We as a nation can begin a meaningful march

toward a sustainable and just society. 

A national paradigm shift, however,

will be a necessary prerequisite.

And it will be the architects who will show us the way forward.

Okay, maybe that's a little hyperbolic, even histrionic.  Or possibly completely off the mark.  But one does have to take a stand (up) before one can walk (forward).

Riding this Train, this Train of Thought

I am not an architect.  I have not deeply studied architecture.  This domain of knowledge has flirted in and out of my intellectual life as one might expect it would for a liberal arts major who majored in history and creative writing.  I do appreciate the aesthetics of architecture as the art of form and function, flying buttresses and all that.  But I can talk of architecture as I can about astronomy.

My interest of late can be summed up I suppose with the means of finding socio-political and economic common ground in this ideologically (and otherwise) diverse country.  One of my strong beliefs is we can only achieve national success if we are capable of effectively and genuinely collaborating on the critical challenges we face as a community.  And this requires that we able in the beginning to achieve this in spite of our ideological (or otherwise) differences, rather than one group or another converting the other side(s) completely to their side of the aisle.  Or one group imposing their particular agenda in spite of howls of protest from the other side(s).

Another strong belief is once individuals actively engage the challenges through the appropriate frameworks of approach, they will have the necessary epiphanies (from my perspective).  They will convert themselves, so to speak, while maintaining the diversity necessary for a healthy society.

Architecture just wasn’t in the picture.

To make a long story not so long, as I struggled with finding one those frameworks of approach I found myself dealing with ecotones. Trying to understand ecotones then lead me quickly to landscape architecture. 

And as quickly as I stumbled upon this field of study, it became quite apparent that it made perfect sense this train of thought would arrive here.

The Common Ground Agenda

We talk about finding common ground all the time.  When we hear someone like Obama during his State of the Union speech say something like:

All that mattered that day was the mission. No one thought about politics. No one thought about themselves. One of the young men involved in the raid later told me that he didn’t deserve credit for the mission. It only succeeded, he said, because every single member of that unit did their job – the pilot who landed the helicopter that spun out of control; the translator who kept others from entering the compound; the troops who separated the women and children from the fight; the SEALs who charged up the stairs. More than that, the mission only succeeded because every member of that unit trusted each other – because you can’t charge up those stairs, into darkness and danger, unless you know that there’s someone behind you, watching your back.

So it is with America. Each time I look at that flag, I’m reminded that our destiny is stitched together like those fifty stars and those thirteen stripes. No one built this country on their own. This Nation is great because we built it together. This Nation is great because we worked as a team. This Nation is great because we get each other’s backs. And if we hold fast to that truth, in this moment of trial, there is no challenge too great; no mission too hard. As long as we’re joined in common purpose, as long as we maintain our common resolve, our journey moves forward, our future is hopeful, and the state of our Union will always be strong.

…well, we nod in agreement.  Who could argue with the fundamental sentiments expressed? Someone might take issue with using the assassination of another human being (no matter who it is) as the analogy to express those fundamental sentiments, but working together as team, watching each other’s back, joined in common purpose, those are good things.  They are things to which we can and should aspire.  . 

But then we are back to the question: how do we actually get to such an ideal place rather than nodding in agreement about how nice it would be if we were there?

Or: Is it really possible to break the socio-political stalemate?

Maybe.

It depends I would posit on what are the points to be discussed on our collective agenda.  And taking it one step further, how those points are specifically articulated.  We all understand how a single loaded word or phrase or topic can derail a conversation before the conversation can even get going. 

Get a liberal and a libertarian in the same room to discuss “liberty” and I will bet you it ain’t going anywhere fast.  The list of the loaded words and phrases and topics is, it seems, infinite.

This is where landscape architecture comes in with the promise of a realistic and fruitful common ground agenda.

Bullsh*t

An initial glance at the definition of landscape architecture quickly shows the promise it holds in bringing people together around the critical challenges we face as a community:

Landscape architecture is the design of outdoor and public spaces to achieve environmental, social-behavioral, or aesthetic outcomes. It involves the systematic investigation of existing social, ecological, and geological conditions and processes in the landscape, and the design of interventions that will produce the desired outcome.

Landscape architecture is a multi-disciplinary field, incorporating aspects of: botany, horticulture, the fine arts, architecture, industrial design, geology and the earth sciences, environmental psychology, geography, and ecology….Landscape architects work on all types of structures and external space - large or small, urban, suburban and rural, and with "hard" (built) and "soft" (planted) materials, while integrating ecological sustainability. The most valuable contribution can be made at the first stage of a project to generate ideas with technical understanding and creative flair for the design, organization, and use of spaces.

The first key facet of landscape architecture is it is multi-disciplinary.  Individuals whose focus is the fine arts come to the table with geologists, and so on.  There are very few fields that could not have something to offer in the ensuing discussion at the table.  Even those who one might say have no particular field, at the very least by virtue of being part of the public who use the public spaces, have a role to play in the discussion.

Secondly, it does deal with public spaces.   There is little else that can concretely focus us on the common ground than actual common grounds.  Moreover, the public spaces are social spaces, which in theory are open and accessible to all, regardless of such things as gender, race, ethnicity, age or socio-economic level. And because these spaces are social, they create, for better or for worse, a collective encounter (and what is politics but an specific kind of encounter).

