The Landscape Urbanism Reader

by Charles Waldheim (Editor)

With populations decentralizing and cities sprawling ever-outward, twenty-first-century urban planners are challenged by the need to organize not just people but space itself. Hence a new architectural discourse has landscape urbanism. In The Landscape Urbanism Reader Charles Waldheim who is at the forefront of this new movement has assembled the definitive collection of essays by many of the field's top practitioners. Fourteen essays written by leading figures across a range of disciplines and from around the world including James Corner, Linda Pollak, Alan Berger, Pierre B langer, Julia Czerniak, and more capture the origins, the contemporary milieu, and the aspirations of this relatively new field. The Landscape Urbanism Reader is an inspiring signal to the future of city making as well as an indispensable reference for students, teachers, architects, and urban planners.

Genres: Landscape Architecture, Architecture, Urbanism, Nonfiction, Reference, Urban Planning, Urban

295 pages, Paperback

First published June 8, 2006

Reviews

[Anna · Rating 4 out of 5]

Landscape Urbanism Bullshit Generator. Genius.

http://www.ruderal.com/bullshit/bulls...

[Christopher Sutch · Rating 3 out of 5]

While there are a lot of very good and thoughtful essays in this anthology (not really a "reader" per se), there are far too many (literally) unreadable pieces here. I appreciated the attempts to reposition and rethink sectors of the urban landscape in fresh and original ways: highways, abandoned/de-industrialized buildings, public utilities and even the internet were all in need of some reconsideration 20 years ago. Now, of course, this kind of planning has made great strides and inroads into contemporary design practice.

The problem with this collection, though, is some _very_ clunky writing. Just because you are in the academy (or, possibly, in design) shouldn't preclude the possibility of clear, concise and well-organized writing. Several of the writers featured here can't construct a paragraph (there is one paragraph that consists of a single sentence), and frequently don't seem to understand the purpose behind section headers (if you title every single paragraph in your essay, you are essentially conveying _no_ information at all; you might as well leave them untitled, it would amount to the same thing). And although I have been known to appreciate a good deconstructive reading, Julie Czerkiak's essay here is a masterpiece of refusing to take a practical, political, or concrete stand on _any_ issue related to her work; it's just that kind of thinking that leads directly to "fake news" and "alternative facts." Also: landscapes don't have "agendas," they just _are._ Humans have agendas that get worked through in landscapes.

[Gede Suprayoga · Rating 2 out of 5]

When urbanism tends to move away from the landscape perspective, this book takes a serious effort to bring it back. This effort is not only rewarding in term of opportunities to solve current problems through urban designs and planning, but also giving hopes that we can restore nature and human relationships to harmonious directions.

[Margaret]

C. Waldheim spoke at UBC in Fall 2012