Broderick_Submission#2_January2010 by Andrew Broderick

EVALUATING LANDSCAPE URBANISM AND THE SUSTAINABLE PARK MODEL Andrew J. Broderick November 23, 2009 UP 519: Urban Design Theory Profs. Larsen and Bekkering

June the High Line Park opened in Manhattan’s Chelsea neighborhood. This project, which may be the most high-profile park design in North America this decade, garnered a lot of popular press

attention and academic praise. In its previous life, the High Line was an elevated freight train railway on Manhattan’s Lower Westside that paralleled the Hudson River from Gansevoort Street to 30th Street. The line was abandoned in 1980. In 1999 a grassroots, citizen-led initiative aptly named “Friends of the Highline,” founded by Joshua David and Robert Hammond, envisioned turning the defunct elevated rail line into a post-industrial “midair oasis” featuring a vegetated recreational pedestrian path constructed over the railroad (Ouroussoff, 2009). A decade after the plan’s inception, the park is, on one level, a welcomed green space intervention for public use, and, on another level, a major statement about the future of recreational and ecological green space design in post-industrial America. It presents a drastically different approach to park design and planning than older, nearby parks such as Paley and Central Parks. This new park planning and design approach is the subject of this paper as it attempts to define and cross-analyze two current transformative paradigms in landscape planning and design – the Landscape Urbanism Movement and Cranz and Boland’s Urban Sustainable Park Model. Both of these movements claim the High Line Park as their own. This paper will

Image 1: The High Line Park in Manhattan’s Chelsea neighborhood at twilight looking south towards downtown. The park is the result of a ten year planning effort that resuscitated a defunct industrail elevated railway by turning it into a pedestrain greenway.

compare these paradigms to see how they relate and where they diverge. First, seminal literature of the Landscape Urbanism Movement will be synthesized to form an essential list of the Movement’s core tenets. Second, Cranz and Boland’s Sustainable Park Model will be analyzed in comparison to the Landscape Urbanism Movement. Throughout the paper, built project examples will be incorporated that aid in the understanding of the two paradigms. Finally, conclusions will be drawn that will serve two purposes: clarify the relation between the two paradigms and critique how these two paradigms can guide landscape planning and design in the

future. While there are several major underpinning themes that these paradigms share, they diverge in certain ways that highlight the short-comings of each other. Taken together they form the foundation of a compelling physical design vision capable of guiding future sustainability and social equity decisions that affect the built environment.

Tenets of the Landscape Urbanism Movement Landscape Urbanism is a multidisciplinary design movement that began in the late 1990s and has influences ranging from geographer Ian McHarg’s 1969 Design with Nature book to Rem Koolhaas’ competition entry for Parc de La Villette in 1982 (Shane, 2006). Guided by two key academic landscape architects, James Corner of Penn and Charles Waldheim of Harvard, the movement largely stems from the traditional mold of landscape architecture, but seeks to transcend the limits of that profession by refocusing on a broader spectrum of issues facing the built environment. Corner (2006) contends that the movement is a “more promising, more radical, and a more creative form of practice than that defined by rigid disciplinary categorizations.” Constructing an essential list of Landscape Urbanism’s main characteristics is difficult as it consists of a broad spectrum Image 2: Pedestrians walk on the High Line Park. The park uses a striated pattern of regional vegetation and impervious concrete pavers. The project, which embraces its post-industrial status, is an example of both the Landscape Urbanism Movement and the Sustainable Park Model.

of fields including ecology, engineering, landscape design, and urban planning/design. However, one guiding rule is supreme:

landscape (not architecture) is the primary element of urban order (Waldheim, 2006). In this way, the movement is focused on “the field, the plane, the horizontal surface” and guided by four distinct tenets: the combinations of urban processes, the staging of horizontal surfaces, and the speculative, imaginary vision (Corner, 2006; Waldheim, 2006). In a broad stroke, both Corner and Waldheim focus on the prefix “inter,” as in inter-relation and interdisciplinary, in describing Landscape Urbanism. While this characteristic informs all four tenets, it is most important in explaining the combination of urban processes over time. Corner (2006) proposes a shift away from object based design to a distributional systems approach. Harnessing dynamic relations between ecology, engineering, and design is Landscape Urbanism’s approach to addressing current environmental problems in the built environmental such as urban heat islands, air and water pollution, flash flooding, the destruction

of natural habitat, and toxic soils. Corner (2006) summarizes it best: “the promise of landscape urbanism is the development of a space-time ecology that treats all forces and agents working in the urban field and considers them as continuous networks of interrelationships.” One example that best illustrates this idea is the Fresh Kills Lifescape on Staten Island, New York, designed by Corner and his firm, Field Operations. This large scale project uses landscape as a medium to transform the world’s largest landfill into a diverse inhabitable green open space that provides natural habitat and recreation while combating a diverse set of environmental concerns ranging from toxic soils to bird migration. A water network system, protected wooded

