Does Land Think?
Does the land think? What does it say? Can land feel, touch, see, hear, move? What defines the land?
Most people do not think of land as an organism that acts in a conscious way. People discuss land as a solid substance that comprises part of the “natural” environment. On the other hand, when people discuss the “built” environment they refer to it as a separate entity placed on top of the land; that is, the built environment exists as a completely independent entity, made by humans for specific purposes, but separate from the land.
Planners should suppress this distinction between “built” and “natural“ environments. Planners should discuss these two environments as inseparable — two sides of one coin. All the elements of the built environment come from nature and go back to nature. By acknowledging the unified reality of built and natural environments, planners will create a more robust, fruitful, and resilient way of planning.
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Looking at midtown Manhattan from the East River you can see layers of meaning, like a geologist of built form. New York City, 1980s.
(Built + Natural) Environments = Places
The relationship between people and the land often sounds like the relationship of parallel, but interlaced, entities — the “natural” environment and the “built” environment. Planners, both practitioners and academics, have spent decades discussing these two sets of attributes — built and natural — as conflicting, almost adversarial, forces that planners try to integrate. Communities sometimes view the integration of built and natural environments as a “zero-sum” game where any improvement in one environment necessitates decline in the other.
Instead of discussing built and natural environments as opposing systems, planners should observe, discuss and design the built and natural environment as one system of already integrated “places.” We can think of it as an equation were adding the two environments together is the way we make places like cities. If planners insist that we view both environments (built + natural) as one “place” environment, then they will find different solutions to urban problems.
Many practitioners and critics emphasize thinking about cities in terms of “places” — this is not an unusual occurrence. Many planners advocate using place-based vocabulary with terms such as: neighborhoods, districts, corridors, parks, downtowns, uptowns, cross towns, riverfronts, riverwalks, plazas, heritage sites, markets, memorials, and so forth. All of these places consist of both built and natural environments. Places can be small scale (yards, porches, doorways) or large scale (national parks, conurbations). In contrast, many technical writers and practitioners relentlessly segregate our knowledge of our land and places into the two categories of built or natural environments. When discussed as mutually exclusive “silos,” built and natural environments are yanked apart, and their pure content is consumed in isolation (we would not enjoy consuming a cake by eating each of the ingredients separately).
Writing on the bottom of the English Channel before the tide. Mont Saint-Michel, 1994.
When we segregate discussions of the built and natural environments, we create unnecessary and unproductive barriers within planning practice. Sometimes these barriers lead to even stronger divisions (and excessive specializations) of knowledge that never become reintegrated within planning practice.
For too many planners, built and natural environments represent two separate languages using different tools, different “best” practices, different standards, knowledge, methods, jargon, and so on. Thinking separately about the built and natural environments also “adds fuel to the fire” and facilitates political arguments in terms of partisanship, diversity, property value and related government policy debates.
When planners examine the natural environment, the land is described as an independent system of natural conditions — soil, air, vegetation, habitat and water are measured independent of built form. Then, when planners examine the built environment “on top” of the land we consider people — and their social systems — as separate from nature. Even when planners reframe the environment in a “land use” map, they focus on the economic environment far more than the natural environment. Some land use maps include natural environmental features but not in any depth, using overly abstract categories like, “environmental corridors” or just “open land.”
Maintaining separate intellectualized categories, like “built” versus “natural,” reveals more insidious ideologies that separate built and natural environments and make it difficult to discuss one system of “places.” The word “place” connotes more complex physical, social, and natural attributes that overlap each other in one system. Places always include both people and land together. A “place” is more than “open space” or “property”. By referring to the land in terms of “places,” rather than isolated categories, planners can more easily identify and discuss the genuine complexities in our communities.
To discuss cities as a system of places — as an environment of places — requires a professional discipline that planners may find inconvenient or difficult to explain. Going one step further we can think of “land” as a “place,” not just property, and not just physical matter. In planning practice, it will be more useful (although more difficult) to aggressively emphasize analysis of communities as one system of “places” and deemphasize, as irrational, the isolationist approach of discussing built or natural environments separately.
Values beyond measurement — not just property, not just open space. Central Park & context. New York City, 1983.
