Public tendering and green procurement as potential drivers for sustainable urban development: Implications for landscape architecture and other urban design professions

• French green public procurements encourage multidisciplinarity in urban design.
• The tendering process favours single disciplinary teams, consisting mainly of architects.
• Green public procurements do not promote the landscape architecture profession in France.
• Environmental experts may constitute competition for landscape architects.
• Architects are almost invariably the lead consultants in urban design.

This paper examines whether green public procurements are potential drivers for the development of a landscape architecture professional field in urban design. It proposes an analysis based on the nature of professional skill sets requested and selected by the public tendering process in France. To conduct this research, an analysis of 196 public ‘calls for tender’ and their results are undertaken. Depending on the consideration of ecological concerns, two types of projects are identified: traditional projects and green projects. We examine the impact that ecological issues assert on the position of landscape architecture within the requested skills and within the winning design team. Our main results show that the emergence of green public procurements in France has a significant impact on the demand for new types of professional ‘competencies’ and disciplinary collaborations but not on the results after the selection process.It appears that clients request more multidisciplinarity collaborations to address green criteria. In addition, the landscape architect is always associated with multidisciplinary teams in the requirements of the public call for tender. However, the emergence of new professional skills in the environmental field challenges the expertise of landscape architects and constitutes a competitive field. Counter to the ‘call for tender’ requirements, the selection process favours monodisciplinary teams, often the architect, who is also the favourite for the lead-consultant role. Finally, we discuss how the recognition of landscape architecture as an academic discipline can influence landscape education and how a strong professional body can protect a professional title.