Black Landscapes Matter

The recent publication of a book of essays by American landscape architect Professor Walter Hood has prompted a reflection on comparisons with the UK.

Sabina Mohideen

Sabina Mohideen worked as Events and Competitions Manager at the Landscape Institute and is currently Programme Manager at Design Council. Sabina writes in a personal capacity.

Diversity. Inclusion Underrepresented voices. All words and phrases I hear repeatedly to take into account, and somehow prove a commitment to, in a variety of contexts. I tick plenty of the boxes – female, Muslim, Asian immigrant – but even to me they sometimes feel like words that are invoked to the point of almost losing their meaning. The built environment sector is as insistent as any other on invoking diversity and inclusion, and it is hard not to become cynical about tokenism.

And then you encounter a place or a room or a group in which your marginalised status has been meaningfully taken into account. The response you have is visceral. And powerful. Wonder. Disbelief. Joy. Tears. Often all of these together. Suddenly you know what it is to have your personhood, and the experiences of your life, recognised and reflected back at you.

It is not that we cannot respond appreciatively to a built environment designed by a dominant straight, white, non-disabled aesthetic and mindset; of course, we can – in the same way that Black and Asian audiences can enjoy a period drama with a strictly white cast, or an LGBTQ+ audience can enjoy a history of romcoms featuring straight stories. The expertise and hard work that went into the creation is not in doubt. But it requires marginalised people to operate within a double existence, in which we are constantly adapting ourselves to what is around us without having access to what is consequential to our (significant) community. Nothing can adequately capture for people who have always had their existence, tastes and needs catered to, what it feels like for those who have not.

However, it is not just we, the marginalised, who edit. The collective editing that takes place at a wider structural and political scale, with the potentially more serious consequences for society, is illustrated by Kofi Boone in Enabling Connections to Empower Place, one of a collection of essays in the award-winning Black Landscapes Matter. Edited by Walter Hood and Grace Mitchell Tada, the book covers the critical contribution of Black people to shaping the American landscape, how their history and culture is being recognised and incorporated into landscapes now and the importance of doing so, along with case studies and photographs of Hood’s work, among others. The contributions come from academics and practitioners in the built environment sector, each telling their stories of the ways in which Black Landscapes Matter.

Seventh Street Gateway

© Landscape Institute

Grace Mitchell Tada

Professor Walter Hood

Kofi Boone, Professor of Landscape Architecture at NC State University, points out that “...we have an implicit professional bias toward not only European landscape, but privileged European landscapes. One can track European innovations in landscape architecture to their alternating dominance as colonial powers. In some ways, their landscape architecture contributions were funded and created through the domination of other peoples and landscapes. We marvel at the craft but edit the meanings and context…Celebrating the everyday landscapes for the nonpowerful and non-wealthy may send a different message about what landscape architecture may mean to diverse people. (1) ”

Elsewhere, in his essay Site of the Unseen, Austin Allen, Associate Professor of Practice at the University of Texas in Arlington’s School of Architecture and principal at Design Jones LLC, references writer Teju Cole’s wonder at the apparent lack of discomfort among white people at the homogeneity of their spaces, while examining the ways in which Black spaces are erased and are only able to live in nostalgia and memory. The disservice we all do to ourselves in not genuinely embedding diversity into our ways of working is all too clear. It is easy to regard Black Landscapes Matter as a book that caters exclusively to a North American audience. Indeed, many of the contexts and reflections do draw upon that very specific background, taking into account the history of slavery, agriculture, farming, segregation and even planning and legal frameworks, such as redlining, that may appear alien to a wider readership. I am neither American nor Black and have not lived in the USA, so I have probably quite a different experience of the complexity of this book and what it signifies. That does not mean, however, that I cannot see the relevance to our landscapes in general; we can use this work to develop an understanding, through this American context, of how our built environment can honour the past, present and future of minoritised communities. And through this honouring, we can vastly enrich our places as a whole.

Commemorating the people, the events and the activities (cultural, religious, political) that have shaped and influenced places, communities and even nations’ fortunes has long been accepted tradition. In Walter Hood’s practice, he moves beyond the men on horseback prevalent in western public spaces. In his Seventh Street Gateway project, pictures of people that “once populated Black family living rooms” (2) , graces a public art structure designed as a freeway exit sign. The people featured were advocated for by residents and provide a sense of ownership, allowing their heroes to be celebrated publicly.

Walter Hood presentation at the University of East London conference

© Landscape Institute

Commemoration, however, is not just for recognised heroes. The Witness Walls project creates sculpted friezes of events that took place during the civil rights movement in Nashville. People can walk among the friezes, for which the pictures were taken from historical photos, and place themselves in the centre of the events. What it also creates is an opportunity to honour events that were every day, and not just the “events and actions that occur at the extremes of human experience.” (3)

But is this enough to protect communities, especially in rapidly developing and often gentrifying cities? Lifeways gives examples of how we can draw on people’s diversity to enable the ways they live to flourish. The Rosa Parks neighbourhood masterplan project incorporates the cultural history of the neighbourhood to create a place which includes an art house, market, infrastructure trails, a sculpture garden, greenhouses and jobs. The combination of these elements creates the conditions to accommodate and build on evolving cultural practice and ways of living. Maurice Cox, takes this approach to a city-level. In A Tale of the Landscape, he describes his ethos as the City of Detroit’s Director of Planning and Development, which was to pay back those who had lived there, committed and with pride, during the city’s most challenging times. The approach was to democratise design “allowing new design and planning to emanate from the residents’ own values – and not ours as city officials and design professionals” 4 . Starting with a comprehensive engagement programme, Cox then details the process of converting the characteristics of a failed city from negative to positive by placing community identity and ownership at the heart of development strategy.

Ultimately, however, if we are to preserve a future for our communities that genuinely enables thriving in diversity, we must tackle systemic issues. Addressing the lack of diversity in our professions is a crucial measure. In Enabling Connections to Empower Place, Kofi Boone also ponders the ways in which we can centralise marginalised voices, an aim of the BLM movement. He connects long term success to “the professions charged with giving form to the places that enable these processes” (5) . He identifies the cost and length of education in built environment professions and the high levels of capital involved in developing our buildings and landscapes as barriers to success, and justice, that need tackling. In parallel with this, the importance of creating places that are resilient to a future of climate change impacts, political instability and growing inequality is consistently shown to be fundamental to an inclusive approach. The landscape profession is uniquely positioned to address crises around water, food, biodiversity, health and wellbeing, as well as creating the places in which, critically, people fight for their rights through protest and citizen action. Communities that are provided with these necessities are made resilient and the projects detailed throughout demonstrate consequent community empowerment.

In 2019, I was lucky enough to attend the University of East London’s conference, Just Landscape? Ethnicity, Diversity and Representation, organised by Senior Lecturer, Dr Bridget Snaith. The conference was a transformative and joyful experience. Those of us present had a common desire to learn about, and share experiences, of how we can design just environments that work for the diversity of society. From creating places that welcome refugees and asylum seekers to feminism in the landscape profession, the sessions provided an opportunity to understand where we are and where we go next to create an inclusive society. One of the speakers was Walter Hood himself, talking about his work – including some of the projects described in this book. My overwhelming memory of the day is being moved to tears by his achievements in listening, understanding, reflecting and celebrating Black communities’ culture and history in the USA. I could only imagine the joy of having these places in our everyday lives and not just in descriptions at conferences, and this book is a good guide for how to make that happen.

Black Landscapes Matter is edited by Walter Hood and Grace Mitchell Tada and is published by the University of Viginia Press.

References

1 Black Landscapes Matter pp70-71

2 Ibid p32