Form Follows Flows: Systems, Design, and the Aesthetic Experience of Change
Ecological design and planning has been driven by three trends. The first is that scientists, planners, and designers are increasingly aware of the imminent and effectively irreversible impacts of rapid climate change. Interest in adaptation and resilience has largely eclipsed the academic discussion of sustainability.
The second trend has been the speed and scope of urbanization to the extent that urbanization as a process and a pattern now encompasses more than half the human population, with urbanization in Asia exploding at spatial and population scales almost unimaginable only three decades ago. This rapid growth has driven an expanded focus on urban infrastructure as a way to determine some of the functions of new city districts.
Environmental laws such as the Clean Water Act of 1972 were expanded nationally to include cities during the late 1980s, when many developed cities entered a phase of renewed real-estate investment and population growth. For example, a 1987 amendment to the Clean Water Act required cities to apply for permits for their stormwater discharges and drove the rapid development of new stormwater design in American ecological design and planning.
The result of these new trends forced older cities to adapt or evolve and use and establish higher environmental performance standards. Designers and planners have been increasingly interested in the relationships among form, multifunctionality, and dynamic systems.
There are two ambitions that are thought to have occurred during this shift. On the one hand, designers have sought to expand the functional relevance of their role in order to challenge the post-World War II dominance of civil engineering in urban infrastructure. On the other side, designers have actively sought to re-characterize landscape architecture as a fine art and have pursued the elite cultural recognition that was historically associated more with architecture.
Globally, urbanization has been occurring at a faster rate and with more people than ever before in human history. More than half of the world's population now lives in urban regions, and that percentage will increase for as far as demographers can project. In the United States, re-urbanization has occurred in many older cities. Poverty is now growing in American suburbs, while wealthier citizens move to a condominium or small urban house surrounded by what is often referred to as a “walkable, service-rich” neighborhood. Many analysts have noted that cities have grown as the average number of people per household has declined, making the social, political, and economic world of today's cities very different
Our attention to trends has blinded us to the lather problem of we do not know how to adapt cities. Cities have been surprisingly resilient to disasters that occur as singular events, but the new challenges are long-term, directional changes with exponential rates of change in magnitude—meaning that the magnitudes of the environmental changes will grow faster and faster, creating economic and political instabilities along the way.
The long view can shows the changes well such as the effect of sea level rise. Seeing global data shows that the level the sea has risen has drastically increased and that cities were established when sea level rise was not as apparent. Sea level rise has always been a thing since the last ice age but now it is increasing at an alarming rate.
Climate change cannot be overemphasized as a “game changer” for the goals and methods of ecological design and planning. Climate models continue to produce results that are nothing short of shocking, and empirical field observations have confirmed that change is already happening faster and is more widespread than anticipated. The fact that the American public is only beginning to be aware of the coming changes is a formidable barrier to ecological planning in the United States as there are a substantial amount of those that do not care or do not even believe it to be true. Compared to anywhere else, the US is a mockery in that we are so behind on climate change. Other nations around the world are already aware and already taking intense action, with support of the public, and are designing and planning to combat climate change. The US is not.
Overall, designing for the future and the now is something that is a not easy. The greatest challenge in ecological design and planning is trying to understand and respond to relationships and patterns in the dimension of time. Designers and planners are working in an era of extremely rapid urbanization and accelerating climate change. They can no longer look to past landscapes in their efforts to understand natural processes or to imagine optimizing spatial patterns for ecological infrastructure without considering the ability of these systems to change and adapt, both in support of and in response to new interconnections of processes. The world is ever changing and what once was may not be what is or what will be. Designing for something continuously evolving is a challenge in itself and one that is at a constant need of being addressed.