Image 3: The Fresh Kills Lifescape site overlay diagram. This diagram illustrates the multiple systems at work on the site.

habitat, and an erosion control system all perform functions that dictate the project’s design, which is organized into three key components: threads, islands, and mats (Corner, 2005). The complex and diverse interweaving of ecological, cultural, and infrastructural layers make this project a hallmark of Landscape Urbanism. A second tenet of Landscape Urbanism is the staging of horizontal surfaces. This characteristic is concerned with the merging of landscape and built form. Corner (2006) explains: “…urban infrastructure sows the seeds of future possibility, staging the ground for both uncertainty and promise...emphasizing means over ends and operational logic over compositional design.” In this way, landscape’s potential is fully realized as an openended system that can rapidly adapt to change. As people (or other animals) shift from one locale to another, the surface trajectory shifts to record and re-record a variety of cultural and environmental events. This shift demands a withdrawal from permanent object constructs towards “a choreography of elements and materials in time that extend new networks, new linkages, and new opportunities” (Corner, 2006). For example, the gridded

system of streets is an abstract ordering of the surface that allows of autonomy and remains open to alternative permutations over time (Koolhaas, 1994). One built project that embodies this notion is the Erie Street Plaza in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, designed by Chris Reed and his firm, SToSS Landscape Urbanism. The riverside plaza, which is considerably smaller than the Fresh Kills Lifescape project, is a flexible surface that serves both recreational and environmental functions. The plazaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s surface is a duality between variegated striations of regional vegetation and permeable concrete pavers that, taken together, enable a multitude of functions to take place over different times of year. According to Reedâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s website (stoss.net), the surface is designed to accommodate large gatherings like art festivals as well as everyday activities like boat-watching. It also serves as a storm water collection system that collects run-off and filters it through a reconstituted marsh/ wetland. Another example is Weiss and Manfrediâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Olympic Sculpture Park in Seattle, Washington, which features an integrated, continuous topographical ramped surface linking plazas, art sculptures, amphitheaters, and the shoreline. It is built on reclaimed, remediated land atop an industrial Image 4,5: The Erie Street Plaza site plan (above) and rendering perspective (below) looking towards the river confluence in Milwaukee, WI.

railway, and it incorporates terraced rain gardens that help control storm water run-

off. As these examples illustrate, the dual-purposing and planned flexibility of the horizontal surface is a quintessential Landscape Urbanism feature. Landscape Urbanism has the ability to shift scales and built typologies. It reaches beyond parks and plazas to enhance city-making through infrastructure and neighborhood design. Its implicit advantage is in its

ability to address the built environment at wide-ranging scope and scales. SToSS Landscape Urbanism, for example, designed a half-acre children’s playground as well as a 100 acre neighborhood urban design project along Toronto’s waterfront that combines mixed use mid-rise buildings and natural habitat to form an urban estuary (Burga, 2008). Dutch landscape firm West 8, for example, designed a coastal protection barrier (the ‘Shell’ Project) that is neither park nor plaza, but a creatively designed infrastructure element (Waldheim, 2006). These examples as well as the earlier Erie Street Plaza and Fresh Kills Lifescape projects challenge the contemporary practice of design by pushing the envelope on the role that design plays in shaping our collective built environment. They are formed by a progressive, imaginative, and creative process that yields results on a multitude of scales and project Image 6,7: The Lower Dons Land waterfront redevelopment proposal in Toronto. The bird’s eye perspective (above) shows the wide expanse of the project while the perspective (below) shows the multi-functional natural habit and recreational area.

types ranging from half acre playgrounds to entire neighborhoods. Landscape Urban-

ism harnesses the imaginary as motivation for the creative endeavor (Corner, 2006). This tenet is appropriately listed fourth as it demands that each of the previous three tenets speculate on new possibilities in order to form a new idiom for expression based first on process and, second, on aesthetic. This new paradigm claims a broad range of contemporary design efforts. If it claims to operate at the confluence of fields as wide ranging as landscape architecture and social policy (Waldheim, 2006), then where does one draw the line? What are its limits? Is it an umbrella design movement that includes other new ideas in the realm of landscape and urban design?

