Where Disciplines Meet Lecture Series 3/2022

12 April 2022

Landscape architecture and social sustainability – towards a dialogue in education and practice

Speaker: Jo Boonen (University College Ghent)
Respondents: Joern Langhorst ((University of Colorado), Heidi Hohmann (Iowa State University)

General subject area: Landscape architecture; landscape theory vs practice; landscape and community; landscape and sustainability, landscape democracy

Landscape architecture is a discipline that concerns itself with the development and design of landscapes. As landscape architects are often mediators between different stakeholders of the landscape, they are perfectly positioned to represent the importance and urgency of a diversity of social sustainability issues connected to landscape.

However, within the SoDuLTA research project, it is argued that the disciplinary relationship with sustainability is complicated. Landscape architects often consider sustainability to be an ‘empty concept’, or politically claimed as a tool for pushing planning ideas, used in the same sentence as ‘greenwashing’. Those who do use the concept refer mostly to its ecological elements. Social aspects of sustainability are not equally valued, or not seen as a part of the larger sustainability discourse. Perhaps the discipline lacks – as Hohmann and Langhorst stated – a shared social agenda.

In this presentation, we will focus on these social aspects of sustainability, and how they are given meaning in the practice and product of landscape architecture in Flanders. Through qualitative research methodologies (triangulation of literature, case studies and in-depth interviews) we will discover their views on social sustainability. This search inevitably leads to bigger questions about the discipline and the role it should play in society and in landscape. What does landscape mean within the discipline? What are underlying social ideologies? How do we strive for democratic landscapes? Where does our own professional influence stop, and how far can and should we push our own ideas? It becomes a reflection not only about the landscape that is our muse, but also about our own political positioning in it.

The goal of this practice-oriented research project is not to create a clear framework or reference theory (although this might have its own worth), but rather to start a continuous, discipline-critical dialogue on social sustainability.

Bibliography 

Benson, J., & Roe, M. (2007). Landscape and sustainability (J. Benson & M. Roe (eds.); second). Taylor & Francis.
Egoz, S., Jorgensen, K., & Ruggeri, D. (2018). Defining Landscape Democracy – a path to spatial justice (S. Egoz, K. Jorgensen, & D. Ruggeri (eds.); First). Edward Elgar.
Egoz, S., Makhzoumi, J., & Pungetti, G. (2016). The right to landscape – Contesting Landscape and Human Rights (S. Egoz, J. Makhzoumi, & G. Pungetti (eds.)). Routledge.
Hohmann, H. M., & Langhorst, J. (2004). An Apocalyptic Manifesto. Iowa State University.
Palich, N., & Edmonds, A. (2013). Social sustainability: Creating places and participatory processes that perform well for people. Environment Design Guide, 78, 1–13. http://search.informit.com.au/documentSummary;dn=714297508732311;res=IELHSSBaird, George%5CnOosterhof, Hedda%5CnBaird, George%5CnOosterhoff, Hedda
Shirazi, M., & Keivani, R. (2020). Urban social sustainability – Theory, policy and practice (M. Shirazi & R. Keivani (eds.)). Routledge.

Jo Boonen Is a landscape architect and urban planner. In 2015/2016 he has worked as an estimator in the landscaping firm the Gardenmakers in Sydney, Australia. In October 2016 he started working as a researcher in the University College of Ghent, Belgium. He is connected to the department of architectonic design and the research centre Futures Through Design. Throughout his research he has worked on socio-spatial themes like social housing quality for children and teenagers and the meaning of social sustainability for landscape architects.

Joern Langhorst Is Associate professor at the college of Architecture and Planning (University of Colorado  – USA). He has practiced extensively, focusing on projects in highly contested situations on various scales. His research, teaching and practices are exploring the processes, forces and actors that make and unmake place, space and landscape, and how place and space influence culture, looking at the temporal and spatial-material dimensions. He is particularly interested in the ethical, epistemological and ontological dimensions of the interactions of human and other-than-human processes in place over time, exploring the roles of landscapes and places in social and environmental justice. 

Heidi Hohmann Is Associate Professor at the College of Design (Iowa State University – USA), with professional experience in historic landscape preservation and landscape design in both the public and private sector. Her experiences in academia include teaching, research, administrative management, and curriculum development. She has received fellowships from both Dumbarton Oaks (2019) and the James Marston Fitch Foundation (2020) for work on her book project on the history of the Minneapolis park system examining its relationship to city planning, environmental management, and historic preservation.