ABSTRACT
As the prominent city building professions of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the reconsideration of the historic roles of civil engineering and urban planning is central to the understudied influence of contemporary infrastructure. By unearthing hidden power structures behind the instrumentality of reason that underpins infrastructural form, the conjecture of landscape as infrastructure can thus reveal and loosen gridlocked ideologies to propose new strategies of design. New, multimedia modes of representation can redefine the conventions of design historically rooted in technical drafting, scenic illustration, pictorial imaging. The creative use of landscape representation to project alternative futures for urban form, infrastructure investment, ecological restoration and environmental management can be a powerful counter to the technocratic dominance of other forms of knowledge. If aberrant suburbanization potentially provides a greater level of spatial, economic, and cultural freedom in the twenty-first century, then distinct spatial democracies may lie between the ecology and the economy of the city.
