Friday, June 11, 2010

Placelessness



an old thing i wrote for school, but a good refresher for why i chose my profession, especially the week of a student loan payment......


Emily McCoy
Writing Assignment Two
Land Use in America and Landscape Architecture
LAR 521 R. Swink

Placelessness, the phenomenon of increasing similarity among places of different geographic locations or the lack of a distinguishable character (Huang, 1995), in communities around America has detrimental effects on our society in that the lack of character manifests into the loss of local fellowship and pride. This dissociation can lead to economic, environmental and sociological problems for communities. The catalyst for these issues is the capitalist society we live in that allows for laissez-faire land use, but can also be thoughtfully managed through our democratic government and progressive private ventures. Land Use in America by Diamond and Noonan outlines several agendas that provide a backbone for how communities and government approach beneficial land use. Landscape architecture is one of the unique professions that can mediate between narrow disciplines and create comprehensive designs that take into account multiple scales, from neighborhood to region to country to world, to achieve the goals of land use agendas that benefit communities and the people they are made of by creating and maintaining a sense of place.

Agenda 9 “A constituency for better land use is needed based on new partnerships…..These partnerships can be mobilized around natural and cultural resources that people value”

Landscape architecture has the power to coalesce not only different disciplines, like engineering and psychology, but also groups of people of different ethos, for example conservationists and developers. Landscape architects are trained to see the big picture and the microenvironment all at the same time. Very few disciplines take on this task aside from planners. The difference, however, between land planners and landscape architects is that the landscape architect applies land use policies to the land directly, whereas the planner oversees the theory. In our democratic society the people make the decisions, but in turn it is everyone’s responsibility to reveal knowledge that could benefit society (education).
In order to develop sense of place in the community, first it is necessary to explain the benefits of sense of place to the people and then develop the specifics of how that goal will be met by celebrating unique natural and cultural resources that people value. Here the LA can hold public forums as a government employee or contracted by the government to find out what the public values about their community or even help point out the uniqueness of their community naturally and culturally. When people strip down their identity to their community, all interests can be met. LA’s have the power to relate unique natural and cultural resources to economic development through land design and visual representation. Academic institutions of LA can also be involved in giving vision to communities by visual representations. These representations can ignite a renewed celebration of community that abides to beneficial land use planning, while also bringing all interests together to achieve the same goal. This takes form as design charettes, final projects and extension services.

Agenda 10 “New tools are required to meet the new challenges of land use….advances in technology also offer new opportunities for improving land use decision making.

LA’s also can identify and remediate through design and construction natural and cultural resources that can be necessary for the health of the community. These natural and cultural resources may also be a unique feature that creates a sense of place and in turn brings economic prosperity. New forms of technology, like GIS, are extraordinary aids at visualizing land use patterns and consequences of those uses. Again, these visual representations help educate the community about the repercussions of poor planning and destruction of life systems in their community. Governments, the private sector and academia all have the opportunity to continue to create these databases for all of America and make correlations between the data. These correlations have the power to guide good land use and in turn good land design. The computer only represents the data, however people, like LA’s, are needed to critically analyze the data and find significant associations that can be drive theory and application of smart land use.
Agenda 7 “Older areas in cities and suburbs must become a focus for renewal. Government policies should help fill in vacant land in already built-up areas and renew older properties rather than promote unplanned expansion in the urban fringe.

The main aesthetic that can create a sense of place in a community comes from architecture and landscape design. In order to create an effective aesthetic for these purposes, architecture and landscape design should first reflect the history, culture, climate and environmental history of that area, but must also be continuous and not piece-meal. Through planning, zoning and government subsidies vacant lots and run down buildings can be revitalized as an option to sprawl. LA’s in the public and private sector can be involved with governments directly or indirectly creating design guidelines for architecture and landscape, doing historical and environmental research and overseeing public forums and mediation.

Landscape architects are and will play a vital role in regenerating American communities that have been magnetized to the monoculture aesthetic that has plagued so many communities. Landscape architects, along with other disciplines, will aid communities in rediscovering or reinventing the uniqueness we all long for, but also drives economic growth. By mediating people, research, design, use of technology and acts of enthusiasm LA’s have an imperative role in the war on placelessness in the communities we loved, love and will love again.


Huang, Chang-Shan. 1995. How can we avoid placelessness? A phenomenological study of place and place-making with four case studies of landscape design projects in Boston and its vicinity (Frederick Law Olmsted, Sr., Laurie Olin, Peter Walker, Martha Schwartz, Massachusetts.) PhD Dissertation. University of Pennsylvania.

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