Landscape – Great Idea! X-LArch III - Department für Raum ...

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Fig.6: Multiscalar repetition and self-similarity in anthropic landscapes
space by itself and attributes marginal activities to it, with
a scarce ability to compete with more remunerative uses.
Instead, the continuity of the system at different scales
within the pervasive built fabric allows green spaces to
work as a complex urban infrastructure with a threefold
purpose:
1. assuming a role of underlying frame, of within the
urban context;
2. creating an infrastructure of sustainability, a continuous
network for ecological regeneration and for
the improvement of hygienic and sanitary conditions
within the urban environment, contributing to the reduction
of pollution of both air and water, in addition to
improving micro-climatic conditions;
3. distributing green spaces and public services and
providing spaces for free time activities. (Angrilli,
2008). All the elements of an urban green structure
(parks, pocket parks, street tree canopies, parkways,
urban forests, urban agriculture and horticulture,
roof and vertical green, greenways, riverside banks,
ecological corridors) have different functions at local,
urban or regional scales, according to their size,
quantity, shape, distribution, relationships. Good
design and planning strategies make them play a
synergic role in the search for sustainability [Fig. 8].
In such cases, the sustainability slogan act locally, think
globally “becomes less than adequate, and we may
need to settle for some less catchy but more pragmatic
version, perhaps one that says: think at the scales that
matter, and act at the levels that count” (Vasisht, Sloane,
2002: 363).
Temporal scales into urban landscape
The last feature is the relation between spatial and
temporal scales in urban landscape. Inhabitants and city
users use, perceive and modify urban landscapes within
different times. The first way in which we know that time
has passed is through various rhythmic repetitions: the
circadian cycle, the working and leisure daily activities,
weekly timetables, changing seasons and annual events.
(Carmona et al., 2003: 193). But we also know that
time has passed through evidence of progressive and
irreversible change, again at different temporal scales:
the times of construction or demolition, the rapidity of
changing in the zeitgeist, the times for individual and
collective memory to become steady, times of social
transformations, medium- to long-term natural processes
and human impacts on environment.
Furthermore, relations between time and experience
of landscape “have been considerably altered by the
various forms of movement that we experience through a
site. The moving picture frame, the rolling motion of a car
or train, the takeoff of an airplane, all entitle us to question
a visual tradition that we have grown to accept, one
that has accustomed us to an understanding of landscape
through a series of fixed vistas” (Girot, 2006: 99).
The kinaesthetic experience of urban spaces requires
new tools to decipher the production of contemporary cities,
characterized by those “unexplained black holes, the
in-between scenes of landscape beauty” which are the
dominant feature of peripheries (Girot, 2006: 100). Digital
videos, aerial videos, combined with the more classical
means of topographic representation, could enable to
formulate a synthetic vision of a site, not only for the
creative design process but also for the entire chain of
decisions.
Designers should not forget the role of urban landscape
as a dynamic term of comparison and a mirror for
civilized societies: “effective action and inner well-being
depend on a strong image of time: a vivid sense of
present, well connected to future and past, perceptive
of change and able to manage it” (Lynch, 1972: 240).
This interrelation between landscape, people living in it
and times of change was pointed out by the geographer
Eugenio Turri: landscape is the first perceptual horizon
in which man places himself and recognizes himself and
–when looking at its own landscape– a civic community
can learn about itself. That’s why every sudden or violent
transformation of the landscape causes social unease
(Turri, 1983), despite of the statistical average calculations
commonly used in the practice of planning and urban
management to guarantee sustainability [Fig.9].
But “rather than change itself –which people expect,
anticipate and often welcome– it is its pace and scale,
and the sense that it is not amenable to local control, that
may present problems” (Carmona et al., 2003: 205), both
regarding the time necessary for customs and memories
of individuals and communities to stratificate, and the
time necessary for natural processes to mitigate impacts
of anthropic transformations and to regenerate environmental
resources.
There are “three main forces –degeneration, permanence,
transformation–“ that “both physically and
ideologically act on the city, contradicting each other” and
Fig.7: Inhabitants constructing landscapes with objects, symbols,
patterns at different scales
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