Reading the Landscape: Terra Fluxus

This essay, Terra Fluxus by James Corner, from the Landscape Urbanism Reader is considered one of the seminal texts in formulating landscape urbanism theory.  Obviously it has had an impact on me personally, as I used it for the name of my firm, with a respectful tip of the hat to Mr. Corner.  The concept and imagery associated just with the term 'terra fluxus' is powerful, and encapsulates what I consider a new methodological paradigm for landscape architecture (which is the lens in which i tend to read and incorporate LU theory) that gives prominence to process while retaining the role of design. 

While formulating the conceptual basis of landscape urbanism, Corner mentions the dual binaries of landscape and urbanism - with the assumption that there are different states of 'being', mentioning "the total dissolution of the two terms into one word, one phenomenon, one practice.  And yet at the same time each term remains distinct, suggesting their necessary, perhaps inevitable, separateness." (24)  This sort of hedging is pretty common - leading to some of the gray area within discourse - is it landscape, urbanism, or both? (often leading people to throw up their hands and say - well what the hell is it!).  I think of it as indicative of the inherent urbanistic challenges which landscape urbanism seeks to address whereas the complexity of the urban condition cannot be oversimplified, at least in analysis. 

:: Fresh Kills Landfill - image via PSFK

In the true sense of urbanism, this is about analysis and development of theoretical positions in which to operate - many of which are not fully realized but are nonetheless, thought provoking.  As Corner mentions: "the union of landscape with urbanism promises new relational and systematic workings across territories of vast scale and scope, situating the parts in relation to the whole, but at the same time the separateness of landscape and urbanism acknowledges a level of material physicality, of intimacy and difference, that is always nested deep within the larger matrix or field." (33)

Corner's main argument includes development of  four provisional themes, which include processes over time, the staging of surfaces, the operational or working method, and the imaginary.  In brief, these include the following summaries:

• Processes over time:  derived from ecology, the temporal aspects of landscape urbanism eschews the deterministic modes of modernist planning and new urbanism, addressing "how things work in space and time" leading to a "more organic, fluid urbanism" (29)  The movement away from fixed, linear, mechanistic models complicates the development of solutions (including both design and representation, much less construction), but is captured in the title of the essay as oppositional to 'terra firma', and opens the new view of terra fluxus, which values "shifting processes coursing across the urban field." (30)
• The Staging of Surfaces:  gives proimance to the horizontal surface as a "field of action," and able to operate at a wide range of scales, from the sidewalk to the "entire infrastructural matrix of urban surfaces." (30)  This derives from Koolhaas in his 1995 essay "Whatever Happened to Urbanism" where he prioritizes urban infrastructure by the, "irrigating of territories with potential... staging the ground for both uncertainty and promise." (31)   Mechanisms to achieve this include the grid (an overlay of flexibility and legibility) that is operated by users through choreography (aka diverse groups of people interacting with space in time, creating "an ecology of various systems and elements that set in motion a diverse network of interaction." (31)
• The Operational or Working Method:  the complexity inherent in the first two themes means development of a new mode of representation that require new techniques "to address the sheer scope of issues here are desperately lacking."  While in the tradition of urbanism, the solutions are unresolved, Corner does imply the importance, stating that "this area alone, it would seem to me, is deserving of our utmost attention and research."  This implies a direction for future study in the contemporary metropolis to test and vet these techniques.
• The Imaginary:  Corner provides distance from his predecessor, McHarg, but invoking the need for creativity, not just rationality in coming up with solutions within this framework.  The implementation of design within public space engages the spirit of the urban population, acting as "containers of collective memory and desire" and furthermore "places for geographic and social imagination to extend new relationships and sets of possibilities." (32)

