Infrastructure and the Future
This doesn’t discount the importance of collaboration, high performance design methodology, getting the engineers at the table at the first meeting and all of these things. There is something at stake here about visioning the city. In terms of the historical moment, it is true that the landscape architects are in control of the vision of the city now, which is very interesting, and I think has mostly positive implications. David Fletcher To pick up on the issue of communication and representation… That person who leads that team—whether it’s architect, engineer, or landscape architect—they need to be able to persuade the hardcore native plant Nazis, and engineers, and everybody else of the value of the project. I don’t know that there’s necessarily Charles’ kind of ascendency of landscape architecture. One of the things that hasn’t been discussed today is this issue of money and where it’s coming from. One of the things I’ve talked with Kazys about is this issue of the D-minus that the American Society of Civil Engineers has graded the entire United States in terms of roads, water, infrastructure, and levies. Over the next five years they’re saying that you need to spend about 2.2 trillion dollars on infrastructure. If we look at the stimulus package for infrastructure, of the 787 billion dollars, there are about 120 billion that are going to be spent on infrastructure in general. Of that, just 1.2 billion is going to be spent on what’s called “green infrastructure.” The issue of the role of the architect or the landscape architect… I don’t know that it’s so much about making things iconic, having this goal of this heroic bridge and other icons of infrastructure, or making them more aesthetic, but rather reconfiguring infrastructure and making it work better, making systematic and network based solutions. Tim Love At the level of consensus-building that a design team would have to do around major projects like the Los Angeles River… this is part of the story too.
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