“ on res De ie i Sa 2°: eS =~] pan) Ce a Qea = ==> As ecology becomes the new engineering, the projecti of landscape as infrastructure—the contemporary, syn thetic alignment of the disciplines of landscape archite: ture, civil engineering and urban planning—has become pressing. Predominant challenges facing urban regions and territories today—including shifting enamels tial flows, and population mobilities—are addi CRtare) strategized here. Responding to the under-performance of master planning and over-exertion_of technological systems at theénd of 20th century, this: book argues for the strategic design of infrastructuralecologies desctib- ing a synthetic landscape of living, biophysical systems that operate as territorial infrastructures to shape and di- rect the future of urban economies into the 21st century. 3 ™ pierre bélanger ‘d by Roe NET “Historically, civil engineering represented the tradition of infrastructure development and infrastructure practi¢e in the’ United States. Moving into the future, the field of landscape infrastfucture and the role of land- scape architects promise to offer muh insight and leadership for prac- tices of infrastructure design and uftban‘ecology across the planet.” ee CMA SAE Ueele ill ORM era ok ae Fee ae Mila ke eee ok ecm eRe Nee aie Structure Lab), and'ASsoolate ProteSsor of Landscape Architecture and Co-Director ofthe Urbanism, Landséape, Egology Area (Master's Degree in Design Studies Pro- ee sneer Mace eee neaked crea een ees: eet eae na erm IS me ei eee eae came aCe Cy EP aot AG ORES Seen ianenene ee eer eres ED)pierre bélanger As ecology becomes the new engineering, the projection of landscape as infrastructure—the con- temporary alignment of the disciplines of landscape architecture, civil engineering, and urban plan- ning—has become pressing. Predominant challenges facing urban regions and territories today—in- cluding shifting climates, material flows, and population mobilities, are addressed and strategized here. Responding to the under-performance of master planning and over-exertion of technological systems at the end of the twentieth century, this book argues for the strategic design of infrastruc- tural ecologies, describing a synthetic landscape of living, biophysical systems that operate as urban infrastructures to shape and direct the future of urban economies and cultures into the 21st century. Pierre Bélanger is Associate Professor of Landscape Architecture and Co-Director of the Master in Design Studies Program at Harvard University's Graduate School of Design. As part of the Depart- ment of Landscape Architecture and the Advanced Studies Program, Bélanger teaches and coordi- nates graduate courses on the convergence of ecology, infrastructure, and urbanism in the Inter related fields of design, planning, and engineering. Dr. Bélanger is author of the 35th edition of the Pamphlet Architecture Series from Princeton Architectural Press, GOING LIVE: from States to Systems (pa35.net), co-editor with Jennifer Sigler of the 39th issue of Harvard Design Magazine, Wet Matter and co-author of ECOLOGIES OF POWER: Countermapping the Logistical Landscapes & Military Geogra- phies of the U.S. Department of Defense. As a landscape architect and urbanist, he is the recipient of the 2008 Cariada Prix de Rome in Architecture, as well as the Curator for the Canada Pavilion and Exhibition EXTRACTION (extraction.ca) at the 2016 Venice Architecture Biennale.First published 2017 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdoh, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an Imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2017 Pierre Bélanger Layout, Design, Cover: OPSYS Media Copyediting: Danika Cooper, Erin Wythotf, Karen Moser, Hernan Bianchi Benguria limiage Editing & Permissions: Séréna Vanbutsele The right of Pierre Bélanger to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in-accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. Dedicated to the memory of Michael Hough—landscape architect, urban ecologist (1928- 2013); “Total control is impossible, biodynamics can only be triggered, manipulated, am: plified, attenuated or registered, Nothing is new; everything exists already in one form or another.” Al rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any elec- tronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in-any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data AA catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Landscape as Infrastructure : A Base Primer / Pierre Bélanger. New York, NY : Routledge, 2017. Includes bibliographical references and Index. LCcN 2015049549 Subjects: 1. Landscape Architecture, 2. Sustainable Development. 3. Infrastructure (Economies) $8472 83585 2016 DDG 712 —de23 LC Record available at http://lecn loc.gov/2015049549 (SBN: 978-1-138-64391.8 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-138-64392-5 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-315-62915-5 (ebk) ‘Typeset in News Gothic and Century by OPSYS Media Funding: Harvard Graduate School of Design, Landscape Architecture Canada Foundation, Netherlands Archi- tecture Fund, Canada Foundation for Innovation, Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, University of Toronto Daniels Schod! of Architecture, Landscape and Design, and Wageningen University.pierre bélanger landscape as infrastructure a base primer foreword by rosalind williams(eT eac} Foreword Preface Prepositions A Landscape Manifesto Systems of Systems Redefining Infrastructure Synthetic Surfaces Ecologies of Disassembly Landscape as Infrastructure Foodshed Metabolic Landscape Regionalization Infrastructural Ecologies Imaging Infrastructure Re-Reading Infrastructure Urbanism, without Infrastructure? Acknowledgments Index ioe} 48 80 116 156 192 Paes 296 334 360 426 480 484 496 498 500Compiled over the past