Landscape Architecture and the Green Deal Dare: Five Successful Experiences in Urban Open Spaces

Abstract

The present work focuses on European cities’ environments and open spaces, aiming to demonstrate how, through landscape architecture, it is possible to respond effectively to many of the ecological and social hardships that the Green Deal aspires to alleviate. It was signed in 2019 by all of the member countries of the Union, seeks to reverse the climate change trend by establishing a series of goals for improving environmental and economic quality for 2030 and 2050 and also aims to enact social justice in rural areas and in the urban environment. Landscape architecture, which is the art of combining the physical and immaterial elements in cities’ open spaces, is taken in this work as the method of interpreting the existing environment. The description, together with the narrative analysis of five selected site-specific urban renovations projects carried out in the last 15 years by some of the main contemporary landscape architects, such as Micheal Desvigne, Peter Latz and Gilles Clément, demonstrates, by means of their empirical experiences, the benefits of the landscape design. It is able to match both the ecological need expressed in the Deal and to respond to the ambition of an open and rightful city, as called for by the theories of Sennet and Balmori. In order to reach the just transition and to leave no one behind, and to meet and to implement the Green Deal objectives, the new, positive and long-lasting explained transformations require the consideration of landscape design, in all its material and immaterial components, as a theoretical synthesis capable of obtaining a practical application in fighting climate change, and it should be considered and included in city management policies and in the Deal, too.

1. Introduction

1.1. Climate Change and the Green Deal Dare

The world we live in today is undergoing a general and rapid climate change. Everywhere on our planet there are windstorms, torrential rains and freezing or very hot air, which take places and people by surprise and sometimes in a violent manner.

Europe is not exempt from these sudden manifestations of nature; for example, the summer of 2021 was the hottest in thirty years according to Copernicus, the European Union’s Earth observation program. Moreover, in October 2018, the Vaia storm affected the north of Italy, parts of Switzerland, Austria and Slovenia, destroying thousands of hectares of alpine coniferous forests in the process forming a natural disaster. These powerful and repeated manifestations of nature, caused by man’s mismanagement of resources over the last fifty years, occur in both natural and urban contexts. In cities, the quality of everyday life is conditioned, often negatively, by its unfolding over time. The way we manage changes in our daily lives, the way we work and the way we tend to urban spaces are all causes of climate change events. All of our actions, if not carried out responsibly, risk increasing air pollution and heat islands. Cities are already densely built up with a large part of the land covered by asphalt; they suffer and appear to be fragile and defenseless organisms. The Climate Change 2022 Report from IPCC pays special attention to the relationship between climate change and cities, and it “has a strong focus on the interactions among the coupled systems’ climate, ecosystems (including their biodiversity) and human society. These interactions are the basis of emerging risks from climate change, ecosystem degradation and biodiversity loss, and, at the same time, offer opportunities for the future” [1] (p. 6).

In order to preserve our lands and lives during these transformations, in December 2019, the European Commission signed the Green Deal as a way to “protect, conserve and enhance the EU’s natural capital, and protect the health and well-being of citizens from environment-related risks and impacts” [2] (p. 2). The Green Deal proposes action in different but closely related areas (society, the economy and the climate), with the aim of achieving a significant shift towards a more ecological and inclusive Europe in 2030 and also in 2050. A lot of money has been allocated for the Deal, and this gives us the measure of the political relevance that environmental action currently has in the EU states. The financial program in the document, published on the European Commission website, tells us of “at least EUR 1 trillion of sustainable investments over the next decade. A greater share of spending on climate and environmental action from the EU budget than ever before will crowd in private funding, with a key role to be played by the European Investment Bank” [3].

1.1.1. The Role of Landscape Architecture

An important way to ameliorate the environment of the cities in a structural way (enacting policies that use a part of this huge amount of money), could be played by landscape architecture. According to Tom Turner, the definition of landscape architecture “is the art of composing landform, water and plants with buildings and pavements to make good places” [4]. Natural elements, such air, wind, vegetation, soil and sun, are what landscape architecture is made of, and their thaumaturgical power can be revealed in the open spaces of cities. The Green Deal can be an opportunity to overturn the traditional building-centric view of the city in favor of a new interpretation of it through work on open spaces. A part of the responsibility for affirming and following up on the idea should lie in the design of it.

