The AA Landscape Urbanism programme set a
2018-2019 agenda in partnership with the New
Economics Foundation, conducting an inquiry
about the potential role a landscape urbanist can
play in the contemporary UK.
In the South Wales Valleys, draining coal in the past
gave rise to an extractive system that fuelled Britain
for decades. Their closure in the 1980s transitioned
the towns to the current highest deprivation levels
in the country. Beyond the national boundaries,
the project looks at how the energy transition
apparatus of the UK impacts the way consequential
landscapes are instrumentalised globally and
how this “greening” veil of Just Transition hides
the continuation of business as usual in resource
extractions in the Global South.
Back in Wales, the Just Transition framework is
interrogated and re-thought through a community
forestry model in the Valleys, where the challenging
of environmental forestry conservations empowers
local voices, re-designing a new relationship with
their landscape commons.
