Manifesto: Taking a Stance Human societies cannot successfully mitigate and adapt to the stresses of climate change without a new state of mind, and landscape architects and artists have an essential role to play....required reading for landscape architects. Combining design, research, art, and environmental knowledge in order to advance landscape architecture as a form of activism, Toward an Urban Ecology is a guidebook for next century practice to tackle the wicked problems of climate change and social fragmentation. This environment encompasses the interaction of all living species, climate, weather and natural resources that affect human survival and economic activity. New York, NY : The Monacelli Press, [2016] isbn. Human societies cannot successfully mitigate and adapt to the stresses of climate change without a new state of mind, and landscape architects and artists have an essential role to play….required reading for landscape architects.” Orff, Kate.Monacelli, 2016SKU: 100737 Kate Orff has an optimistic and transformative message about our world: we can bring together social and ecological systems to sustainably remake our cities and landscapes. Urban ecology as an “ecological” science It is not really surprising that urban ecology was not started by bio-ecologists who focus on plants and animals, and who have long viewed cities as severely impaired ecosystems unworthy of scientific research. When assessed through the lens of “appearance” (i.e., in the projects’ formal, spatial, and visual preoccupations) the built work seems less compelling. These chapters provide forward-thinking and celebratory design provocations that can catalyze chance and arm the reader with a way of thinking and acting ecologically across systems. imprint. Inherent in the work, and the words that describe it, are two important ambitions. The book is organized into four chapters. Part monograph, part manual, part manife­sto, Toward an Urban Ecology reconceives urban landscape design as a form of activism, demonstrating how to move beyond familiar and increasingly outmoded ways of thinking about environmental, urban, and social issues as separate domains; and advocating for the synthesis of practice to create a truly urban ecology. Be’er Sheva Quarry, Negev Region, Israel. Informed by her experience practicing landscape architecture and urban design in the context of global crises affecting climate, water, food, and housing, Orff issues an urgent call-to-arms: “What is the agency of the urban designer?” she asks. Although powerful in their own right, these images might have been paired with short texts explaining to readers how what they saw fit within the overall process of working within a complex, urban ecological milieu. Kate is also the Director of Columbia University GSAPP’s Urban Design Program.Runtime: 56:43 minutesPart monograph, part manual, part manifesto, Toward an Urban Ecology re-conceives urban landscape design as a form of activism, demonstrating how to move beyond familiar and increasingly outmoded ways of thinking about environmental, urban, and social issues as separate domains; and … This year, to mark the occasion, LAM is issuing a special supplement for young readers, called YOUR LAND. Part monograph, part manual, part manife­sto, Toward an Urban Ecology reconceives urban landscape design as a form of activism, demonstrating how to move beyond familiar and increasingly outmoded ways of thinking about environmental, urban, and social issues as separate domains; and advocating for the synthesis of practice to create a truly urban ecology. She refers to the firm’s use of the “thick, rendered, and heavily notated section” (11) as a means to convey the complexity of the city. SCAPE's work aspires to work "toward a collaborative, community-stewardship-driven methodology that acknowledges change and uncertainty." Who is their audience, and most importantly, what agency might they have in realizing the book’s overarching ambition to catalyze change? As successful as these examples are, I find myself wanting a bit more information about “how to” get urban landscape projects done, from the teams of experts one needs to assemble, to innovative ways to collaborate, to the drawing types needed to communicate to a host of constituents, to the way public processes work. We all should be doing this. Urban ecology has advanced rapidly in recent decades, yet has focused primarily on terrestrial and freshwater systems. So how, precisely, does Toward an Urban Ecology serve as a manual, and for whom? In order to achieve this, the firm promises not simply to share the design strategies for or the products of the work (which it does, thoroughly, throughout the project documentation) but also to “highlight what happens behind the scenes” (7), presumably to make the design process understood and, one imagines, replicable. 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