A great resource for those looking for clarification on some of the terminology around Landscape Urbanism on the New Urban News.  A number of key terms and concepts (as well as their originating authors) are included, including:

“Analog Ecologies: Projects that attempt to model, analogously, the responsive behaviors of living systems in nonliving constructions or processes.”

“Emergent Landscape: The urban form emerges from the interaction of complex systems (ecological, political, social, economic, etc) that make up cities and human settlement; urban form is the product of a complex confluence of a potentially endless set of factors.”

“Invisible Infrastructure: Invisible infrastructure generally refers to non-tangible infrastructure such as wireless communications. More broadly, the term can refer to all forms infrastructure, such as power transmission lines, that often go unnoticed. A general tendency in development has been to make infrastructure more invisible and remote, even as it becomes more individualized and less communal. Landscape urbanism argues that this invisible infrastructure escapes the attention of the masses and that there is a need to make it visible for the masses to appreciate it.”

“Radical Horizontal Urbanism: A vast mat-like field where scattered pockets of density are knitted together by high-speed, high-volume roads. Coined by Pierre Belanger.”

“Structured Ecologies: The strategy of working with or alongside the substance and processes of dynamic ecologies: plants, waters, wildlife, etc.”

“Void Framework: The voids of figure-ground diagrams are protected from “contamination by the city.” Open spaces, or voids, in a cityscape are desirable.”

Also included is a key concept of Landscape, Landschaft, and Landskip – which I think is a key determinant that many folks miss in thinking about landscape in a purely North American was as ‘open space greenery’ and derived from the scenic viewpoint of “Landskip” and not in more broadly European terms as a unit of habitation  “Landschaft” that includes a more culturally inclusive concept.

Good food for thought (or discussion), so check out the entire list here.