Week 1 Readings

Ecology+Introduction to Landscape Urbanism

Words on a map

-Donald Worster

Anupreksha, Mrunmai, Akanksha S.

Ecology- those who discover is often seem to think they have thereby discovered a new nature, another world of meaning a way of salvation

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There was a word there was an evolving point of view and the word came well after-not before the fact.

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“Word are like empty balloons” inviting us to fill them up with associations.

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According to Humboldt, interrelated communities formed by various species of plants. Plants in this system are social creatures. They gather into societies that may assume composite appearances that are different from one another.

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To see and appreciate the forest as a whole was as important as explaining the composition.

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'Formation' - similar assemblages of plant created by similar climates. (name given by Grisebach). Eg - The tropical rainforest of Africa, South America and India Archipelago comprises of a single type of plant formation. These formations are response to peculiar climatic conditions.

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The author describes her first meeting with her college professor, she explains about her keen interest in the flowers asters and goldenods

She explain scientific basis for the traditional wisdom and practices

The chapter shows a divide between scientific knowledge and Indigenous wisdom

She also explains about how it changed her perspective after following the path of science..

Asters and Goldenrods

While the modular Western science thought process has its place, Indigenous science has equal and complimentary value.

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Robin initially adopts Western science in order to pursue her education within the university system. However, she eventually rediscovers Indigenous science and sees how it doesn’t impede her understanding of botany, but rather enhances it.

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Robin realizes how this approach offers the space to consider her original question: “why asters and goldenrod [look] so beautiful together.”

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The answer lies in complimentary colors and the colored afterimage phenomenon, but the purpose behind it lies in the attraction of pollinators, specifically bees.

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The beauty of the flowers is what first leads her to engage with this question, and the answer then broadens our understanding of plant reproduction.

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Although this question may not be on the top priority list of most people, Robin story conveys the benefit of accepting other scientific cultures alongside that of Western science or as she put it: “We see the world more fully when we use both.”

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She experience results in a more profound connection with her discipline—something that I would like to develop throughout my career in environmental science.

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“Asters and Goldenrod” has shown me what utilizing varied lenses might look like. As a result, I hope to nurture a holistic perspective attempts to better understand the interactions and global change that surround us.

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Mishkos Kenomagwen: The Teachings of Grass

• never take the first plant that you see.

• “To always leave a gift for the plants, to ask if we might take them? It would be rude not to ask first.”

• you never take more than half.”

• she twists a handful of timothy into a loose knot upon itself, beside the trail. “This tells other pickers that I’ve been here,” she says, “so that they know not to take any more.

• To be heard, you must speak the language of the one you want to listen

• Experiments are not about discovery but about listening and translating the knowledge of other beings.

• A scientific theory is a cohesive body of knowledge, an explanation that is consistent among a range of cases and can allow you to predict what might happen in unknown situations. Like this one. Our research was
• most definitely grounded in theory—Lena’s, primarily—in the traditional ecological knowledge of indigenous peoples: If we use a plant respectfully, it will flourish. If we ignore it, it will go away.

• “Do these two different harvest methods contribute to decline?” And then we tried to detect their answer. We chose dense sweetgrass stands where the population had been restored rather than compromising native stands where pickers were active.

• Laurie did a census of the sweetgrass population in every plot to obtain precise measures of population density prior to harvest. She even marked individual stems of grass with colored plastic ties to keep track of them. When all had been tallied, she then began the harvest.

• For two years she harvested and measured the response of the grass

• The surprise was that the failing plots were not the harvested ones, as predicted, but the unharvested controls. The sweetgrass that had not been picked or disturbed in any way was choked with dead stems
• while the harvested plots were thriving.

• Grasses carry their growing points just beneath the soil surface so that when their leaves are lost to a mower, a grazing animal, or a fire, they quickly recover.

• Even the pulling method was beneficial. The underground stem that connects the shoots is dotted with buds. When it’s gently tugged, the stem breaks and all those buds produce thrifty young shoots to fill the gap.Many grasses undergo a physiological change known as compensatory growth in which the plant compensates for loss of foliage by quickly growing more

• Humans participate in a symbiosis in which sweetgrass provides its fragrant blades to the people and people,by harvesting, create the conditions for sweetgrass to flourish.

Wiingaashk was the first to be planted by Skywoman on the back of Turtle Island.

Shifting Sites

-Kristina Hill

Atisha Bhuta

Jinal Trivedi

Mayuri Naik

Shifting Sites

Spatial Scale Paradigm Shift

Pattern Shift

Temporal Scale Shift

Although this has sometimes resulted in a

reduced willingness among scientists to predict the specific outcomes

of dynamic processes, it has also led to an increased ability to under-

stand fluctuating human economies as components of ecosystems.

