Landscape and social capital social: methodology for landscape reading

Abstract

The concept of social capital was first used in education in the beginning of the 20th century. However, it was Jane Jacobs in her book The death and life of great american cities who introduced it to account for the healthy social network of her neighbourhood in New York. Later, the social capital concept was developed by the sociologist Pierre Bourdieu. His praxeology has contributed to the acknowledgement of social capital, from the 1990s onward, as a multidisciplinary area of research capable of linking physical, social and economic aspects. Nevertheless, Bourdieu himself has not fully developed its connection to the physical realm. This study extends the present debate on social capital into the area of landscape and urban design and proposes a methodology for landscape reading. First, and based upon a thesis developed as part of a PhD degree at the University of Guelph, Canada, Bourdieu’s theory of social capital is advanced, drawing attention to its physical dimensions and it is propose the concept of objectified social capital to account for the process by which social capital is realised and crystallized in the built environment. This concept is considered a relevant transdisciplinary framework to inform the design of the urban Brazilian landscape. Secondly, this framework is applied into the development of a methodology for landscape reading, a methodology that can offer a critical purview to professionals who aim to design an inclusive built environment responsive to the various communities within a community of place, and in this way, help minimise the present situation of Brazilian social exclusion.