Neeco

“Sure enough, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has a botanical aspect. Actions such as planting, uprooting, preferring one species over the other and even nature-protection laws reflect the conflict and impact on it. Perhaps the most notable of these actions is the massive foresting of lands nationalised by the state of Israel in the 1950s, previously belonging to Palestinians who fled or were forced out of their villages during the 1948 war. This transformed large parts of the country into coniferous forests, comprising mainly pines. The main objectives of this foresting action were political-tactical (obtaining control over the land) and economic (forestry as a work-fare programme for incoming Jewish immigrants). At the same time it was an act of erasing the previous landscape, with all its cultural meaning, and introducing a new monoculture landscape that was mean to represent the "melting pot" of the newly founded state. (34)”
― B. Cannon Ivers, 250 Things a Landscape Architect Should Know

“Certain forms of knowledge and control require a narrowing of vision. The great advantage of such tunnel vision is that it brings into sharp focus certain limited aspects of an otherwise far more complex and unwieldy reality. This very simplification, in turn, makes the phenomenon at the center of the field of vision more legible and hence more susceptible to careful measurement and calculation. Combined with similar observations, an overall, aggregate, synoptic view of a selective reality is achieved, making possible a high degree of schematic knowledge, control, and manipulation. (11)”
― James C. Scott, Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed

“Do you have the courage? Do you have the courage to bring forth this work? The treasures that are hidden inside you are hoping you will say yes. (?, Jack Gilbert)”
― Elizabeth Gilbert

“For centuries philosophers and scientists have discussed this most pressing of questions: are humans part of nature - or are we above or beside (or indeed beneath) it? One of the most important things a landscape architect must know is that humans are not only part of nature - we are nature. This insight is at once the simplest and also the most startling and disturbing insight that Modernity can imagine. If humans are nature, that means we must completely reconfigure the way we think about our presence in the world. Gone are the days when humans could subjugate nature in our attempts to reshape the world in our own image. Instead we must realize that we are here on this planet on equal terms with trees, plants, animals, jellyfish and mountains - an ethical knowledge that we must treat everything on Earth (the whole system of which we are part) in a decent way. We must take this knowledge seriously and make landscapes, cities and societies such as we have never seen before. (4, Stig L. Andersson)”
― B. Cannon Ivers, 250 Things a Landscape Architect Should Know