ten years, this book brings to- gether a series of ten different texts, with ten different positions, that explores how the emergence of ecology and revival of geography at the turn of this century are radically reconfiguring the way we understand and shape environments. Written by a landscape urbanist, each text offers a position on the visible systems, invisible process- es, and indivisible scales—the infrastructure—supporting contemporary urban life. Unlike specialized, professional, or deep, philosophical works, this book does not present itself as a treatise nor a textbook but rather a preliminary and elementary in- troduction to the cross-disciplinary nature of landscape infrastructure as a method of thinking, model of peda- gogy, milieu of research, and mode of practice. In the cross-cultural sense that West Coast geographer Carl O. Sauer assigned to the morphology of landscape in 1925 as conflation of “land and life,”! this book is an attempt to represent a field that is simultaneously emergent and convergent, sometimes fleeting or gone afield during the past century. As a compilation, the book is undisciplined in its affilia- tion to any one single professional practice or academic program. Yet, for the most part, it emerges precisely out of a demand for new practices of urbanism, landscape, and ecology that transcend historic, jurisdictional sys- tems or territorial states. Although the book is unscien- tific in its lack of a rational methodology, it is neverthe- less anchored by a model of thought that is abductive, which privileges selective sampling and rapid reconnais- sance from different fields, often borrowing broad-basedknowledge across geography, history, economy, industry and anthropology, for immediate or long-term purposes. Neither inductive nor deductive, yet essential to everyday design practice, abduction draws from many fields and appropriates many levels of knowledge, extensively and intensively, to formulate ideas and strategies based on uncertain conditions, indeterminate circumstances, and sometimes incomplete information. If designers, in con- trast to scientists, can easily formulate conclusions and develop solutions based on hunches, imperfect scenari- os, and incomplete information, it is simply because they revel in abductive thinking.? Through rapid research and expedited reconnaissance, they can process and syn- thesize large bodies of information very, very quickly. To the extent of these important possibilities and with the acknowledgement of their limits, the book is actionable. The writings are committed to action—through imple- mentation, influence, intervention, and engagement—on, and from the ground. Written from a Western, industrial, and highly developed world optic, the book takes position vis-a-vis the space and performance of conventional urban infrastructure where, thanks to the omnipresence of state and corpo- rate systems (including cities as incorporations), it has become a given, and to a certain extent, naturalized to the point of being practically invisible. In turn, the book is equally informed by non-Western environments of suburbanization and highly influenced by ideologies of underdevelopment. The failure, suppression, or oppres- sion of conventionally planned or engineered infrastruc- ture is not only informative, but extremely generative Preface = 11and inspiring in its subtractive, reductive, counterfactual value.? With practitioners, policy makers, students, and educa- tors in mind, the book provides precedents and pro- poses antecedents to this discourse that requalify how we think about infrastructure and proposes alternative directions for aspiring urbanists. From the fields of ecol- ogy, engineering, planning, and landscape architecture, the strategies and positions proposed here avoid the overemphasis and over-reliance on over-engineering and over-design that has historically been—and to a certain extent, remains—based on a skewed sense of security and stability. Out of the current crisis of professional design disci- plines to address the predominant challenges of the ur- ban age—from shifting climates, resource economies, and population movements—emerges a field, and a school of thought that, in the words of urbanist William Sherman, recognizes the agency of risk, doubt, and flux: “With the shift to a dynamic conception of form and a new engagement of time-based processes, design has repercussions at many scales. No work can be conceived independently of the human and natu- ral processes that form its context. The infrastruc- ture that made possible the last half millennium of urbanization was conceived as a one-way system providing a predictable flow of resources in lieu of nature’s volatile processes. It derived the stability required for economic and cultural progress. This modern infrastructure implies dependence, though,on a fragile premise; stability breeds reliance on in- creasingly vulnerable centralized authorities. The freedom to invent new form was thus predicated on a false sense of security.”* Whether by design or un-design, the different positions offered in this book are contingent on three ontological critiques of disciplinary, institutional, and professional knowledge associated with fields concerned with the en- vironment, engineering, and infrastructure: 1. Systems within Systems, States within States. We inhabit systems of systems, where multiple levels of complexity exist, coexist, converge, and collide. Those systems are always incomplete and imperfect, influenced and induced, never completely open nor completely closed. They are always mediated by one form of infra- structure or another, usually under the influence of vari- ous states and scales of control.