Urbanist intentions for the built landscape: examples of concept and practice in England, Canada and New Zealand

Shifts in developmental and environmental imperatives in the late 1980s and early 1990s have prompted concomitant reassessments of urban management practice. In this context, discourses advancing a ‘traditional’ form of urbanism have emerged as an alternative take on how to create the built landscape. The ideas promoted in the discourses have been quickly adopted internationally, and implemented in a myriad of urban development projects. However, it is the contention of this paper that such endorsement of urbanist principles has been hasty and uncritical. h an exploration of the discourses of the Urban Villages Forum and the Congress for the New Urbanism and three concrete manifestations in Britain, Canada and New Zealand, this paper examines the implications of the production of urban form in the communication of meanings and social relations. The approach uses ‘landscape’ as an organising concept. It acknowledges the ideological foundations of urban transformation processes and the role that the built landscape has in signifying societal intentions. In addition, via the use of a detailed matrix, a comparison is provided of the urbanist criteria endorsed and applied by the two key movements and the three case studies. What the investigation highlights is that not only do urbanist discourses have a concern with fashioning physical environments, but they also attempt to procure specific social outcomes through the built form. principal arguments are made in the paper. Firstly, that urbanist conceptions and constructions in the built environment communicate a specific conservative social order. Secondly, that when embracing new paradigms the planning and development communities need to make themselves aware of the intrinsic implications and complex ideological enterprises associated with them. Finally, that a critical landscape approach is a powerful tool for unveiling the foundations of newly emerging planning visions. aper should be of interest to academics in planning, urban design and geography. It combines an assessment of popular planning and design ideology within a critical geography framework. The evaluation of contemporary practice should also appeal to planning and urban design practitioners. In addition, the diverse locations and contexts of the case study examples will find some connection with readers from a wide variety of situations.