These four themes connect the temporal aspects of ecology with the intellectual history of design - something that at least for landscape architecture goes hand in hand, as we deal with the organic materials that never rest in a state of completion but are always active and evolving.  The distinction here is not purely literal, but captures landscapes' conceptual scope, in Corner's terms "its capacity to theorize sites, territories, ecosystems, networks, and infrastructures, and to organize large urban fields." (23)  This has parallels not just in manipulation of open space, but as a way to tackle the ongoing complex nature of cities, this yields a "looser, emergent urbanism, more akin to the real complexity of cities and offering an alternative to the rigid mechanisms of centralist planning." (23) 

 :: Master Plan Diagram - image via Shelby Farms Park

Therefore rather than a method to expand landscape architectural discourse, it addresses the much larger dichotomy of nature versus culture, repositioning landscape not as the city's 'other' but as coterminous in overlapping with the purview of contemporary urbanism.  This moves us away from the purely rational, oversimplification of the city process, and the blind faith in market forces to shape our urban areas and at the same time exploring new methods, such as Kahn's diagramming of Philadelphia vehicular circulation, aimed at "representing the fluid, process-driven characteristics of the city." (30) and derived from central place theory modelling of Christaller and Hilberseimer showing "flows and forces in relation to urban form." (28)

:: Diagram of Christaller's Central Place Theory

In the context of this nature/culture divide, there are two elements of importance in relation to built work.  First, although acknowledging the early integration of landscape in urban settings (epitomized by Olmsted's Central Park and the work of Jens Jensen) - there is the need to move beyond the idea of landscape as pure scenery or as a palliative (which is encompassed in the hollow, Radiant City concept of the 'green complex' championed by Le Corbusier, which is both formless and anti-contextual).  The towers in the park lacks purpose in its rationality, but there is also a need to expand the environmental rationality of McHargian analysis into a realm of philosophical grounding that is not anti-urban, but allows for creativity and imagination in combining the ecological to the urban.  The extension of the natural combined with the infrastructural is mentioned selected precedents, such as Olmsted's Back Back Fens projects in Boston, which is an oft-citied example of ecological urbanism, and a precursor to landscape urbanism, despite its cultural leanings towards the natural, as well as the configuration of the city of Stuttgart, Germany in funnelling mountain air through the city to both cool and cleanse the environment.

:: Back Bay Fens (Olmsted) - image via Landscape Modeling

An interesting modern precursor to the landscape (and) urbanism worth noting is reference to Victor Gruen's idea of 'Cityscapes' from the 1964 publication 'The Heart of the Cities: The Urban Crisis, Diagnosis, and Cure', which are part of a variety of different 'scapes' that define the city.  This distancing from landscape as urban 'other' is vital in forming a new view of urban nature and landscape as including "the built environment of buildings, paved surfaces and infrastructures... not the 'natural environment' per se, as in untouched wilderness, but to those regions where human occupation has shaped the land and its natural processes in an intimate and reciprocal way." (26) 

:: Plan for the Perfect City - Gruen - image via If I was an Imagineer

While mapping a potential conceptual approach to landscape urbanism, the essay also provides some of the fuel to current fires of competing urbansim, the viewpoint of desire for a new, more flexible planning alternative is clear.  Referencing Harvey's 1990s 'The Condition of Post-Modernity' in clarifying this line of thinking the aforementioned theme related to processes over time and yields the terminology of indeterminacy, as Corner mentions:

"In comparing the formal determinism of modernist urban planning and the more recent rise of neo-traditional 'New Urbanism,' the cultural geographer David Harvey has written that both projects fail becasue of the presumption that spatial order can control history and process.  Harvey argues that 'the struggle' for designers and planners lies not with spatial form and aesthetic appearances alone but with the advancement of 'more socially just, politically emancipatory, and ecologically sane mix(es) of spatio-temporal production processes,' rather than the capitulation to those processes 'imposed by uncontrolled capital accumulation, backed by class privilege and gross inequalities of political-economic power." (28-29)