° 2. Ecology is Urbanization, Urbanization is Ecology. Both as lens and language, model and medium, the en- vironment of history (code for landscape of urbanization) is as important as the history of the environment that is often recounted through histories of science and of technology. As analytical aberration, one that does not conform to any one formal categorical discipline, the characterization of landscape as process of urbanization, and the urbanization of landscape as a field, resists dis- ciplinary or territorial definition, and as such, is material, spatial, biophysical, political, technological, and temporal simultaneously.® Preface 133. Live Ecology as Lived Experience. The living, temporal subject of landscape is an epis- temological critique of the reductionist and techno- logical focus of engineering and environment that is historically rooted in its mechanical and hydraulic origins. As design media, life is thus a scalar and spatial medium expressed through a multitude of different temporalities ranging from speeds, seasons, cycles, zones, growths, movements, migrations, mo- bilities, displacements, destructions, and disasters.” ® As forward-looking prepositions, these ontologies are further reinforced throughout the book with a series of practical and irreducible positions—prepositions—that the following essays, maps, and diagrams are based on. Laid out as introductory theorems, these ideological preconditions are retroactively modeled on two lesser- known manifestos that bear significance for the field of landscape, namely William J.T. Mitchell's “Nine Theses on Landscape”? (1994) and André Gorz's “Seven The- ses on Ecology.”!° In his Ecologie et Politique (1975), the philosophical journalist and writer Gorz formed his think- ing during an era of social revolution in terms of capital, consumption, production, poverty, state, society, and life. To do this, Gorz proposed ecology, less as a scien- tific discipline, or state-driven area of study (terrestrial or conservation ecology) that requires constrainment, and more as a political and spatial strategy—a body ecolog- ic—that could be deployed as expression of freedom, lib- erty, and multiplicity. Formulated as preconditions to the individual essays, the ten positions that are distributedacross the book thus aspire to a level of actionability and cultural relevance in the context of the current turbulent period of climate change, population dynamics, and re- source flows. To this end, these positions may appear to the reader as sliding uncomfortably and paradoxically between intensive and extensive! models of landscape thought and infrastructural inquiry at early stages. As an attempt, the emergent positions proposed here remain nevertheless operative for study and practice in the con- verging fields of urbanism, landscape, and ecology. ology of Landscape (1925)" in Land and Life: A Selection from the Writings of Carl ‘Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1963): 315-349, thought and way of working that privileges a basis for drawing conclusions: e, and sometimes absent information, drawing knowiedge and methods fram many ‘ols of thought, sources, stories, and media through ideas, inferences, or hypotheses thet often seem countter- factual, counterintuitive, and contradictory. Applicable to and assumed as part of the process of design, abduction is most often used in complex, parametric thinking, where linear relationships seldomly exist and where simple strategies are sought. In the field of logic, the process of abduction was formulated by American logician Cherles C0 sone of the most profound and original philosophers that America has produced,” elected Writings (Values in a Universe of Chance) (New York, NY: Dover, Haw to Make Our Ideas Clear” Popular Science Monthly 12 (January 2, Abductive thinking is a m bbased on incomplete, imp 1878); 286 3, Here, the confluence of the “landscape and infrastructure" parallels that of “environment and infrastructure,” as profiled in Emmanuel Kreike's Environmental Infrastructure in African History (New York, NY: Cambridge University. Press, 2013), where the absence of technological systems and weaker (or less pronounced) legacies of civil engi- neering traditions expose @ deep-founded legacy of environmental processes, plant practices, and living systems as socal infesttuctues; leading to cultural growth and economic wealth beyond environmental dependencies, and subsistence levels of living. ux" in Site Matters: Design Concepts Histories, and Strategies ed. Carol J. Burns (New York, NY: Routledge, 2005): 311-314 5. Ludwig von Bertalanfy, "The History and Status of General Systems Theory” in Tends in General Systems Theory, ed. George J. Klir (New York, NY: Wiley Interscience Press, 1972): 21-41 6. Peder Anker, “Environmental History versus History of Science,” Anthropology 31 (2002): 309-322. 7. Rosalind Williams, Retooling: A Historian Confronts Technological Change (Cambridge, MA: MIT’ Press, 2002). 8, Russell King, “Theories and Typologies of Migration: An Overview and a Primer” in Willy Brandt Series of Working Papers in international Migration and Ethnic Relations ed, Bjorn Fryklund and Erica Righard (Malm, SWE: Malm® institute for Studies of Migration, Diversity and Welfare, 2012). 9, See W..T. Mitchel, "Imperial Landscape” in Landscape and Power (Chicago,IL: University of Chicago Press, 994): 5-34 10, André Gorz, Ecologie et Potique (Paris, FR: Editions Galilée, 1975). 11. Models of intensive (intense, concentrated, deep) and extensive (large in extent, far-reaching range, wide) thought and characterization originate both from the philosophy of sciences (thermodynamic properties, for ex ample) end from the philosophy. The comparison between these two erttical terms is best understood 1 explanation of “intensité” (intense, intensity intensities) and “étendue” (extended, extension, ex- Gilles Deleuze's Difference and Repetition trans, Paul Patton (New York, NY: Columbia Preface 15