Place editorial

British Landscapes – A change for the better?

For masterplanner Raymond Unwin, landscape was not just a background to

lives lived, it was a weapon of social change, says David Davidson, architectural

adviser at Hampstead Garden Suburb Trust. Unwin’s

vision was the communal landscape, one that promoted

social interaction at every turn. In creating the Hamp-

stead Garden Suburb, he realised the democratic land-

scapes the Garden City movement espoused

Davidson was the first speaker in the Landscape Insti-

tute’s autumn lecture series Urban Landscapes in the

Twentieth Century. He is also the first of our essayists

in this special edition of Landscape, which takes as its

starting point the ideals of the Garden City and pits them

against the great 21st century challenge: realising the

green city.

British Landscapes – A change for the better?Davidson was the first speaker in the Landscape Insti-

tute’s autumn lecture series Urban Landscapes in the

Twentieth Century. He is also the first of our essayists

in this special edition of Landscape, which takes as its

starting point the ideals of the Garden City and pits them

against the great 21st century challenge: realising the

green city.

Programmed by Susannah Charlton of the Twentieth Century Society, the lecture series accompanies the Garden Museum’s From Garden City to Green City exhi-bition. The five speakers agreed to pen a series of essays for us, so, following a

foreword from Christopher Woodward, director of the Garden Museum, we dedicate 15 pages to what we can learn from more than a century of urban

landscapes.Projects adviser at the Prince’s Regeneration Trust Roland Jeffery

tackles housing landscapes, and the new towns in particular. Their landscapes, he says, have still to find a comfortable

role that is somewhere in between the private gar-den and the public highway.

Programmed by Susannah Charlton of the Twentieth Century Society, the lecture series accompanies the Garden Museum’s From Garden City to Green City exhi-bition. The five speakers agreed to pen a series of essays for us, so, following a

foreword from Christopher Woodward, director of the Garden Museum, we dedicate 15 pages to what we can learn from more than a century of urban

landscapes.Projects adviser at the Prince’s Regeneration Trust Roland Jeffery

tackles housing landscapes, and the new towns in particular. Their landscapes, he says, have still to find a comfortable

role that is somewhere in between the private gar-den and the public highway.

Urban PlanningKen Worpole, writer and senior professor at the Cities Institute, suggests that the British still have a problem

in thinking about designed landscapes as places of pleasure. He asks whether now is the time for us to

rediscover the purpose of our leisure landscapes.“If you leave people to live in a lousy, unhealthy, un-green and depressing environment that indi

cates that society at large, their local authority and the government don’t care about them,

then why should we be surprised when they act without care themselves?” This is Sarah

Gaventa writing in the wake of August’s riots as she asks how communities

can possibly be expected to interact when they have nowhere decent to com-

mune.

Ken Worpole, writer and senior professor at the Cities Institute, suggests that the British still have a problem

in thinking about designed landscapes as places of pleasure. He asks whether now is the time for us to

rediscover the purpose of our leisure landscapes.“If you leave people to live in a lousy, unhealthy, un-green and depressing environment that indi

cates that society at large, their local authority and the government don’t care about them,

then why should we be surprised when they act without care themselves?” This is Sarah

Gaventa writing in the wake of August’s riots as she asks how communities

can possibly be expected to interact when they have nowhere decent to com-

And finally, Landscape’s honorary editor Tim Waterman explores our relationship with food and the ur-

ban landscape. Are taste and appe-tite our biggest barriers to realising

sustainable design?

But just how relevant are the ideas of the Garden City to those nations cur-rently in thrall to urban revolutions of

their own? We asked Ruth Olden to get behind the images of verdant green cities and see what’s happening in India, China

and Mexico.

With large-scale investment on the backburn-er for the foreseeable future, the Landscape

Institute’s latest publication Local green infra-structure: helping communities make the most

of their landscape, seems particularly pertinent.

The guide presents eight case studies that show how local people and businesses can make their

towns, cities and villages more attractive, healthier and better for wildlife.

So why have we put Stefano Boeri’s 27-storey Bosco Verticale on the cover? Billed as the world’s first ‘vertical forest’, each apartment will have a balcony planted with trees, creating a green forest rising above the city. It is the first element in Boeri’s proposed BioMilano, in which a green belt is created around the city. This seemingly fantastical concept is actually under construction in Milan and serves, perhaps, as a stark reminder that nothing quite so green and ambitious seems to be going on in the built environment in the UK.

Or is there? After all, there is unlikely to be one solution the green city. Rather, the question is whether our at-tempts to realise it, in all its manifestations, will be re-signed to the drawing board as utopian ideals or will the 21st century see them finally succeed at scale?