Duany on the ascendancy of Landscape Urbanism

Duany video from 18th CNU

Jon Boyd, Sep 27, 10.

Andrés Duany talks about the ongoing intellectual battle between New Urbanists and Landscape Urbanists in a lecture titled, “The Next Urbanism is not the New Urbanism,” recently released by the Congress for the New Urbanism (CNU).

Duany describes the emerging dominance of landscape urbanism, as characterized by a CNU media release:

Featuring modernist and avant-garde architecture in naturalized settings that purport to be both urban and environmentally sensitive, this emergent model offers star architects a setting that doesn’t constrain their freedom of form as does more traditional fabric, while offering landscape architects marquee visibility too. Though concerned about Landscape Urbanism’s fast ascent and apparent grip on Harvard and other top design schools, Duany is impressed with canny aspects of the movement, including its sense of purpose and use of alluring imagery, and sees some potential for inter-movement cooperation (to the extent such interest will be reciprocated). Reactions from veteran professors and departmental leaders Doug Kelbaugh and Ellen Dunham-Jones round out the presentation.

Duany warns that some of these Landscape Urbanist projects cause, “Density and diversity without urbanism.”

A slide show accompanies the video, and one image in the presentation is taken from Discovery Green in downtown Houston.

Duany also said, “This surburbia that we had presumably killed is coming back with a vengeance, and this time it’s disguised as a beauty. Surburbia used to be mortal and ugly; now she’s mortal and beautiful.”