Kristina Hill talks about the evolving notion of the natural world as a dynamic ecosystem which has slowly but radically altered the ways ecologists talk about the patterns and dynamics of a site. Many of these changes in theory have led to shifts in the natural sciences as dramatic as transitions initiated by the Modern Movement in design. In short, a wholesale reevaluation of boundaries and predictability has occurred, posing special challenges for professions that propose site designs.

Spatial Scale Shift: Organism vs System,Boundary vs Node

Cognitive research has shown that metaphors are fundamental to human thinking in everyday situations, as well as in formal theory building.

Scientists have used two dominant metaphors to describe these relationships.

Super Organism

System

Proposals by nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century biologists

Nineteenth-century botanists classified plant associations using nomenclature.

The notion of an "oak-hickory forest type."

a holistic (organismal) bias affected the way scientists and designen talked about geographic associations among plant species.

The idea that relationships among many species were real and necessary became pervasive, and theories were proposed that described nested hierarchical relationships between individual species and their community-level super-organisms.

A competing theory that plant species responded individualistically to environmental gradients was published in the 1920s by Henry Gleason and was promptly rejected without significant debate." It resurfaced in the works of Robert Whittaker and Margaret Davis during the 1940s and 1950s,"

Davis tested the idea that plant communities migrated as a cohesive group during periods of climate change.

Theory of Plant Dynamic Succession.

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The multidisciplinary context of Henry Cowles' work and that of his colleagues in animal ecology seems to have provided them with greater flexibility in conceiving dynamic relationships between landscapes and a wide range of biological organisms, including both plants and animals.”

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The system metaphor suggests that nodes exist where more numerous interactions occur.

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The work of Sandra Steingraber.

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The Temporal Shift: Cycles,Rates Of Change, And The Role Of History

Deterministic equilibrium based concepts were insufficient to explain observed energy inputs and losses.

[less predictable ways that leaked energy and materials]

Open Systems

Non equilibrium paradigm in ecology ie. predictability in ecosystem dynamics is probably not possible.

Idea of enduring temporal legacy ie. event that happened 300 years before could influence contemporary patterns.

Cities of Resilience where resilience is defined as ability of system to adapt or adjust to changing internal and external processes. Hence, to not reach a certain end point but ‘stay in the game.’

“Sustaining a particular set of conditions is less meaningful than adapting to a fluctuating set of contextual variables.”

“The challenge of this theoretical shift is that it requires ecologists to treat human activities as similar to other ‘natural’ disturbance processes such as windstorms, insect population booms and fires.”

“Ecologists now try to write as if human altercations are an integral process in ecosystems affecting both disturbance and regeneration.”

No Boundaries Theory

New metaphor for open systems with no steady states

Being ready for changing contexts and constant surprises.

Systems that exist at a larger and smaller scale than the site

“The relaxation of boundary concepts in ecosystems even more unlikely since these systems are now understood to be more heavily influenced by processes that occur at spatial and temporal scales much larger eg global climate change and much smaller eg the evolution of disease causing organisms over very short lifespans.”

“Don’t treat boundaries as real biophysical phenomenon but rather stretched, shrunken, revisioned across multiple scales..”

Conservation of Open Systems/Biological Resources

A walled and protected area vs treating them as if they were desirable sandbars in a shifting flowing river.

“In cultural terms sites are best understood as shapeshifters and boundaries as tricksters that teach us what we see in a moment of time is not necessarily what matters in the river of time.”

The Spatial Pattern Shift: Landscapes as Dynamic Mosaics

• The metaphor that currently dominates landscape ecological conceptualizations is the "shifting mosaic." A pattern that consists of sporadic, repeated emergences and disappearances of different ecosystem types (vegetation or hydrologic features like wetlands,for example).

Savannah Landscape Mosaic

• The metaphor of a shifting mosaic relies on a probabilistic conceptualization of change.
• Timing plays a very critical role in this.It can vary from species to species depending on sites.

Change

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Probabilistic and multidirectional

Daman Landscape Mosaic

• Geology and geography use a lenses that looks at homogeneity, contrasts and similarities,landforms/surfaces/plant associations

• The different ecosystems within this mosaic are often described as interspersed in a range of "grain sizes" from coarse to fine grained. They may also exist in dendritic patterns, grids, or ladders. The significance of these patterns for specific

species varies.

