Need a good read this week? Here is an in-depth study for you! Our friends over at Landscape Urbanism recently launched the latest issue of the newly-named Scenario Journal – Scenario 4: Rethinking Infrastructure. This issue responds to the emergence of infrastructure as a central concept within the larger conversation about urbanism and a key force driving the transformation of urban landscapes, exploring the pressing question of how the infrastructure of the next century will be imagined and built.
“Scenario brings together work from practitioners, academics and students of landscape, planning, architecture, art, engineering, and environmental science,” which gives each issue a unique and fresh perspective. Crafted by Editors-in-Chief Stephanie Carlisle and Nicholas Pevzner, the Scenario 4 co-editors write:
“Infrastructure underlies and shapes urban growth, yet for the most part exists outside the realm of design discussions, tucked below ground or hiding in plain sight. Long fascinated with complex, dynamic powerful systems, designers are finally turning their attention to the potential of infrastructure as fertile conceptual territory. “With the pressing issues of climate change, financial malaise, unemployment and failures of governance, it is clear that the old approach to infrastructure —heroic but expensive, brittle, and difficult to maintain —will not be possible for too much longer. How do we ensure that the urgent conversation about the design and conception of infrastructure is a multidisciplinary project? How do we move beyond the buzzwords of green infrastructure, soft systems, and eco-engineering, in order to create a landscape infrastructure that is robust enough for the challenging times ahead?”
Recipient of the 2012 ASLA Honor Award in Communications, the Landscape Urbanism website was created by Sarah Kathleen Peck as a platform for interrogation, dialogue, and critical inquiries of the potential and futures of landscape urbanism ideas.
Check out the latest issue here: http://landscapeurbanism.com/journal/issue-4/
Photo Credit: Filled mangrove near Bandra Station, Mumbai. Photo by Stephanie Carlisle
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