ABSTRACT
Landscape urbanism emerged at end of the 1990s as a platform for promoting landscape and ecological structures and systems as guiding design principles in urban projects (Mostafavi and Najle 2003; Waldheim 2006c, 2016; cf. Hagan 2015; Sordi 2014; Thompson 2012). While this approach emerged primarily within prestigious North American design schools, its ideas have been disseminated worldwide, forming the basis of projects by design firms with global outreach. Its main claim is that landscape has emerged as a ‘model and medium for the contemporary city’ (Waldheim 2016: ii). In the words of Charles Waldheim, one of landscape urbanism’s protagonists: Landscape ‘has become a lens through which the contemporary city is represented and a medium through which it is constructed’ (Waldheim 2006a: 15). After a more general introduction to the discourse of landscape urbanism, this chapter will focus on a discussion of the central concept of landscape in landscape urbanism as an entry to emphasise some key aspects of the discourse, to address critique and to suggest possible lines for future enquiry. 1