To return to the distinction between terra firma and terra fluxus, from the fixed to the fluid - the power of the ideological shift is immense, whether you agree with the tenets of landscape urbanism or not.  The power of this essay, removed from the context of the debate over 'urbanisms' is that we need to develop a different, more expanded set of values in design and planning that will are response to a true accounting of the complexity of cities, whatever your ideological leanings.  I fall into the camp that gives us the ability to focus on multiple 'urbanisms' to exist to address these complex urban phenomena.  In this view, the role of 'urbanism' is understood as the study of urban systems and not the development of solutions - providing an understanding and not a blueprint.  If one can take anything from this essay, it provides some possible tools to address complex systems in planning and design, to understand a wider contextual viewpoint, and develop new methods for understanding and representing these systems.   

:: Stommel Diagram - image via resilience science

In the ensuing application of disciplinary practice, we can then use this information and employ the imaginary in crafting solutions armed with our best information, not a predetermined idea of what should happen.  The sum total of this approach and these solutions are grounded in the view, from Corner, that "the projection of new possibilities for future urbanisms must derive less from an understanding of form and more from an understanding of process - how things work in space and time." (29)  

Reading List: Landscape Infrastructure: Case Studies by SWA

'Landscape Infrastructure: Case Studies by SWA' published in 2011, is edited by the Infrastructure Research Initiative of SWA including Los Angeles office principals Gerdo Aquino and Ying-Yu Hung.  This is supplemented with contributions from Charles Waldheim, Julie Czerniak, Adriaan Geuze, Matthew Skjonsberg and Alexander Robinson.  While ostensibly about landscape infrastructure, this type of book is a new sort of publishing hybrid that has emerged, combining the firm-specific work of a monograph within a more topical subject matter on a particular typology or approach to project work.

I think this may become a new trend in publishing, as it provides firms with the opportunity to showcase work, but also offers a more expansive vehicle for exploration of themes and inclusion of more collaborators, making the book both more widely marketable while putting the work of the firm in the forefront of emerging trends.  This differs somewhat from the Dutch examples and their production of brick-like graphic tomes of research and work.  This collection of essays and case studies benefits from the inclusion of more voices, although is similarly directed at positioning a firm within a certain intellectual and conceptual frame of reference.

This frame of reference, landscape infrastructure, is not altogether new, but is definitely one of the more emerging ideas within landscape architecture and urban design, which is reflected in the description of the book, per the SWA website:

"INFRASTRUCTURE, as we know it, no longer belongs in the exclusive realm of engineers and transportation planners. In the context of our rapidly changing cities and towns, infrastructure is experiencing a paradigm shift where multiple-use programming and the integration of latent ecologies is a primary consideration. Defining contemporary infrastructure requires a multi-disciplinary team of landscape architects, engineers, architects and planners to fully realize the benefits to our cultural and natural systems."

The book exhibits some of the exploration of these topics, picking up on what Aquino mentions as the aim of SWAs Infrastructure Research Initiative "as a testing ground for engaging and redefining infrastructure in the context of future growth in our cities and towns." (p.7)  This is echoed by Waldheim, and the research of the firm and the position of infrastructure as a way to "enter contemporary discourse on landscape as a form of urbanism." (p.9) and is thus connected to the more well-known broader goals of landscape urbanism and other 'adjectivally modified' forms of urbanism. (for more on this, read Aquino's interview on Archinect 'What is a Park?')

Waldheim's essay is followed by exploration of landscape urbanism and infrastructure by Hung, which gives some more detail on the history and specificity of these connected trends.  The distinction offered is that this is a 'next step' "for the further inquiry as a city's development and economic future is in direct proportion to its ability to collect, exchange, distribute goods and services, resources, knowledge, and people across vast territories." (p.16)  The ideas of landscape infrastructure therefore are given more detail, including the relationship to 1) performance - allowing for metrics; 2) aggregation - scalable collectivity; 3) networks - working towards connectivity; and 4) incrementalism - allowing for changes and adaptation, as well as expansion over time.   While I'm not convinced this is altogether new territory, it is important nonetheless, and the sum of this exploration in defining what I would call a subset, not an expansion of what falls under the rubic of landscape urbanism.

