Weeds, War, and reconceptualising nature in Aotearoa, New Zealand: A provocation to theorists from a practitioner at the coalface

Warning: This essay contains disturbing ecological forecasts and challenges to mainstream cultural attitudes towards weeds, our idea of nature, and the future management of native forests in Aotearoa, New Zealand. It will argue we need to dismantle popular but inadequate environmental dogmas, which will be galling to many. However – spoiler alert – it concludes, optimistically, that environmental weeds will ultimately force us to create more adequate conceptions of nature, and pragmatic management approaches. In short, it will be good for us, even if we hate this prospect at present. And no, the word hate is not too strong (I predict the strongest reactions will be from those who love native forests the most. And I sympathise completely).Let’s cut straight to the nub. There is an insurmountable environmental weed problem coming to rural New Zealand. It won’t be beaten by chemical or biological warfare, updating noxious pest plant lists, mobilising the unemployed, volunteers, high-tech drones, or by planting native trees. This apprehension is based on observations and decades of professional experience and has led to my premise that it’s a battle that can really only be won in our minds; we need a change of mindset. Environmental weeds will eventually force us to reconceptualise ‘nature’ in Aotearoa, New Zealand. &nbsp

Entire Issue as One Document

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Te Karanga Ki Ngākengake The Call of the Shifting Forces

This design proposal extends and intensifies the powerfully present geological conditions of Te Whanganui-a-Tara–Wellington’s harbour. Originally conceived for an international design competition it contextualises the magnitude of geologic time and imagines an embodied experience of suspension, a quality of being between worlds yet in the felt immediacy of nothing but kenetic change. The design emerges from and is given meaning by Te Ātiawa pūrākau of taniwha Ngake and Whātaitai. Together these taniwha give the why and how of Pōneke Wellington’s land and seascape; they contextualise geomorphology in deep time and express the entangled alliance between mana whenua and the specificity of place, a quality defining Pōneke Wellington. With the design we touch into multiple relational intersections made possible by the forever mercurial space where the sea and the land meet, yet do so in such a way to unsettle settler colonial schemas of landscape-seascape experience

Edge Reprised

This essay reviews relationships towards the land sea interface in the currency of professional landscape practice in Aotearoa New Zealand. With changing climates and failing infrastructure there is urgent demand to repair, yet further, to reframe and reposition how landscape practice engages in such modification. At stake is the necessity for repair to be in service of relationships across the many life worlds past and present that move with and through the coastal edge. Drawing on a project in Petone, Wellington that ‘reclaims’ a strip of land from the sea, the essay takes a personal journey through this ambition touching aspects of the project and context including cultural, legislative, and synthetic materiality. Reflective commentary offers an intimate window on current tensions and opportunities in landscape practice at the mercurial edges of the land where stakes are high

Cooling strategies using thermal alliesthesia: a complementary approach to enhancing greenway walking comfort

A favourable thermal environment along urban greenways supports public health and sustainability. In dense built-up areas, limited land availability makes it difficult to rely solely on high-quality green spaces for continuous greenway development. Planners are attempting to increase tree canopies along municipal roads, even under less than ideal conditions. The key challenge is how to improve thermal comfort for those walking along these road corridors. Combining a literature review and field investigation, this paper introduces thermal alliesthesia as a perspective that complements physical design. Existing strategies to improve thermal comfort in greenways focus on enhancing static environmental quality. In contrast, ‘thermal alliesthesia’ emphasises how changing subjective perception can shape thermal experience. The thermal alliesthesia effect can be triggered by variations in the physical environment. Taking Beijing’s Second Ring Road Greenway as a case study, this paper proposes route planning and landscape design for urban greenways as strategies to elicit this effect. It describes the detailed design of a representative section of the greenway to demonstrate how this concept can be applied. This approach is adaptable across climate zones, provided designers develop flexible, site-specific solutions. The findings offer practical insights for greenway planning and design in complex urban contexts

Negotiating a place for Agricultural and Pastoral Shows in Canterbury, New Zealand

Agricultural and Pastoral (A&P) shows bring together farming and non-farming communities across the urbanrural continuum. Prior research demonstrates that visitors experience a range of activities that promote a sense of trust in agriculture, which suggests they are important places for negotiating a social licence to farm. Based on our analysis of five A&P showgrounds in the Canterbury region, our research indicates that the places where A&P Shows are held are also subject to negotiation. This is evident in changes in their location over time, different ownership structures and relationships with local councils, and infrastructure to enable multiple uses by the local community

Against Architectures of Degradation: Pōhaku and Protection on Mauna Kea

This paper examines practices of erasure and resistance through the use of pōhaku (stone) on the Mauna Kea volcano Hawai‘i island, and within the boundaries of the Mauna Kea Science Reserve. Mauna Kea is a sacred site point of genealogical connection for Kānaka Maoli, it is also a contested landscape: Crown and Government land seized from the Hawaiian Kingdom in 1898, held in trust by the territorial and then state government, and leased in 1968 to the University of Hawai‘i to host an ever-expanding astronomy industry. Since the inception of the Mauna Kea observatories, Kānaka Maoli kia‘i (protectors) and environmental activists have resisted the increasing construction of large scale telescopes on Mauna Kea for both their degradation of the land and their violation of Hawaiian sovereignty. One way they have done that is through the built environment. Pōhaku is a material that registers and refuses settler colonial attempts to expropriate land and control Indigenous political relationships to place. Through oral history and archival research this paper centers the stones erected as shrines within the jurisdiction of the Mauna Kea Science Reserve removed by Department of Land and Natural Resources officers and discounted by archaeologists only to be returned again and again by kia‘i. It brings these stones into dialogue with the Hale Pōhaku (stone house) architecture built for the astronomy industry in the 1970s and 80s, which became a site for direct action against the construction of the massive Thirty Meter Telescope from 2014-2019. During protests pōhaku became an essential architecture of protection that blocked construction equipment from ascending the road