54

Kongjian Yu

Five Traditionsfor Landscape Urbanism ThinkingThe inspiring traditions in urban planning, design history and related fields

may be useful for the development of landscape urbanism thinking to meet the

needs and challenges of the ecological and sustainable urban form.

55

Over the past 10 years landscape urbanism,

an arguably new theory of urbanism and urban

design, began to be discussed, promoted and

popularized among students in landscape ar-

chitecture and urban design fields in North

America and Europe. The core argument of

landscape urbanism is that landscape, rather

than architecture, can better define urban forms

and experiences. Charles Waldheim describes

this as “a disciplinary realignment [whereby]

landscape replaces architecture as the basic

building block of urbanism,” and James Corner

considers landscape as an infrastructure of

processes and field of operation.

Methodologically-speaking, I prefer to de-

scribe landscape urbanism as a “negative ap-

proach” as opposed to the conventional (“posi-

tive”) approach to urban development, in which

urban growth is defined by built, gray infrastruc-

ture comprised of roads and pipes that provide

services for the urban development. The nega-

tive approach considers the green and unbuilt

ecological infrastructure (EI) that provides

ecosystem services and acts as a framework to

define urban growth and urban forms across all

scales. It is a recessional figure-ground.

In this sense, five traditions in both the

Eastern and Western planning theories and

practices inspire the development of landscape

(and ecological) urbanism.

Feng-shui and geomancy

The pre-scientific model of landscape urbanism

thinking. The pre-scientific model of the nega-

tive approach is the Chinese ancient art of geo-

Langzhong, a 2,300 year old city in the Chinese province of

Sichuan, exemplifies how the feng-shui model was followed

to shape an ideal form surrounded by water and mountain.

mancy, or feng-shui, which always gives prior-

ity to the natural pattern and processes of Qi or

breath. Ordered from large to small, the entire

national landscape (mountains and water

courses) is considered as an interconnected

dragon vein and a network of Qi movement. A

sacred landscape infrastructure in the fractal

form is a given pattern that any human actions

must come to terms with. This model was ap-

plied to the establishment and construction of

villages and cities, roads, bridges and even

tombs. All are connected. In this sense, the sa-

cred landscape forms the spiritual backbone or

network of the sustaining living environment

and becomes the infrastructure that bares ge-

nius loci. This tradition still flourishes in rural

China and has, for thousands of years, defined

the Chinese landscape’s cultural heritage and

56

The pre-scientific model of of landscape urbanism thinking

or the negative approach is the Chinese ancient art of geo-

mancy, which always gives priority to the natural pattern.

The plan for a typical city in the flood plain of the Yellow

River shows how the city was built around the water system.

57

spiritual bearings. Classic examples of Chinese

landscape cities are Hangzhou and the water

system of Suzhou City. Feng-shui also exists in

other cultures. The famous Incan Empire and

Machu Picchu in South America were also

based on geomancy and the city was ingenious-

ly designed in harmony with the natural land-

scape. This is just one example.

Greenways

Landscape as infrastructure of recreation and aes-

thetic experience. In the US, parks and green

spaces have served as fundamental infrastruc-

ture to solve urban problems such as conges-

tion and sanitation since the late 19th century.

Pioneered by Olmsted, the well cited examples

include Boston’s Emerald Necklace and the

Minneapolis parkway system. At the regional

scale, green spaces are systematically planned as

a metropolitan infrastructure, such as the one

shown on Eliot’s plan for Massachusetts. A sim-

ilar idea of natural system protection and green

space planning is done even at the national

scale in mining. This tradition of park systems

and parkways, with its function mainly focused

on recreation, has recently been adopted by the

greenway movement in the US. However, it is

enriched and integrated with more compre-

hensive functions including the protection of

natural resources and natural processes, protec-

tion of cultural heritage, and the development

of recreational amenities.

