Category Archives: Urban Design

The landscape architecture of bicycling in China

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526297738_e8cf7e2b9f_bThe BBC broadcast a programme on the Fall and Rise of the Bicycle in China http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/fallandriseofthebicycle/ which was actually about the Rise and Fall of the Bicycle in China. The main point was that the world’s greatest cycling country aims to become the world’s greatest motoring country. In Beijing the cycle lanes are being narrowed and cars are being allowed to obstruct them. I don’t know if the presenter has experience of cycling in Beijing but I can tell him about another problem: many of the cycle lanes are full of near-silent electric motor bikes. To people like me, who are in the habit of using their ears to discover when a motorbike is about to overtake, this can be very dangerous. I would not want any westerners to be in the position of appearing to say ‘you can’t live as we live’. But I am happy to pronounce that ‘most western countries made a terrible mistake when they switched from bikes to cars (eg from 1920-1960) so please think a thousand times before you make the same mistake. Beijing still has some of  the best cycle paths in any capital city (photo courtesy Rich & Cheryl)

A Chinese contributor to the programme explained that riding a bicycle is a working class and driving  a car shows that you are an important person. That is why the Chinese landscape architecture profession needs to become involved. Landscape architects can design such safe and beautiful cycle lanes that using them becomes a mark of what used to be the distinghishing characteristic of China’s scholar-officials: GOOD TASTE. Come my Chinese friends and colleagues: show the world what you can do and we should do.  Cycle planning should be incorporated with greenway planning and design, in China and everywhere.

Sustainable urban design and landscape architecture – definitions

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sustainable_urban_design1

The Bruntland Commission may have set back sustainable urban design by half a century with an idiotic definition: “Sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs” It gives anyone who wants it an excuse for doing nothing and claiming they are acting sustainability. What are my ‘needs’: one bicycle or two cars? And what are ‘needs’ of future generations: no bicycles and three cars?

The reason for Bruntland’s blunder is that sustainability is a relative concept, like ‘near’ and ‘far’, incapable of absolute definition. Is the moon near or far from the earth? It is very near for space travelers but very far for cyclists.   We should boast an inability to design ‘sustainable cities’ but assert a competence in making cities ‘more sustainable’. As urban designers and landscape architects we do this by planning for  fewer inputs and fewer outputs than the International Modern Cities which too many architects and engineers have designed, are designing and will design. Here are some examples:

1.  Cities will require less input of water because we are expert in sustainable urban drainage systems – and they will have less output of waste water because we know how to detain and infiltrate water within urban areas.

2. Cities will require less import of construction materials from distant lands because we believe in respecting the Genius Loci and using the local materials which he provides for our use.

3. City building will involve less transport of excavated subsoil to dumps because we will use it design new landforms.

4. Less energy will be required for heating and cooling because we will orientate buildings correctly and design with microclimate.
5. Planting schemes will require less irrigation, less maintenance and less input of chemicals because we  will make more use of native plant materials and will make lawns only when they have a social use.

6. People will walk more and cycle more because we will design beautiful and convenient paths – and we will do this before any roads or buildings are planned.

7. When people get more exercise they will have better health, so that the resource inputs for healthcare will also be reduced and we will have less medical waste to dispose of.

8. Buildings will be better insulated, because almost all of them will have vegetated roofs, and will therefore require less heating in winter and less cooling in summer.

9. Cities will be more compact because there will be less roadscape, fewer parking lots and  less need for greenspace at street level – because we are going to make such wonderful skyparks and skygardens.

The inputs and outputs exemplified above are all measureable, just as the distance from the earth to the moon is measurable.

See also: Eco-city plans and sustainable design

History of Asian garden and landscape design book

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Himalayas by Ilker Ender

Himalayas by Ilker Ender

Phew!