The cities’ renovation process, according to the Deal, aims for ecological sustainability and social justice, and is strictly related with the ability of landscape architects to conceive of new forms of managing and caring for the urban environment.

Many important contemporary authors, such as Gilles Clément, Michel Desvigne and Peter Latz, have already implemented, in the past twenty years, projects involving urban parks, public squares, streets and infrastructures, in which large parts of cities have been rescued from their state of neglect and pollution. Henri Matisse Park in Lille (Clément), Dora Park in Turin (Latz) and Île Seguin in Paris (Desvigne) are just a few examples of successful transformations which have been able to reveal the environmental, expressive and ethical power that the action on the landscape is able to evoke and shows how successful this can be in densely built places.

Leaving no one behind in the transition is the other main goal of the Deal, together with the environmental one. In 1950, Garret Eckbo, a master of the discipline, wrote: “Our work is done for people, to provide settings and surroundings for their life and activities. Therefor all its forms must relate definitely to the forms of people: to their size, their shape, the way in which they move about and relax, their requirements as to air, sun, shade, the way in which they perceive their surroundings and so on. This observation may seem simple and elementary to the point of naïveté, until one looks about with open eyes and sees how seldom our environment is really formed to fit the simple and fundamental needs of the people who must live in” [5] (p. 73). The works which we might call ‘social landscape’ are carried on by a number of authors (such as the collective Bruit du Frigo based in Bordeaux, Gravalos—Di Monte in Saragoza and also through urban politics as in Berlin for the Tempelhofer feld), and these match the need for organization, legitimacy and clarity in today’s new urban social geographies so as not to leave anyone behind. “Cultural evolution requires a new organization of cities and territory, and this, in turn, determines new cultural evolutions” [6] (p. 54).

1.1.2. The Necessity to Restore ‘Landscape’ in the Deal and to Improve it through Political Choices

The dialectical synthesis between the natural and anthropic elements that the city is made of, could, through design and suitable political choices [7], respond to the need for the evolutionary transformation that the Deal aims for. Diana Balmori, in her manifesto, states that “landscape renders the city as constantly evolving in response to climate, geography, and history and it is becoming the main actor of the urban stage, not just a destination” [8] (p. 225). We, as citizens, are an active part of this process of generating new aesthetics, new ethics and new ecologies that aim to raise cities above congestion and degradation.

Furthermore, according to Balmori, landscape can be like poetry: highly suggestible and open to multiple interpretations. However, this word, ‘landscape’, is never mentioned in the Green Deal text. The absence of this term in the text manifests a cultural and political problem. According to the European Landscape Convention, “landscape is part of the land, as perceived by local people, or visitors, which evolves through time as a result of being acted upon by natural forces and human beings. “Landscape policy” reflects the public authorities’ awareness of the need to frame and implement a policy landscape. The public is encouraged to take an active part in its protection, conserving and maintaining the heritage value of a particular landscape, in its management, helping to steer changes brought about by economic, social or environmental necessity, and in its planning” [9] (p. 2). The fact that the landscape is never mentioned in key documents for managing climate change is a symptom of an important political and cultural problem. What is not recognized is not the environment (which is often present in its physical dimension as a whole of natural systems) but the cultural dimension and synthesis between the different ecological and social elements. The term landscape doesn’t appear even in the New EU forest strategy for 2030 published in July 2021, as one of the flagship initiatives of the document. We can observe how the urban environment is considered as a possible and even privileged place for the strengthening of the presence of trees. This is one of the key points of the plan. The text states: “there is potential for extending forest and tree coverage in the EU through active and sustainable re- and afforestation and tree planting. This concerns mainly urban and peri-urban areas (including e.g., urban parks, trees on public and private property, greening buildings and infrastructure, and urban gardens) and agricultural area” [10] (p. 15).

The goal of this work is therefore to urge a great effort, on the part of scholars and planners, to recognize the landscape of the city and to transform it with landscape architecture through dedicated policies and programs. This could be an effective resolution for some of the aims set out in the Deal, as we can see in the following projects that are driven by a method of understanding and transforming the open spaces of the cities.

