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

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Fig. 8: Fragmentary planning
model and green structures at
the urban and territorial scales
Fig.9: Times of dismantling
vegetation and times for acceptance
of new landscapes
an effective understanding of urban landscape should not
“cling exclusively to the notion of permanence, which is
the weaker force at state” (Girot, 2006: 91).
networks, processes and states of becoming, both natural
and socio-cultural, while common numerical indicators
depict single frames of a certain form.
Conclusions
“A site exists in un unlimited number of scales” (Pollack,
2006:130): overlapping ecological dimensions, multiple
scales of use and activity, scales of physical, infrastructural
connection and of virtual, symbolic relation, ranges
of environmental impact, temporal distribution, time
evolving structures, times of space appropriation and
“unanticipated spatial characteristics” that “may emerge
from the interplay between elements and through inhabitation”
(Pollack, 2006:138). In order to face this complex
multiscalarity “there is a need of reinstate a balance
between scientific and empiric, heuristic research on the
landscapes of cities” (Girot, 2006: 91).
Surely the research, in trying to integrate the multidimensional
interpretation of urban landscape and the
assessment of urban sustainability, has to cope with
the difficulties in managing qualitative data derived from
walkabout surveys and urban fieldwork, multimedia,
participative investigation combining insider and outsider
views: data which rarely satisfy the criteria of simplicity
and reproducibility.
Nevertheless, if the use of landscape as a connoting
medium (while numerical indicators are denoting) implies
a weak, unformalizable praxis, it has a strong cognitive
value (Vallega, 2008: 42; Hak, 2008:62) in order to
disseminate information, to help the public to develop
a common language for discussion and to promote the
idea of integrated action at diverse scales for sustainability,
assuming that “where we live affects how we live”
(DETR, 2000: 53).
In particular, in reading the urban sites in relation with
the targets of sustainability, the research is showing that
the landscape lens works better in detecting cross-scale