My ‘Tomfool Project’ to write a history of Asian gardens and landscape architecture is done: I have just posted the CS (computer-script) to the publisher. The main subjects are Ancient Garden Design,  Islamic Garden Design, Indian Garden Design, Chinese Garden Design,  Japanese Garden Design and modern landscape architecture across Asia.  The text files, drawings and photographs fit on one DVD, so all I have done is re-arrange some binary code, unless you count taking over 100,000 photographs. The easier-to-write chapters drew on other work but the difficult chapters took a year each for research and travel. The sensible alternatives would have been not to have begun the project or to have started 40 years earlier by learning half a dozen Asian languages. But I enjoyed the work and will be a lucky man if the ‘royalties’ pay for the travel – so you could say the books will be sold at ‘cost price minus’. It reminds me of the advice I received from Arnold Weddle about 30 years ago. We were making use of adjoining urinals at the time and I think the conversation went like this:

‘Hi Tom, how are you and what are you doing’. Ignoring the obvious, I replied ‘Fine – I’m writing a book, actually it’s about Landscape planning‘. Arnold, who had recently founded the journal Urban and landscape planning, replied: ‘Hmmm. Don’t expect to make any money by writing books’

Weddle was a wise man and I often quote another of his remarks. In Techniques of landscape architecture he wrote that the landscape profession is distinguished from its related professions by looking beyond their ‘closely drawn technical limits’ and ‘narrowly drawn territorial boundaries’. Though not quite what he had in mind, I have taken his advice in Asian gardens by relating garden design to the religions, mountains,  forests, deserts, social customs, art and architecture of Asia. As you can imagine, this has involved a number of topics in which I might wish to have more expertise.  Ananda  Coomaraswamy would have been a good man for the job, helped by one of his photographer wives and his ability to think in English, Hindi, Greek, Latin, Sanskrit, Pali, Persian and Chinese.

[See also: next post on Asian gardens and landscapes]

The world’s top ten gardens

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With Top Ten lists becoming img_9392popular, we thought Gardenvisit.com should have a list of the world’s ten best gardens.  But how should it be compiled? Democracy or autocracy? Here are the democratic results: top ten gardens  generated from our garden reviews and rating system. But Winston Churchill said: “Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.” ( 11. 11, 1947)

So let’s try autocracy: here is Tom Turner’s Top Ten Gardens List, which you can think of a list of the gardens which should be, like the Temple of Abu Simbel, if rising waters were going to flood all the world’s best gardens, by which I mean those which would disappear when the Vale of Kashmir, and Shalimar Bagh, were submerged by global warming. The gardens are in no particular order:

If I had been to Columbus Indiana I think I would include the garden of the Miller house, though I do not know what I would delete from the list. So which is best: democracy or autocracy? – and would readers like to suggest changes to the list?

Sissinghurst Garden Design and Management

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Photogaph Philippe Leroyer

Photogaph Philippe Leroyer

BBC4 is showing a series of programmes about Sissinghurst Castle Garden. Here is a link to the first episode on the iPlayer – the link will not be active for long and there is a link to a BBC Sissinghurst webpage.  Adam Nicholson and Sarah Raven live in the family house, because Adam is Vita’s grandson, but Adam’s father (Nigel Nicholson) gave the property to the National Trust. The programme presents Adam and Sarah as enlightened visionaries able to understand the past and present. But the National Trust staff are presented as obstinate blockheads able to say little more than ‘This is the way we do it because this is the way we have always done it and this it the way we will continue to do it’.  Since the series runs to 8 episodes one can’t help wondering it the editing has been done for dramatic effect. Unless the National Trust  Blockheads are going to be seduced by sweet reason, the series is going to end up portraying the Trust as a disorganised rabble which leaves decisions to junior staff.

Sissinghurst gives me the impression of being too commercial and of having too many visitors. It this is what the National Trust wants, they should avoid the cowpats Adam wants to bring back as an aspect of traditional farming. The BBC slipped in the titbit that Vita had over 50 lesbian lovers and the Independent (28.2.09) refers to ‘the site’s fascination for today’s educated lesbians’. Adam predicts that ‘By Easter, there will be rivers of lesbians coming through the gates’.  It would be useful to know whether the return of traditional farming practices (‘cowpats’) would attract or repel the lesbians, and where Adam stands on the lesbian issue.  I look forward to Sissinghurst holding its first Gay Pride day. As they say, ‘history repeats itself as farce’.