Often as landscape architects we are drawn into this belief that we are creating sustainable landscape architecture if we are creating a green landscape. We may be planting trees and plants but we wrongly assume that the landscape design we are creating is sustainable. Green does not mean sustainable.
When working at BAU in Shanghai we often referred to landscapes that we mostly gardenesque or picturesque as “Beautiful Green”. A “beautiful green” landscape was often brimming with trees, plants and swathes of mown grass. Now, many will argue that a “beautiful green” landscape is sustainable as it looks green and is largely made up of soft landscape with trees and plants. However, are they really sustainable? from my experiences as a landscape architect and living in China they often aren’t sustainable. As an example the largest component of green space in cities is residential developments which are required to have 30% green space. However, 99% of the time these developments are only picturesque or gardenesque in nature, they serve one purpose and that is to create a garden for residents to look at from their villas or the apartment in the 100 metre tall building they live in. So, what is wrong with this you ask, well these landscapes require vasts amounts of energy from fertilisers to manual labour to keep the landscape looking as prestine as possible. However, most residents spend very little time in these landscapes around their buildings. Invariably, they walk to and from their building to the one or two guarded entrances of the residential compound or they get in the lift go to the basement carpark and drive their car out of the development. So if they are merely landscape to look at can they be really sustainable?
I often hear that these landscape are sustainable in essence as they provide green lungs for the city. However, I find this a vast waste of resources. I can understand that a expressway or highway verge may need to be green and picturesque to soften the urban environment and provide green lungs for the city. But we can make these landscape more sustainable by using them as plant and tree nurseries rather than using farmland on the edge of cities for nurseries. Understandably we wouldn’t want the reverse to happen where urban green along expressways is used for farmland due to the toxic nature of the air and water that enters these landscapes. I will leave this point here and explore it further in another post.
Green landscapes maybe seen as sustainable but residential and urban landscapes that are merely gardens with little or no facilities are not sustainable. I have seen acres of parks and riverfronts in new and old chinese cities that are totally unsustainable. I am not speaking from a materials and maintenance stand point but from land use and community participation as I have often have few people in them. For landscapes that are surrounded by urban densities that often reach 4,000 to 10,000 people per square kilometre it is often astonishing the lack of people in these landscapes.So how do we make these landscape green.
Modern people’s lives are changing and green space needs to adjust to suit those new needs and wants. Planning simple green and blue network landscapes achieves very little in the long term. Green or Beautiful Green does not mean sustainable it is just green. Green landscapes have their place but sustainable landscape surpass the relevance and need for just green landscapes.
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Sustainable Landscape Architecture Part 3: Can Technology & Materials create Sustainable Landscape Architecture?