Places Evolve Incrementally
Places, and systems of places, evolve — in a daily, seasonal, yearly, or centuries-long process. Every moment the land, and the places upon it, have both a history and a future. Imagine a moment when a person created a deed restriction on their lot one hundred years ago. At that moment, the person acted as an “owner of land.” The deed restriction and the land became a single entity — a special place — which continued to evolve over time. Imagine this owner used existing laws (written by local government independent of the land) to prepare the “deed restriction.” The restriction preserves a small woodland with a modest home, in perpetuity. At that moment the owner, the house, local laws, and the woods begin to evolve from primarily independent elements, quite distinct from each other, into one place that linked together all the elements of people and land. As time passes the circumstances surrounding this place in question evolve. One hundred years later the same place has new owners and occupants. The woods will change as well, probably with new species and an adaptive ecology. House renovations take place. The surrounding community changes as do the laws which allow continuation of some deed restrictions and nullify others.
When the owner creates the deed restriction, the perpetual linkage of people and land is an intention, legally recorded — equivalent to an elementary plan. The owner’s initial intention becomes a seed that grows. Without that initial seed (or plan) the house, the land, the woods, and the surrounding community will be different. With that seed, the owner’s self-conscious elementary plan becomes inseparable from the land. Over time, other persons, also influence the evolution of the place. This might include renters, public officials, neighbors, and persons who only experience the land from afar. The built and natural environments have grown together for one hundred years.
Finally, imagine that this, or similar circumstances have unfolded throughout the community with thousands of people, buildings, streets, laws, social and economic trends, political upheavals and so on. Such a community, like a city, is one system of places. The city is not a pairing of independent built and natural systems, but an ongoing blending and re-blending of places.
Gramercy Park facade portrays a building’s history. New York City, 1980s.
Places Spiral Through History
The dirt in our front yard may not have a brain and may not have a goal, but our “front yard” is still a place that has been shaped by people from the past into the future. The “yard” (just like our city) will continue to evolve consciously, not just by zoning regulations (for front, back, and side yards), but also through the inevitable evolution of community places voiced through effective planning.
As city planners, all of our plans and actions include both the people and land where these conscious plans and actions take place. Individuals and groups engage in these activities across many decades, acres, and centuries. Our intentions take place in cities, neighborhoods and streets. For planners, thinking pragmatically about places as concrete entities is far more meaningful than thinking of our communities as two divided systems of built and natural environments.
When we think about an undivided system of built and natural elements, the discussion of places becomes more meaningful, easier to understand, less abstract, less generalized, and more concrete. While planning for “places” also becomes much harder, this approach adds credibility and relevance to the work. Place-based planning requires more subjective judgements due to the necessary qualitative, unmeasurable or uncertain circumstances we must address.
A new generation of strollers and tricycles on a playground fence illustrates neighborhood evolution. Stuyvesant Town, 1990s.
One way to envision this evolution is to picture a spiral from the past to the future in which people and land, built and natural elements, modify the places that make our community incrementally. One point on the spiral represents one moment in the life of a system of places. As the built and natural environments age together, the spiral reflects an indivisible “community” history — past, present, and future pushed together. The history of this spiral responds to our actions, thoughts and plans. Planners practice within this milieu of continual self-conscious intentions and actions.
As places spiral through history, they usually change in a cyclical way. A well-placed park may be active and well-groomed at one point in time, then lose some of its visual quality if resources for maintenance decline, only to rebound a generation later when, the surrounding community reinvests. Problems, like gentrification, arise when cyclical change happens in a discordant manner. Good planning practice requires an understanding of how this cyclical spiral can be managed fairly and effectively.
Some planners view the integration of built and natural environments, as argued in this essay, as self-evident and not worthy of serious reflection. In practice, however, over the past decades planners have systematically separated thoughts about land and people through professional disciplines, intellectual silos, political convenience, a false sense of objectivity, and a legacy of regulations. The point here is that if we see the land as a place inseparable from its conscious social history, our planning practice will change for the better. That is, land does think (perhaps only as a metaphor) and planners must not listen narrowly (not a metaphor), thereby integrating the mind and body of the community.
