Landscapes: Selected Writings

by J.B. Jackson, Ervin H. Zube (Editor)

The author views landscaping as an expression of a way of life. This collection of essays is written for the general reader and features articles without footnotes. The subject matter ranges from disquisitions on ordinary houses, yards, farms, and farmsteads to notes on ecology and from the impact of automobile use, mobile homes, shopping centers, and rural and urban planning to philosophical arguments about the meaning of human space and arguments for and against preservation.

Genres: Nonfiction, Landscape Architecture, Geography, Urban Studies

168 pages, Paperback

First published June 1, 1970

About the author

John Brinckerhoff "Brinck" Jackson, J. B. Jackson, (September 25, 1909, Dinard, France - August 28, 1996, La Cienega, NM) was a writer, publisher, instructor, and sketch artist in landscape design. Herbert Muschamp, New York Times architecture critic, stated that J. B. Jackson was “America’s greatest living writer on the forces that have shaped the land this nation occupies.” He was influential in broadening the perspective on the “vernacular” landscape.

Reviews

[Anna · Rating 3 out of 5]

In a way, I can see how J. B. Jackson caught the imagination of a generation of urban theorists and geographers. He has a sort of casual off-hand style that is at times witty and at times critical. After reading A Sense of Place, A Sense of Time and then this book, I do feel like I had gotten his whole agenda spelled over and over again in dozens of similar essays. This agenda is, in a way, very narrow an very dated. I was hoping that I might be able to glean some larger strategy on how to analyze landscape's relationship to human construction and culture, but the texts limit themselves to the use of anecdotal stories, mostly involving either pioneers or Native American tribes. This is perhaps one of the problems of studying "vernacular" architecture. What it does is set up a scenario in which the writer is analyzing a perceived "other" which is formulated as such from a very fixed and particular view point. This is perhaps also why a generation of urban planners(mostly bred out of UC Berkeley as I understand it) took his basic ideas and extrapolated them into very bad and unnuanced urbanism. The ideas in the book, no matter how much one wants them to, do not stretch beyond the particular scenarios upon which they are formulated.

I would be curious is anyone has a recommendation for a very good book on landscape urbanism or the relationship between the social and historical construction of landscapes.

[Michael Lewyn · Rating 4 out of 5]

A variety of short, (mostly) interesting essays describing various American places in the 1950s and 1960s- for example, a long essay comparing three generations of farmers, a comparison of a drab highway-oriented Main Street and a more successful street oriented towards a variety of users, and a description of a small western town. This book is mostly poetry rather than prose- by which I mean that its best essays seek to describe a certain place at a certain time, rather than to lay out facts or to argue for policies. The last few essays, which are more policy-oriented, are less impressive.

[Tito Quiling, Jr. · Rating 4 out of 5]

This collection of essays by J.B. Jackson is an interesting read because of its focus on vernacular architecture and landscape manipulation by the people who inhabit these towns, who live in a grid of streets, and walk by different establishments day after day. The innate relationship between humans and various landscapes definitely affects our worldview and how we move inside the space. Personally, it was a new take on my perception of rural and vernacular spaces.

Although some essays tend to become repetitive, his statements on how a place progress through time is somewhat accurate. Published in 1970, the articles inside coincide with the milieu when was written. Almost fifty years later, we are still dealing with the same problems: urban decay, the small-town mentality and the flight to more, modern areas.

[Tim · Rating 3 out of 5]

A pretty interesting collection of essays (published in 1970) about how we conceive of and manipulate the landscape, knowingly or otherwise, and how American attitudes towards and use of the landscape have developed and changed through our history.