The socio-spatial Qualities of the Landscape

The perspective of the city constitutively presupposes peripheries – whereas from the perspective of the land, which today we usually perceive as landscape, peripheries do not exist. Cities are referred to via attributes such as the public sphere, specific characteristics, intrinsic logic, subjectivity, use value, integrating effects, openness, encounter. The land has lost all these aspects and an exclusively aesthetic perspective on landscape cannot replace them. And yet it might be a mistake to bring up periphery at all, to think in terms of peripheries, as in other abstract spatial categories such as ‘rural’ or ‘suburban’, which emphasise the separating aspects. Virtually no one today who wants to explain the phenomenon of the city, primarily relies on the abstract terms ‘centre’ and ‘urban space’. Rather, they describe actual places and characteristics; instead of separation, they tend to highlight the dialogue of figure, spatial structure, form and sustainable economy as well as social coherence.     «

The perspective of the city constitutively presupposes peripheries – whereas from the perspective of the land, which today we usually perceive as landscape, peripheries do not exist. Cities are referred to via attributes such as the public sphere, specific characteristics, intrinsic logic, subjectivity, use value, integrating effects, openness, encounter. The land has lost all these aspects and an exclusively aesthetic perspective on landscape cannot replace them. And yet it might be a mistak...     »