Transitional Ecologies

On a recent trip to Shanghai, China, I was struck by the sheer number of urban redevelopment projects happening there. The economy is booming in China, and it seemed that as soon as a residential district aged about 50 years it was slated for demolition and “renewal.” From the stacked elevated highways, the sprawling metropolis displayed dozens of recently bulldozed neighborhoods. The city was a checkerboard of grey concrete high rises alternating with walled-off rubble piles. Growing over the concrete debris were trusty early successional plants -- sumacs, grasses, plantains, and smartweeds. As a matter of fact, the rubble piles were one of the few areas where I didn’t see managed park-like landscapes in the city; they were about the only places that wildscapes can exist. 

This led me to think about economics as a driver of early successional landscapes in cities. It’s relatively easy to take down old buildings, it’s much more expensive and time-consuming to put new ones up. So the land often sits there while the wheels of economics spin. As the land waits, seeds blow in from nearby sites or emerge from the soil bank below. Flowers open in the first season, moths and butterflies dive in, spiders follow suit. Suddenly a thriving ecosystem occurs where none, and I mean none, existed before. Of course this doesn’t last long before new construction begins. But in the meantime, a foothold for new life begins its march into new territories. An age-old, time-tested march.

There are plenty of plants that follow human disturbances. Eastern American native peoples named the European plantain (Plantago major) “white man’s footprint” because it only appeared where the Colonists settled. Humans are a busy sort, and because of this, they continually create the way for opportunistic plants, animals, and diseases to thrive. Whether we like it or not, they are our constant companions and work to heal our landscapes. Urban renewal creates transitional ecologies, which in my book, can create important early successional plant communities. Maybe one will hopscotch near you.

Allowing for Landscape Dynamism

Landscape architects take immense pride in their sketches and the crafting of shining visions of what a project could be. These are beautifully rendered and often use freehand ink and marker drawings, Photoshop jpegs, 3d Sketchup models, and photo-realistic Lumion visualization software. Sometimes, these images are so lush and colorful that the clients will end up paying for a really nice sketch-- but in actuality is a dysfunctional design. But does the landscape ever really look like the image that they imagined? Does it ever take into account the droughts, the insect infestations, the eutrophic waterbodies, the reductions in maintenance budgets, or just plain decline of the entire system? Where is landscape process and the inclusion of ecosystem services in client presentations? Simple, it is intentionally and quietly not discussed for many projects. That magically falls to the realm of the client and the landscape manager.

Designers project their visions of what the landscape will look when it is semi-mature, usually 10 to 15 years out. The trees are large, the fountain is always flowing, and there are plenty of parking spaces available. Project sketches are an ideal of the project on a good day. The sun shines and has billowy clouds, there are happy children with kites and balloons in the air, and families out enjoying a Sunday stroll. Happy drawings (think Bob Ross) make for happy clients. But does this give clients a static view of their landscape that eventually guides their long term management? To account for this, do we expect the average person to have an advanced understanding of landscape succession and management? Do clients budget the landscape funding accordingly to keep that perpetual view? Landscapes are most often looked at as temporary gardens in a throw-away culture. If the old one doesn’t suffice, let’s get the dozers in and make a new one. New owners have new ideas and new image brands for their properties. And cities are ripe with areas for “redevelopment” (code for let’s take out the old and put in the new).

How can a design represent successional process?  A 2014 article in the journal Places discusses just that. Written by Chris Reed and Nina-Marie Lister, the article traces prior world-views of static ecological systems to today’s dynamic landscape processes.  Entitled Ecology and Design: Parallel Genealogies, the authors state “There is a growing recognition that what is needed are more flexible, adaptive approaches to managing human activities and designing within the systems that sustain us. What designers make of this has much to do with how change and dynamism are understood and interpreted in the humanities and within cultural production.”

 Lawrence Halprin waterfall sketch

There are landscape architects such as Michael Van Valkenburg, Michael Hargreaves, Richard Haag, and Ian McHarg that have incorporated some ecological process into their work; and are highlighted in the article. But this will happen only when designers realize that landscape is a living process, and not just a product. You can view the full article at

https://placesjournal.org/article/ecology-and-design-parallel-genealogies/?gclid=CMXJ1PKNvM4CFcskgQodHRIBKw

Hybrid cities

"Why can we imagine smart technologies and not smart behaviors, smart institutions, and smart societies? Why think only of technology and not of humans and their societies that co-evolve with Earth?" --Marina Alberti, from http://www.thenatureofcities.com/2013/09/27/building-cities-that-think-like-planets/