Design is Political: White Supremacy and Landscape Urbanism

Abstract

Landscape Urbanism theory gained momentum for its potential to drive new urban forms and increase the agency of landscape architecture in the design and planning of the contemporary city. However, this approach still leaves significant gaps in our design discourse surrounding issues of equity that remain since Frederick Law Olmsted and the creation of Central Park. If Landscape Urbanism seeks transformational change, landscape architecture and planning professionals must recognize their role and responsibility in breaking down the physical and spatial manifestations of structural and systemic racism that continue to disproportionately affect people based on race and contribute to the increasing inequity in our cities. The momentum and influence of Landscape Urbanism today provides landscape architects and its allied professionals an important opportunity to critique what is missing from conversations in design that can move us toward progress in addressing issues of social and environmental equity. Environmental justice and environmental racism will be defined to frame the objectives of an environmental justice agenda for Landscape Urbanism. More specifically, Laura Pulido’s broadened definition of environmental racism that speaks to the spatial manifestations of environmental racism frames this critique. Through a review of Landscape Urbanism discourse and practice, examples of non-action, complacency, and erasure of structural and systemic racism embedded in the physical environment must be acknowledged in order to hold critical conversations on what it means to design better cities.