Landscape – Great Idea! X-LArch III - Department für Raum ...
Landscape – Great Idea! X-LArch III - Department für Raum ...
Landscape – Great Idea! X-LArch III - Department für Raum ...
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66<br />
Green <strong>Idea</strong>/Grey Reality<br />
Carl Smith<br />
<strong>Department</strong> of <strong>Landscape</strong> Architecture, 235 Memorial<br />
Hall, the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville,<br />
Arkansas, 72701, USA. (e-mail cas002@uark.edu)<br />
Abstract<br />
<strong>Landscape</strong> is a great idea. Bio-diverse landscape<br />
is even an better one: a ‚green idea‘. This is<br />
particularly true within residential development, as<br />
the environmental qualities of housing is central<br />
to achieving a sustainable society. A sustainable<br />
residential landscape must, inter alia, protect<br />
and enhances a site’s biodiversity. This paper<br />
describes fifteen UK housing schemes that purport<br />
to be sustainable, and identifies to what degree<br />
biodiversity has informed the design and management<br />
of their landscapes. The assessment highlights<br />
a generally poor level of ecological consideration;<br />
bio-diverse residential landscape is a green idea,<br />
but one that was seldom put into practice, resulting<br />
in standardized built outcomes or ‚grey realities‘.<br />
Through undertaking interviews with stakeholders<br />
associated with a selection of the case-sites, key<br />
factors behind this apparent disregard for biodiversity<br />
were identified. These included belated employment<br />
of landscape and ecological professionals on<br />
projects and the prioritization of other development<br />
elements over vegetation. Perhaps more intriguingly,<br />
stakeholders perceived impediments to bio-diverse<br />
landscapes stemming from conflicts with two other<br />
facets of sustainable design: community/resident<br />
needs and the preservation of local identity. These<br />
perceptions were, however, founded on a lack<br />
of community input and a lack of appreciation<br />
for the versatility of bio-diverse landscapes.<br />
Key words<br />
soft-landscape is often based on simple compositions of<br />
mown turf, a few emergent trees, and low diversity shrub<br />
mass (Dunnett & Clayden 2007). These approaches are<br />
antithetical to the green idea of bio-diverse landscapes<br />
and represent, to use the Robert L. Thayer’s metonymic<br />
device, a grey reality. A seemingly obvious application<br />
of bio-diverse landscapes is in ‘sustainable housing’<br />
(Baines 1998). Although there has been some studies<br />
of ‘sustainable’ UK housing schemes built though Urban<br />
Village and Millennium Community initiatives and Building<br />
Research Establishment (BRE) certification (Barton<br />
& Kleiner 2000; DETR 2000; Biddulph et al. 2003), they<br />
have failed to fully consider whether or not bio-diverse<br />
landscapes have been implemented by the developers,<br />
and the reasons why. This paper looks to begin to fill<br />
these gaps in knowledge.<br />
Material and methods<br />
Between October 2001 and August 2005, the author<br />
undertook a study of fifteen ‚sustainble‘ English housing<br />
schemes investigating, inter alia, biodiversity though<br />
landscape design. The sites were selected to provide<br />
variety in unit density, tenure and context (Fig.1).<br />
Each of the case-sites was assessed using a checklist<br />
based on the most recent BRE certification method, Eco-<br />
Homes (see Rao et al. 2000). This allowed their performance<br />
to be quantified and benchmarked. Site drawings<br />
were analysed and each site was visited, whereupon<br />
observations relating to ecological criteria were recorded.<br />
Although EcoHomes covers biodiversity, the new checklist<br />
used substitute critera better suited to the qualitative<br />
on-site assessments [see Fig. 2]. The developments<br />
were ranked on the EcoHomes scale of fail, pass, good,<br />
very good or excellent, with a score of good or above<br />
considered to benchmark a significant move towards<br />
biodiversity. Subsequent, semi-structured interviews<br />
with developers, designers and contractors identified<br />
the reasons behind the observations at sites 2, 3, 7, 9,<br />
Fig. 1: The fifteen housing case-sites<br />
sustainable housing, ecological design, greenspace.<br />
Introduction<br />
Biodiversity <strong>–</strong> the variety of living species <strong>–</strong> is a key global<br />
resource (Williams & Cary 2002). Although one might<br />
picture bio-diverse landscapes as untouched wilderness,<br />
they can be deliberately created through the works of<br />
landscape architecture (Dunnett 1995). Man can even<br />
create bio-diverse landscapes unintentionally; for example<br />
the habitat mosaics of urban wastelands (Gilbert<br />
1989) and garden suburbs (Owen 1991). These landscapes<br />
may appear different, but they share common<br />
traits such as species diversity and variety in vegetative<br />
layers and ages. Unfortunately, standard developer-led