Moreover, the work aims not to examine the Green Deal, but to demonstrate the potential of a landscape perspective in improving the approach to the open space design and in ecologically and socially regenerating empty urban spaces and residual spaces.

2. Materials and Methods

2.1. Which Landscape Architecture Projects?

The urban landscape designs described and analyzed below in a narrative way, through the story of their strengths (ecological, social, expressive and political), were chosen, among many, as they meet, as indicated in the quality objectives of the Convention, the ambitions of their inhabitants, of their local administrators and of the Deal, too.

The use of innovative and successful regulatory tools and the outcome in significant and hitherto unseen forms of expression in European cities were the main project selection criteria. Tools and forms of expression can be adapted to other urban contexts and replicated, thus, becoming a virtuous model of practice for city management in adherence to the call for advancement of land policies expressed in the Green Deal.

These are projects for which it has been at least 10 years since the beginning of the process (except for that of Saragosse); landscape architecture takes time to be welcomed by the population and included in the urban fabric. Thanks to time, it was possible to verify the evolution and adaptation of the vegetal systems (spontaneous and not). They are projects that, each in a different way, have been able to introduce new, winning and functional, aesthetically expressive environments, changing the traditional idea of an urban park. The prevalence of French projects betrays the avant-garde in Europe of the ‘École nationale supérieure de paysage of Versailles’ from which the authors of the projects come. The projects in Saragossa and Zaragoza attempt to account for the implementation of new and winning policies for the open space of the city.

These are five examples of working methods and attitudes used to develop site-specific landscape project policies in order “to promote, on the one hand, protection, management and planning according to landscape quality objectives (administrative and institutional questions) and, on the other, integration of the landscape dimension into all sectoral policies with landscape implications (criteria and instruments for implementing landscape policies)” [11] (p. 2).

The goal is not to understand the applicability of projects, but to show how the landscape action can enrich the meaning of the term landscape and the role of communities in safeguarding their social and ecological values (Scheme 1).

2.1.1. Eco-Logics

Saint Nazare (2009–2011), Gilles Clément

“The ambitious interests of ecological transformation of the urban environment” expressed in the agreement are put into practice by Gilles Clément, the French landscaper-gardener and agronomist who teaches at the university of Versailles. In his essay A Brief History of the Garden, states that today’s landscape architect is an implicit ecologist who must equip himself with two ineffable tools: the non-enclosure and extended time.

In his project for a park at the former naval base of Saint Nazare (2009–2011), Clément welcomes and animates the wild vegetation that has grown on the remains of the military infrastructure, restoring it to an expressive and ecological dimension that was otherwise denied by its status as an urban remnant. The two-hectare park was created on the occasion of the art biennale Le voyage à Nantes, a 60 km artistic trail on the river Loire estuary that allows visitors to discover the estuary and its unusual sites. The park stands on the imposing concrete roof of a submarine base built by Germany during the Second World War, in a complex urban situation made up of different elements and textures. It is located in an area between the sea, an artificial water basin and the city’s industrial port. The gray, muscular and rough remains of the submarine deposits find a gentle accord with the porous and colorful textures of the vegetation. This one, blown by the wind, welcomes the pioneer species (Sedum, etc…) that have been able to take root in a non-fertile but concrete soil together with the new species (Populus tremula and Orpis) that have been planted by Coloco atelier (whose members are the authors of the work together with Clément). “Instructing the spirit of non-doing as well as instructing the spirit of doing” and “imagining the project as a space that includes reserves, questions to ask” [12] (p. 59) is the way the landscapers (who like to define themselves as gardeners and guardians of the unpredictable) give form (an open form, but still a form) to their idea of a ‘third landscape’ that is a refuge for diversity. The former naval base of Saint Nazare is a third landscape (Figure 1). It is an open space that becomes an ethical model in which the acceptance and the coexistence of native, wild and foreign plant species develop a model for people to live together and a new aesthetic paradigm for the city’s many abandoned and post-industrial landscapes. Furthermore, the Saint Nazare project transforms an area, revealing its ecological richness that will grow in biodiversity over time, to the point where it can be assimilated into a core area of the city’s ecological network. Additionally, in this sense, Clément considers the third landscape not as a heritage asset, but as a common space of the future.

