Roads Belong In the Urban Landscape

In spite of being an essential part of the system of automobility and as such playing an important role in the development of urban landscapes, road networks seldom attracts much attention among architects involved in the planning and design of urban landscapes. One reason is probably found in the dominance of the zoning approach to planning, where road planning easily becomes isolated and reduced to a matter of traffic regulation and transport economy. Another possible reason could be, as suggested by the Australian landscape architect Christopher Sawyer, that road networks like other infrastructures are conceived ‘outside’ the more visually oriented domain of landscape architecture at a much larger and more abstract territorial scale. This is not to say that infrastructure do not operate within the landscape, it obviously do, but rather that it does not originate there. According to Sawyer, infrastructure is conceptually located elsewhere and thus is not strategically accessible to landscape architects working only in the realm of landscape. As a consequence infrastructure often become something landscape architects work around rather than engage with and alter.
If Sawyer is right, how can we as landscape architects engage with road networks in profound ways, which moves beyond the purely visual and pictorial? Is it possible to conceptually (re)locate road networks in the landscape? The paper will address these questions by discussing different understandings of landscape and its relation to infrastructure and claim that ‘roads belong in the urban landscape’, a claim that echoes John Brinkerhoff Jacksons essay Roads Belong in The Landscape (1994). Furthermore, it will be argued that road networks can be considered an important framework for creating new ‘green infrastructures’ that can qualify urban landscapes in terms of improving their overall porosity and connectivity.
In order to strengthen this argument, the paper will (re)visit tree different ‘sites’ in relation to modern road networks, which holds a potential in relation to the development of green infrastructures in fragmented urban landscapes: The roadside will be described as a parallel network with a capacity to connect otherwise isolated fragments – an idea with references the concept of park ways. The super grid will be presented as a pertinent way to organise the interface between ‘urban’ and ‘rural’. Last but not least, the fine network of minor roads – the sponge will be described as a platform for site-specific development without ‘fracture’. The potential of each of these sites will be exemplified by particular reference projects working in a cross-disciplinary field between landscape architecture and urban planning.