ABSTRACT
Strong associations between the growth of European capitalism in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries and the emergence during this time of a new way of understanding landscape provide a point of departure for this questioning. A continuation of representing and reconfiguring environments through visual images has explicitly informed contemporary landscapes over the last three decades: these landscape techniques have been employed in the privatization of public spaces; they have contributed to elevated land values; and they have dictated the accessibility, uses and activities of urban redevelopments. Ideologies of capital had been challenged and their relationships with cultural and social practices were strained. A focus on visual qualities undermines other landscape relations. Traditions of landscape painting present singular perspectives, rendered from static positions of power. The framing of landscape offers a practical means through which specific views are claimed, presented and controlled. Contradictions exposed as landscape techniques are employed to redesign public spaces.
