landscape no. 31 | april–june 2011 27 ontemporary social and envi- ronmental conditions pose sig- nificant challenges to norma- tive design practices, stem- ming as they do from an increasing scar- city of resources and consequent shifts in economic, political and material processes. Landscape Urbanism sets out to develop new modes of practice that originate from the understanding that the processes of ur- banization – capital accumulation, deregu- lation, migration, globalization ,environ- mental protection and such dynamic forces are much more significant for the shaping of urban relationships than are spatial forms of urbanism in and of themselves. 1 Landscape Urbanism, coined by Charles Waldheim in the mid 1990’s is one of the most literal manifestations of a continuing critical shift to consider open space and natural systems over built form and infra- structure as ways of organizing and plan- Rahul Paul | Guest Editor ning the city . At its most basic level, it may defined as Waldheim states, “Landscape Urbanism describes a disciplinary realign- ment currently underway in which land- scape replaces architecture as the basic building block of contemporary urbanism. For many, across a range of disciplines, landscape has become both the lens through which the contemporary city is rep- resented and the medium through which it is constructed.” 2 It suggests a strategic ap- proach to the formation of an urban scheme through the transformations of processes related to landscape. In Kelly Shannon’s article this approach is however challenged to be not a ‘new’ discipline of urbanism, but a traditional concept of urbanism ‘borne of necessity’. Water systems; ecological corridors and patches; bio diversity; the consideration of orientation and aspect; the introduction of urban agriculture; and the multiple uses of urban infrastructure corri- dors have always been key elements in landscape urbanism |