WHAT’S IN YOUR 15-MINUTE LANDSCAPE?

In the lead up to the National Landscape Forum 2023, it’s time to get curious about our locales, urges Terry O’Regan.

In 1968, pop art leader Andy Warhol was credited with the prediction: “In the future, everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes.”

The quirky observation, coined not by Warhol but by others close to him, anticipated today’s social media phenomenon, whereby everyone might aspire to short-lived fame. Personally, I could give the glare of such fleeting publicity a miss. I do suggest, however, that ‘landscape’ –which enjoyed a brief place in the sun in the noughties – is once again in urgent need of some highprofile exposure.

I’m hoping that my ‘15-minute landscape’ proposition will help reenergise landscape-awareness and strategic action. The idea draws on the ‘15-minute city’ concept that has gained much traction recently (as well as criticism – sparked by covid lockdowns – that it’s a dystopian form of social control).

In fact the 15-minute city idea was first mooted in 2010 by Carlos Moreno, esteemed professor at the PanthéonSorbonne in Paris. It implies having all essential amenities/services within a short walk, bike ride, or public transit trip from one’s home. Unsurprisingly, the 15-minute city has caught the imagination of environmentalists across the globe. However, it’s not a particularly new idea. My own generation growing up in the towns and cities of 1950s Ireland will remember walking no more than 15 minutes to the butcher, the baker and the candlestick maker – as well as to most other trades, professions and public services. We walked and shopped often daily, because few had cars or refrigerators.

My 15-minute landscape concept is a more accessible version of A Guide to Undertaking a Landscape Circle Study, which I wrote and published in 2008 with the support of The Heritage Council.

This guide aimed to make the European Landscape Convention (ELC) of the Council of Europe – which opened for signature in 2000 – accessible for nonacademics or light academics like myself. (The ELC is the first international treaty to be exclusively devoted to all aspects of European landscape, and provides an integrated framework for landscape protection, planning and management.)

Your own 15-minute landscape is defined by a 15-minute walk from your home in all accessible compass directions. The invitation is that you ‘read’ the natural and cultural landscapes you traverse including trees, shrubs, flowers, birds, insects, buildings old and new, artefacts, curiosities, views and prospects, shopfronts, bridges, water courses, water bodies etc. You can record the landscape photographically or in rough sketches, and/or write your own narrative in prose, poetry, song or rap. You can even record four seasonal versions.

In the process, you will equip yourself with the landscape knowledge and language to engage with the National Landscape Strategy (NLS), the Irish government’s response to the ELC, launched in 2015.

Excellent Road Maps

Unlike the 15-minute city, the 15-minute landscape has little risk of being targeted by ‘conspiracy theorists’. Yet the many active citizens who engaged with the process that resulted in the NLS in 2015, concerned with the subsequent lack of progress, could be forgiven for suspecting a conspiracy.

Much of the blame for planning and development delays seems to be directed at concerned citizens’ challenges to the planning process. However, the blame may in fact lie with the failure of successive administrations to build a robust, adequately resourced, integrated planning infrastructure based on research, enforced regulation, best practice identification, and citizen involvement throughout the process – not merely in desperate rear-guard action.

This is the kind of well-rounded planning process with regard to holistic landscape that the ELC/NLS are intended to deliver. They are not magic potions, just excellent road maps demanding sustained hard work involving all players. Not only will such work incrementally deliver a healthier cultural/natural landscape; it will also achieve a more streamlined planning process, with resultant savings.

Loving Our Landscape

We in Ireland have been very adept at commodifying landscape as a leisure/tourism product, best epitomised by the ‘Wild Atlantic Way’ and its offspring. But successful landscape commodification involves landscape ‘wear and tear’. This heightens the need for active strategic landscape protection, management and planning.

Where the return might be less tangible than tourism income, our management of the wider urban/rural/upland/ coastal/water body landscape has been patchy at times.

Since the ELC came into force in 2004, the committed multidisciplinary work of most Council of Europe member states that underpins it has continued through regular workshops and conferences, including the ‘Third Meeting of the Workshops for the Implementation of the European Landscape Convention’, facilitated by Landscape Alliance Ireland in Cork, 2005.

Ireland’s National Landscape Strategy is central to our implementation of the ELC and compliance with relevant EU environmental directives. Yet this crucial high-level policy framework, whose aim is to support and protect the Irish landscape, appears to have stalled in 2018.

As part of the drive to remobilise around our landscape, I will launch the ‘15-Minute Landscape’ at this autumn’s National Landscape Forum. The launch will be one of some 30 wide-ranging presentations by international, national and local speakers, who together will give landscape a lot more than 15 minutes of fame. The quality of our shared landscape is decided by past actions and future plans – be they draft or in progress.

The 12th National Landscape Forum has the broad theme of ‘Landscape Past; Landscape Future’. ‘Landscape Present’ is excluded because today, change as never before characterises our landscape.

The pace of landscape change almost paralyses us. Even when we cry ‘stop and reflect,’ it’s often too late for effective corrective input. This, despite the fact that when managed creatively and sustainably, our natural/cultural landscape enriches our lives; whilst a degraded, ill-treated landscape inflicts harm on humans and all planetary biodiversity.

The few landscapes that have largely avoided rapid change include Waterford’s Mount Congreve House and Gardens, the site hosting National Landscape Forum 2023 on 28/29 September.

Whilst this gracious Georgian estate – a landscape of select privilege in its time and now a ‘living museum’ courtesy of state investment – might seem remote from our everyday landscapes, it illustrates, with its rich blend of nature, culture and peace, landscape characteristics to aspire to.

Even so, the landscape of Mount Congreve generated controversy in recent years, in association with the routing of the ‘new’ Waterford bypass, which makes this year’s forum venue a good starting point for a landscape strategy conversation!

My hope is that National Landscape Forum 2023 will witness the relaunch of a generously-resourced National Landscape Strategy, primed to deliver on all its aims and objectives. ✽

NATIONAL LANDSCAPE FORUM 2023 TAKES PLACE 28/29 SEPTEMBER IN MOUNT CONGREVE HOUSE, CO WATERFORD.

Convened by Landscape Alliance Ireland (LAI) in partnership with the local Waterford community, the forum brings together interested players/stakeholders to constructively explore landscape evolution, legislation and management in Ireland and Europe.

Focussing on successful best practice, and lessons from failed measures and missed opportunities, the National Landscape Forum aims to clearly identify the most effective and strategic way forward.

Presentations/discussions will consider how best to manage the landscape changes involved as we respond responsibly to climate change, carbon sequestration, biodiversity loss, water scarcity, cultural diversity, urban density, food security and more.

Waterford – with its sweeping mountains to the rivers/sea topography, urban/rural cultural landscapes, dynamic creativity, and experience of many landscape challenges – is the perfect setting for what promises to be a landmark forum.

The National Landscape Forum is dependent on funding to ensure access and diversity. As of mid-June, vital support had been committed by Bioregional Weaving Lab Waterford, Bord Bia, Waterford City and County Council, and MKO Planning & Environmental Consultants Galway. Check the LAI website (lai-ireland.com) for booking information and forum updates, or contact terryjoregan@gmail.com.