Greenbelt

Landscape as urban form maker. The third tradi-

tion of landscape as infrastructure in the West-

ern world can be traced to the European prac-

tice of greenbelt, green heart and green wedge

concepts. These are used by urban designers as

stoppers, separators and connecters of urban

development to create an arbitrarily good ur-

ban form. Greenbelts between city and coun-

tryside were established as a planning device

during the deconstruction of most European

city walls in the 18th and 19th centuries. The

greening of formerly walled areas created

promenades for recreational uses and city

beautification. However, they continue to serve

as separators of city and countryside, just as the

walls did in the cities of the Middle Ages. At the

end of 19th century, the idea of the greenbelt as

city stopper was appropriated by Ebenezer

Howard and became a fundamental element of

his Garden City model. For a century since

Howard, green spaces have been planned for

structuring, and they define “good urban form”,

such as greenbelts for compact cities like Lon-

don and Berlin; green heart for conurbation;

and green wedges for development control.

Similar ideas have been applied in Chinese

city planning since the 1950s and still prevail

today, such as the two greenbelt plans for Bei-

jing. Current evidence, based on European

countries, the US (Washington, DC region),

Canada’s capital city of Ottawa, and even Chi-

nese cities including Beijing, shows that these

greenbelt and wedge dreams have more or less

failed. Evidence also reveals that negative defi-

nitions of landscape forms (derived as an urban

containment), are hardly successful for protect-

ing open spaces in growing city regions. In-

stead, landscape must have a positive definition

based on the uses and perception of people.

This issue strongly supports the notion that in

order to have a sustainable landscape and urban

form, the conventional planning approach of

architectural urbanism and economic develop-

ment urbanism has to be reversed.

Partly for this reason, in the past decades, es-

pecially in the US, the greenway concept has

more or less replaced the concepts of greenbelt,

green wedge and green heart as urban form

makers. Based on multiple case studies, re-

searchers have demonstrated that greenways

evolve from an urban design approach that at-

tempts to impose both landscape form and land

use function to an ecologically based planning

approach that addresses natural factors, connec-

tions between natural and urban systems, pub-

lic participation and support, and innovative

government involvement.

The greenways concept has further devel-

oped into the more comprehensive and inter-

connected landscape called green infrastruc-

ture (GI). Considered as the maker of “urban

form” within urbanizing and metropolitan re-

gions, it is a tool for both “smart conservation

and smart growth”.

Ecological network

Landscape as infrastructure for biological conser-

vation. The fourth tradition of landscape as in-

frastructure is rooted in biological conserva-

tion. Biologist Edward Wilson noted that in the

expanding enterprise, landscape design will

play a decisive role. Where environments have

been mostly humanized, biological diversity

can still be sustained at high levels by the ingen-

ious placement of woodlots, hedgerows, water-

sheds, reservoirs, and artificial ponds and lakes.

Master plans will meld not just economic effi-

ciency and beauty, but also the preservation of

species and races. Concepts such as ecological

framework, ecological network, extensive open

space systems, multiple use modules, habitat

network and wildlife corridors, landscape

restoration framework, ecological corridor, en-

vironmental corridors, framework landscape

and eco-structure, etcetera, are made in differ-

ent places with different emphasis for the

preservation of biodiversity in the context of

stressed landscapes. These concepts, although

they vary slightly, all indicate that the philoso-

phy of nature conservation is changing from

species-centered and site protective approach-

es in early phases, into ecosystem-oriented

58

and Biosphere) program of UNESCO. In the

1984 MAB report, five principles were put for-

ward: (1) ecological conservation, (2) ecologi-

cal infrastructure, (3) living standard of resi-

dence, (4) cultural and historical conservation,

and (5) induction of nature into cities.

The principle of ecological infrastructure

refers to the natural landscape and hinterland of

the city, but is not clearly defined and overlaps

with other concepts such as ecological conserva-

tion. In biological conservation studies, the

term was first used to represent the habitat net-

work and emphasized the biodiversity conser-

vation function of landscape components such

as core zone and corridors. From a practical per-

spective, the practices of ecological infrastruc-

ture in the Netherlands are good examples, such

as the Dutch Ecological Main Infrastructure,

which is made up of natural core areas; natural

development areas; corridors or connections;

and buffer zones.

