How can Landscape Architecture contribute to a new professional free market?

[Gabino Carballo]

Hi Robert,

Thank you for your beautiful reply. That is a nice tale to tell about becoming a Landscape Architect.

I agree that Landscape Architecture has many roots in Europe, even if some of the oldest and most fantastic manufactured landscapes ever conceived blossomed in places like the Middle East and China.However, Landscape Architecture as a profession, with strong beliefs in its ability to change society for the better has many more roots in the US.

I teach some lectures at some of the Universities in Barcelona, some for US students, and they are always surprised at my presentations about Olmsted.

Somehow, they are not aware of his egalitarian ideals regarding public space, or how he saw the American Landscape as a moral repository for the nation.

Students seem surprised to find that common green space has not always been equally accessible to all citizens. This principle may now be fundamental to the idea of a “public park”, but was not assumed as necessary before him.

So, ideas about how society should work generate public policies and these are inextricably linked to politics.

“Politics” has its roots in “Polis”, greek for City, the same root as “polite”, in the same way that “civilized” has a root in Latin “civitas”, City again. And you know that life in cities needs public participation and politics, otherwise you get a totalitarian citadel.

Cannot scape politics. The problem is that sometimes we get trapped by the lowest common denominator in politics: self-serving interest. Thus, decent people get out of politics and we are left with whatever social flotsam cares to drift in the resulting unhealthy miasma.

This kind of politics inevitable leads to another kind of politics: that of individual action, challenging the establishment with whatever legal or administrative avenues are left, often against your best interest.

This is a tale of such a behaviour:

http://elmanifiestodelospaisajistas.wordpress.com/2013/10/17/landscape-architects-discriminated-against-in-spain-and-catalonia-eu-says/

Sven is good guy and we are all grateful for his work, he has made no friends, but he has got a result for Landscape Architects in Spain: nobody can say any more that things are ok here in Barcelona, Madrid and the rest.

It sets the foundations for change, if we survive the war, that is.

We are positive people though. We believe that there are other things, beyond Landscape Architecture, and we believe that we have a responsibility towards our fellow citizens.

So we care to dignify our work with initiatives such as this “Making Landscapes – Saving Lives”:

http://elmanifiestodelospaisajistas.wordpress.com/2013/10/23/making-landscapes-saving-lives/

I would like to encourage you all to copy it and replicate it all over the world.

Landscape Architecture is a beautiful profession: it is worth working for it!

Thanks again!

Gaby

[Gabino Carballo]

Hi,

It has taken a while, but it looks like the American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA) support Landscape Architects’ Professional Regulation in Brazil.

http://www.slideshare.net/slideshow/embed_code/27686014#!

CLARB have also expressed support for professional regulation in Brazil:

http://www.slideshare.net/slideshow/embed_code/27686072#!

I am glad that ASLA and CLARB and getting on with this, and I glad to hear that people in the US understand the concept of professional regulation.

Next: Spain, please!

[Gabino Carballo]

ASLA supports Landscape Architects under attack in Brazil

http://elmanifiestodelospaisajistas.wordpress.com/2013/10/30/asla-supports-landscape-architects-under-attack-in-brazil/

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