Cranz and Boland’s Sustainable Park Model One way to test the boundaries of the Landscape Urbanism movement is to compare it to another paradigm of landscape architecture. Dr. Galen Cranz, a sociologist at the University of Chicago, and landscape architect Michael Boland suggest that a new type of park is emerging: the Sustainable Park. This model is very closely related to Landscape Urbanism, but, surprisingly enough, the two paradigms don’t reference one another despite having several built project examples such as the High Line Park in common. As will later be explained, it is by no coincidence that these paradigms substantially overlap each other. This section will first elaborate on the defining characteristics of the Sustainable Park Model, and then it will explain why it is essentially a component within Landscape Urbanism. Finally, lessons that the Sustainable Park Model has for the larger Landscape Urbanism Movement will be explained. Cranz and Boland (2004) suggest that there have been four major park typologies since the first public parks were built in the late 19th century that categorically define the evolutionary history of park planning in America (see appendix ‘A’). At the beginning of the new millennium a fifth model of urban park – the Sustainable Park – emerged to address contemporary urban ecological and social problems. This model focuses on addressing multiple urban problems at once, and bears a lot of similarities to Landscape Urbanism. This park is based on three central characteristics: integration with the larger urban system beyond the park, material and maintenance resource self-sufficiency, and has a new aesthetic expression (Cranz and Boland, 2004). Cranz and Boland’s model focuses on integrating the park with the larger urban system (2004). They identified many new parks that address four common problems: infrastructure, reclamation, health, and social well-being. The first two characteristics parallel the Landscape Urbanism literature as integral elements of the horizontal surface. In this light, Sustainable Parks and Landscape Urbanism are closely related. However, the Sustainable Park Model goes one step further by explicitly addressing social well-being, health, and education issues whereas it is only implied in the Landscape Urbanism literature. Cranz and Boland (2004) explain: “What is distinctive about the Sustainable Park is that it might be used to improve and maintain physical and psychological health even more directly than has been traditional in the U.S.” This characteristic lacks built examples, but it is a normative claim that seeks to challenge contemporary landscape practice. In this way, it relates to the ambitious aims of Landscape Urbanism, which would be well-served by exploring the potentials suggested by Cranz and Boland. Additionally, Cranz and Boland suggest that the new model plays a didactic role in improving the qual-

ity of life of people (2004). Using the landscape to teach ecology and expose the public directly to new ways of seeing and understanding nature is of primary importance. Signage and educational wayside are two ways that explain natural processes at work (Cranz and Boland, 2004). While Corner and Waldheim don’t explicitly address the didactic role Landscape Urbanism plays, they imply that this is an important element as evidenced by the educational ecology hiking trails in the Fresh Kills Lifescape. In general, Cranz and Boland’s model more directly deals with social issues than Landscape Urbanism. Cranz and Boland’s park model focuses on resource self-sufficiency, which fits within the inter-relation of ecology and urban systems idea. This characteristic embraces the use of plant types and maintenance techniques that require little resources to sustain (2004). In this way, the Sustainable Park focuses on ecological performance. Using native or appropriate exotic plant types to prohibit run-off and erosion; utilizing on-site composting as a way to recycle vital nutrients; and designing water management systems that manage storm water are a few specific examples. Beyond ecological systems, Cranz and Boland argue that the Sustainable Park must also be culturally and socially viable. They suggest that public private partnerships such as park conservancies or stewardship programs be formed to enable direct community involvement with park issues (2004). The third major principle of the Sustainable Park Model is the formation of a new aesthetic expression. This quality is a meshing of what Corner calls the “imaginary” and “performative urbanism.” Cranz and Boland (2004) call for a new form of park where the style is determined by the functions it performs – an “evolutionary aesthetic.” In fact, Cranz and Boland suggest that this new type of park “may serve as a model for other urban landscapes, private gardens, and ultimately, the city itself” (2004). This statement parallels Waldheim’s claim that “landscape has supplanted architecture’s role as the medium most capable of ordering contemporary urbanism” (2006). Cranz and Boland continue to explain that the “evolutionary aesthetic” is one that is installed in multiple steps over time. They also use the Fresh Kills Lifescape as an example of this principle. After comparing the Sustainable Park Model to the Landscape Urbanism Movement (as summarized in Table 1), it is clear to see that the two paradigms are very similar. It can best be ascertained that Cranz and Boland’s model is essentially a more socially-directed as well as ecologically driven subset focused mostly on parks that fits within the broader scope of Landscape Urbanism. What forces are at play that inform these two paradigms and shape their related visions? How can one improve the other?

