8_Melvin

Recommendations

Info

Figure 2: Olympic Sculpture Park, However, there seems to be some deviation and gaps between the ideas of Anderson (2013) and Nichols (2012), signaling varying strands of interpretation of Ecological Urbanism at large. Within Charles Anderson’s work on the Olympic Sculpture Park in Seattle, Washington (Figure 2), the project was designed to highlight the vital natural processes that support our human-centered world, encouraging a paradigmatic shift within nature-human relationships which is not that drastic at all. Nichols (2012)’s book about ‘Urbanature’ did little to showcase next steps of how cities should be developed and only works to reaffirm the design work of Anderson and his colleagues as the current gold standard within landscape projects. In this manner, it can be further argued that Ecological Urbanism in its most extreme form is still anthropocentric in its nature because it does little to incorporate the natural world within urban design beyond a simple nod in its direction to acknowledge the relationship that nature has on our urban environments. Ecological Urbanism as an elaboration of Landscape Urbanism does little in critiquing the ontological exceptionalism of humans within planning theory and cannot be counted as a paradigm shift. Other landscape projects that Anderson take up like the Phoenix Stadium in Haiti all echo similar sentiments of anthropocentric design strategies that seek to alleviate social problems through edible gardens, and fish rearing through the veil of Ecological Urbanism without any considerations of the rehabilitation of biodiversity or ecological systemic analysis, evoking semblance of critiques towards Marris’ (2013) arguments of new nature. It must be mentioned that concepts of systemic analysis and species diversity should not be subjected again to a ‘wildness v.s. wilderness’ dichotomy as it strays from understanding the city as an ecosystem and only seeks to further cement the dichotomous idea of nature and city which we already know does little to help with ecological preservation efforts. Yet, Ecological Urbanism seems to be gaining popularity worldwide. “Create the space and animals will come” from the newly released Planet Earth II featured the city of Singapore as a model of ecological urbanism that all cities should aspire towards to in incorporating nature into the city. Gardens by the Bay in Singapore was designed and built with non-human others in mind. Yet, Hicks (2017), critical of Planet Earth II showcase of Singapore as exemplary, argued that despite claims of the increase in biodiversity in the surrounding areas of the Gardens, most of the plant species that the gardens have are non-native. These gardens are only friendly structures for animals that can adapt to man-made structures and are not wary of people. This excludes most of the native species that resided in the area. Whilst that might be true, Hicks (2017) took on a classical ecological conservation approach as he laments the loss of wild areas and questions the positive effects of greening the urban environment (Hicks, 2017). Ecological Urbanism by itself therefore contributes to the dichotomy between nature and city because it distracts efforts and further delineate ecologists and landscape architects within philosophical lines of their own understandings of what nature is and how urban planning and landscape architecture should be, purely by visibly portraying and manufacturing the nature they as humans envision. This imbues Ecological Urbanism with layers of anthropocentric meaning that deviates it from the lofty goals it set out to do in the first place. There is a clear delineation between construing human action as nature and the reconstruction of nature by humans. Department of Landscape Architecture
Constructing Zootopia: First Steps of a Lengthy Process What we need now beyond the promises of Ecological Urbanism and Landscape Urbanism is a serious consideration of non-human subjects and their place and roles within the urban ecosystem. This takes the whole mantra of “Create the space and animals will come” approach a few steps further by firstly acknowledging that we are not dealing with a tabula rasa but an already thriving ecosystem that was not inhabited with humans. This form of ‘rewilding envisions a new form of urbanism that incorporates animals and plants, and seeks to change the way urban ecosystems are shaped (Wolch and Emel, 1995). Donovan (2015) chronicles the wild creatures that already inhabit our urban landscape and how they are adjusting within the urban terrain. Ecological Urbanism needs to consider the site in situ and the species that already exist in the area instead of implementing flashy altruistic projects that seem to enhance neoliberal environmental thought instead of a serious consideration of local ecosystems. Urban ecosystems can be extremely diverse and only come grab attention when conflicts between humans and animals occur (Beatley and Bekoff, 2013). There is no driving consensus as to how humans should deal with environmental conflicts with animals in the urban environments besides culling. There are insufficient visible connections between humans living in the cities and the natural world. This results in urban ecosystems often being forgotten (Basta and Moroni, 2013). Ecological Urbanism needs to be more holistic and really understand the complexity and flux with urban ecosystems at large and posits itself from a non-humanistic approach for a paradigm shift to happen. An nonhumanistic approach towards landscape thinking is required to broaden the concepts of Landscape Urbanism and Ecological Urbanism. It is important now for one to consider the various tenuous questions that are intricately linked to a nonhumane approach towards planning and designing cities. How can planning and designing be non-humane if the production of means are essentially human? How do we embrace complexity and flux if we still need deterministic tangible outcomes from our surrounding built environment? Is this untaming or taming the urban? How do we distill something so abstract and distill it into something tangible that planners/ designers can implement? These are some of the questions that we need to address as we move towards a more decentralized, less anthropocentric form of planning and urban design. The need for socially and environmentally inclusive planning and design does not need to stem from a complex non-humanist philosophical approach but from a simple acknowledgment that the dichotomy of nature and the city does not exist and that urban ecosystems are essential for the functioning and workings of the city within a context of climate vulnerability and change. Current urban environments often present nature and urban lifestyles in conflict and mutually exclusive. A nonanthropocentric line of urban thinking seeks to turn this concept on its head, by integrating humans into natural systems. Blue and Alexander (2015) illustrated the example of coyotes attacking domestic animals in Toronto. We need to transcend our tidy geographical imaginaries of what belongs in the city and what does not. This involves a recognition of nonhuman agency in shaping our own perceptions of space and place. In their article, Houston et. al. (2017) argued two possible directions for non-humanistic urban planning to develop: Multi-species entanglement and becoming-world. These two theories have potential to help develop habitable non-anthropocentric urban futures. Graduate Seminar Theories of Landscape Architecture Spring 2016
Page 1 and 2: 8 Constructing Zootopia Going Beyon
Page 3: since prehistory, with opportunitie
Page 7: Bibliography Babbitt, Bruce. Cities

8_Melvin

You also want an ePaper? Increase the reach of your titles

Delete template?

Save as template?