The American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA) Northern California Chapter recently hosted a series of speakers to present on the topic of Landscape Urbanism at the AIA in San Francisco, CA. James Stickley, ASLA, LEED®AP of WRT, along with three others, each spoke on the evolving practice of landscape architecture and urban design, as well as the ways in which both theory and practice have shifted over the last few decades.
“What is landscape urbanism?” Jim asks in the introduction to his lecture. “Is it the shaping of the urban landscape with an integrated landscape framework? Or, is it what we’ve always done as landscape architects?” He answers each query with a firm and resolute “it is both.”
Stickley goes on to speak about how the fundamental principles driving the agenda of landscape architects and designers—the values, the systems, the processes, the goals—have been largely the same throughout our history as landscape architects. Today, however, with more attention and focus being directed back at our metropolitan centers, the paradigm has somewhat shifted, with practitioners in the industry increasingly having to address larger-scale projects situated in denser, grittier and more urban settings. And the real question that we as professionals need to answer is not What’s driving the practice? But rather Do our projects measure up? Do they perform how we say they are going to perform? And Does this performance of the landscape change at different scales?
By working across a variety of different scales, the ideals of Landscape Urbanism, Stickley points out, are optimized—allowing for broad policies and frameworks to be set at the larger, macro scale of a given project, and giving more validity and effectiveness to landscape systems as they play out at the smaller, yet not less important, district and site scales. In support of this multi-scale and integrated approach to thinking about the urban landscape, three WRT projects were showcased, offering case study examples of working successfully at each of the three scales: Brisbane Baylands, San Francisco State Master Plan, and the Richmond Civic Center respectively.
In the end, Stickley emphasizes that landscape architects need to see themselves as leaders in the movement of Landscape Urbanism, and as key players in shaping the new urban landscape. What they should not do is get caught up in the competitive argument currently taking place in the industry as to which profession has the most control of urbanism. “We need to see ourselves as vital collaborators with the other allied disciplines,” Stickley says, “with all of us shaping the urban landscape together—each with valuable perspectives, knowledge, skills and contributions to make.”
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See Jim’s lecture online:
