VIEWING LANDSCAPES

Originally Posted on Land + Artscapes, 9/18/17



The subjectivity of the word ‘landscape’ is inescapable. Within the categories described by Meinig in the Beholding Eye, landscape as history has various interpretations for persons of color living in America and for persons who are recent migrants to this country. For many landscape is the same as streetscape and unless one is privileged to have a glimpse from  an elevated balcony, from the Empire State Building or from an elevation in Brooklyn Bridge Park  or Central Park, landscape is relegated to the status of whatever floor or ground span that person traverses. For some the landscape does not extend beyond Chinatown. As the New York subway emerges from its tunnel and lounges across a bridge to Brooklyn or Queens or New Jersey one can have a glimpse of the Hudson River, the East River and possibly recognize the Statue of Liberty in the distance beyond some other bridge that is partly concealed by multitudes of buildings. This is the landscape of the city dweller. Within this category of people are some who resist outdoors or are reluctant to walk in parks for fear of mosquitoes, soil and bacteria, fear of pit bulls and falling tree limbs, fear of fear. For some there is no landscape except for the patches of land found in tree pits and that suits them just fine. For some the idea of landscape only occurs in the form of imagery, particularly screen savers and background computer imagery. These bitmapped and pixelated landscapes often carry the capacity to seduce the viewer and move in ways that can rival the experience of actually standing for a moment overlooking the Grand Canyon, at sunset, so there is no need to actually experience the landscape of the Grand Canyon.

The connotations of the landscape for the immigrant may oscillate from wonder to threat to conquest and while this new landscape may not reveal itself as new frontier as in the case of newly arrived immigrants in the seventeenth century, the immigrant has an urgency to settle in and “get a piece of the pie”. The beholding eye of the immigrant often sees landscape as investment that is to be quickly secured for his family’s future. The refugee may regard the landscape with even more nuanced emotions. For the refugee landscape is history, place nature, system, ideology, problem and landscape resembling something synonymous with sudden disruption and displacement.

Whatever our associations and eyes discern landscape to be, it is necessary for the landscape architect, landscape designer or urban planner to grow a third eye. Our views of the world and landscapes have to expand and evolve with the times and include the various and fluctuating connotations that landscapes encompass for diverse populations of myriad socio-economic and cultural compositions. The future of the profession may rely on those astute enough to devise research that is grounded in critical theory that challenges the status quo as well as enlists imperative and instrumental theories (Deming and Swaffield) when designing research for landscape solutions.