This wall reflects years of neglect. Camden, 1968.
No One Controls The Land
Planners may influence the land, but we must avoid the misperception that they control the land. This misperception may go back to the one square mile grid Thomas Jefferson imposed on the land which, from my perspective as a planner, misconstrued the “open space” of North America as “property” owned by the United States. The Land Ordinance of 1785 seems to have established our nation-wide conceit that we control the land because of ownership and property lines, neither of which guarantee control.
As a planning tool, Jefferson’s grid oversimplifies land as a commodity — it turns land into property. We refer to house lots as “real” property (when in fact they are abstract concepts). While pragmatic, Jefferson’s approach is also monumental, idealistic, and arrogant. Ideological grids harm communities, just as most utopian plans unthinkingly impose symbolic geometries in order to promote some moral or spiritual principles. The principles may be worthy, but their diagrams do not make good city form. Places that have evolved without oversimplified land controls tend to reflect moderated and customized geometries which, in turn, facilitate much better places and communities.
Even when planners think we control land, we find that the land has a “mind of its own.” In the simplest sense the land can crumble, quake, grow, flood, burn, dry out and act in other ways. Land and people are subject to cultural forces that planners cannot change. These forces were at work in the United States before and after Jefferson’s grid. These forces impact places every day as the social, political and environmental conditions change.
In addition to political turmoil, the lack of land control also includes changes due to climate and weather. Many planners still evaluate land as a place shaped exclusively either by nature or by people (weather or politics) but not both together. When we analyze a flood, planners usually attribute the cause to weather events. More frequently today planners acknowledge that the flood impacts are worsened or alleviated by the character of the places in which they occur.
Major weather or climate events that do not impact communities in a harsh, immediate manner are rarely labeled as “disasters.” The same event that garners attention across our planet when it provokes a human disaster will go unnoticed or unlabeled when no immediate human harm occurs. Have we moved on from a climate “watch” to a climate “warning”? Should we plan bigger basements (like we planned fallout shelters)?
Years ago, Jane Jacobs noted two views of the cause of severe heat deaths in Chicago. One view, emanating from the Center for Disease Control was based on physical science. The CDC concluded that the major contributor to severe heat deaths in Chicago was the failure to supply sufficient air conditioning. Another view from the realm of social science noted that the cause seemed to be the different social systems that reduced access to air conditioning and related services. Perhaps lack of access, not supply, was a more appropriate way to account for the differentiation in mortalities in some neighborhoods versus others. Maybe both frameworks are valid but in different places for different reasons. For planners, a reasonable principle might be that we should not measure the physical states of nature independently of the social conditions of the places in which they occur — we have to evaluate both simultaneously as a unified circumstance.
“Heat” disasters (like floods, earthquakes, and extreme weather events) result from both (a) our inability to control the land as well as (b) the inability to control social conditions that subject people to the disaster. In all cases, the “disasters” implies the underlying synthesis of land and people.
In all cases, we cannot control the land. At best, we can plan for managing our response. We should use our knowledge of past disasters while we plan for future, unpredictable disasters — they will not be the same. I have often joked, even though planners act like it, that planning for stormwater does not involve writing a zoning code that “prohibits rain” in one zoning district and “requires rain” in another one. Planners control neither land nor weather, nor can we predict them with sufficient certainty. By looking at past disasters, planners can, however, influence how places become more robust and resilient for multiple futures.
Some built structures stand out in contrast to natural landscapes, whereas others have more visual continuity. Rocky Mountains, 1970s.
Places Require Responsive Adaptions
We adapt to the places around us, whether the change is sudden or slow, condemned or celebrated, ugly or beautiful, These adaptations are the basis for many of the arts, disciplines, and sciences included in the professional world of urban planning and design.
Collective adaptation to the places around us – whether it is an art, discipline, craft, or science – must start with our perception. Usually that perceived image or model of our world includes an indivisible built and natural environment. Unfortunately, as we adapt to the places we inhabit, we assume, often with arrogance, that we control the land around us. We assume the land is our property and we will do whatever we want. We assume that the politically constructed rights to own property somehow bestows upon us the physical ability to control all that we own. Then, some people may take their privilege too far and assume they can and should control their neighbor’s land.
