Week 6 - What is the potential of infrastructure within the contemporary city? What is infrastructure? Is the urban landscape a wasteland? Can we adapt these systems to grow in ecological potential and performance. I believe that as designers and citizens of our future cities we can adapt our waste and dross scapes into performance landscapes that have both current and future ecological potential.  The importance in doing this not only lies within the preservation of our landscapes but our ability to acknowledge the reclamation that has to take place. Infrastructure like our urban highways, medians, curbs, sidewalks, parking lots, interchanges and paved surfaces are not being immediately used, and to that we can take advantage.  Why not mold our cities to represent us and serve us, by serving their ecology first; molding themselves to the urban fabric.   Waste landscapes by definition are contaminated waste sites.  Drosscapes are inevitable waste landscapes that result from rapid, horizontal urbanization (urban sprawl) that are then left behind due to failed economic and production regimes.  A key and important point made in the Landscape Urbanism Reader states that the challenge for designers today is not to achieve a drossless urbanization (landscape) but to integrate inevitable dross into more flexible aesthetic and design strategies.  Waste landscapes which include actual waste sites, wasted places and wasteful places are all indicators of healthy urban growth when successfully utilized.  This idea of drosscapes requires design to be implemented as an activity that is capable of adapting to changing circumstances while at the same time avoiding being too open ended as to succumb to future schemes that are better organized.  I believe this approach can be very successful in the San Bernardino project.  Currently, the site has vacant lots, empty parking sites, and waste landscapes.  By incorporating programmed uses that can change over time, people may be more likely to stay and utilized their community to its full potential.  

Week 6 - What is the potential of infrastructure within the contemporary city? What is infrastructure? Is the urban landscape a wasteland? Can we adapt these systems to grow in ecological potential and performance.

I believe that as designers and citizens of our future cities we can adapt our waste and dross scapes into performance landscapes that have both current and future ecological potential.  The importance in doing this not only lies within the preservation of our landscapes but our ability to acknowledge the reclamation that has to take place. Infrastructure like our urban highways, medians, curbs, sidewalks, parking lots, interchanges and paved surfaces are not being immediately used, and to that we can take advantage.  Why not mold our cities to represent us and serve us, by serving their ecology first; molding themselves to the urban fabric.  

Waste landscapes by definition are contaminated waste sites.  Drosscapes are inevitable waste landscapes that result from rapid, horizontal urbanization (urban sprawl) that are then left behind due to failed economic and production regimes.  A key and important point made in the Landscape Urbanism Reader states that the challenge for designers today is not to achieve a drossless urbanization (landscape) but to integrate inevitable dross into more flexible aesthetic and design strategies.  Waste landscapes which include actual waste sites, wasted places and wasteful places are all indicators of healthy urban growth when successfully utilized.  This idea of drosscapes requires design to be implemented as an activity that is capable of adapting to changing circumstances while at the same time avoiding being too open ended as to succumb to future schemes that are better organized.  I believe this approach can be very successful in the San Bernardino project.  Currently, the site has vacant lots, empty parking sites, and waste landscapes.  By incorporating programmed uses that can change over time, people may be more likely to stay and utilized their community to its full potential.