Table 1: Matrix comparing the Landscape Urbanism Movement and the Sustainable Park Model

Sustainable Park Model

Landscape Urbanism Movement First Tier Characteristics

An integrated part of the larger urban system

Ecological and urban processes over time

Resource selfͲsufficiency

The staging of horizontal surfaces

New modes of aesthetic expression

the ability to shift scales; typological versatility The imaginary (push the envelope) Second Tier Characteristics

Promote physical and psychological health

Indirectly promotes physical and psychological wellͲbeing

Increase social wellͲbeing Didactic role Ͳ educate public about nature Improve quality of life by mitigating conflicts between adjacent land uses Scope Parks and Plazas

Parks and Plazas Neighborhoods Urban Infrastructure (highways, storm barriers, etc) Common Denomonaters Embrace the rise in environmentalism and demand for recreational landscapes Operate largely on postͲindustrial sites

Common Influences, Critiques, and the Future Towards the latter half of the 20th century two major forces influenced both the Landscape Urbanism Movement and the Sustainable Parks Model: the increase in regional ecology planning as evidenced in the work of Ian McHarg and Kevin Lynch and the rise in demand for tourist recreational landscapes that seek to reimage post-industrial urban centers. Both of these forces help to shift the professional focus of both landscape architects and urban designers. The Landscape Urbanism Movement, as previously outlined, addresses both of these forces by inter-mixing a multitude of processes over space and time. Similarly, the Sustainable Park Model focuses on infusing ecological functions with recreational pursuits, but it also seeks to address some social welfare and equity aspects that are, at best, only implied in the literature of Landscape Urbanism and, at worst, are missing completely. This is one area where the Sustainable Parks Model can add to the larger Landscape Urbanism Movement. More specifically, Landscape Urbanism needs to develop an ethical tenet that needs to not only address ecological concerns but also issues of social welfare and equity. The urban planning and policy arm of Landscape Urbanism should seek to address social equity policy

strategies ranging from issues such as open-space planning in “excluded ghettos” (Marcuse and Van Kempen, 2000) to revising urban land-use requirements for food production. Through theses means Landscape Urbanism can truly embrace its poly-professional status and reach beyond the knowledge limits of its landscape architecture origins to answer its goal of “offering coherent, competent, and convincing explanations of contemporary urban conditions” (Waldheim 2006). Finally, cultural sociologist David Harvey (1996) offers this warning: the challenge to designers and planners is not simply a challenge of spatial form, which both Modernist and New Urbanist paradigms posit, but rather a “more socially just, politically emancipatory mix of spatio-temporal production processes…” Given Landscape Urbanism’s focus on the inter-relation of processes over time it should consider addressing social equity goals more directly so it doesn’t become a one-sided approach to addressing urban issues. Incorporating the social aims suggested by Cranz and Boland is just the first step of many in guiding the future of the Landscape Urbanism Movement. Future discourse and research is necessary to establish a fifth tenet of Landscape Urbanism that deals with social equity.

Appendix A: Cranz and Boland’s Five Park Models Including the Sustainable Park (2004):

Table 1. A Comparison of the Sustainable Park to Prior Park Types after Cranz (1982). Pleasure Ground 1850–1900

Reform Park 1900–1930

Recreation Facility 1930–1965

Open Space System 1965–?

