Neeco

“The world is moving into a phase when landscape design may well be recognized as the most comprehensive of the arts. The reasons for this are threefold: (a) the existing delicately balanced order of nature within the biosphere, or protective envelope of the planet, is being disturbed by the activities of man, and it seems that only his own exertions can restore a balance and ensure survival; (b) these exertions call first for ecosystems that are no more than a return to an efficient animal state of sustained existence; and (c) man's destiny being to rise above the animal state, he creates around him an environment that is a projection into nature of his abstract ideas.”
― Geoffrey Jellicoe, The Landscape of Man: Shaping the Enviroment From Prehistory to the Present Day

“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

“One kind of life-alienating communication is the use of moralistic judgments that imply wrongness or badness on the part of people who don’t act in harmony with our values. Such judgments are reflected in language such as, “The problem with you is that you’re too selfish.” “She’s lazy.” “They’re prejudiced.” “It’s inappropriate.” Blame, insults, put-downs, labels, criticism, comparisons, and diagnoses are all forms of judgment. (15)

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It is my belief that all such analyses of other human beings are tragic expressions of our own values and needs. They are tragic because, when we express our values and needs in this form, we increase defensiveness and resistance to them among the very people whose behaviors are of concern to us. Or, if they do agree to act in harmony with our values because they concur with our analysis of their wrongness, they will likely do so out of fear, guilt, or shame. (16)”
― Marshall Rosenberg

“Marginalized, “subaltern” or oppressed communities all emanate from the non-reflexive lens, which prioritizes the world views of the mainstream, the colonizer, the oppressor. These embedded predilections create spaces that, at best, do not welcome or make comfortable a diversity of users and, at worst, systematically destroy the structures and networks that historically provided for the non majority’s needs. What happens when we push against that world view? When we center instead the deaf, the indigenous, the immigrant, the blind and the Black experience? We learn how people of wide-ranging abilities and backgrounds feel, smell, touch, remember and navigate the landscape, and we can create a responsive, intentional design that, in serving their needs first, enriches all our experiences. In so doing, we may gain the opportunity to investigate, reveal and coax out what can be called a “sixth sense,” known by some as the magical sense. Temporal, phenomenological, seasonal and sensory aspects of perception lend themselves to creating experiences that can be transformative, invigorating and life affirming. Whether we are acculturated to having five, six or fourteen of them–as landscape architects, we must learn to design for all our senses. (9, Sierra Bainbridge)”
― B. Cannon Ivers, 250 Things a Landscape Architect Should Know