Further essays include Czerniak's exploration of making infrastructure more 'visibly useful' (p.20) and additional discussion by Geuze and Skjonsberg on 'Second Nature' expanding on previous writings derived from John Dixon Hunt and the expanded concept of the cultural landscape that is not pastoral, but is made up of the entire working landscape (infrastructure) that is shaped by man through direct and indirect means.  The final essay by Robinson takes on the ability to modulate, not to suppress or to make off-limits, flows by implementation of new infrastructural systems, using examples like the Los Angeles River, with the goal of providing expanded open space opportunities in the metropolis.  All offer ideas worth exploring, giving an additional dimension of understanding to the infrastructural landscape.

If this new type of book is the trend, it's a welcome one.  The idea of a monograph is somewhat anachronistic and indulgent - so I can see how firms and publishers alike would move towards this value-added approach.  The book is richly detailed and provides interesting exploration of topics.  The 14 case studies of projects - organized per Hung's four areas of performance, aggregate, network, and increment - are introduced with a concise description and many graphics, exploring the process as well as the product - showcasing innovation beyond merely showing off a project.

While not comprehensive case studies with data and other information, there is some meat on the bones of these cases, making it useful beyond the 'wow' factor in informing other projects.  Obviously the urban scope of SWAs work makes this a broader geographic range of work that touches North America, as well as China and South Korea.  This gives the work a context of both our indigenous urbanism as well as developing solutions in rapidly expanding globalized urban areas as well.

This cross cultural and multi-scalar range of projects offer a glimpse into the complexities inherent in tackling large-scale infrastructural projects.  This applies to both the content as well as the visualization, with interesting graphical representations that attempt to communicate temporality, adaptability, and fludity (which is no small feat).  I will leave you to check out the book for more and decide if the $70 (US) price tag is worthwhile, but the breadth of information makes this a valuable addition to the library of those landscape and urbanists working in these arenas and interested in ways, as Waldheim mentions in wrapping up his essay, to identify "the discourse around landscape urbanism generally, and infrastructure more specifically, as an entry point into contemporary readings of landscape as a cultural form." (p.13)

[images from the book - copyright SWA]

Mississippi Modelling

An article that came up amidst discussions on the Landscape Urbanism Reader revisits the question of scale brought by up Linda Pollak in her essay 'Constructed Ground'.   On Design Observer, Kristi Dykema Cheramie investigates the wonderful history of the massive model built to simulate river conditions in her essay The Scale of Nature: Modeling the Mississippi River.

 

:: images via Design Observer

RBC: Urban Earth: Mumbai

Urban Earth: Mumbai  |  Raven-Elison & Askins

Urban Earth, with studies in Mumbai, Mexico City, and London:  Their approach: “walking across some of Earth’s biggest urban areas, to explore their spatial realities for the people who live there and challenge dominant media discourses regarding the places in which most of us now live.  The idea is to walk a transect across an urban area, taking a photograph every ten steps.” (84) 

The concept reminds me of Christopher Girot's essay 'Vision in Motion' in the Landscape Urbanism Reader (Waldheim, 2006), on the role of new representational techniques and the ability to document the interstitial, non-destination spaces, echoing Conan, the 'black holes' in the urban fabric that   “...have become the dominant feature of peripheries and urbanized countries… need to consider these long non-entities as probably equally significant as the most celebrated vistas…” (Waldheim 2006, p.100)

Each frame becomes a story which is fascinating on it's own although nothing you would typically document in the day to day.  Here's a random image of London from their Flickr stream...