Seguin Island (2009–Ongoing), Paris, Michel Desvigne

The ecological transformation of Seguin Island in the Boulogne-Billancourt district of Paris by Michel Desvigne is another significant example of urban environment design. Seguin Island is almost completely artificial, having been a part of the dismissed Renault factory. In order to redevelop the big city space of Boulogne-Billancourt (74 hectares) that remained unused after Renault abandoned it in 1992, the municipality, in 2004, formed the operator SPL (Société Publique Locale) Val de Seine Aménagement. It has to promote, coordinate and manage open space transformation projects in the whole area on both public and private properties. Until 2009, the island had been abandoned, and it had looked like a massive flat concrete plane in the middle of the river Seine. The aim of the author was to activate a process starting with a ‘prefiguration garden’ based on a regular pattern in which rectangles of a mineral surface alternate with rectangles of a permeable surface. More than a project, it is a pattern, a trigger, which will, in time, evolve into a park (Figure 2).

The temporary vegetation will be replaced by pioneer plants adapted to the urban environment, which will come of their own accord. The paved areas will also be colonized by the inhabitants, who will find ways of using them and engaging in activity (rest, play, walking). The dimension of time, so characteristic of landscape design, is particularly relevant in Desvigne’s projects. Urban spaces make it possible to calibrate the performative dimension of nature in accordance with the population’s ability to make open space their own, transforming it into a recognized place with a clear identity.

Time, as a design element, should be given more consideration in the Green Deal, not only as a goal (e.g., decarbonizing the energy system is critical to reaching climate objectives in 2030 and 2050), but as a process, as the unfolding of events and actions that enable the transformations to which the pact aspires.

Dora Park (2004–2012), Turin, Peter Latz

The redevelopment of Turin’s Dora Park, which is the northern spine of the city’s green infrastructure, is also an example of a virtuous agreement between the dynamics of social re-appropriation of the place, environmental reconstitution and semantic evolution of spaces once occupied by industrial facilities. Peter Latz’s project, which started in 2004 after he won an international competition, aimed to transform a 37-hectare area already included in the “Turin, City of Water” program. The large park has a strategic location in the city for the purposes of reconstituting the mass of trees, ploughing back the waters of the river Dora Riparia (with redevelopment of the riverbank) and reclaiming the disused structures of the Fiat and Michelin industries.

The landscape project by Peter Latz solves environmental and infrastructural issues (on the edge of the park is part of the railway axis of the city) through a careful and elegant redesign of the lawn areas and a strengthening of the forest areas. These, together with the long paths, welcome and reveal in a new and poetic expressiveness the remains of pillars and roofs of iron and steel (Figure 3). The new areas have become places of leisure and culture open to citizens. They are welcoming places open to use for any legitimate need of the inhabitants. The strip canopy, for example, is regularly used by the Muslim community of the city as a place of prayer and celebration of the feasts of worship. The long new walkways partly replicate the existing ones, and together with the rows of hornbeam and ash trees, underline the longitudinal structure of the former Fiat buildings. Ivy and Wisteria Vines envelop new and abandoned facilities, welcoming them once again and contributing to the formal and spatial unity of the project. Dora Park is a part of the Strategic Plan of the Green Infrastructure of the city of Turin and continues to constantly expand its arboreal heritage. It happened thanks to participatory forestry measures implemented by the municipality through the initiative for mitigation of climate “1000 trees for Turin”.

According to the Deal, the EU forest strategy will have as its key objectives’ effective afforestation and forest preservation and restoration in Europe, as well as in the urban environment. So, as the works before mentioned demonstrate, we do not have to be scared anymore about incorporating nature into cities. It is about changing the way we understand the environmental component of cities by implementing methods of plant heritage management. We should also develop policies that nurture spontaneous and wild vegetation. We should accept its evolution in order to consider it as an important part of the natural wealth of the city.

2.1.2. Socio-Logics

As for reaching the ambitious goal of leaving no one behind, conventional approaches will not be sufficient. Emphasizing experimentation, and working across sectors and disciplines, the EU’s research and innovation agenda will take the systemic approach needed to achieve the aims of the Green Deal. The Horizon Europe program will also involve local communities in working towards a more sustainable future, through initiatives that seek to combine societal pull and technology push.

