Theories of Landscape as Urbanism

This course introduces contemporary theories of landscape as a medium of urbanism and product of urbanization. The course surveys sites and subjects, texts and topics describing landscape’s embeddedness in processes of urbanization as well as economic transformations informing the shape of the city. The course introduces students to landscape as a form of cultural production, as a mode of human subjectivity, as a medium of design, as a profession, and as an academic discipline. Through lectures, discussions, readings, and case study projects, students will be introduced to landscape through the lenses of capital, labor, material, subject, and environment. The first half of the course revisits the origins of landscape in response to the societal and environmental challenges of industrialization and the attendant transformations in industrial economy shaping the modern metropolis. The second half of the course repositions recent discourse on landscape as urbanism in relation to the economic and territorial transformations associated with ongoing urbanization at the planetary scale.

The first quarter of the course introduces the origins of landscape as a genre of painting and the invention of the ‘new art’ of landscape architecture as responses to urbanization and their attendant social, economic, and cultural transformations. This portion of the course describes the material and cultural contexts in which landscape was conceived as well as the sites and subjects it invoked. The second quarter of the course describes the emergence of city planning from within landscape architecture and the subsequent impoverishment of the field in the absence of its urban contents. This portion of the course introduces the aspirations and implications of ecologically informed regional planning in the 20th century, as well as the ongoing ideological effects of that agenda in the context of neoliberalism.

The third quarter of the course introduces the discourse and practices of landscape urbanism over the past two decades. This portion of the course surveys the discursive and projective potentials of an ecological urbanism, as distinct from those of ecological planning, and speculates on the recent formulation of projective ecologies, among other discursive formations shaping the field. The final quarter of the course follows the transition from region to territory, and from regional urbanization to planetary urbanization. This portion of the course describes landscape’s role as a medium of cultural production and critical revelation in relation to the increased scale and scope of anthropogenic impacts across the planet.

Course readings, video lectures, and supplementary multimedia materials are made available via Canvas. Weekly discussions sections led by the Teaching Fellows live via Zoom are organized by time zone (Euro/Asia 08:30-09:30 or Americas 16:30-17:30). All-class meetings are scheduled weekly to discuss questions and comments arising in discussion sections (09:30-10:00 or 17:30-18:00). Critical questions address issues of racism and resistance, capitalism and climate, among other topics of contemporary import to landscape architecture. Students are invited to contribute to discussions, prepare brief response papers, and complete a design research dossier on a topic attendant to the course content at the end of the term. The course invites candidates from the Master in Landscape Architecture Program as well as candidates in the Urbanism, Landscape, Ecology stream of the Master in Design Studies Program.

Please note that students are expected to attend only the morning section OR the afternoon section. If you have a phantom time conflict that prevents you from enrolling in another course, please inform your TF (Phillip Denny, Angela Wheeler, and Boya Zhang).