Methodology
The research follows a Landscape Urbanism methodology, inside an interdisciplinary approach. The environment is not an object that can be designed, but a complex system of elements that create a network of interactions between them. The aim of the research of each case study is not to reach a predictable urban form or planning prototype. A new alternative future for the territory is based on planning strategies that take into account flexible dynamics, scenario thinking and processes over time, which relate with changes and re-adaptation. The selection of a specific scenario reflects choices and processes, among the possible options (policies, planning decisions, hypothetical events and plots) which generate the complexity of a new landscape for the future.
Landscape urbanism anticipates strategic scenarios and operational logics through a wide range of scales. In the analysis of the location it is necessary to detect the potentials, qualities and problems of the site together with the patterns of the existing cultural landscape. It is important to value what already exists, and the potentialities of the space, editing it carefully. The planning strategy, at large scale, aims to draw the big picture of the planning proposal, where processes consider “time” as a third dimension in the implementation of the planning decisions. It answers the question WHY. Why we have chosen a specific location for a specific purpose? Why we have modified an aspect of the existing landscape? Why we preserve certain features and erase others? Tactics involves the middle scale in planning. It answers the question HOW. How are we going to arrive to a result in a specific area of our plan? How different programs interact with each other? If changes in the territory depend on decision makers, and in participatory processes, How to change the present situation in a particular location? We also search, in the small scale, for the main actions that trigger catalyst processes of change that generate a self-sustainable territory. At this scale decisions are based in the detail of urban, architectural and landscape design projects. It answers the question WHAT. What type of landscape we will have as a result?