There are a number of transformation projects in Europe carried out in the open space of cities that have been possible thanks to the active involvement of the people who inhabit the transformed places. We might call them ‘social active landscapes’. They have the greatest value in giving new meaning to the urban space; it is activated by the feeling of affection that the inhabitants feel towards them. Regarding cities, these are open spaces that have very different scales and ‘consistencies’ (they are usually very anthropized and abandoned places also marked by the massive vegetation). All, however, have in common the ability to be radically transformed without excessive alterations in the shape of the space or in the natural environment.

Esto no es un Solar (2009–Ongoing), Saragoza, Gravalos–Di Monte

The Esto no es un solar (This is not a lot) urban redevelopment program, led by Nacho Grávalos and Patrizia Di Monte in Zaragoza, was able to anticipate the municipality’s policies, enabling the city to recover from the severe economic crisis in which it fell in 2008. The two architects undertook a careful and very punctual study of the urban fabric, from which they obtained a map of the unused lots. These were empty open spaces with either abandoned buildings or even ruins, a porous and dull plot, in the heart of the ancient city, waiting to be returned to their state as places of public life. The transformation of the lots was given a name, Esto no es un solar, and was submitted to the municipal administration that approved it and, albeit modestly, financed it. The funding for the project was given to an employment program. The architects ensured unemployed people were actively involved throughout the transformation work. Both the inhabitants and unemployed people were involved in the design of the new spaces and their construction. The space in the lots was cleaned, opened to the public road and was graphically decorated with paintings on the bordering walls and on the ground (Figure 4). Since 2009, there have been interventions for about 30 places, some of which, the most recent, are located along the river Ebro. Their use is public and organized through an annual calendar of events. Esto no es un solar has been able to relaunch the city of Zaragoza through its public spaces and political commitment not from the city but the inhabitants. New tools have been put in place, mostly intangible, including: the ability to look and analyze, cultural richness and intensity of participation in the care and attendance of the open space of their city. The experience of Zaragoza led us to consider approaches using unconventional tools (that the Deal asks us to use) as necessary to urban transformation. This approach is also economically sustainable and a model of a just society.

Richard Sennet, in his 2006 article The open city, proposes a more radical approach to work within the city: “In saying this, I am propounding a paradox, for today’s planner has an arsenal of technological tools—from lighting to bridging and tunnelling to materials for buildings—which urbanists even a hundred years ago could not begin to imagine: we have more resources to use than in the past, but resources we don’t use very creatively. This paradox can be traced to one big fault. That fault is over-determination, both of the city’s visual forms and its social functions. The technologies, which make experiment possible, have been subordinated to a regime of power that wants order and control” [13] (p. 1).

Park of Saragosse (2017–2019), Pau, Bruit du Frigo

The French collective Bruit du Frigo, for years, has been working on landscape mediation projects in cities such as Bordeaux, Grenoble and Nantes, through which it aims to establish forms of knowledge, design and attendance of places considered marginal in the urban space. Open spaces forgotten by people have been reinserted into the living fabric of the city (the authors speak of ‘defricher’—to clear) by means of new forms of relations between nature and human behavior. The authors are radical, and it is surprising how poetic the results they obtain are at the end of their work. One, D’un jardin invisible vers les jardins de Saragosse, carried out for the homonymous district of the town of Pau from November 2017 to June 2019, was, in their own words, a collective urban adventure through which they tried to redevelop the central park (of 2.2 hectares) and to connect the punctual green areas behind the residential buildings, creating a linear garden. The purpose of the work was to create the most effective and lasting reconquest of the places through a long and immersive investigation of the field. A period of more than a year of attendance allowed the inhabitants to better vocalize their desires and their ambitions, so the authors developed a collective pre-program for the management of the two parks. The mild time of the invisible garden (virtual place of desires, reflections and ambitions for the public parks) was followed by the building of the site with a shorter construction time, and the creation of ephemeral works. They were wooden devices for playing in parks, for performing and for assemblies and graphic works, made with different colors and designs, able to build the identity of the garden of Saragosse. Ephemeral installations (as well as symbols) are never innocent. They allow you to dare and to discover the need for movement of the body in space. They are able to test the real ways of use and occupation of it (Figure 5).