And the transect is also interesting as an experience, alluding to Girot's new representational techniques, as seen in this great video of the stitched together for Mexico City:

:: video from Urban Earth YouTube page

(from Ecological Urbanism, Mostafavi & Doherty, eds. 2010, p.84-93)

RBC: Zeekracht (OMA)

Zeekracht | OMA

A related follow-up to the essay by Koolhaas, this short essay explores Zeekracht, a master plan for the North Sea, driven by it's "high wind and consistent wind speeds and shallow waters..." making it "...arguably the world's most suitable area for large-scale wind farming."  The project master plan (below) outlines the strategy.  "Rather than a fixed spatial plan, proposes a system of catalytic elements, that, although intendted for the present, are optimized for long-term sustainability." (72)

From an ecological perspective the proposal looks to incorporate elements call 'Reefs' which are described as "simulated marine ecologies reinforcing the natural ecosystems (and eco-productivity) of the sea." (72)

 

The local implementation is "...designed to be sited, programmed, and phased to meet the evolving demands and plans of North Sea regional development," fulfilling the potential of the area as "...a major player in global energy production and trade through wind power alone." Aside from the energy potential, there is the idea thinking of this in tandem with ecological restoration, as "Farms developed along ecological zones and around existing decomissioned platforms create marine remediation areas, new recreational parks, and recreational sea routes." (72)



The project offers the example mentioned by Koolhaas as a "combination of politics and engineering" (71) that is essential to attain and ecological urbanism, attaining both productivity and remediation: 

images via OMA website
more from the official Zeekracht site


(from Ecological Urbanism, Mostafavi & Doherty, eds. 2010, p.72-77)

Ecologies of Gold

Brilliant study of the meshing of urbanization and gold mining in Johannesburg, South Africa by Dorothy Tang and Andrew Watkins (on Design Observer).  As mentioned in the article and accompanying photo essay;  " In particular, the 80-kilometer mining belt between the two cities is riddled by deep-shaft mines, where companies built an extensive network of underground tunnels and moved large amounts of earth to the surface. These operations have weakened geological strata, disrupted natural drainage patterns and altered ecological habitat. The original semi-arid grasslands ecology is now converted to an urban forest, and sediment from mining waste has blocked natural waterways, unexpectedly creating wetlands with rich bird habitat."

 :: images via Design Observer

While mining and urban areas is not necessarily a different scenario (the many sand and gravel pits around cities have a similar pattern) - the cyanide-extraction method of gold mines makes them especially toxic neighbors - especially when coupled with adjacent areas of poverty.  The overall urban pattern that emerges pairs the informal settlements with gold mining particularly on the fringes of the urban area.

  :: image via Design Observer

 Some of the diagrams show the processes of mining on a macro and site specific scale - which is helpful for understanding the complexities of the process.

  :: images via Design Observer

 In addition to analysis, there is thought of opportunities and solutions that take advantage of these new ecologies that have emerged - as Tang & Watkins propose: "While Johannesburg and Ekurhuleni face grave environmental challenges, including contaminated soils, acid mine drainage, undermined land and scarce water resources, it is also important to recognize the possibilities found in the existing regional infrastructure of pipelines and the large quantities of land being released for use. Currently operating gold mining companies recognize the environmental challenges they face and are actively pursuing more sustainable mining practices. Informal settlements are finding productive political strategies and are maintaining a positive entrepreneurial nature. The scarce water resources of the Witwatersrand are a critical entry point for landscape interventions, especially in relation to the provision of sanitation and the remediation of acid mine drainage. Can gold mining and informal settlements, two seemingly disparate players in the region, provide solutions for the future development of the “Ridge of White Waters”?

 
 :: image via Design Observer

Read much more and see the entire slideshow here.

The Deconstructed City

Amazing new maps from an L+U favorite, Strange Maps, featuring 'A Taxonomy of City Maps:  "Imagined cities built from the fragments of real ones: something similar is happening in Tout bien rangé, a cartography-based artwork by French artist Armelle Caron. It consists of a series of map pairs, one a blind, but recognisably real city map, the other what looks like an assembly kit for that same city, with the its blocks impracticably but neatly arranged by shape and size."

