Dwell in Between: the Landscape of Suburban Sprawl in Flatbush

Abstract

The thesis discusses the landscape of suburban sprawl and the ways to deal with the suburban development in Flatbush - a new town situated on the outskirts of Auckland's metropolitan limit. Suburban sprawl has already become one of the most urgent contemporary planning issues, which is expected to be unscrambled and examined from a broader range of urban, architectural, environmental, and social-political aspects. Landscape is often seen as a trivialized feature in suburban development. The emergence of Landscape Urbanism has shown a 'process' based development approach stimulating an open-ended, flexible and networked urban structure. The discussion emphasizes how to apply landscape urbanism's conceptual framework to suburban development which critically adopts Richard Weller's theory and practice of Landscape (Sub) Urbanism. It is arguable that Landscape (Sub) Urbanism is relevant in the Flatbush's urban-rural fringe context as it provides a multidisciplinary and multifunctional landscape concept responding to the area's complex suburban dynamics in order to enable a creative synthesis between space and ecology, landscape and architecture. Flatbush is characterized by its unique 'urban-rural fringe' landscape. The urban fringes are valuable aspects of contemporary urban space as many of them comprise significant ecological green belts and nature reserves. The traditional town planning approach considers the urban fringe suburbs as the continuum/extension of urban cores and the planning policy is normally extended passively from the conventional perspectives. However, the majority of the projects lack the discussion of specific and imaginative place-making and holistic landscape concepts for these areas. The design project tries to deliver potential prospects for Flatbush's suburban development through design as investigation by exercising the landscape system interactions. The critical questions are: 1. Under the influence of suburban sprawl, what are the current problems Flatbush is facing and the opportunities/potential that can be explored to improve the space character and dynamic suburban landscape? 2. How to adopt the theories of Landscape (Sub) Urbanism and develop suitable landscape concept for Flatbush?