50 years ago, when AILA was established, industrial infrastructure’s impacts on landscapes were major environmental concerns. Landscape architects were activists in conservation matters, including protecting Australian landscape identity. These were heroic times.

It is chastening to realise that 50 years on, human impact on the planet has become worse. The Dawn of the Anthropocene Epoch contrasts markedly with the 1960s dawning of the Age of Aquarius when LAs, together with UNESCO, were collectively achieving environmental stewardship, despite being relatively marginal professionally. Dominated by architects and engineers, there were nevertheless advantages to this marginality because as outsiders LAs could freely speak out. Our landscape heroes began their practices at this time, maintaining their environmental, social and heritage activism throughout the 1960-70’s.

Neoliberalism changed such attitudes by the mid-1980s. Although Postmodernism injected iconoclastic energy into the profession, from the 1990s on, landscape institutes have succumbed to the pressures of economic rationalism and corporatisation. As highly respected professionals, often as lead designers, LAs entered a Faustian bargain with Neoliberalism because, under confidentiality agreements, LAs surrendered their ability to speak out. Corporatisation doesn’t respect landscapes; its processes brand places.

Given these changes, are we in a fit ethical state to be stewards of global urbanisation let alone designers of Anthropocene landscapes? The current ethos inhibits LAs as strategic thinkers. Instead, we are tactically skilled; good at doing what we are expected to do, but no longer what we should do. Are we robust enough to take on the so-called ‘landscape architecture century’?

The New Views session looks at this history – a palimpsest of legacies - and, through a panel of senior practitioners, debates whether we need to rupture and overturn such legacies to release new ways of dealing with the future, or if we can draw from certain persistent ideals to inform our role in the major dynamics of the Anthropocene?