A few selected cities such as New York (top) and Berlin (bottom) - click to enlarge images:

And a closeup of the two panels from Paris - to see some more detail:

As mentioned, "Caron strips cities of their spatial context. Roads and rivers become irrelevant, districts and parks disappear. The relationship between built-up areas and empty spaces is obliterated."  See more on Armelle Caron's website

Architect's Brother

Stunning work by artists Robert and Shana ParkeHarrison worth checking out (link via the always great Landezine).   Not a whole lot of descriptions around to place these - so just soak them in - more at the artists website.  Happy New Year!

:: images via Landezine

Tales from Portlandia

As it is always important to laugh at oneself  - the 6-part IFC Original short-based comedy series PORTLANDIA, created, written by and starring Fred Armisen and Carrie Brownstein will premiere January 21, 2011 at 10:30 PM ET/PT. Each episode's character-based shorts draw viewers into "Portlandia," the creators' dreamy and absurd rendering of Portland, Oregon.



Bloody brilliant... Can't wait for more.

Zappata Romana

The ease of online mapmaking leads to a democratization of the dissemination of all forms of information.  In the spirit of Greenmaps, Italian firm Urban Architecture Project presents Zappata Romana, a simple, icon-based mapping of community-run green spaces on underused and abandoned areas in Rome.


Visualizza “ZAPPATA ROMANA”: community-run green areas _by studioUAP in una mappa di dimensioni maggiori

Some additional information about the project:  "About 50 community-run green areas mapped: little urban gardens, play yards, edible gardens and areas for walking, resting, or simply talking. Citizens and associations acting together to reclaim the abandoned areas in Rome. More than 100 sites together with the 65 spontaneous gardens registered by the Rome municipality.  Urban farms too and other interesting experiences such as Partecipation Houses, “Punti Verdi Qualità” and green areas maintained by established associations." 


Imagine the growing potential, using shared geographical data from a global resource (in this case, the ubiquitous Google Map) - how the layering of information has grown, and will continue to do so, due to tools that are easy to manipulate with little technical expertise and little to no cost.  For a similar project, check out my Beta version of the PDX Greenmap - which aims to feature a range of sustainable sites and strategies around Portland (more info here).

Maps=Information
Information=Power [thus]
Maps=Power.

The Digital Canopy (Expanded)

It's intriguing that Google Earth 6 has started populating the virtual 'planet' with 3-Dimensional trees, which together with buildings and terrain offer the opportunity for some reasonable representation of exterior sites.  Right now, only a few cities have been added in selected cities and natural areas:

"I think we can all agree that our planet without trees would be a pretty desolate place. Besides the ever-important task of providing us with the oxygen we breathe, trees are an integral part of the landscape around us. In Google Earth, while we and our users have been busy populating the globe with many thousands of 3D building models, trees have been rather hard to come by. All that is changing with Google Earth 6, which includes beautifully detailed, 3D models for dozens of species of trees, from the Japanese Maple to the East African Cordia to my personal favorite, the cacao tree. While we’ve just gotten started planting trees in Google Earth, we already have more than 80 million trees in places such as Athens, Berlin, Chicago, New York City, San Francisco and Tokyo. Through our Google Earth Outreach program, we’ve also been working with organizations including the Green Belt Movement in Africa, the Amazon Conservation Team in Brazil and CONABIO in Mexico to model our planet’s threatened forests."

A short video from Google, particularly regarding their concept for showing specific species of trees to promote understanding and great conservation.

The problem, of course, is the rendering of trees, which is so often problematic in digital formats as to be more distracting than useful.  The trees are somewhat abstracted, due to the need to provide simple shapes lower memory usage.  (UPDATE: the images previously shown were from the old version of Google Earth - so I have no provided a comparison with these and a city that has the new Google Earth 6 Trees  - thanks to Damian @ World Landscape Architect for the heads up on this).  All images are exports from the Pro version.