The precision sometimes reassures, as the members of the collective explain in the work diary, and it is in the indeterminacy (which Sennet himself proposed as a new working tool) that a possibility of openness to living, and therefore the success of the project, can be found. The authors, using their own words, have generated spaces of poetry and triggered encounters that persist today among the inhabitants, satisfying the unanimous need to find space for conviviality.

The ‘invisible garden’ of Bruit du Frigo is now the real, much-loved garden of Saragosse. It confirms what the authors call the need for a permit and transversal urbanism capable of offering a real place for the informal projects of initiatives and appropriation. Additionally, that is why “In the watermark of each of our actions there is an incompressible and invisible temporality. The submerged from the iceberg otherwise the project would not quite the same flavor. This invisible is multiple and compiles design, writing, reflection, programming, meetings, team, sharing and transmission. Two parties submerged and emerged as a whole. We are mediators, we are a medium, a kneecap between the inhabitants, the actor’s landscapers and sponsors” [14] (p. 28).

3. Results

3.1. New Meanings

The Green Deal in its text is very clear and assertive. We can read in the introduction that it is a new growth strategy that aims to transform the EU into a fair and prosperous society, with a modern, resource-efficient and competitive economy, and the transition must be just and inclusive. It must put people first, and pay attention to the regions, industries and workers who will face the greatest challenges. As emerged in the previous projects, we should consider new designing principles and no longer only quantitative elements (of open or built spaces, of plant mass, of population and money). A modern, prosperous and inclusive urban society must consider the intangible, the indeterminacy and the unfolding of time as substances that the city project must feed on. The comparison and the relevance in the urban context of the aesthetic and social outcomes achieved by projects makes it possible to recognize instruments that could be used by local administrations. In fact, they have been realized through unprecedented programming tools. They suggest further new design principles that can be carried out on open space to ensure success in urban regeneration.

3.1.1. The Intangible

The landscapes are with us and we are the landscapes; therefore, they contain our greatness and our fragility, our nobility and our inadequacy [15] (p. 8).

With these few words, Annalisa Metta captures, with extraordinary precision and effectiveness, the sense of ‘landscape’, in which the project (architecture) must, in fact, act. The landscape, even more the urban one, is certainly a spatial dimension, but also and above all a cultural dimension made of many and continuous overlaps, interferences, harmonies and dissonances of times and meanings. Therefore, it is precisely there that work with the intangible, with the invisible, is necessary. Daniela Colafranceschi, who dedicated her latest studies to this dimension, writes: “Reality consists, at the same time, of presences and absences, of elements that manifest themselves and others that are hidden, yet always there. Reality is not only what you see. The visible cannot be identified with the real and vice versa. You have to learn to look at what you can’t see; you have to learn the profession of landscape diviner. Nothing better than the landscape to apply an ontology of the visible, because the landscape is, at the same time, a physical reality and the representation that we give it culturally. The external and visible physiognomy of a certain portion of the earth’s surface and the individual and social perception that it generates; a geographical tangibility and its intangible interpretation” [16] (p. 11).

Grávalos Di Monte and Bruit du Frigo (along with other contemporary landscapers such as the ETC collective Marti Franch in his project Girona’s shore) have shown us that by working with the addition of a minimum number of physical elements (whether they are built or natural), it is possible to recover strongly compromised areas. It is possible to bring them back to a dimension of social, aesthetic and environmental sense from abandonment, improper use and social marginalization. The understanding of the tangible geography is in the interpretation of the intangible (which is also feelings, relationships, atmosphere and beauty). To return to the words of Colafranceschi, the intangible is the opportunity for the success of the project for the city and of putting people first.

3.1.2. The Indeterminacy

The unknown and the uncontrolled (or not easily controllable) are elements of design, as already expressed by Sennet, and a possible method for the transformation of the existing spaces. The indeterminacy allows us, for example, to achieve the environmental benefits urgently needed in polluted urban areas’ soil and air through the improvements that the natural migration of seeds and plants can provide. In addition, the plants that arise spontaneously are more resistant, help to keep the soil still so that it does not run away, absorb the excess water that overflows from the contained water streams and significantly increase the biodiversity of the vegetated areas. This is seen in the project of Clément for Saint Nazare, where the vegetable blanket that covers the concrete structure is largely spontaneous. Additionally, it is precisely the author himself in his third landscape manifesto who reveals to us that it is necessary to instruct the spirit of not doing as the spirit of doing is instructed.

