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Defining Public Art and How it Can Interact with Sustainability

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When putting the keywords ‘public art,’ ‘sustainability,’ or ‘urban planning’ into an internet search, there are plenty of results about articles, research, or press releases. However, when typing all of them together, there are no results relating those three concepts together, yet public art can serve as a key player in urban design for sustainability.

Over the past few decades, urbanization has surged, prompting cities to develop strategies that leverage the intersections of culture, economy, and politics to gain competitive advantages on regional, national, and global scales. (Palmer, 2024) Governments have implemented specific plans for urban planning and sustainability, with the United Nations launching the 17 Goals program as part of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. (The Global Goals, 2024) This agenda, adopted by all UN Member States in 2015, outlines 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) aimed at fostering peace, prosperity, and environmental stewardship. (The Global Goals, 2024) This Part One article will dive into the specifics of public art concerning urban design, planning, and sustainability while the Part Two article will dive into specific case studies concerning cities that have implemented sustainable public art plans.

Image: Fazlalizadeh, Tatyana . Stop Telling Women to Smile. 2020.

Image Source: Seal Press

Amidst these developments, discussions surrounding public art have often been perceived merely as artworks, beautification attractions, or city landmarks for tourists. Public art seems to be frequently overlooked or has not been adequately incorporated or mentioned into city planning. Governments and professions might neglect its potential usefulness and importance for urban environments. Therefore,  it is important to explore the intersection of these concepts in practice.

This study looks into the role of public art in the urban design process, seeking to provide insights as to how public art can intentionally be used in the urban design system to achieve the goal of sustainability. The study ultimately aims to understand how public art can enhance urban design toward achieving sustainability, highlighting the specific contributions public art can make to sustainable urban development.

Nowadays, various urban design has faced its own problem and challenges, such as climate change, flooding, air pollution, economic instability, and the preservation of cultural heritage. However, governments and professionals have not fully explored the potential of public art to address these issues. Public art, as a useful and powerful source, is missing. While cities often develop comprehensive sustainability strategies during the urban design process, public art is overlooked as a component of these plans.

Research

After examining the correlation between public art's target and urban sustainability's ongoing aim, I employ quantitative and qualitative methods to support my research. I conduct case studies of Singapore, Vancouver, and Brussels to understand how public art can enhance urban design and contribute to city sustainability.  By checking their strategies and outcomes, the goal of the case studies is to evaluate current government policies that incorporate public art in urban design from the most sustainable cities in the world.

Public Art

Public art may be integrated or stand-alone, and they might be two-dimensional or three-dimensional, often encountered in public parks and buildings. They can be used for various purposes and different materials like stone, wood, glass, and cement, as well as figurative, abstract, or literary. Public art has a comparatively shorter history than the wild field of art and culture. Public art is a controversial term. In the forty years since the word was created, it hasn't yet been collected in the index of Abrams' History of Art. (Cartiere & Willis, 2008) The first pieces of public art in the US. appeared in the early 1800s, which primarily manifested through the installation of memorials or statues and the decoration of the architecture of the young republic. (Palmer, 2024) Historically, in Greece, Rome, and Europe prior to the late Renaissance, Christian' public’ artworks were used to commemorate the same values and convictions, which are meant to express a common spirit. (Hein, 1996)

Today, public views on public art are expanding to include more purposes or goals but with a focus on reflecting the personal or community values and aspirations of a society. (Damon, 2024) Views from the Practicing Artists Cameron Cartiere and Leon Tan mention the tie between ‘with, for, and by’ the public and public artist, as to say ‘Art is the heartbeat of a community,’ to create things cared for by community or society. (Damon, 2024)

Image: Denat de Guillebon, Jeanne-Claude , and Christo Vladimirov Javacheff. The Gates. 2005.

Image Source: Artsy

Sustainability

The word ‘sustain’ originally comes from the Latin sustinere and then translated into English through the Old French souvenir. (Kuhlman & Farrington, 2010) The concept of sustainability was first used in forestry, which means that ‘people should not harvest more than what the forest yields in new growth.’ (Kuhlman & Farrington, 2010) Thanks to the United Nations' efforts, the evolution and significance of sustainability have risen from a novel idea to a key element in global discourse since the 1980s. (Kuhlman & Farrington, 2010) The political sustainability concept is originally shown in the Brundtland Report of 1987. (Kuhlman & Farrington, 2010) Later, in the 1990s, sustainability became a common term in policy discussions, but it faced first criticism for being a ‘buzzless buzzword’ as described by environmentalist Bill McKibben in 1996 that the term was created to obscure meaning and predicted it would not become mainstream, suggesting the need to explore alternative concepts. (Caradonna, 2017)

The idea of sustainability has been increasing scholarly and societal focus on concerns over industrialization's ecological impact, advocating for a reevaluation of industrial and capitalist values. (Caradonna, 2017) Data shows that ‘since  the  year  2000,  over  5,000  published books have included either the words ‘sustainable’ or ‘sustainability’ in the title, compared to zero such books before about 1976.’ Nowadays, a quick Google search for the word ‘sustainability’ returns 2,930,000,000 results. (Caradonna, 2017) A modern view of sustainability should be focused on ecological and economic thoughts, which shows the importance of sustainability's interdisciplinary nature and the necessity of integrating environmental, economic, and social dimensions for a long-lasting future. (Caradonna, 2017)

Image: Gormley, Antony . The Angle of the North. 1998. 