Sustainable Park 1990–present

Social Goal

Public health & social reform

Social reform; children’s play; assimilation

Recreation service

Participation; revitalize city; stop riots

Human health; ecological health

Activities

Strolling, carriage racing, bike riding, picnics, rowing, classical music, non-didactic education

Supervised play, gymnastics, crafts, Americanization classes, dancing, plays & pageants

Active recreation: basketball, tennis, team sports, spectator sports, swimming

Psychic relief, free-form play, pop music, participatory arts

Strolling, hiking, biking, passive & active recreation, bird watching, education, stewardship

Size

Very Large, 1000+ acres

Small, city blocks

Small to medium, follow formulae

Varied, often small, irregular sites

Varied, emphasis on corridors

Relation to City

Set in contrast

Accepts urban patterns

Suburban

City is a work of art; network

Art-nature continuum; part of larger urban system; model for others

Order

Curvilinear

Rectilinear

Both

Evolutionary aesthetic

Elements

Woodland & meadow, curving paths, placid water bodies, rustic structures, limited ﬂoral displays

Sandlots, playgrounds, rectilinear paths, swimming pools, ﬁeld houses

Asphalt or grass play area, pools, rectilinear paths, standard play equipment

Trees, grass, shrubs, curving & rectilinear paths, water features for view, free-form play equipment

Native plants, permeable surfaces, ecological restoration green infrastructure, resource self-sufﬁciency

Promoters

Health reformers, transcendentalists, real estate interests

Social reformers, social workers, recreation workers

Politicians, bureaucrats, planners

Politicians, environmentalists, artists, designers

Environmentalists, local communities, volunteer groups, landscape architects

Beneﬁciaries

All city dwellers (intended), upper middle class (reality)

Children, immigrants, working class

Suburban families

Residents, workers, poor urban youth, middle class

Residents, wildlife, cities, planet

Image Credits Cover Olympic Sculpture Park, Seattle, WA; Designed by Weiss/Manfredi. source: Thun, G. (October 2009) Surfacing Lecture. Arch 589. TCAUP. U. of Michigan. 1

The High Line Park, Manhattan, NY; Photo by Iwan Baan, Friends of the High Line source: http://www.thehighline.org/galleries/images

The High Line Park, Manhattan, NY; Photo by Librado Romero, The New York Times source: http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2009/06/09/arts/20090609_HIGH_SLIDESHOW_3.html

Lifescape Diagram, Staten Island, NY; Fresh Kills Masterplan, James Corner, Field Operations source: http://www.nyc.gov/html/dcp/html/fkl/fkl_index.shtml

Erie Street Plaza, Milwaukee, WI; Competition Drawing, Chris Reed, SToSS Landscape Urbanism source: http://www.mkedcd.org/planning/EriePlaza/finalists.html

Lower Dons Land, Toronto, Canada; Competition Drawing, Chris Reed, SToSS Landscape Urbanism source: Burga (2008)

Works Cited Burga, H.F. (2008). River+City+Life: A Guide to Renewing Toronto’s Lower Don Lands by SToSS Landscape Urbanism. In Places, 20 (3). Retrieved November 15, 2009, from www.escholarship.org/uc/ item/0c881272 Corner, J. (2005). Lifescape. Competition Entry. Fresh Kills Park Draft Master Plan. New York City Department of City Planning. Retrieved from www.nyc.gov/html/dcp/html/fkl/fkl_index.shtml Corner, J. (2006). Terra Fluxus. In C. Waldheim (Ed.), The Landscape Urbanism Reader. (pp. 21-33). New York: Princeton Architectural Press. Cranz, G. and Boland, M. (2004). Defining the Sustainable Park: A Fifth Model for Urban Parks.” In Landscape Journal, 23:2-04. (pp.102-120). Madison, WI:Board of Regents University of Wisconsin System Harvey, D. (1996). Justice, Nature, and the Geography of Difference. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing. Koolhaas, R. (1994). Delirious New York (2nd Ed.). New York:Monacelli Press. Marcuse, P., & van Kempen, R. (Eds). (2000). Globalizing Cities: A New Spatial Order. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing. Ouroussoff, N. (2009, June 10). On High, a Fresh Outlook [electronic version]. The New York Times. Shane, G. (2006). The Emergence of Landscape Urbanism. In C. Waldheim (Ed.), The Landscape Urbanism Reader. (pp. 55-67). New York: Princeton Architectural Press. Waldheim, C. (2006). Landscape as Urbanism. In C. Waldheim (Ed.), The Landscape Urbanism Reader. (pp. 35-53). New York: Princeton Architectural Press.