The indeterminacy of the shape of an urban park, which remains open and ready to change (as in the case of work in the Saragossa district), allows it to adapt over time to the wishes and needs of people, as well as permitting artists to make the most of the environmental conditions of the place, and changing the uses of the open space depending on the seasons. The lack of determination in the ways in which a park can be used allows it to meet the requests of users, as in the Dora Park designed by Latz, in which the former industrial structures once became an open place of prayer, and another time a place for artistic events.

The indeterminacy rarely fails, because in the overlap and in the mixture of elements, the resilience capacity of men and landscapes which they inhabit increase.

3.1.3. The Unfolding over Time

The Green Deal states there are very precise times by which the energy and environmental improvement objectives need to be reached; 2030 and 2050 are the years that are most often mentioned as deadlines for evaluating the achieved results. For 2030, it is hoped a fifty percent reduction in gas emissions can be reached, and for 2050, climate neutrality.

The urban landscape project is much more than a defined goal. It is a process which constantly guides the city towards sustainable change. Michel Desvigne, who received the Grand Prize for Urbanism in France in 2011, comes to consider the landscape project as an ‘intermediate nature’, which cannot be told with defined images. Intermediate nature is an architecture made of natural elements that changes with time. Each element changes according to its precise and different rhythm. “Neither full nor empty. These squared spaces are sieved of a sort where paradoxically life moves in-traps for an intermediate nature” [17]. On Suguin Island, the trees planted will be replaced by stronger ones, the meadows will grow or shrink, and the species that are part of them will change. This evolution of nature corresponds to the evolution of its form and use. In the project for the city, its unfolding over time (the growth of plant systems, the adaptation of the soil to buildings and its waterproofing, the trend of the water system) is more correct than having a final view that is destined to change.

4. Discussion

What Is Next: Between Landscape and Green Deal Ambitions

Landscape architecture is revealed to be a method of analysis and interpretation of the territory, which is composed of unconventional elements such as the intangible, the indeterminacy and the unfolding of time. Its great potential for solving the problems affecting the urban environment (such as excessive air pollution, integration of industrial infrastructure and social marginality) leads us to consider it as necessary.

However, we have to define, even more specifically, which urgencies the architecture of the landscape must respond to today, in the Green Deal era.

The first one is concerned with the definition of what is public. To what, to whom and to what places do we refer when we design public spaces? “As a concept, ‘public’ is easy to understand, but not easy to define” [18]. Thestatus of the public is dedicated to this topic in the latest issue (n. 49) of Harvard Design Magazine edited by Anita Berrizbeitia and Diane E. Davis. They invite public intellectuals, scholars and practitioners in architecture, urban planning, landscape architecture and in the social sciences and humanities to join us in pondering the fate of the public in a world where xenophobic thinking and challenges to collective responsibility are becoming ever more dominant. The two editors warn us of the current risk of ecological challenges in cities based on the greening process (with the thickening of the forests and the enlargement and integration of the countryside into the urban environment). Reducing overheating can produce inequalities and social marginalization. Public green is truly green only if it is also socially sustainable.

The second matter of urgency is the need to put public open space design before built architecture. The landscape is able to address the developments of urban complexity through the study of the natural structures that form the places, even those in the city. It has to have a premonitory role in the political decision. It should be the strategy through which ecological–social harmonies and aesthetic continuity and meaning between man and nature, between city and countryside, between open and built space and between necessary building density and desire for openness are created. The project, as a development of harmonies, has recently led Lucina Caravaggi to talk about co-evolution and to invite us to overcome the traditional opposition between man and nature “and its multiple derivatives: wild-domestic, productive-unproductive, urban-rural” [19].

So, “according to this vision, relations between urban space and landscape, ecosystems and inhabitants are strengthened. This translational process through knowledge generates a culture of responsibility that through virtuous processes has direct and effective effects on the health and well-being of citizens and ecosystems that allow life” [20] (p. 209).