Summary: Changing the Climate: Utopia, Dystopia and Catastrophe | Jo Russell-Clarke For software programmer Ward Cunningham, inventor of the Wiki, problems are enlightening while difficulties are distractions. A dangerous dilemma can arise from confusing this distinction. For Karl Mannheim, who distinguished a utopia from an ideology, Fredric Jameson who recognised that utopias allow for consideration of things otherwise inconceivable, and Thomas More who coined a term charged with the paradox of a good place that is no place, utopian endeavour constitutes work on exactly such useful problems. So does design. Landscape architecture is a design discipline with a rich history of responses to environmental concerns. Presently, it is reacting to the challenges of climate change in two ways: enumeration of de-politicised technical solutions to practical difficulties urged by bi-partisan calls for adaptation, or by uncritical positioning of change itself as logically inescapable, essentially apolitical, and therefore utterly unproblematic to begin with. Neither approach constitutes a design response or a utopian one. Jo Russell-Clarke is a registered landscape architect and lectures in landscape architecture and design. She has worked in a small design practice on several award-winning projects and a multinational firm on a range of larger projects with a focus on residential subdivision. Her PhD under examination looks at the design of suburbs.