Digital Trees (A Comparison)
A contextual overview is somewhat interesting, for instance, Central Park in New York City (which does not have the new trees yet) looks surprisingly robust with the old trees.

Central Park

The new trees - in this case from San Francisco's Golden Gate Park, show a more homogenous and subtle patterning of the canopy, a bit more realistic in the inability to see separate trees, and the lack of repetition.

Golden Gate Park

The distant views at eye level are interesting to provide context for the adjacent buildings, something missing in the sterility of the 3D google earth buildings.  From a flattened view, the Central Park trees do provide a foreground to the adjacent urban edges.

Central Park

Standing in a similar field looking outward, there seems to be a bit more depth in the new 3D trees, and the rendering of individual tree components is more noticeable (maybe it's just the lighter trunks?).  There's obviously less density surrounding Golden Gate park, but the foreground/background relationship of the distant hillside is pretty effective (now when is the Weather on Google Earth going to be perceptible on the ground-level view, which might make the sky look a bit more real).

Golden Gate Park

The whole thing falls apart for the old trees, similar to many other attempted representations of vegetation, at a close-up scale. You can see the X-shaped geometry of the trees (a common way of providing lo-res 3D vegetation) start to give up their individual facets and look a bit strange.

Central Park

While the new 3D trees are an improvement, as you can see a better approximation of the trunk and canopy as well as a distinction between varieties of species.  As anyone that's worked in Sketchup knows, the search for good approximations of trees is a difficult task to find good representations of trees to match diversity of real vegetation.  I think some Google Earth to actual photo matching shots would be interesting to show the differences and see how close these have come to true representation.

Golden Gate Park

An interesting first attempt (check out all of the cities with trees here), but one that still needs a lot of work.  Talking with folks that do a lot of 3D rendering, landscape is always a difficult aspect for a couple of reasons.  The overall complexity of a tree, for instance, is immense - even when compared to a building (which is typically more uniform in shape and is covered with 'flat' materials.  

The Problems of Rendering Trees.

Thinking of a tree as a complex system - there's a infinite branching system of components - trunk, branch, stem, leaf, bud, flower - radiating in 3 dimensions in an ordered, yet flexible paths.  A beautifully rendered tree is a masterpiece, but one that takes a lot of time and memory to accomplish and is a mere snapshot in time of one species, of a certain age, and at a certain time of year.

:: image via Peter Guthrie

Even with the perfect specimen, there are many other factors at work - which in essence requires each one to be slightly different, as well as the ability to capture form at different ages.  Take into account a changing canopy over the 4 seasons - often representing with spring leaf out, coloration, summer full foliage, fall color and leaf drop, and winter branching - and that adds another complex variable to the equation.  A bit simpler for evergreen species, but just think of the number of species of trees that exist in any particular city.  Thus attempts to simplify often create trees which are somewhat cartoony approximations of the real thing.  It boggles the mind - just think what it does to the CPU.

:: Revit Trees - image via YellowBryk

Finally, trees are but one aspect of the landscape - and unless you are living in a park from the picturesque era, most are juxtaposed with a layered structure from overstory, understory, shrubs, and groundcover - especially when viewed from a close-in site scale.  There are programs available that will allow for this complexity - but how many project budgets do you think have this built in, or how many firms have the technological capabilities and personnel to do this type of work. This dilemma becomes evident in the eventual jump from the 3D to more 2D forms of rendering (predominately Photoshop) which allows a snapshot to take on a much richer palette, with less time and expertise - to more accurately render vegetation.  These are relegated to a one-shot image, and lose the potential for fly-throughs and other 3D tools for representation.  The search, alas, continues - for the perfect set of tools.

