Adam Beck, Smart Cities Council Australia and New Zealand

The Hidden, Wildly Transformative Work of the Ministry of Landscape

It was a stretch in our original thinking, but our public places and spaces eventually transitioned into highly productive networks of service-oriented, citizen-centric, and digitally transformed connective tissue. The analogue landscape was massively disrupted. Algorithms now design our landscapes, and maintenance programs are data-driven. The urban landscape has eyes and ears. The Internet of Landscapes is a real thing.

Landscape as a platform is a practice – data gathering, data crunching. Landscape Architects retrained as Landscape Analysts. You see, landscape is the most valuable of all infrastructure assets today, and the most democratic. Well, in the 3rd City at least.

This is the work of the Ministry of Landscape, a special purpose vehicle established through the Western Sydney City Deal by the federal government in 2018. It has funding from all three tiers of government, as well as the United Nations. It’s a pilot for the UN’s New Urban Agenda, which aspires to be the global reset of future urban development practice. This presentation will present the Ministry’s first performance report. And yes, it’s made up. But that’s the future. Join us.

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