Fall 2019

Edited by Nicholas Pevzner & Stephanie Carlisle

Infrastructure is always political, and energy transitions have always been contested, pitting established players against upstart technologies and new coalitions. How can a radical reimagining of energy infrastructure create opportunities for an inclusive and participatory conversation about climate change and social justice? Who has the power to talk about infrastructure, and who gets left out?
Introduction: Power
Community Power As Provocation: Local Control For Resilience And Equity
Our Energy For Our Country
Speculative Designs For Energy Democracy
The TVA, Fuzzy Spaces Of Power, And Other Purposes
The Missouri River Basin: Water, Power, Decolonization, And Design
Power Plant Power
Arctic Present: The Case Of Teriberka
Coal Ash Wastescapes: The Byproduct Of Our Coal-Fired Power Dependency
Biomass For All: Designing An Inclusive Biomass Infrastructure
China’s Giant Transmission Grid Could Be The Key To Cutting Climate Emissions
2050 – An Energetic Odyssey: Persuasion By Collective Immersion
The Blue Lagoon: From Waste Commons To Landscape Commodity
Territory Of Extraction: The Crude North
Daylighting Conflict: Board Games As Decision-Making Tools

Popular

    The Performative Ground: Rediscovering The Deep Section

    by Stephanie Carlisle and Nicholas Pevzner

    The landscape we see happens above ground, yet much of its true intelligence lies beneath the surface.

    Made in Australia: The Future of Australian Cities

    by Richard Weller & Julian Bolleter

    The Australian population is increasing at a rate of one person every 84 seconds. Taking population growth seriously means planning for an extra 40 million Australians by century’s end.

    How Many Trees are Enough? Tree Death and the Urban Canopy

    by Lara A. Roman

    Realizing the ecosystem services benefits of tree programs depends on tree survival. Despite the focus on planting over the past few decades, overall canopy cover levels in major US cities have been declining.

    Coding Flux: Redesigning the Migrating Coast

    by Fadi Masoud

    As sea levels and groundwaters rise, 20th-century planning practices no longer suffice. Innovative planning approaches that embraces dynamic water levels and changing weather patterns are sorely needed.

    Speculative Designs for Energy Democracy

    by Nicholas Pevzner

    Hurricane Maria exposed and exacerbated long-standing structural weaknesses in Puerto. A landscape architecture studio set out to test the potential of community-based energy hubs as having a radical potential to reframe the spatial distribution of resources, community preparedness, and political control.

    Butte Montana: A Case for the Mining Metropolis

    by Bradford Watson & Sean Burkholder

    Extraction is an ugly process. Still, the vast resources present beneath the ground and the motivation to pull them to the surface are intimately tied to the settlement and permanent occupation of the landscape.

    Performance

    by Stephanie Carlisle and Nicholas Pevzner

    Tomorrow’s cities will need to perform better than today’s. To meet this challenge, designers (and their clients) have assembled a host of goals for urban projects—from encouraging smart transportation to protecting wildlife, from remediating toxic sites to building diverse neighborhoods—and increasingly, landscape projects are sold on such claims rather than their formal or aesthetic value alone.

    Landscape Urbanism: Definitions & Trajectory

    by Christopher Gray

    Long described as an “emerging” practice, landscape urbanism—with all of its ambiguity and complexity—has in fact already emerged and represents a significant 21st century design and planning ethos.

    Gold Mining Exploits and the Legacies of Johannesburg's Mining Landscapes

    by Guy Trangos & Kerry Bobbins

    An extensive network of abandoned mine shafts and tunnels exist beneath Johannesburg. Today, these spaces are lost to time, long forgotten and abandoned below the surface of the Earth.

    Living with Water

    by Stephanie Carlisle

    Living With Water, is paradigm shift from a drain-pipe-pump mentality toward a system that values water as an asset.