Thirdly, because these spaces intimately deal with the outdoors, the encounter is not only with one another, but also the natural environment.  Inherent in this multi-disciplinary endeavor is the necessity to confront our relationship with the earth itself. 

And lastly (for now), it provides a common framework of language through which individuals with vastly different perspectives and viewpoints can express those perspectives and viewpoints without derailment of the conversation.

Regarding this last point, landscape architecture has its own jargon that has developed over time.  Like other disciplines, it naturally develops a short-hand of expressions to convey ideas that are frequently discussed between members of a group, and, consequently, develops a barrier to communication with those not familiar with the language of the field.

And as we all know what is all too common in academic fields, is a short-hand that appears to be gibberish (or is gibberish, depending on your point of view).  In my web searches, I came across the site: Landscape Urbanism Bullshit Generator.  Clicking on the “make bullshit” button gives one little poetic gems such as:

orchestrate elastic morphologies

incubate post-industrial functionalities

transform algorithmic portals

orchestrate infrastructural regimes

reclaim vegetal laminar flows

At this point it might seem I am advocating finding a common ground agenda simply by getting us all to collectively embrace saying nothing while believing we are saying something.

Touching the Tangible

I will reiterate that I am no expert in architecture.  And that is a critical point here.  I am not advocating we all become experts in the field of landscape architecture.  What I am proposing is translating "incubating post-industrial functionalities" into a workable framework of approach to the critical challenges our communities face.

Linguist Guy Deutscher in The Unfolding of Language: an evolutionary tour of mankind's greatest invention * (a must read book) points out that every word, except for a couple of pronouns, can be traced back etymologically to a word describing a concrete object in the natural world - something perceived through our five senses. Our most abstract and complex thoughts are built upon the simple and the tangible.

Landscape architecture, and architecture in general, deals with, if in nothing else, the concrete world.  I probably don’t have to list the multitude of architectural related metaphors, analogies, and figures of speech people use without a moment’s thought: we are on the path to…, we encountered a wall of…; we need to lay the foundation for…And so on.

Translating the concepts and principles of (landscape) architecture in a way someone like me can understand provides a subject all of us, regardless of socio-political stripes, something with which we can all relate.

To this point, Christopher Alexander writes:

Architecture, because it is so ordinary, affects billions of people, and covers a huge volume of physical stuff, is, from a study point of view, and from a theoretical point of view, one of the first cases we have encountered collectively, as a civilization, where it really matters whether you do things right or not [with the emphasis on do—i.e. this is about practice mattering].

[The quote is from an essay: New Concepts in Complexity Theory: Arising from Studies in the Field of Architecture. A reading of some of my previous blogs would reveal my interest in complexity theory and complex adaptive systems.  When I came across this essay, I knew I was (for my entertainment purposes if nothing else) on the right track.  The iconoclastic Christopher Alexander, of who I had not heard, himself is worth a blog or two.]

The Edge

To bring this blog to a close, we come back to the edge.  As in the edge effect found in the ecotones.

The edge effect in ecology is the effect of the juxtaposition or placing side by side of contrasting environments on an ecosystem....Increasing edge effects allows more habitat structure to increase biodiversity within the area.

It is in this increase in diversity within the area of overlap of between two systems which is is of importance here.  Moving from ecology to encounters between two systems of thought - we can see the theoretical foundation for a framework of approach to achieve a common ground agenda.

But if we translate it to the overlap between the systems across scale of the human spaces, and between the overlap between the systems of human and natural spaces, that are the focus of landscape architecture - we can see how the architects can show us the way forward.

Christopher Alexander writes further in New Concepts in Complexity Theory:

Boundaries, and especially thick boundaries with substance, can play a role in helping the goodness of a center, or in strengthening a center. This happens because, if two systems are interacting, the boundary condition is often turbulent or a source of possible confusion. When the boundary zone itself has dimension, it can then take on an "in-between" structure, which mitigates or smoothes out the potential interacting processes in the inner and outer zones. Familiar examples are to be seen in the very thick boundary around a living cell (which contains so much vital functionality), in the edge ecology between a forest and a lake, or in the corona of the sun which mitigates the interactions of the sun’s interior and the processes taking place further out in the near vacuum beyond.

The boundary plays a huge role in the effect and behavior of any system made of other systems, since the system will literally be riddled with such boundary layers and boundary zones. Although one cannot say that every center must have a boundary of this kind, it is certainly one of the ways in which a living center gets its stability and strength, and capacity to interact other systems.

Not surprisingly, then, a transformation which gives a given entity such a boundary zone—not a very difficult kind of transformation to induce mechanically as part of any developmental process—is likely to create a niche for desirable effects. The transformation which preserves and enhances structure, by introducing boundaries, is likely to bring with it a variety of positive effects. Thus evolution, ontogeny, planning, building, and design, are all likely to benefit (at the very least in a heuristic and probabilistic fashion) from such transformations

Now all we have to do is translate that.

[* Deutscher opens the book with “Language is mankind’s greatest invention – except of course, that it was never invented.” ]