Local Cultures – Global Spaces
Abstract
Contemporary cities may share common features, technologies, brands, and even spatial fabric; creating a sense of planetary urbanization, perhaps best expressed by Neil Brenner and Christian Schmid (2014). However, within each of these population centers are real people, exerting their own creative, individual, local spatial interests. Unlike the well-funded, top-down mainstream landscapes or urban design projects that appear to be prized because of their visibility, the hidden landscapes produced and promoted by residents reveal much more about local interests, histories, and values that hold collective meaning. This presentation shares several case studies of under-studied and under-valued landscapes in American cities. These include historical and contemporary examples of invisible, unsanctioned, and under-appreciated types of landscapes, and interrogate the values that underpin their relative distance from the public eye. Many of these spaces have developed at an intentional remove from normative design and planning processes, and yet they serve enormously important functions for groups and individuals. Examples of such types of places include foraging landscapes, wayfinding trees, and the Jewish sabbath markers called eruv. These counter-hegemonic approaches can be studied to inform more dominant planning practices, and make a case for the preservation of local sites and methods. The interdisciplinary interests of architecture, landscape architecture and urban design are represented in this research.
Carey Clouse is Professor of Architecture and Landscape Architecture. She holds a post-professional degree (SMArchS) in Architecture and Urbanism from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a BArch from the University of Oregon. Clouse is the recipient of a Fulbright-Nehru Senior Research Fellowship to India and the Enterprise Rose Architectural Fellowship in New Orleans, LA. Her research addresses bottom-up, DIY climate-adaptive design and planning.