Image Source: Britannica

Urban Design

Planning is a systematic method and tool to achieve goals. Urban planning can be traced back to the ancient Greek city-states, and despite constant technological and social advances and advancements through the ages, the intent of urbanization has always remained the same. (Wiryomartono, 2020) Historically, towns have been identified as centers of cultural cultivation. (Wiryomartono, 2020) Starting from ancient Greece, urban political culture and planning have been reduced to the concept of the city-state. (Wiryomartono, 2020) In 1516, the term ‘Utopia’ was raised by Sir Thomas More to describe intentional, idealized communities and ideas based on the present. (Wiryomartono, 2020)

The origin and development of modern urban planning are closely linked to the need to manage the complexities of urban growth and the efficient use of land and resources in response to industrialization, particularly in England, Europe, and North America. (Wiryomartono, 2020) Urban planning emerged as a discipline aimed at creating sustainable, livable communities by integrating economic, environmental, and sociocultural factors. (Wiryomartono, 2020) It focuses on addressing challenges such as rapid population growth, and land scarcity and ensuring communities are healthy, safe, and sustainable for future generations. The urban design movement began to flourish in the nineteenth century in response to the urban ills of the Industrial Revolution and its negative impact on the quality of life and flocked to cities for work. (Credo, 2024)

Public Art in Urban Planning

Public art and urban planning have a long history in the US. 1872 Fairborn Park Art Association, the US’s first private organization, focused on integrating public art and urban planning. (Knight, 2008) Public art is a wide topic with sub-media of digital art, murals, artifacts, posters, sculptures, interactive three-dimensional artworks, collaboration with practical infrastructure, etc. Murals can be part of a town-enhancement strategy, art added to transit facilities can provide orientation for travelers, sculpture can help interpret the place, and public art planning can lead us to what we have learned from the past. (Fleming, 2007) In 1934, the A-i-A program was designed. The goal of the program is that one percent of new federal building costs must be marked for the commission of art in order to raise greater awareness of public art. (Knight, 2008) The program raises the awareness that truly public art should be internally owned by the citizens and that public spaces and artwork are not interchangeable, which is to say that the site and art are prime integrated and considered in the work’s conception and design. (Knight, 2008) Later, the Percent for Art Ordinances was set, as early as 1959 in Philadelphia, to determine the percentage of the total renovation project budget is set for public art and policy on the rule of spending money on the acquisition and commissioning of public artworks. (Americans for the Arts, 2019)

Sustainable Public Art 

As global awareness of sustainability grows, art has incorporated this concept widely, leading to the development of sustainable art, which is ‘the creative practice of making artwork that is not harmful to the environment as well as works that address topics such as climate change, waste, and social issues.’ (Artterra, 2024) Meiqin Wang introduces the notion of ‘artist-as-environmentalist’ highlighting artists who craft with environmental consciousness, using public engagement and social involvement to draw attention to environmental aesthetics. (EBSCO, 2024) Traced back to 1982, Joseph Beuys's project ‘7000 Eichen’ (7000 Oaks), which started for Documenta 7 in Kassel, Germany. This project is later often cited as a pioneering work of environmental or sustainable art that emphasized the importance of tree planting for urban environments and became a lasting legacy of integrating art with environmental action. (Ofspub, 2017) As it has evolved over the decades, sustainable art encompasses various forms, including ecological, environmental, land, and biophilic art, which uses environmentally friendly material or underlines the concept of world awareness of ecological living.

Image: What is Sustainable Art?
Image Source: Artterra

Urban Planning Sustainability 

Sustainable urbanism is a theoretical study of sustainability principles in land use planning and urban design. (Wiryomartono, 2020) In the book ‘Livability and Sustainability of Urbanism,’ the author emphasizes that sustainable urban planning requires an interdisciplinary. (Wiryomartono, 2020) Sustainability in urbanism is not merely the use of renewable materials, clean energy, and conservation efforts like reducing environmental pollution and waste. (Wiryomartono, 2020) Instead, it necessitates a holistic approach that integrates land use planning and urban design with eco-friendly public transit and sustainable economic strategies, fostering vibrant, healthy, transit-supportive communities with economic growth and public safety. (Wiryomartono, 2020) A vital urban economy is central to true sustainability, having the relationship between environmental stewardship and economic development to ensure the long-term vitality and safety of urban areas. (Wiryomartono, 2020) The concept of urban sustainability is widely used in urban regeneration and regional development. Urban sustainability was introduced by William Cronon and published in Nature's Metropolis to a wider audience in 1991, triggering a stream of interdisciplinary academic research. (Cronon, 2024) Over the past decade, urban sustainability and new inclusions have been used in planning practices to deal with the contradictions of urban development. (Krueger & Buckingham, 2012) Since the early 2000s, the city of Worcester has engaged in sustainability planning, and the government has focused not only on environmental sustainability(greenhouse gasses and climate change) but also on education, economic, and cultural sustainability for this decaying industrial center. (Krueger & Buckingham, 2012)

My research findings above indicated that among the three topics explored, research about collaboration between any two of the three domains has thrived. However, there has been insufficient discussion regarding the interplay between Urban Design, Public Art, AND Sustainability. When considering the improvement of sustainability inside urban areas, the government or professionals did not take public art plans into their urban planning as a consideration, tactic, or source. Just as urban design requires meticulous planning, so does public art. Therefore, I conducted further research to unpack and prove that it is important to take public art as a primary consideration when the government or charging organizations are doing Urban design with the aim of fostering sustainability.  You can read the three international case studies (Vancouver, Brussels, and Singapore) in Part II of this research, to be published on June 17, 2024. If you are deeply curious in this work, the full report can be read in our reports section. 

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