Natural Boundary / Political Boundary

I'm really glad that Strange Maps featured the interesting (albeit never realized) notion of John Wesley Powell's watershed-based approach to defining political boundaries in his 1890 'Map of the Arid Region of the United States'.  The concept reframes the Jeffersonian national grid, using drainage districts as "the essential units of government, either as states or as watershed commonwealths".

:: image via Strange Maps

Some further information: "Powell was convinced that only a small fraction of the American West was suitable for agriculture (3). His Report proposed irrigation systems fed by a multitude of small dams (instead of the few huge ones in operation today) and state borders based on watershed areas. The bulk of the arid regions should be reserved for conservation and low-intensity grazing. But other interests were at work; the railway companies lobbied for large-scale settlement and agricultural development."

:: image via Strange Maps

Just imagine the differing political geography of a West that is defined through natural boundaries of topography and hydrology, and what implications  While Powell's emphasis was on agriculture, imagine the different ways this would have allowed for looking at urbanization in the relatively dryland west that would have resulted through looking at availability of water.  Would Los Angeles and Phoenix be the same as they are today?

:: image via MIT

The concept obviously was a radically different approach to the orthagonally based, Jeffersonian approach in the late 18th Century, now continued to be managed by the Bureau of Land Management through the Public Land Survey System (a good resource of info as well from from National Atlas).

:: image via National Atlas

Some pertinent history, from the site:  "Originally proposed by Thomas Jefferson, the PLSS began shortly after the Revolutionary War, when the Federal government became responsible for large areas west of the thirteen original colonies. The government wished both to distribute land to Revolutionary War soldiers in reward for their service, as well as to sell land as a way of raising money for the nation. Before this could happen, the land needed to be surveyed.  The Land Ordinance of 1785 which provided for the systematic survey and monumentation of public domain lands, and the Northwest Ordinance of 1787which established a rectangular survey system designed to facilitate the transfer of Federal lands to private citizens, were the beginning of the PLSS."

The remnant of this being the rather 'straight-edge' development of political boundaries for delineating terrain that we live with today - the only diversions being for river edges that divide states, mostly expressed in the Montana/Idaho and somewhat less in the Washington/Oregon borders.

:: image via National Atlas

Drilling down into some of the smaller scale patterns, it's easy to see the disconnect between the political 'grid' and the underlying hydrology at work.  A map of Kent County Michigan (although not of the west) illustrates this point, with the clash of political delineation over the organic, dendritic patterning of hydrology on the landscape.

:: image via Wikipedia

Which maybe reads a bit different in a drier region, such as that of agricultural Kansas (where the use of fixed pivot irrigation is evident).

:: image via Wikiipedia

My favorite example of course, growing up in North Dakota where one is intimately connected to the Jeffersonian grid, is the use of the 6x6 mile township system dividing land into an individual square mile pattern to develop a road system that literally etches gravel pathways throughout every corner of the state (allowing a significant amount of public access to territory via ca, ostensibly for access to farmland).  It's virtually possible to zig-zag your way from one end of the state to another.  It's also interesting to note, even with a seemingly barren flat landscape, the subtle patterns of water (creeks and potholes) on the land (more on this later as I sat staring at Google Earth closeups for about an hour, mesmerized).

:: image via Google Maps

The grid of course, cannot stay pure (even in the topographically flat areas), and it's funny after miles of arrow straight country roads to encounter the grid shift (scene of many a lonely automotive faux pas on a snowy day).  These shifts, beyond the topographic, offer a more telling idea of the difficulties of a grid as a pure form on the larger landscape.

:: image via Google Maps

This idea, in a different scale, was inspirational for the conceptualizing of 'Neighborsheds' or neighborhood-based watersheds - that was the topic of my ASLA National Conference talk in 2006.  More on this soon, once I dig out the materials - something I've wanted to revisit.  Thanks to John Wesley Powell, although unsuccessful, in planting a seed of bioregional planning and boundary making, well before it was popular.