But what makes the concept of ecological

infrastructure such a powerful tool for land-

scape urbanism is its marriage with the under-

standing of ecosystems services. Four categories

of services are identified: provisioning, related

to production of food and clean water; regulat-

ing, related to the control of climate and dis-

ease, mediation of flood and draught; support-

ing, related to nutrient cycles and providing

habitat (suitable living space) for wild plant

and animal species; and cultural, related to

spiritual and recreational benefits. In this sense,

ecological infrastructure can be understood as

the necessary structure of a sustainable land-

scape (or ecosystem) in which the output of the

goods and services is maintained, and the ca-

pacity of those systems to deliver the same

goods and services for future generations is not

undermined. Ecological infrastructure can

therefore be defined as the structural landscape

network that is composed of the critical land-

scape elements and spatial patterns that are of

strategic significance in preserving the integri-

ty and identity of the natural and cultural land-

scapes and securing sustainable ecosystem serv-

ices, protecting cultural heritages and recre-

ational experience.

These five traditions and ideas about land-

scape as infrastructure and landscape urbanism

finally unite on the basis of the understanding

of natural capital and ecosystems services

merged with the concept of ecological infra-

structure. Other landscape elements such as

cultural heritage corridors, riparian buffers and

stormwater management systems, can also be

integrated with ecological infrastructure.

It is important to recognize that the conven-

tional approach to urban development plan-

ning, which is based on population projection,

built infrastructure, and architectural objects, is

unable to meet the challenges and needs of the

ecological and sustainable urban form and de-

velopment. It is in this situation that landscape

urbanism thinking is valuable. Using the anal-

ogy of photography in describing film and pic-

ture, or figure and ground, the term “negative”

can be used to describe the urban development

model being negatively enframed by ecological

infrastructure, not the other way around. To

say it in another way, ecological infrastructure

positively defines the urban form and growth

pattern and safeguards sustainable ecosystem

services essential for the city and people. Con-

ventionally, landscape and green elements are

negatively defined by architectural and built in-

frastructure. By positively defining ecological

infrastructure for the sake of ecosystems serv-

ices and cultural integrity of the land, the urban

growth pattern and urban form are negatively

defined. Ecological infrastructure builds a

bridge between landscape urbanism, the disci-

plines of ecology – especially landscape ecolo-

gy –, the notion of ecosystems services and sus-

tainable development. It is the bridge between

smart development and smart conservation.

ones, emphasizing the significance of deeply in-

tegrated conservation infrastructure.

In this tradition, the science of landscape

ecology plays an important role. Since its emer-

gence in 1939, and especially through its rapid

development since the 1980s, landscape ecolo-

gy has become the single most important disci-

pline that provides a sound scientific base for

the planning and design of landscapes. It is ar-

gued that unlike any other discipline, the land-

scape approach offers holistic assessment and

planning tools to define and develop the inter-

face between nature and culture. Hence, land-

scape, as the place of human interaction with

nature, appears to be at the heart of sustainabil-

ity. The definition of landscape as a heteroge-

neous land area composed of a cluster of inter-

acting ecosystems is fundamental in such a way

that it brings the discipline of landscape into a

field of science. This is dramatically different

from its poetic and picturesque past. While sci-

entific research provides a great amount of

knowledge about the processes, patterns and

changes, new shifts are called upon to bridge

the gap between scientific knowledge and its

application where landscape sustainability be-

comes the key concept.

Ecological infrastructure and ecosystems services

Landscape as integrated infrastructure for sustain-

able city and land. As a developed version of

ecological network, ecological infrastructure

gathers the most comprehensive meaning and

is considered to be an important strategy to

move built landscapes, metropolitan regions,

and cities toward a more sustainable condition.

The concept of ecological infrastructure origi-

nally emerged in the 1980s in two fields: eco-

city study and conservation biology. According

to available documents, the term ecological in-

frastructure first appeared in the MAB (Man

59

The ecological infrastructure of the Beijing region acts as the backbone in safeguarding the various

natural and cultural processes, and provides essential ecosystems service for the city of Beijing.