Cities are constantly evolving: growing, shrinking, diversifying, sprawling, and densifying. Each phase of evolution brings a unique set of challenges to urban areas in deciding how to remain vital and healthy for long-term sustainability. One of the most important questions facing urban centers today is how to keep people attracted to live in, invest in, and participate in the city. Recycling Spaces focuses on these questions broadly through conversations with experts in the fields of landscape architecture, economics, and urbanism, and specifically through the work of world-renowned landscape architectural office, Martha Schwartz Partners. Martha Schwartz Partners breathes life into cities and neighborhoods by creating spaces that that make people feel emotionally connected, engaged, and invested in the long-term viability of the place. Places that resonate with people are sustainable places. This expanded notion of sustainability, is the basis of the firm's public work, and is illustrated here by a selection of the firm's recent and ongoing planning and design projects. Readers will be exposed to much of this work for the first time and will be able to explore some of the issues raised through the projects and through written pieces by experts on topics including: An expanded notion of sustainability The role of the urban landscape in the sustained health of the world's cities Landscape as urban infrastructure The aesthetics of sustainability Why do people choose to live in cities? What qualities make them attractive? AUTHOR: Martha Schwartz is President of Martha Schwartz Partners in London, UK and Cambridge, Massachusetts USA. Elizabeth K. Meyer is one of the leading landscape architectural theorists in the United States. Charles Waldheim is Professor and Chair of the faculty of Landscape Architecture at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design. Emily Waugh is a Lecturer in Landscape Architecture at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design and founding principal of Survey, a studio focused on writing, editing, curating, research, graphic design, and communication. ILLUSTRATIONS: 300 photographs & 10 illustrations
