Sustaining Sustainable Urban Landscapes: A Case Study of the Ongoing Process of Planning, Designing and Maintaining Urban Landscapes

Raymond Isaacs

While we have learned much about creating sustainable urban landscapes, we need to develop more effective strategies for sustaining the process of creating and maintaining these landscapes. The purpose of this paper is to explore such strategies at the municipal and regional levels. Urban landscape architecture’s contribution to urban sustainability is multi-faceted. One aspect is the maintenance of local, natural (non-human) processes. Another aspect is the space of social exchange, including access for individuals of varying social classes and cultural groups. A third aspect is the aesthetic expression of the interaction between the natural and the social. In recent years many ideas have emerged regarding designing and planning for each of these aspects, including respectively: “design with nature” and “eco-revelatory design;” “environmental equity” and “life between buildings;” “cultural landscape studies” and “critical regionalism.” There have also been proposals for integrating the different aspects. However, there has been little success in implementing the plans and designs as an ongoing, sustained process.

Using the case of Leipzig, Germany, current opportunities, obstacles, and contradictions within contemporary landscape planning, design, implementation and management are considered, and potential strategies for resolution are studied. The case of Leipzig is useful for two important reasons: 1) the current situation of development following the end of the Soviet Era and the emergence and expansion of the European Union provides a crucial test of contemporary planning methods; 2) within the city and its surroundings landscape planning and design can be observed at various levels with the planning hierarchy, ranging from a broad regional scale, to design of specific sites. After eight years of observation, strong suggestions for implementation processes are emerging. At both the regional planning scale and the site-specific design scale, serious deficiencies illustrate the ineffectiveness of these two approaches.

However, at an intermediate level consisting of a cooperative network of adjacent communities, more effective implementation has been observed and is likely to continue as a sustainable process. The case of Leipzig challenges the structure of traditional planning institutions. It is one example of “quasi-regional” planning with a holistic, yet targeted focus on issues of sustainable urban landscape planning. With many small steps, the city and surrounding communities share a coordinated vision.