• The question of boundaries is very significant in landscape ecology since they must be described in terms that are appropriate to the size and behavior of individual species to have meaningful biological implications. Many landscape boundaries can act as metaphorical filters barriers, and conduits, depending on the specific mobility and body size (or seed size) of organisms.

• In the 1980s, Christine Schonewald-Cox and J. Bayless presented :typology of boundaries that summarized the different kinds of edge experiences organisms might perceive, focused in particular on the perceptual responses of large mammals.
• They noted that some edges had been "generated" because of restrictions on human uses, and others had been made more discrete by the imposition of a reserve boundary in a forested area, allowing timber harvests on one side and not the other.

Conclusion

• We are the prairie from which we eat
• Organisms more clearly as sites as nodes in a network of flows that penetrate permeable skins (human skin, animal skin, plant skin, soil)
• A dynamic and kinesthetic(movement through sensory organs) aesthetic
• Sites matter precisely because it is in place that we can prop the windows open on the past and be specific about what is known and how.

Site Photos

Smaller markets/vendors leading to the main municipal/wholesale market

Site Photos

Street Leading to the market

Market Street

Market Street

Site Photos

Flower Market

Wholesale Plastic Marts

Canteen

Site Photos

Vegetable Market

Sorting and Storage Space

Storage

Flower Market

Plastic Manufacturing

Trucks(fruits/vegetables)

Accessories/Pooja Saman

Municipal Market

Hawkers

Street Shops

Skywalk Vendors

Train Vendors

Shopping Centres

Clothes Manufacturers

Looking Back At Landscape Urbanism

Julia Czerniak

The author Julia Czerniak imagines landscape as a particular culture of and consciousness about the land that refrains from the superficial reference to sustainability,ecology,and the complex processes of our environments in favor of projects that actually engage them.

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According to architect James Corner the nineteenth century notions of public spaces where nature is seen as separate from the city, is imaged as undulating and pastoral and acts as a moral antidote to urbanization.

The following projects challenge this notion and attempt to make landscape visible and legible through the everyday life thereby to build new relationships

Projects for discussion;

• Guadalupe River (1988)
• Byxbee Parks (1991)
• Rebstockpark (1992)
• Plaza Park (1989)

The intention of examination by Hargreaves Associates and Eisenman Architects

• The first is to observe how site particularities, both physical and discursive, "make their appearance".
• The second is to speculate on the implications site generated work poses for landscape and the contemporary city.
• The generative capacity of a site variously construed as a spatial location, a physical and cultural context. and a discursive position which is value-driven.

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• Guadalupe River (1988) a three-mile linear park and flood control system that passes through downtown San Jose, California

• Byxbee Parks (1991) another example of force/form evolution

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Rebstockpark, Frankfurt

Central park, Manhattan

Folded Grid Pattern for houses

Two principle devices

Tree rows of various combinations of canopy

Drainage swales and canals

Unconventional Juxtapositions

Park/ Parking

Planting Strategies - public and private spaces

HARGREAVES ASSOCIATES

PLAZA PARK in SAN JOSE (1989)

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• The area affecting the design-how the specifics of a site construct the work-is supplanted by the area affected by it-how the work constructs the site." To elaborate on this point through Hargreaves Associates' Plaza Park in San Jose (1989).
• Shifting economies of the region, from one based on agriculture and food production to high-tech software industry.
• Successful technology companies were juxtaposed with low income neighborhoods.
• Miwon Kwon makes two points relevant to the discussion of landscape publicness.
• Lucy Lippard’s suggestion.
• TO THINK SITE IS TO THINK LANDSCAPE
• Hargreaves Associates and Eisenman’s strategies of site specifics.
• Landschaft and Landskip.

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Terra Fluxus

James Corner

Terra means ‘earth’ and fluxus means ‘flowing or fluid’

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Massive urban growth.

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Global ecological awareness

Looking at the city and landscape - 19th century

The importance of studying landscape.

