion , and dl'stination ('nte rtain--
ment, packaging architectural obj ec ts and fragments of th e traditional urba lll
fa bric as optional excursions into them ed env ironments. The architecture of th e:
city beco mes commodified as a cultural produ ct, iro nically rendering many citi e"
less and less distinguishable from one anoth e r. In pla ce of regional and histori --
cal distin ctions, many industrial cities have lon g since lost most of their inhab--
itants In th eir decentralized suburban surroundings. In place of traditional ,
d ense urban limn, most N orth Ameri ca ns spe nd th eir til11e in built environ-
m en ts chara cte ri zed b y decreased d ensity, easy accommodation of the automo -
bil e, and public realm s characteri zed by ex ten sive vegetation . In thi s hori l.Ontal
fidd of urba ni za tion , la ndscape ha s a newfound relevan ce, otfering a multi va-·
Ic nt and manifold mediulll for the making of urba n form , and in parti c uiall
in th e con tex t of complex natural cnvironlllents, p,,,t-indu strial s ites , and
publi c infrastructure.
The Lmulswpc Urbal1islII Reader ga thers essays from fourteen authors aeros>!
a range o f dis ciplines internationall y, to articul ate the origins and aspiration ~'
FIG.l "Territor~ for the New Economy," Andrea 8ranzi, Strijp Philip s, Eindhoven, The Net herlands, 1999-2000
of thi s burgeoning field of cultural product ion . It, and the "new language" it

INIR OOUClIUN : A IILI EREN[[ MANIITS TO Ot~


014 CHAR LES WAlDHEIM
put s f'".th, atte mpt to describe the rapidly changing context for landscape in social, and cultural shitts surrounding de-industriali "ation. Practi ces of lan dscape
discussions of the contt'mporary city. The emerging di scourse it documents urbani sm em erge as a useful framework in these contexts, most appropriatel y
speaks to the relative inadequacy of th e traditional disciplinary, professiunal, adopted for sites experienc ing the abandonment , toxicity, and social pathologies
and criti cal categori es to account for the renewed interest in landscape f()und in left in the wake of industry as it d eca mped for more favorable locations.
the work of many architects, landscape archit ects, and urbani sts over the past Grah a me Shane extends thi s lint' of inquiry rela ting the decentralization of
several years. T his collection assemhles a variety of essays look ing back to the very industr y to contemporar y interests in landscape urbanism. In his essay, Sha ne
recent past and, through the shock of fashion, to th e advantage of a new ohject, surveys the growing body of literature attendant to landscape urbani sm, whi le
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a new language. tracing the institutions and individuals implicated in its discourse, especially as
The formulation of a "refere nce manifesto" at once proclaims an em e rgellt •
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I they relate to the disciplinary formations and discourses of urban design. Ri chard
moment of cultural production and traces its etymology, genealogy, and critical We ller's essay, "An Art of Instrument,liity," surveys co ntemporar y land scape prac-
commitments. The phrase produces an int erestin g double -bind, demanding that
t ti ce in relation to de- industri alization, in frastructure, and the rapidly expand -
thi s volume describe emergent conditions hefore they fully clarify themselves
while simu ltaneous ly doc umenting their various sources and referents. These
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ing commodifi cation of the traditional urban realm. From this vantage point he
cit es Corner and the work of others in conceptualizing landscape urbanism as a
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dual aspirations place the book in a curious c ritical position, necessitatin g new
modes of description, new forms of scholarship, Ilew models of discourse. Th e •I practice providing newfound relationships between landsca pe archit ecture and
oth er professional and disciplinary mod es of urhanization, including civil engi -
anthology I(mn thi s puhlication adopts, an often undervalued '"mnat, art,mi s t neering, real estate deve lopm ent, and the desi gn protCssions.
space for Cl range of divergent voices while at the same time t(lCusing those crit - i With " Vision in Motion : Represe nting Land scape in Time," C hristoph e (;irot
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ical energies on a collec ti ve object of study. It pres up poses a varied and in sOllle
cases incongruous set of contributors, from a spectrum of disciplinary and schol-

