Martha Schwartz, a professor at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design, discusses how urban landscape design plays an important role in the creation of value and therefore in the creation of sustainability.
Efficiencies Through Collectivization
Our practice is devoted to cities. We believe that the most sustainable form of human habitation is the city. Collectivization is the best means we have to conserve natural resources and reduce our carbon footprint. Our philosophy is that if we create attractive cities, we can create happy densities that will encourage people to live and thrive in cities. The highest and best use of our training as landscape architects lies in our ability to create attractive and functioning dense population centers which people will choose to live in over living in suburbs.
Where’s the Green in Sustainability?
In our sustainability discussions, most of the focus has been on buildings. Planners, architects and city leaders have often been slow to recognize the important role that the broader landscape that underlies our city’s buildings plays in making cities successful. However, the focus on buildings is understandable, as the sheer fact of the intensiveness of resources and energy used in construction and operations of buildings overshadows the less resource-hungry landscape by far.
In addition, the development of technologies for use within buildings is a financial “dripping roast” profit-maker for the tech – industries, as many of the environmental issues embodied in buildings can be addressed with a degree of simplicity and directness through technological innovation.
Without having a technological imperative for dealing with climate change, landscape architects have been relegated to providing green roofs and walls for buildings, which are basically technical sections. On a project-by-project basis, our scope is generally small and focuses on the technical performance of the ground plane. The lack of a clear voice for the landscape architect in this discussion is both ironic and problematic, as the landscape is the actual “green” part of the “green” discussion.
Landscape as Built Infrastructure
The awareness of our urban landscape as a built piece of infrastructure, crucial to a city’s performance and liveability, is a very new paradigm and little appreciated by most planners and city-builders. New mega-cities, a vast global trend towards urbanization, and a world population of over 7 billion, plus a surge of cities that are growing and regenerating, cast the urban landscape in a whole new light.
The role of our urban landscape has been a difficult topic to understand due to its lack of boundaries, breadth of function, and problematically, it is largely owned by the public, an often economically stressed and politically complex domain. Its purview actually rests outside the technologies that can be marketed, thus there are fewer industries that are vested in it. Lastly, the economic benefits derived from the urban public realm are more difficult to quantify and measure, although this too is changing.
Sustainability continues to focus on buildings. However, “Landscape Urbanism,” a clever oxymoron, has brought the topic of the landscape into the discussion by conjoining these two opposites. Its focus, however, relies on large-scale ecological strategies but ignores the importance of place-making and how people use the landscape. It also leaves out the connection between people, value and sustainability.
Thankfully, landscape topic is still open given the breadth of the landscape (which I consider everything outside the building), and our knowledge about ecology is rapidly expanding. These are both wider and more complex issues than architecture which has resulted in a landscape profession that is quickly expanding.
But our understanding of how the urban landscape might function more vigorously in creating healthy cities is hobbled by very strong cultural myths that most people hold in terms of what a landscape should be and look like. Most people bridle at the idea that the landscapes we live in are man-made artifacts. Given this unpopular reality, the manufactured, urban landscape exists outside the realm of architecture, urban design and planning. The realm of the urban landscape includes the streets, on and off ramps, service corridors, parking lots, traffic islands, tube corridors – most of which is covered in asphalt and concrete and have little financial investment, advocacy or aesthetic expectations. However, these are the types of spaces that characterize a city more so than its green parks and waterfronts.
Platform for the City
In the landscape, on a site-by-site basis, there is relatively little that can be done to affect sustainability at any scale. The more robust role of landscape architecture in sustainability becomes more evident as we engage the landscape at a city-scale or regional scale. It is when cities are thought of as living organisms rather than aggregations of buildings, and understand the landscape as the entire platform upon which a city operates. This platform contains the infrastructure that services us, embeds the public transportation, IT connections, water- and waste-systems. Most importantly, it is the platform upon which we connect to one another on the sidewalks of streets, in bike lanes, and in the great variety of spaces that create a rich array of choices for people to recreate and relax. People spend much more time on their city streets than in their parks. Pedestrian sidewalks are the most used public open spaces and carry the most potential in terms of upgrading how a city looks.
Landscape architects are now taught to not only consider the technical operations of the landscape – the geology, topography, soil structures, hydrology, phenomenology and plant and animal ecologies – but to understand more specifically how the landscape functions for people within the city. In order to design successful space we now must understand how a specific urban landscape is influenced and designed to reflect the end-user, the politics surrounding the site, the economic environment and social and cultural structure of the neighborhood. Only if these, what I call “soft systems,” are understood, can urban spaces truly serve their neighborhoods and be successful. As with the study of ecology, unless we truly embrace human systems, we will not be able to design so as to create optimal cities for people. Landscape architecture is now shifting our professional focus from the suburbs to cities, which are going under tremendous expansion globally.
