Democratic Landscape Transformation 2023 - Team 13

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Background of your team

• We are a group with unique perspectives and backgrounds seeking a better understanding of landscape democracy.
• Kowsar:- I am a representative of one of the civilized countries with a rich history, which, like other countries, has issues in various social, political, cultural, etc. fields.
• Shashank Yadav :- I am an Architect, Landscape designer and environmentalist. After gaining my bachelor’s in architecture I’ve been working in the realm of landscape and urban design and projects ranging from small and large-scale commercial landscapes to sustainable landscapes in the public realm. In future, I want to work on making the public and urban realm better by putting more emphasis on merging sustainable landscape design with the existing scenarios and making the world a better place.
• Maia Kessler:- I am a recent graduate from the bachelor's program of Landscape Architecture at the University of Maryland. I have a particular passion for horticulture, environmental design, and community design. I have a specific interest in the correlation of nature and horticulture to mental health and healing.

Your Landscape Democracy Manifestoes

Here you can add links to the manifestoes you presented on April 26

• Kowsar momeny-Manifasto here
• Rich Landscape Poor landscape
• Maia- Manifesto

Examples of Landscape activisim

In the session on May 10, you will discuss examples of landscape activism from your own contexts. You can share the examples in this section (link, image and/or short explanation).

• Malligavad Foundation-Lake rejuvenation
• Black Lives Matter Plaza- Landscape activism

The Role Play

The role-play activity was done in an interesting way, rather than choosing one manifesto to work on, we decided to combine the manifestos to look for common ground. The Manifesto from Shashank and Kowsar included a similar scenario where the idea was to improve the landscape and living conditions in the informal settlements and the lower-income housing groups, and the manifesto from Maia was to add more biophilia in the landscape. So we combined these and the collective idea turned out to find solutions for adding more green scape and biophilia to the existing informal settlements to provide them with a better landscape, a chance to maybe grow their own small gardens and overall uplift the living conditions in the areas through better-ingrown landscape solutions.

During the talk, the speakers chose to impersonate the following people:-

Shashank:- Jan Gehl

Kowsar:- Dominika Tihani

Maia:- Karl Linn

>>> All information on the phase B activities is compiled in this PDF

Readings, concepts and definitions

• Start: April 5, 2023
• Due: July 5, 2023

Working in your group, express your personal understanding of the relation of landscape and democracy in the form of a concept map with linking words or any other diagrammatic representation. Please make your maps very visual and not just verbal. Think critically about why one map differs from another

About concept mapping

Before starting the exercise you can read this article by Joseph D. Novak & Alberto J. Cañas about Theory Underlying Concept Maps and How to Construct and Use Them. This paper gives a good explanation of how concept maps are conceived and developed.

You can use any tool you like for producing your concept map. However, since the result needs to be submitted digitally we recommend the following open source software for producing your maps:

• Cmap Tools >>> you can also work with your group on the Cmap cloud doing a shared map
• VUE - The Visual Understanding Environment

Please add your concept map(s) here

• Error creating thumbnail: File with dimensions greater than 12.5 MP

  [1]
  Possible format: JPG (for wiki upload) or link to any other resource
• You may add one map per team member or an integrated one
• add as many additional materials as you need

Error creating thumbnail: File with dimensions greater than 12.5 MP

When we talk about any democratic process, it always is affected by the factors that influence the process around it. Taking Landscape democracy into consideration, this map focuses on the factors that influence it. The landscape democracy is not just about the landscapes and the management factors, but everything around such as culture, people, conservation factors, politics, needs of the people, ecological factors, and biodiversity. To complete the democratic process in Landscape, all of these factors must be combined to form an equitable balance between all these aspects. And the chart describes the factors taken into account

Please finish with a short reflection

• What are the similarities and differences in your team regarding your understanding of what democratic landscape transformation is?
• In how far did the seminar lectures and readings help you to clarify this?
• What will you take home from this seminar?