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sei zes upon th e temporality, subject ivit y, and centrality of vislI<l1 images in the
landscape m ed ium to argue for new modes of representation, particu larly time -
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arly backgrounds. Some arc established scholars, others emerging voices. All have + based media in apprehending the suhje"'s of land scape urbani sm . Girot's theo -
found the discourse surrou ndin g landscape urbanism to be signifi Cililt to their ! retica l reflections derive from his own teach in g and research on the role 01" video
own work, and have devoted considerable tim e ,lild energy to the articulation of
its potential s in thi s coll ec tion . The eSS:l ys collected here, and the projects and
t: in capturing the sub jec ts 01" urban lanti scape, particularly over time. Julia
Czerniak uscs th e framework of landscape urbanism to inform her reading of
propositions the y po in t to, provid e clear evidenc e o f landsc:lpe's invo cat ion t, th e topic of "site" across disciplinary, professional, and generational boundaries.
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as a medium thro ugh which the contemporar y city might be apprehended and Her essay "I.ooking Back at Land sca pe Urbanis m : Specul:ltions on Site," while
implyin g that the landscape urbanist moment has passed, prompt s read ers to
intervened upon .
In hi s essay "Terra l'Iuxus," James Corner describes the intellectual and prac-
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L, consid e r the complex conceptual apparatus that is the site ',n a design project,
ti ca l underpinnings of the la nd sc ape urbanist agenda , framing the recent •i
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referencing the available li terature of recent notions of site and proposing a
renewal of int erest in landscape within the hi storical disciplinary f(Hlllations of ren ewed relevance fo r questions of si te in relation to urbani zation anti land -
architectu re, urban design, and planning. Corner's proposal put s '"Hth four inter-
practi cal themes from wh ich to o rgani ze the emerging landscape urbanist prac -
t
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scape practice. Linda Pollak conti nu es this interest in the essentia l or fu ndamen-
t al precepts of ur ban landscape wo rk wit h her essay "C onstructed Ground:
tice: ecological and urban processes over time, the staging of horizontal surL,crs, t Question s of Scale," whi ch examin es Ilcnri Lefebvre's ana lysis of nested sca les of
th e ope rationa l or worki ng method, and th e imaginar y. H e argues that o nl y space to inf""'m her reading of several contemporary urban landscapes relative
through the imaginative reordering of th e design disciplines and their objects of +i
L to their social and scalar dimension s.
study might we have sOllle potential trac tion on th e f"H1nation of the contem - With her essay " Place as Resistance: I.andscape Urbanism in Europe," Kell y
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porary city. Following Corner, my essay " Landscape as Urhanism" focuses on th e Shannon chronicles the rise of lands cape urbanism in European lan dscape
discourses surrounding landscape and urhanism ovcr the past quarter-century, practice, parti cularl y as a mechanism for resisting the commodification of urban
construc ting a lineage for the e mergent practice beginning with the restructur- ti form. Based on Kenneth Prampton's interest in land scape as a medium of res ist -
an ce to placeless urbanization, Shannon's essay traCt' S the evolution of Kenneth
ing of the industrial economy in the West, th e rise of postmodernislll, and th e
ongoing transformation of the industrial city through flex ibl e production and
• hampton's interests in a regionali sm of resi stance, first through architectoni c
consumption, global capita l, and decentralization. Il ere, landscape urbanist ten-
d encies e merge within the discourse of architects in response to the economi c,
1 form, and more recen tly through the land scape medium. The essay cites numer-
ellIS contemporar y European examples o( landscape design offering a specific

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01 6 [ HARLES WAL DH EI M + I NTRU UUCTl ON : A RCH RE N CF MAN IH STO 0 17

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regional id entity in the face of ongoing urbanization. Eli zabeth MossoI' extends asp irin g to descr ibe, delineate, and design th e contemporary cit y. The book
the co nversa ti on of landscape in rdation to urban infrastructure with an anal y- records the subtle sh ifts and sharp shocks of a deep. ongoing, disciI'I i nary hreak-
s is of the various rclat ion sh ips available between t he two. Not ing exa mples from down, in t~lVor of a new object, a ne w langwlgc.
Europe, North Aln~riGl, Australia, and Asia. Mossop <lsscmblcs a convincing array
of precedents in support of the notion that practices of 1<lIHlscape urbanism arc
most evident in relations between the horizontal ecological field and the net- Notes
works of infrastructure that urbanize theill. Extending th e theme of urban infi-a - Fpig,nlJl/I. RO\;1Ild Barthcs. "hom \!\'ork to Tcxt," Ill/(/y,c ,\111., j( 'Ii'XI, trans. Stephen Heath (New
structure, j'lcquciine Tatolll chronicles the hi story and future of the urban York: Ilill ;1IlL! \tVi\ng, llJ77), 155.
highway as a locus of landsca)Je )Jractice. Citing a range of historical cases li'olll
the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, 'l'ltOIll folds more contempora ry inter-
ests in the int eg ration of highways into the l'lhric of cities, espec iall y as soci'll,
ecological , and ultimately cultura l artifacts.
Ala n Berger, in his essay " I>rosscape," advances it con ce ptual and analytical
framework for coming to terms with the e normous territories left aba ndo ned in
the wake of d c -indu s tri a li zation. Theorizing these s it es as p<Ht of a hroader
econolllY of waste, Bl'I"ger advocates landscape urbanism as an inter-practical
framework for approa ching the appropriation of territories left in the wake of
industrial abandonment. With "I.a ndscapes of Exchange: Re-articulating Site,"
Clare Lyster describes th e changing scale of economi c activity as one basis for a
model of urban l'lI'I11 and an explanation for contemporary interest in landscape
urbanism. Following from several historical examples of urban I,'rm, l.yster locates
the operational dnd logistical imperatives ofjust - in -timc production and other
cOlltclnporar y paradigms for post-industrial CO 111 111 cree as analogs fur horizon-
tal landscapes of exchange. Pierre Ill-Ianger continucs this interest in the surt'lCes
of con tcmporary commerce and offers an hi storica l inquiry into the develop-
m e nt of No rth America's la nd scape of paved surfaces. BClan ge r chronicles the
tech ni ca l and so cial milestones in th e unrele nting ons laught of aspha lt across
tile continent , from hi ghways and ports to inter-modal tran sit hubs and foreign
trad e zones, in th e 'll aking of a horizontal network of urbanized surfaces. The
collection concludcs with Chris Reed's meditations on the changing conditions
f"r public works practice in North America. Citing a nlllgc of public projects li'olll
the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Reed descrih es th e role of landscape
urbanist pra ctices as an analog to the organizational, politica l, and procedural
conditions through which public projects are conce ived and co mmissioned.
Taken (ogether, these essays describe the positions, practi ces, a nd projec-
ti ve potentials of la ndscape urbanism. Equally, the y art iculate the expanding
international re levance of wha t ca n no w be und erstood as the s in g le 111 0s t
s ignifican t sh ift in the design disciplines' description s of the cit y in th e past •
quarter centur y.
rile l.al1dS(tlp ~ Url",n;S11I Reader assembles the fullest accou nt to date of the •I
origins, affinities, aspirations, and applications of this "Illerging body of
knowledge, In so doing, it chro nicles the shifting attention s of those disciplines

Olfl CHARI_ES WALOH EIM


INTROOUC110N , A REFERENCE MANIFESTO 019

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