Invisible Civility: Towards an Unsettling Reckoning

From its inception, Landscape Architecture has been concerned with the imperative to civilize territories already under cultivation and in deeply enfolded functional relationships with indigenous peoples of Turtle Island. Translocating European ideals of form, function, aesthetics, and organization to America, the pioneers of planning and landscape architecture felt the moral imperative to shape a new nation in their image. Our founding father, Frederick Law Olmsted, is hailed as a humanitarian, an abolitionist, and a pillar of democratic vision for the built environment. As his bicentennial unfolds this year, the moment is ripe for retrospection, a thorough accounting, and a sobering investigation into the formation of our profession.