When working within urban environments, it is my belief that our profession is as connected to social and cultural forces as it is to environmental imperatives. Necessary environmental infrastructure elements and planning and zoning needed to shape healthy growth must be made at governmental levels. Of course, as teachers and practitioners we can influence this thinking through advocacy, teaching and setting examples. However, if we are to deliver sustainable built environments, we must also design places that people can emotionally connect through creating a sense of place, memory and identity. Without connecting person-to-place, even our best efforts at creating sustainable environments will not succeed. We must build constituencies of devoted users who will value the places we build. But we must also recognize that the public landscape is one of the most fragile but perhaps the most critical components of our cities; without it, natural and social systems cannot function and you are left with a dysfunctional city.
Besides providing the platform for urban connection and working ecosystems, the physical quality of this landscape provides the visual quality in which we live. The way it looks and how it functions, forms our identity as individuals and ultimately becomes the image of the city itself. It can be degraded and ugly, or glorious in its diversity and beauty. It can determine the health of the earth itself, determine the liveability of a city, support (or not support) a city’s economy and help to create health and happiness for its citizens.
Added Value
During my time living in London, I have come to realize that the English countryside is an intrinsic part of the UK’s national and cultural identity. Entwined in history, art, and literature, great lengths are continually taken in order to protect it, with the Green Belt synonymous with this sense of an instinctive, almost moral duty to protect the rural landscape. For not only is the countryside inherent in the sense of English distinctiveness, it is also directly linked to the value and attraction of the country as a whole, generating a huge tourism industry and financial income. You will understand then, why I have found it strange to have been witness to a disparity between the lack of financial investment and attention to maintaining the urban landscape which is dominated by the hardscapes of streets, sidewalks, alleys, public housing open spaces, traffic islands, roundabouts, underpasses, lowered subway pathways, etc., while lavishing money and attention to protect the English countryside. I believe this is an example of our myths of “nature” which disallow us to truly embrace what is before us now – that the majority of people live in urban environments and, because they are not natural, are not considered, undervalued and underfunded. We cannot hope to achieve sustainable cities when our urban, man-made landscapes are seen as a child of a lesser god.
Within cities, we should be developing not only architecturally innovative buildings, but also well-designed, refreshing, and beautiful spaces around and between them. Parks and green spaces tend to do better in regards of support and expectations. However, the attention to the quality of the hard, urban landscape can make a city more liveable, beautiful and ultimately bring economic uplift as people who have choice will always choose an attractive city in which to live and work over an unattractive city. Mayors are vying for well-educated people to support knowledge and creative based industries. Upgrading the urban landscape environment is one of the ways this is being achieved. The urban landscape was one of Mayor Livingstone’s primary agenda in his bid to attract well-educated people to London so it would become the world financial capital it is today.
We at Martha Schwartz Partners believe that the “Added Value of the Public Realm” means that investing in the public realm spaces of a city can provide a city with the opportunity to enhance both the aesthetics and operations of neighborhoods and ultimately the whole city. It is through the improvement of a city’s public realm landscape that can result in financial lift of property values, footfall, retail uplift, create jobs, tourism, create social equity and financial sustainability. There are numerous studies that give evidence to the economic uplift enjoyed by cities through the improvement of their public realm landscapes.
Bottom Up
As the most fundamental example, let’s take the example of the added value of street trees. It has been found that the same house on a similar street will enjoy a 20% uplift in value if the street has trees on it.1 In the UK, having a garden will, in the majority of cases, increase the value of a property, particularly in cities.
Extending this from the domestic garden and toward the commercial, public open space, a great example of the Added Value of the Public Realm is Central Park. It is a US icon that in the same way as the countryside in the UK, has become integral to the cultural identity of New Yorkers. It is quite astounding that less than 15 years after it was built in 1859, property prices in the surrounding areas had soared by more than 100%, with their collective value at $236 million up from $53 million.2
Central Park is worth $627 million per acre3 – over 30% more than the 2005 US defense budget.4 The total value of Manhattan, therefore, would be significantly less if Central Park were to be developed. That is why Central Park remains undeveloped.
You just need to look at the newest addition to Central Park to appreciate the value a park or open space can add to an area, particularly given the sharply contrasting backdrop of the recession. Central Park West, the ultimate luxury Manhattan building, has just sold all of its condominium apartments, netting $1.8 billion in the process; the most for any new residential building in North America.
Central Park is of course a world-renowned park; however it is not an isolated case. Research into the impact of parks on property values has found a significant, positive relationship between property prices and their proximity to a green, open space.5 The $1.4 billion worth of residential development in Chicago for example, bringing in 20,000 new residents, is directly attributable to the creation of Millennium Park; hence, it is clear that developing the public realm can play a significant role in generating demand for new residential development.6 Visitor spending in the area has rocketed, and hotels have capitalized on the hype surrounding it, using the Park as a marketing device for their websites, sales brochures, telephone recordings, and guest materials.
While the Park should be seen as part of a much larger expansion plan in Chicago, Millennium Park itself has already has brought extensive value to the surrounding areas; from direct employment, through to the tax revenues gained from visitor spending, the Park has become a major asset to Chicago and is a success story in its own right.
