Tim Waterman

Landscape Studies, Food Studies, Utopian Studies

Category Archives: Uncategorized

A Word … “Profession”

by Tim-Waterman on March 31, 2016, no comments

“A Word …” is my quarterly column for Landscape: The Journal of the Landscape Institute. Here in the Spring 2016  issue I address the importance of professions and institutions.  In the middle of the 17th century, at the dawn of modernity, the philosopher Thomas Hobbes, in his Leviathan, described human relations as bellum omnium contra omnes – a war of all […]

A Word … “Seedling”

by Tim-Waterman on December 7, 2015, no comments

“A Word …” is my quarterly column for Landscape: The Journal of the Landscape Institute. Here in the Winter 2015 issue I talk about how nurturing plants and creative and community interests are essential for both children and for the future of our landscapes.  When I was eleven years old, I can recall standing before the […]

A Word … “Decant”

by Tim-Waterman on September 20, 2015, no comments

“A Word …” is my quarterly column for Landscape: The Journal of the Landscape Institute. Here in the Autumn 2015 issue I warn against the use of the word ‘decant’ to describe the forcible ejection of people from their homes Wine is symbolic in a host of ways. A silver chalice of it can represent the […]

The Global Cucumber: On the Milan Expo 2015

by Tim-Waterman on July 28, 2015, no comments

This article appeared in the July 2015 edition of Landscape Architecture Magazine (LAM), with the subheading “The Milan Expo raises unsought emotions about food, cities, the world.” The text and photos are both mine.  A city like Milan reflects the strivings of generations. It has a rich quality of everyday life that includes a sophisticated […]

Those Evil Doorstep-Sitters

by Tim-Waterman on July 9, 2015, no comments

A strange tug-of-war between a gentrifying private world and the need for a public life and public space are being played out in tiny micro-aggressions on doorsteps in Fitzrovia. At our recent meeting of residents at the late-Victorian mansion block where I live, the other tenants expressed worries about the large numbers of people, especially at […]

A Word… “Inevitable”

by Tim-Waterman on June 11, 2015, no comments

“A Word …” is my quarterly column for Landscape: The Journal of the Landscape Institute. Here in the Summer 2015 issue I call for more hope, idealism, and striving for prosperity to counter those other apocalyptic horsemen, the Thatcherites and the Blairites.  There are so many things in the world that we have come to believe are […]

A Question of Taste

by Tim-Waterman on April 25, 2015, no comments

This essay appeared in the Autumn 2011 issue of Landscape to accompany my talk at the Garden Museum entitled ‘Food in the Metropolis’. My research continues to explore questions of taste, prosperity, and the good life as key to a sustainable future.  The story of food weaves itself through our idea of human comfort and […]

Bad Role Models for Landscape Architecture

by Tim-Waterman on April 20, 2015, no comments

‘Bad Role Models for Landscape Architecture’ is a series of articles I wrote in 2012 for Landscape online and which led to much discussion (some angry) and a short appearance on the BBC where I criticised Charles Jencks’s earthwork Northumberlandia. Jencks believes that in a postmodern age any publicity, even negative, is good publicity. This, […]

A Word… “Blang”

by Tim-Waterman on April 18, 2015, no comments

“A Word …” is my quarterly column for Landscape: The Journal of the Landscape Institute. Here in the Spring 2015 issue I introduce the damning term ‘blang’ – where bland meets bling. A pewter-grey luxury sedan is parked on a pea gravel drive edged with tightly-clipped shin-high boxwood hedges. A pedimented entryway, door gloss black and […]

We Need Places Shaped by Local Interests to End the Housing Crisis

by Tim-Waterman on March 31, 2015, no comments

This post first appeared on Homes For Britain’s ‘Fifty Blogs in Fifty Days’ here.  Our housing crisis stems from a larger crisis in how we conceive of place and of landscape. Landscapes are the environments we shape and which, in turn, shape us. However, the control of our everyday landscapes – our cities and our […]