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In the 1990s, a new question began to unsettle landscape architecture: what if the city itself should be understood and designed as a landscape, rather than as a collection of buildings and streets? This question gave rise to a cluster of frameworks that have reshaped urban design theory and practice. Three frameworks—Landscape Urbanism, Ecological Urbanism, and Infrastructural Urbanism—have driven the debate, each offering a different answer about what should be the primary driver of urban form. Their disagreements are not minor; they reflect fundamentally different commitments about process, ecology, and infrastructure. Yet all three share a starting point: the city is a dynamic, horizontal field of systems, not a static arrangement of objects.
Landscape Urbanism emerged in the early 1990s, primarily through the work of Charles Waldheim, James Corner, and Mohsen Mostafavi. It was a direct reaction against two earlier traditions: modernist urban design, which treated the city as a composition of discrete buildings and zones, and postmodernist urban design, which emphasized historical reference and symbolic form. Landscape Urbanism argued that both approaches had failed to address the complex, dynamic, and often chaotic conditions of the contemporary city.
The core proposition of Landscape Urbanism is that landscape—understood as a horizontal, process-based field—should be the primary medium for organizing urban form. Instead of designing buildings as objects in space, designers should think of the city as a continuous surface shaped by ecological, hydrological, and social processes. This shift from object to field, from static composition to dynamic process, was the framework's most distinctive contribution. The High Line in New York City, designed by James Corner Field Operations, is often cited as a paradigmatic example: an abandoned elevated railway transformed into a linear park that weaves through the city, treating the urban fabric as a continuous landscape surface.
Landscape Urbanism was not primarily an ecological framework, though it drew on ecological metaphors. Its emphasis was on process and performance: the city should be designed to adapt, change, and grow over time, much like a landscape. This process-based approach was a deliberate break from the formalist and typological thinking of earlier urban design. However, critics soon pointed out that Landscape Urbanism's focus on process and metaphor could be used to justify projects that were ecologically shallow or socially inequitable. The framework's commitment to performance over normative goals left it open to the charge that it lacked a strong ethical or ecological core.
Ecological Urbanism emerged around 2000 as a direct response to the perceived weaknesses of Landscape Urbanism. Its leading proponents, including Mohsen Mostafavi (who had earlier been associated with Landscape Urbanism) and Gareth Doherty, argued that the earlier framework had not gone far enough. Where Landscape Urbanism treated ecology as a metaphor or a process model, Ecological Urbanism insisted that ecological integrity and social justice must be non-negotiable design drivers.
The distinctive contribution of Ecological Urbanism is its normative commitment: the city should be designed not just as a landscape-like field, but as an ecologically functional and socially just system. This framework draws on urban ecology, environmental science, and political ecology to argue that urban design must prioritize biodiversity, ecosystem services, climate resilience, and equitable access to green space. The Sponge City initiative in China, which uses permeable surfaces, rain gardens, and wetlands to manage stormwater, exemplifies this approach: it treats ecological performance as the primary design criterion, not just one among many.
Ecological Urbanism also introduced a stronger emphasis on social equity. Critics of Landscape Urbanism had noted that many of its signature projects, including the High Line, contributed to gentrification and displacement. Ecological Urbanism responded by making environmental and spatial justice explicit goals. This shift from a process-based/performative approach to a normative/ecological-justice approach is the key methodological difference between the two frameworks. Ecological Urbanism does not reject Landscape Urbanism's horizontal field concept; it absorbs it, but narrows and transforms it by adding a non-negotiable ecological and ethical core.
Infrastructural Urbanism emerged in parallel with Ecological Urbanism, around 2000, but from a different set of concerns. Its key figures, including Stan Allen and Kelly Shannon, argued that infrastructure—not landscape process or ecological integrity—should be the primary driver of urban form. This framework redefines infrastructure as visible, landscape-like, and multifunctional, rather than hidden, purely technical, and single-purpose.
The distinctive contribution of Infrastructural Urbanism is its argument that infrastructure networks (roads, water systems, energy grids, waste management) are the most powerful shapers of urban form, and that designers should embrace this fact rather than resist it. Instead of treating infrastructure as a necessary but ugly support system, Infrastructural Urbanism proposes that infrastructure can be designed as public space, ecological corridor, and urban armature simultaneously. The Cheonggyecheon restoration in Seoul, which uncovered a buried stream and transformed it into a linear public space, is a celebrated example: it treats a hydrological infrastructure project as the central organizing element of the urban landscape.
Infrastructural Urbanism coexists with Ecological Urbanism in a productive tension. Both emerged around the same time and share a concern with performance and systems thinking. But they prioritize different drivers: Ecological Urbanism puts ecology and justice first, while Infrastructural Urbanism puts infrastructure networks first. This difference leads to real conflicts in practice. An Infrastructural Urbanist might design a highway as a multifunctional landscape corridor, while an Ecological Urbanist might argue that the highway itself should be removed or reduced to restore ecological connectivity. The two frameworks agree that the city is a system of interconnected flows, but they disagree about which flows should be privileged.
Today, all three frameworks remain active, and their relationships are best understood as a living debate rather than a linear succession. They agree on several foundational points: the city should be understood as a dynamic, horizontal field; design should prioritize performance and process over static form; and landscape and infrastructure are not separate from the city but constitutive of it. These shared commitments distinguish all three from earlier urban design paradigms.
Where they disagree is on the primary driver of urban form. Landscape Urbanism privileges landscape process and adaptability; Ecological Urbanism privileges ecological integrity and social justice; Infrastructural Urbanism privileges infrastructure networks as the primary urban armature. These are not merely different emphases; they lead to different design decisions, different criteria for success, and different political implications.
In current practice, the division of labor is roughly as follows. Landscape Urbanism remains influential as a conceptual framework and as a design vocabulary, especially in large-scale urban parks and reclamation projects. Its emphasis on process and horizontality has become almost a default assumption in contemporary landscape architecture. Ecological Urbanism has gained traction in policy and planning, particularly in climate adaptation and resilience initiatives, where its normative commitments align with governmental and institutional goals. Infrastructural Urbanism has found a home in large-scale infrastructure projects and in the growing field of landscape infrastructure, where designers work directly with engineers and public works agencies.
The three frameworks overlap in many projects. A single urban design scheme might draw on Landscape Urbanism's field concept, Ecological Urbanism's ecological performance standards, and Infrastructural Urbanism's multifunctional infrastructure approach. But the tensions remain, and they are productive. The subfield's vitality comes from this ongoing disagreement about what should drive urban form: process, ecology, or infrastructure. No single framework has won, and none is likely to. Instead, the debate itself has become the subfield's defining feature, forcing each generation of designers to articulate what they prioritize and why.