1997 : New disciplinary ‘Landscape urbanism’ was anticipated in Landscape Urbanism symposium and Exhibition originally conceived by Charles Waldheim

Olmsted's challenge

Comparing the words landscape and urbanism to x and y chromosome

Looking at cities and landscape

The contrasting notion of landscape and the city

Functions of urban landscapes

1955 : Urbanist Victor Gruen coined the term cityscape

Landscape Urbanism - Practice more than a category

4 themes

1969 : Due to Ian McHarg’s, Design with Nature publication

1953 : Louis Kahn’s diagram of vehicular circulation in Philadelphia

Comparison by L. I. Kahn

21st century idea of including the landscape into the city

Expressways

Municipal Parking Towers

Roads

Buildings

Rivers

Harbours

Canals

Docks

List of references:

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1. Landscape urbanism symposium- 1997
2. Central Park, Manhattan, New York- Frederick Law Olmsted, Landscape Architect
3. Jen Jensen, Landscape Architect
4. Plan Voisin (Radiant City)- Le Corbusier
5. Boston Back Bay Fens stormwater system
6. Stuttgart greenway corridors
7. Concrete channel: L.A. river
8. Parc de la Villette, Paris
9. Geographer Walter Christaller’s diagrams
10. City planner Ludwig Hilberseimer’s diagrams
11. Cultural geographer David Harvey
12. Design with Nature- book by Ian McHarg
13. Louis Kahn's 1953 diagram for vehicular circulation in Philadelphia.

Central Park, Manhattan, New York-

Parc de la Villette, Paris

Plan Voisin (Radiant City)- Le Corbusier

Louis Kahn's 1953 diagram for vehicular circulation in Philadelphia.

Boston Back Bay Fens stormwater system

Concrete channel: L.A. river

Stuttgart greenway corridor

Geographer Walter Christaller diagrams

City planner Ludwig Hilberseimer diagrams

Location- Mahavir Nagar, Kandivali west

THIS WORLD SYSTEMS - HOWARD ODUM

01. Interdependence of various bodies on each other

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- energy, material, money, information and society.

- utility of energy resources to produce, consume, recycle and sustain.

- civilization has caused problems in human environment, social systems are left unaddressed.

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02. Macroscopic view of energies

• all that you see around is a part of some pattern of the nature.
• humans are getting aware of various global problems due to forecasts, internet and other such resources.
• humans are very small part of this large machinery of the nature.

Many calories of one kind required to produce a few calories of another.

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C-c bond forms to make amazing world of carbon compounds

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accelerating growth of fossil fuel use has allowed civilization to interfere with life support, outdistancing our knowledge of the consequences.

This creates a system of chain to discover growth in mankind like the fossil fuels help to run machines but it also creates hazardous effect to climate to the air and water, this civilization creates a better life to humans but inputs poison to marine insects and birds life

t h i s w o r l d s y s t e m

PHOTOSYNTHESIS

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The Living Metabolism of the Earth

Oxygen released -

day time

Carbon dioxide released -

night time

Oxygen consumed-

night time

Carbon dioxide consumed -

day time

The materials generated by consumption are the ones

used by production and vice versa

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Rain water cycle

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Resources from Above and Below

Agrarian community balance between production and consumption

No much waste generated

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• Competition raised
• Production increased for more choices
• More wastage
• More health disorder
• Wastage in oceans
• Unpredictable high tides

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Solar Society

GROWTH IN INDUSTRIAL SOCIETY

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• new industrial system and the old agrarian society.
• The earlier society was dis-

persed over the landscape because

the energy sources were spread

over the earth’s surface.

• Adding industrial society to the biosphere suddenly is like adding large animals to a balanced aquarium

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Humanity Takes Over Nature with Fossil Fuels

URBAN DEVELOPMENT AND ANIMAL CITIES

• EXTINCTION OF SPECIES FROM THE ANIMAL CITIES
• DEVELOPMENT OF URBAN CENTRE DUE TO FOSSIL FUELS
• BIOLOGICAL CYCLES BARELY ABLE TO ABSORB AND REGENERATE AGRICULTURAL AND URBAN WASTE
• NEED OF NEW LANDSCAPES AND INTERFACE ECOSYSTEMS TO EVOLVE

INFORMATION SOCIETY AND THE CHANGED ROLE FOR HUMANITY

• SHARING OF GLOBAL TELEVISION, INDIVIDUAL COMPUTERS AND INTERNET
• INCREASE IN USE OF ELECTRICAL POWER
• INCREASE IN FOREIGN TRADE
• PEOPLE NOT ABLE TO SEE THE ENERGY BASIS DUE TO LARGE AND COMPLEX ECONOMIC SYSTEM WHICH IS CHANGING RAPIDLY
• AS ENERGY SOURCES DECLINE, HOW DOES SOCIETY RETURN TO A LESSER POSITION IN THE EARTH SYSTEM WITHOUT A COLLAPSE?

ENERGY DIAGRAM OF THE SUGARCANE JUICE MAKER

ENERGY DIAGRAM OF THE FISHERMEN AT KOLIWADA

ENERGY DIAGRAM OF FLOWERS

ENERGY DIAGRAM OF TIFFIN SERVICES