BRITAIN REBUILT

For master-

planner Raymond Unwin, landscape was not

just a background to lives lived, it was a weapon of social change, says David

Davidson, architectural adviser at Hamp-stead Garden Suburb Trust. Unwin’s

vision was the communal landscape, one that promoted social interaction

at every turn. In creating the Hamp-stead Garden Suburb, he realised

the democratic landscapes the Garden City movement es-

poused.Davidson was the first speak-

er in the Landscape Insti-tute’s autumn lecture series

Urban Landscapes in the Twentieth Century.

He is also the first of our essayists in this

special edition of Landscape, which

takes as its start-ing point the ideals of the

Garden City and pits

them against

the

great 21st cen-tury challenge: realising the green city.Programmed by Susannah Charlton of the Twentieth Century Society, the lecture series accompanies the Garden Museum’s From Garden City to Green City exhibition. The five speakers agreed to pen a series of essays for us, so, following a foreword from Christopher Woodward, director of the Garden Museum, we dedi-cate 15 pages to what we can learn from more than a century of urban landscapes.Projects adviser at the Prince’s Re-generation Trust Roland Jeffery tackles housing landscapes, and the new towns in particular. Their landscapes, he says, have still to find a comfortable role that is somewhere in between the pri-vate garden and the public highway.

URBAN PLANNING

Ken Worpole, writer and senior professor at the Cities Institute, suggests that the British still have a prob-

lem in thinking about designed landscapes as places of pleasure. He asks whether now is

the time for us to rediscover the purpose of our leisure landscapes.

“If you leave people to live in a lousy, unhealthy, un-green and

depressing environment that indicates that socie-

ty at large, their local authority and the

government don’t care

about

them, then

why should

we be surprised

when they act

without care them-

selves?” This is Sarah

Gaventa writ-ing in the wake

of August’s riots as she asks

how communities can possibly be expected to interact when they have nowhere decent to commune.And finally, Landscape’s honorary editor Tim Water-man explores our relationship with food and the urban landscape. Are taste and appetite our biggest barriers to realising sustainable design?But just how relevant are the ideas of the Garden City to those nations currently in thrall to urban revolutions of their own? We asked Ruth Olden to get behind the images of verdant green cities and see what’s happening in India, China and Mexico.With large-scale investment on the backburner for the foreseeable future, the Landscape Institute’s latest pub-lication Local green infrastructure: helping communities make the most of their landscape, seems particularly pertinent.The guide presents eight case studies that show how local people and businesses can make their towns, cities and villages more attractive, healthier and better for wildlife.So why have we put Stefano Boeri’s 27-storey Bosco Verticale on the cover? Billed as the world’s first ‘verti-cal forest’, each apartment will have a balcony planted with trees, creating a green forest rising above the city. It is the first element in Boeri’s proposed BioMilano, in which a green belt is created around the city. This seem-ingly fantastical concept is actually under construction in Milan and serves, perhaps, as a stark reminder that nothing quite so green and ambitious seems to be going on in the built environment in the UK.Or is there? After all, there is unlikely to be one solu-tion to the green city. Rather, the question is whether our attempts to realise it, in all its manifestations, will be resigned to the drawing board as utopian ideals or will the 21st century see them finally succeed at scale?

REGE

REGENERATING BRITAIN

For masterplanner Raymond Unwin, landscape was not just a background to lives lived, it was a weapon of social change, says David Da-vidson, architectural adviser at Hampstead Garden Suburb Trust. Unwin’s vision was the communal landscape, one that promoted social interac-tion at every turn. In creating the Hamp-stead Garden Suburb, he realised the democratic landscapes the Gar-den City movement espoused.Davidson was the first speaker in the Landscape Institute’s autumn lecture series Urban Landscapes in the Twenti-eth Century. He is also the first of our essayists in this special edition of Landscape, which takes as its starting point the ideals of the Gar-den City and pits them against the great 21st century chal-lenge: realising the green city.Programmed by Susannah Charl-ton of the Twentieth Century Society, the lecture series accompanies the Garden Museum’s From Garden City to Green City exhibition. The five speakers agreed to pen a series of essays for us, so, following a foreword from Christo-pher Woodward, director of the Garden Museum, we dedicate 15 pages to what we can learn from more than a century of urban landscapes.

REGENERATING BRITAIN

Projects adviser at the Prince’s Regeneration Trust Roland Jeffery tack-les housing landscapes, and the new towns in particular.

Their landscapes, he says, have still to find a com-fortable role that is somewhere in between the

private garden and the public highway.Ken Worpole, writer and senior profes-

sor at the Cities Institute, suggests that the British still have a problem in

thinking about designed land-scapes as places of pleasure. He

asks whether now is the time for us to rediscover the pur-pose of our leisure landscapes.“If you leave people to live in a lousy, unhealthy, un-green and depressing environ-ment that indicates that so-

ciety at large, their local au-thority and the government

don’t care about them, then why should we be surprised when they

act without care themselves?” This is Sarah Gaventa writing in the wake

of August’s riots as she asks how com-munities can possibly be expected to inter-

act when they have nowhere decent to commune.And finally, Landscape’s honorary editor Tim Water-

man explores our relationship with food and the urban land-scape. Are taste and appetite our biggest barriers to realising sustainable design?