The peri-urban space seen by a landscape architec

Territorial space transformation through/by the landscape

 The peri-urban space, to take again a quotation of Francoise Dubost: "One does not know what it is, one does not know where it starts and where it finishes. Approximately one agrees on the definition of suburbs... in particular those of the years 1920-1930: an in the countryside established core of housing estates which is slowly caught in by the city. The suburbs are characterized by this phenomenon of progressive densification. Nowadays, this is not the case anymore. Jean-Michel Roux and Gerard Bauer described, since 1976, the phenomenon of "rurbanisation", a concept which emphasizes the urbanization of the rural areas."

I will try here to present on which bases the peri-urban in France was established and which is the contribution of the approach of the landscape architect in relation to this mode of production of the territory.

It is in a very specific and isolated context that the place of the landscape architect emerged in the urban construction industry. During the whole first part of the XXth century the architects and town planners developed functionalist theories, which marked the creation of the urban territories until today. These theories, which will give rise to the Charter of Athens and of which Le Corbusier was one of the principal elaborators, were applied at the time of the rebuilding of the Post-war period. The architects and town planners who claimed the creation of new cities for a new society lauded the "tabula rasa" and the radical rupture with the architecture and the city of the past in the construction of models as perfect in their function as in their forms. (Photographs: housing estates).

These same theories resulted in the development of the contemporary planning and management tools of the urban territories. Indeed, the radical transformations which took place in the society during the second half of the XXth century (rural migration, rebuilding, immigration, modernization...) required the creation of means of transformation of the city in order to lessen the impact of the exceptional growth of the urban zones, in particular around the big cities. These tools, based on a logic of zoning, forged our way of building and thinking the contemporary city. Today, the urban territory is divided in sectors, each part and/or reparcelling is assigned to particular qualities and objectives, identified by a code and a specific regulation.

Caricaturing, one could look at the contemporary city as a whole of juxtaposed and sometimes autonomous fragments, connected or bordered by a grid of functional networks. Of course this look is simplistic, but it highlights that the ways of thinking and building the city influence in a decisive way the produced forms. After the housing estates appeared the commercial zones, the industrial parks, the suburban zones... which constitute today the major part of our peri-urban spaces. (Photographs: commercial zones, industrial parks, suburban zones).

In parallel to the functionalist, other ideologies developed, particularly that of the "systems". Centered on environmental problems, it remained for a long time limited to the rural areas and naturalist questions without really being interested in the urban territories.

However, as the hinge between urban and rural territories, the development of these spaces almost "naturally" led to a meeting and confrontation of its ideologies, based on common problems.

The distinguishing feature of the peri-urban territory is neither urban nor rural, and it is this difficulty of identification which Sebastien Marot calls "the crisis of the archaic distinction of the city/countryside model ".

Indeed, on the one hand the rural areas lived and abandonment by a declining traditional society (rural migration and new ways of agricultural productions) and on the other hand, a new urban society, marked by consumption and growth, developed from new models of productions of the city. While being opposed to the "concrete city", the city in the countryside responds to a strong social and economic demand, but without questioning the functionalist approach of the production and transformation modes of the territory. That’s how the big zones of private housing estates and new workspaces (commercial, industrialists and tertiary sector) emerged.

 For more than thirty years landscape architects acquired a position as full-fledged actors in the construction of the city and the urban territory. Today, their role is not limited any more to the "landscaping" (cf Serge Briffaud) of urban public spaces and they claim to be capable to place the urban project in a spatial, social, cultural and historical dimension of the territory.

The landscape architect for a dynamic vision of the territory.

Largely influenced by the thought of Le Corbusier, the architects often regard the landscape as the spectacle of an immutable nature, or like the construction of a green decoration surrounding an architectural object. On the contrary, the landscape thought concerns the temporal and evolutionary dimension of the territories and rather tackles the question of the intervention from the point of view of the transformation than a creation out of nothing (process rather than produced). This way of tackling the urban questions is opposed to the hitherto dominant models privileging the oeuvre and the morphological approach. Without showing timidity in his/her proposals, the work of the landscape architect falls under the continuity of the already existing with which he/she works and invents new spaces for new uses.

The landscape designer for a different look at the territory.

From Le Notre to Forestier, it goes without saying that the culture of the landscape architect is

that inherited from the XVII, XVIII and XIXth centuries. To integrate the territory in the landscape project and in the urban art is a key component of the thought of the landscape architect. Continuously reinventing this way of looking at the landscape of the territory offers a renewed approach to the contemporary problems. This less sectorial approach of the landscape, replaces its different components in a common/same coherent unit, in which the rural milieu and the city, are considered, for the same reasons, as an artifact.

The landscape architect for an answer to the contemporary problems.

If, for a long time, the work of the landscape architect was restricted to give coherence to the architectural oeuvres forming the city, it is undeniable that, little by little, it is less identified with the composition of a park alone, in order to invest that of the territory in all its dimensions. Today, tools of territorial policies, like the landscape Plans and Charters, offer new opportunities of thinking the urban spaces. They result from an growing awareness on behalf of certain actors involved in the problematic of regional planning. For them, the landscape lends a light and perspectives to weave again a link between the new urban spaces and the territory on which they settle. It is also the emergence of "the green ideology" i.e. to remedy the urban crisis by an impulsion of a strong greening policy, for example creating green spaces, around highways and cites. (cf Francoise Dubost).

The landscape architect for an approach based on the knowledge of the subject area.

The raw material of the landscape architect is without any doubt the "field". As I already evoked, its work is based on the already existing landscape of which his/her detailed and reasoned knowledge is an essential factor of the force and accuracy of his/her proposal. This does not imply that it is the only determinant, but it can explain why the approach of the landscape architect brings a plus vis-a-vis the current urban problems. It is in this interpenetration between situation and urban project that on the long term an intimate connection becomes established.

The landscape architect for placing the site at the center of the landscape project.

This stake emerged from the observation of the inexorable spreading out of the peri-urban area since the Seventies and of the collective consensus on the degradation of the environment which is the consequence. It is undoubtedly thanks to his/her capacity to integrate the physical, historical and sociological characteristics of the sites on which he/she intervenes and always, at the same time, to replace his/her intervention in a geographical dimension and in broader dynamics that the landscape architect can adapt his proposal to the required development stakes. But the site is not limited to only one factual dimension, the landscape project must offer a significant part to the sensitive and aesthetic dimension, specific to each designer and his/her interlocutors.

The work of the landscape architect is undoubtedly not the only solution to the peri-urban problem such as it is formulated today. On the other hand the landscape is in the center of the interrogations and the landscape architect, by his/her way of considering the project, allows to open a new range of activities. Indeed, this capacity to reformulate his/her proposals and always placing the site at the heart of the landscape project, allows him/her to take a different and perhaps better adapted look at the peri-urban situation.

Alexandre moisset (National high school of architecture and landscape of Bordeaux)