Often the argument is simply that one owner believes change in their neighbor’s property impacts unfairly the enjoyment of their property. Instead of acknowledging that we might adapt to the places around us, we assume that the places around us should adapt to our way of thinking. Balancing these two views demonstrates the need for regulations that manage the “enjoyment” of property. The right to “enjoy” property belongs to the owners. Arguments about this issue arise regularly and have become the basis for innumerable zoning and regulatory battles. Usually the “enjoyment” of property means its economic value. These debates usually rank non-economic attributes of property as much less important such as views, social interaction, natural features, historical and cultural significance and other essential components of good community places.
Do Not Suppress Adaptations
As planners we often hear the acronym NIMBY (“Not In My Back Yard”) to represent the complaint of land-owners who wish to prevent change on their neighbor’s property. As a practicing planner I rarely hear a property owner acknowledge the rights of abutting landowners. These attitudes carry directly into planning practice. One group of landowners want outcomes for the land owned by others.
Ultimately, in every property conflict, one group dominates the argument (perhaps with a compromise), and the final plan becomes an officially approved outcome. The final plan, however, may be devoid of any accommodation of existing places. That is, plans which fit local political realities may not fit with the character of the built and natural environments. The plan may be too costly or technically infeasible. Just because a community can agree upon desired changes does not mean they can or should occur. More typically, an agreed-upon compromise may not be good for community surrounding the decision makers. Effective plans must be derived from an understanding of existing places, not just from the wishes of those who control the land at the moment.
In practice, community functions always follow the physical conditions of the land — both built and natural environments. Whatever function (or vision) we choose for our community it occurs, by definition, after the conditions that already exist. Every function will not fit every existing condition. The more explicit and detailed the desired functions, the less likely it will fit into all existing conditions — and therefore changes are needed.
Sometimes our communities can accommodate change easily with the existing built and natural environments and sometimes the changes require radical adaptations. When radical adaptations seem contrary to the system of places that make up our community, we need to think again. If the land could think and speak, it might tell us to start by listening to the history of its places for clues. Evaluating the history of places, prior to radical adaptations (like large scale urban renewal) may make changes much harder. But to be effective, major changes require much more thought, talent, expertise, and resources.
In many cases planners lack the ability or talent to craft well designed large-scale adaptations for new uses. When this shortcoming occurs planners and designers argue that “responsive adaptations” are simply wrong because we all know that “form follows function.” Using this fallacy planners can disingenuously defend a plan if it is in fact responsive to existing conditions because it is “following functional” requirements. The argument I have heard too many times is that “if the plan must follow functions (or goals objectives, policies, etc.) then the existing conditions (forms, places, built and natural environments, and people) matter less.” If, however, planners and designers are not allowed to argue that “form follows function,” they need to justify their proposals based on real places.
The viewpoint, that physical form must follow new functions rather than existing places, lets us create “one-size-fits-all” adaptations. If the new functions are the same from one place to another, then planners and designers argue that the forms they require should be the same. We have made this mistake for millennia. It is the natural outcome of social systems that adopt arrogance with regard to the land. It is analogous perhaps to an invasive species — or perhaps a franchise — that simply runs amok across the land. The franchise is not a new idea. The Law of the Indies, Roman forts, cities by fiat, and contemporary retail systems all speak with the same loud scream that drowns out any response from the land. What makes this approach even worse is that, like a broken clock, it will occasionally fit into the local time and place.
This ideology that “form follows function” means that we can ignore the history of a place, define our highly specialized preferences, and make the land adapt to us. From my view this is a delusional goal which sooner or later ends in disaster. This approach is like an earthquake that makes the land think and speak back to us in ways which we did not intend. Instead of a conversation or dialogue with the land we usually create a one-sided conversation. We talk and pretend the land listens.
The Campo in Sienna has adapted incrementally many times and changed its form over centuries. Sienna, 1976.
Topic summary:
(Built + Natural) Environments = Places
Places evolve incrementally
Places spiral through history
No one controls the land
Places require responsive adaptations
Do not suppress adaptations