RICHARD WELLER

The Meyerson Chair of Urbanism and Professor and Chair of Landscape Architecture and Executive Director of the McHarg Center at The University of Pennsylvania.

Richard Weller is a unique voice in the world of Landscape Architecture. Serving as the Chair of Urbanism and Landscape Architecture at the University of Pennsylvania he has consistently been recognized as one of the top educators in the discipline. All the while, making major contributions to the pedagogy of landscape architecture through his writings, research, and institutional development. In 2015, Weller launched the bi-annual publication LA+ Interdisciplinary Journal of Landscape Architecture, alongside Tatum Hands. His most recent research projects ‘The World Park Project’, ‘The Hotspot Cities Project’ and the ‘Atlas for the End of the World’ are important for anyone engaging in the global dynamics lying at the intersection of rural and urban life. 

We wanted to start our DIALOGUES series speaking with Professor Weller. He has not only been influential in our own development as designers and thinkers, but he also brings a perspective to the topic of rural issues that is greatly needed. Weller is a big thinker. Similar to historians like Jared Diamond or Yuval Noah Harari, Weller thinks in global systems across long time spans. He does this soberly and without losing track of what is ultimately important about his original line of inquiry. Weller can sometimes be controversial and even provocative. He asks his students and readers to come to problems honestly, and it is his own honest approach to this topic that we’re excited to bring to you. 

Richard Weller at the Weitzman School of Design

Your work often takes the subject matter of landscape architecture (culture and ecology) and blows it up to a global scale. Similarly, how would you contextualize the rural countryside and its future from a global perspective? 

From a global perspective the issue is, above all, one of yield keeping pace with population growth. For example, by my rough calculation if 10 billion people ate the way we in the rich world take for granted then we’d need 90 % of the earth’s ice free terrestrial surface for food production at today’s yields. The first problem with that is that it reduces the planet to a few monocultures and the second is that since 30% of the earth is desert it means you would need to green them. So, yield has to increase and yet ideally this increase would take place within the current footprint which is in the order of about 45 % of the earth’s ice free, terrestrial surface. This would leave the deserts out of the equation and also enable us to dedicate 30 per cent to biodiversity as conservationists are now arguing for.

A map of the worlds available Crop Land from Weller’s Atlas For the End of the World

How should the work of designers change to address this context? Who are our collaborators in this work?

Designers are not really involved at this scale but since each nation that is signatory to the Convention on Biological Diversity (196 of them) has to produce national plans demonstrating how biodiversity will co-exist with other land uses, then they have an opportunity to be, and certainly should be. Collaborators are government agencies, the NGOs,  indigenous custodians and land owners. And of course you can’t achieve anything unless the farmers are on board. More specifically, we need to consult landscape ecologists because the big issue is achieving habitat connectivity at both a large scale and a fine grain and this is—in the first instance, at least— a scientific question of what will work best for which species.

What obstacles inhibit design practices from succeeding in these areas?

First we are just not “out there”. We huddle in cities where the work and the money is. And I don’t just mean rural lands in the first world, I mean really out there on the front line between agriculture and habitat in the world biodiversity hotspots. If I had my career over again I’d get a backpack and head into that territory. Second, we need  credibility. Only a fool blows into town and tells farmers how it should be. We also need more than good will; we need to take all the different interest groups vested in land seriously and try to show that we can produce plans and strategies which reconcile their competing interests.

The intersection of biodiversity and urbanism in Nairobi Kenya, as part of Weller’s Hotspot Cities Projectseries

What does Richard Weller's ideal future for the rural countryside look like?

I spent a lot of time on farms as a kid so I’m not romantic about what farms are or how they work, and given the pressures I’ve sketched above I’m afraid I see a high performance landscape of genetic engineering and intelligent machines before I see Eden. That said, I do believe  biodiversity can and will be factored into mechanized landscapes. Ideally, what I don’t see is livestock— not because everyone is a vegan, but because the big breakthrough in terms of yield has to be protein production independent of ruminants. And finally, just over the horizon I see a city, maybe small cities in all directions. This is important because city life lowers population growth and if you want a more romantic agrarian landscape then you need a much smaller global population.  

Credits for images are

Atlas for End of World: Richard Weller,  Claire Hoch, Chieh Huang

Hotspot Cities: Richard Weller,  Zuzanna Drozdz, Nanxi Dong