In London, with 40% of the 607 square miles of the city occupied by open space, it is reassuring to see that this city is awakening to the possibilities of the public realm.7 In a time of economic uncertainty, it is imperative that London continues to experiment with the public realm, and that city planners remember that the buildings in which we work and live are part of av wider landscape. While there is still much public realm potential that should be unleashed and capitalized, the US can learn a lesson or two from London. Although PlaNYC, for example, proposes that all New Yorkers live within a 10 minute walk of a park, this is the extent of the sustainability and public realm agenda for the city.
Therefore, rather than simply accepting a tranquilized state of routine development after routine development where the landscape is viewed as an after-thought or decoration, the Added Value of the Public Realm should be injected into all future developments in a systematic way so it can be effective city wide, and not just in isolated instances. By devoting as much consideration to the urban public realm as is devoted to English countryside, the UK and hopefully, in turn, the US, will be able to boast of not only architectural innovation, but innovation in their urban landscapes which in turn support the quality of life in those cities. “Quality of Life” is now a very important concept as people are reconsidering a post- economic/post-consumer type of lifestyle. Focus on our urban environments so they are quality spaces that are functional, safe, diverse, environmentally sound and beautiful will be critical to the creation of healthy, sustainable cities.
Cultural Life and the Landscape
Cities also collectivize of wealth, allowing local governments to better build and equip schools, universities, libraries, and performing arts buildings and a myriad of other services that support the generation of culture. Culture flourishes in the meeting places in cities – not in our living rooms.
In a city’s major civic open-spaces is expressed the cultural aspirations by which a society wishes to see itself and be seen by the world. The ability for the public realm landscape of a city to provide the forum for the cultural life of a city is now of utmost importance, as the cultural and environmental health of cities is at the top of a mayor’s “to do” list to attract people. The cultural offer of a city is a huge attractor and is itself, a new industry. Activities that were once found only inside museums and theatres are now in the streets and spaces of cities, where one can enjoy street performance, concerts, art installation, and dance. The public realm landscape is the new stage for cultural events. This openness and generosity reflects a lively and open city where people from all parts of the globe can participate, integrate, and enjoy themselves.
Design and Sustainability
Although little discussed as it pertains to the landscape, physical design plays an important role in the creation of value and therefore in the creation of sustainability. We seem to have forgotten that sustainability itself is a cultural notion, and it is the value we bring to anything that will determine whether we maintain and cherish it.
It is the specifics of the design that will play a large factor in whether anything sustains over time. It is a false belief that one can achieve sustainability based only on “smart” technologies and functioning ecosystems, because people are part of the environmental equation. Nothing can sustain itself over time if people are not invested in it either intellectually or emotionally. All the smart technologies, appropriate materials and energy used to build a technologically LEED’s rated project or community will be wasted simply because it was not designed to the spiritual, psychological and emotional needs of people. If it has no visual appeal it will have a limited shelf-life. Design can motivate us to invest and maintain our open-spaces that results in longevity and cultural continuity.
Conclusion Design in itself cannot make cities successful, as cities are a very complex layering of moving parts. However, for a city to function maximally, the design quality of a city’s public realm components becomes extremely important. Design quality is a crucial factor in whether a city can reach its fullest potential. A city’s public realm landscape needs to be designed to be more than merely functional, but as wonderful, inspired, attractive places to live and work for all socio-economic levels. Making cities liveable and places where people will choose to live is ultimately the most effective way to combat global warming and decrease our need for shrinking natural resources.
About the Author
Martha Schwartz is principal of Martha Schwartz Partners and Professor in Practice at Harvard University, Graduate School of Design. Her focus is on environmental sustainability and the creation of awareness about how the urban landscape underwrites urban sustainability through functioning as the platform for a city’s environment.
References
1. Kenneth G. Willis , Guy Garrod, Valuing Environment And Natural Resources, Northampton, MA: Edward Elgar Publishing, 2012.
2. John Crompton, The Role of the Proximate Principle in the Emergence of Urban Parks in the United Kingdom and in the United States, Leisure Studies,Vol. 26, No. 2, 213–234, April 2007.
3. US Department of Defense, Release No. 061-04 (February 02, 2004)
4. Jonathan Miller, http://matrix.millersamuel.com/?p=280
5. Ben Bolitzer and Noelwah Netusil, The Impact of Open Space on Property Values in Portland, Oregon , Journal of Environmental Management 59/2000, pp 185-193. Margot Lutzenhiser and Noelwah Netusil, The Effect of Open Space on a Home’s Sale Price, Contemporary Economic Policy, 19(3), 2001, pp 291-298.
6. Edward Uhlir, The Milennium Park Effect, EconomicDevelopment Journal, vol. 4, No. 2, Spring 2005. 7. Greater London Authority, Greener London – The Mayor’s State of Environment Report for London (2007).
