Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
1.2 Climate Change and Landscape
As I leave the mountains of Engadin on this warm Autumn morning, my mood
swings between hope and gloom. I'm happy to have witnessed that over the last six
months of 2008, environmental landscape planning awareness has seen a wealth of
global seminars and conferences showing that every country in the world is willing
to make changes that will have a positive effect on the world. These months saw
“environmental planning and landscape ecology” often discussed in magazines and
a flaunting with new European regulations. But at the same time the figures I had
read throughout the last six months of 2008 disturb me greatly (Shahneshin, 2008b).
In nature, one-way linear flows do not survive long. Nor, by extension, can they
survive long in the expanding economy that is not a part of the earth's ecosystem.
The challenge is to redesign economy and development so that they are compatible
with nature. The throwaway economy and runaway development that have been
evolving over the last half-century are an aberration, as can be seen by the collapse
of financial systems worldwide in October of 2008 (Shahneshin, 2008c).
There is no doubt that, as our built environment has transformed from a local
phenomenon to a global one, we are now confronted with more pressing social,
technological, economic, environmental and political change forcing us into a local
mindset - on a global scale (Shahneshin, 2008d; Stern, 2006).
We are living in an epoch capable of building the most extraordinary infrastruc-
tures, but these same projects have seldom been able to structure the territory that
they traverse and occupy. Since SHAGAL
iodaa
1
is in the business of design,
it has made great efforts to address this very issue in its extended sense; leading
city administrators and policy-makers in creating a city where the built and natural
environments prosper and thrive “together” (Shahneshin, 1996).
SHAGAL
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iodaa has, since the early 1990s, embarked upon hypothetical enact-
ments of a city carbon-neutral policy for numerous projects including the Cincinnati
Park in Torino (Italy) 1994, Strategic Masterplan for Downtown Athens (Greece)
1998, Masterplan for a New City in the Eastern region of China 2002, Trinity River
Corridor Development in Dallas (USA) 2003, Riverfront Development in Geneva
(Switzerland) 2004, the New Masterplan for Zurich Airport (Switzerland) 2005,
and for the Hobart Waterfront in Tasmania (Australia) 2006, to name some.
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1.3 Shrinking Airport
I would love to share with you one of the mentioned projects. The greatly discussed
Zurich Airport New Master Plan project: a truly participatory approach of nature
and men. Before telling you the story of this master plan (the Naturpark), it would
be compelling to reveal the bottom line and foremost imperative engines of this
neighbourhood- and community-oriented project.
People and nature are placed at the heart of this design with quality
shrinkage
2
as the main programmatic theme, and it is called the
new
“smart growth”, adding to
the discourse surrounding urban landscape in Europe and beyond.
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