Environmental Justice a Growing Concern Among Landscape Architects
Environmental justice, which is about ensuring everyone benefits equally from nature, is a "growing concern" among landscape architects across the globe, said Kurt Culbertson, FASLA, Design Workshop. For example, in the ASLA 2016 Student Awards, 68 percent of the award-winning designs focused on issues of environmental and social justice. At the ASLA 2016 Annual Meeting in New Orleans, global perspectives on the subject were offered by Kongjian Yu, FASLA, Turenscape; Senator Kamel Mahadin, ASLA, MK Associates; and Mario E. Schjetnan, FASLA, Grupo de Diseno Urbano.
Yu focused on the villages demolished to create an urban greenbelt around Shanghai. Parks are good, aren't they? More green space is for the best, isn't it? Yet overnight, in the name of "good will," 100 square kilometers, comprised of thousands of villages surrounding Shanghai, were demolished in the name of growth and urbanization. This demolition helped enable another population explosion in Shanghai, which has expanded 4 times in 20 years. Some 74 percent of the new immigrants are from rural areas.
In the name of goodwill and growth, villages were demolished, and parks were built, but to what end? "Goodwill may not necessarily lead to a good or justifiable result," said Yu.
The equitable growth of cities and the flow of displaced populations are issues that must be addressed, said Jordanian Senator Mahadin, who was a landscape architect before becoming a politician.
Aqaba, which has grown by over 180,000 people in recent decades, has handled its growth successfully, in part because it is one of the "few cities in the Middle East with a master plan that holds green space" as important. Unlike Shanghai, green space in Aqaba is not taken at the expense of its citizens. "Cities are not painted by landscape architects or architects, they are painted by the people." The master plan holds that the Port of Aqaba – the only one in Jordan – should not be further built or developed, but held for the people.
Senator Mahadin believes environmental justice must begin with education. Speaking passionately, he reminded us we all share the same ethics; that we need to be good to our neighbors and feed our poor. Plant trees and create a high quality of life for everyone. The small things landscape architects do can make a difference.
And going a step further, Senator Mahadin, perhaps unsurprisingly, made a pitch for more landscape architects to confront the issues environmental justice through politics. "Lead by example. Save and protect our water resources and national parks."
"Landscape is a human right," began Schjetnan, landscape has the ability to de-marginalize people and integrate them into society.
Environmental justice, and access to resources are especially critical to developing countries, which are "not developing, so much as developing too quickly through accelerated urban growth. Four-fifths of the world is like this," he added, "neither developed nor undeveloped – just growing too quickly."
In Schjetnan's Mexico City, and many other exploding cities, there are major problems with inequality, congestion, natural resource depletion, water and waste management, all which present landscape architects and designers not only big challenges but also big opportunities.
Landscape architecture is a "medium to create well-being" through green public space, said Schjetnan. To rehabilitate unjust places, we must focus on environmental justice and make sure everyone has access to these spaces.