When reflecting on the title itself ‘A Framework for Action’ I read it like noticing a kind of urgency to keep things being done. The title brought together a static word related with structure and orderframework-, and a dynamic one -action-, building a strategy. That is what a plan is aimed to be, a framework for action where the different stakeholders find a common ground to proceed.Quoting the authors we know about the ambition of the plan -‘a landscape plan focuses on the landscape as both a natural and cultural entity’. In this sense the plan is tailored for the site and community living there, offering an understanding of local and city broad scales, and aiming to change and evolve through time. The report is very precise identifying from the very beginning which are the products from the plan – six reports and a digital data base-, and which are the intended audiences – from the residents to other citizens and public agencies or other public or private institutions. It identifies too the sponsors engaged in the implementation of each recommendation. The plan offers to every player a promise and a clear way to proceed.
The websites help to feed that framework. The development of a website is a powerful tool to make a plan reachable for a greater audience than the directly affected. The way the WPLP is documented is really interesting. As I started to navigate through the different documents I got the sense I was travelling through time and place. The different formats in which we get to know a little about the place and its history, the community, and all the project staff, better exemplify one of the main concerns in this course: to read and understand processes and the way our actions can affect them.
Since I do not have any expertise in the design of websites, I can say very little about how easy could result to update one or the other. In the case of the WPLP it is really useful to visit both websites because they belong to different times and they offer a different approach to the project. However, apart from the design considerations, it surprised me that MIT website seems closer in time to people and place than the Penn one. I enjoyed reading the stories from people, that way I imagined and even saw things in different ways; of course the images also helped to give me a more real picture of the place and the people there. On the contrary, Penn’s website focuses more in showing the plan itself; I find it more academic, and the same well structured and easy to follow for different audiences. Perhaps both websites should stay complementing each other. Their differences are part of the process itself, time always help to frame experience and tell another chapter in the history of the site.
And time is important because it always offer a clue for better understand the true nature of the problem to solve. There is a lot of emphasis in the plan about the importance of researching and getting to know the history of a site previously to any intervention. That gives answers about current landscape and urban patterns, and how they fit the site. We learnt from geographers that land can be read as a palimpsest, and we are now part of future layers to be written. That is our responsibility towards next generations to come.
The project has another very interesting feature, it allowed for bringing together professional practice and the academic sphere. I see a lot of power in this kind of symbiotic relationships, a kind of back and forth between theory and practice. A central part of the WPLP is the experience of collaboration of both the university and the school. I am curious about the process of shaping this project as a pedagogic tool for students, and curious too about the kind of feedback coming from them. I wonder if any student has taken his/her explorations further, continuing their collaborative activities with the community, or researching independently on related issues. And I am curious too about how the planner/designer tracks her own actions and feelings throughout the process all this time. I guess this is what I find so special in the discipline and practice of Landscape Planning and Design. Coming from an architecture background one learns to deal with a project in the studio table, then -more or less easilyone gets it built, and that is: a final product to be consumed. You do not track the life of your design much longer, most of the times you do not even get to know who live or use the spaces you designed.
The case of this plan is really special; it proposed to work simultaneously planning, with design, construction and evaluation of the different parts. I guess this is one of this projects that stay with you your whole life.
