On the concept of landscape in landscape urbanism

This chapter focuses on a discussion of the central concept of landscape in landscape urbanism as an entry to emphasise some key aspects of the discourse, to address critique and to suggest possible lines for future enquiry. In the words of Charles Waldheim, one of landscape urbanism&s;s protagonists: Landscape &s;has become a lens through which the contemporary city is represented and a medium through which it is constructed&s;. The conflation of word and concept, or the abstraction from any conceptual, content-related differences, lies also at the core of using landscape as a term that is supposed to guarantee interdisciplinary cooperation. The criterion that allows one to distinguish between landscape as building block, as medium and as the imaginary refers to landscape&s;s ontological status, an often used and fruitful way to understand the differences between multiple concepts of landscape. Landscape urbanists could recognise, for example, that aesthetic design ambitions are not incompatible with functional demands.