New Forms of Green for Mega-Cities: Peri- and Inter-urban Agricultural Space.

Abstract: In Australia, the crisis of unbridled development as continuous linear coastal conurbations, predominantly residential, has resulted in alarming losses of productive rural land. Urban crises, however, can also provide opportunities. Originally explored in the Netherlands as ‘reflexive modernization’, there has been interest in the instrumentality of design and its enabling function. Netherlands designers ’ confronting representations of the ‘endgame ’ of unrestrained housing developments prompted government-sponsored design competitions, resulting in visionary designs for urbanism, landscape and infrastructure. This paper argues that an important component has been left out of new infrastructure-rich, enabling cities, namely new forms of ‘green ’ as peri-inter/urban rural space. New typologies for such lands require new landscape vocabularies with key drivers being state-of-the-art Information Technology and mapping techniques. Equally important and inextricably linked, are economic dilemmas, including development pressures, current farmers ’ need for retirement incomes and rationalised agricultural economics. ‘New Green ’ requires new land-tenure models and innovative forms of agriculture that synthesize agriculture, nature conservation, infrastructure and communities. As a result, new forms of LGA planning are needed. Landscape design in this context, needs to transcend Late Capitalism consumerism and instead employ design as an inventive enabling agent. The paper sets the scene for ways that landscape design can engage with new design and planning tools to sustain productive lands as a new form of urban and peri-urban ‘green’