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Perspective Essay
a r t i c l e
i n f o
Article history:
Received 20 March 2012
Received in revised form 26 March 2012
Accepted 26 March 2012
Available online 4 May 2012
Keywords:
Synthesis
Planning
Sustainability
Scenario
Visualization
Transdisciplinary
a b s t r a c t
Landscape refers both to a conceptual eld that examines how humans affect geographic space and to
real places, and the word has both analytical and experiential implications. Pairing the analytical and the
experiential enables landscape to be a catalyst for synthesis in science and for insight in urban ecological
design. Emphasizing that science is fundamental to ecological design, this essay broadly interprets urban
ecological design to include intentional change of landscapes in cities, their megaregions, and resource
hinterlands. The essay offers two laws and two related principles for employing landscape as a medium
and a method for urban ecological design. The laws observe that landscapes integrate environmental
processes and that landscapes are visible. Two related principles explain how these inherent characteristics can be used to effect sustain ability by using landscape as a medium for synthesis and in a method
that invites creative invention.
2012 Elsevier B.V. Open access under CC BY-NC-ND license.
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Fig. 1. Landscape patterns are the basis for what people directly perceive about environmental phenomena of all scales, and human experience of landscapes prompts human
actions to change landscapes.
Adapted from Gobster et al. (2007).
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2005; Swanwick, 2009). From the standpoint of human experience, Termorshuizen and Opdam (2009) see such a strong
relationship between landscapes and ecosystem services that they
recommend adopting the characterization landscape services.
They argue that this could make knowledge about ecosystem
services relevant at more local scales, where people make concrete decisions about landscape change. This law suggests that
the common sense of 19th century naturalists and geographers who found scientic insight by eld investigation in the
landscape is relevant for addressing local and global environmental challenges in the 21st century. 21st century science is
in search of a way to integrate methods and conclusions from
diverse specialized sciences, and a focus on landscapes is one
approach.
Because they inherently integrate the effects of fragmented
analyses and decisions, landscapes can confront society with
unintended effects, consequences of human actions that do not
anticipate synthetic properties. Transportation systems, economic
development policy, housing technology and policy, agricultural
technology and policy, water infrastructure systems, construction techniques, and even ecological restoration efforts are all
replete with such unintended effects. For example, U.S. federal
policy promotes the use of smart growth techniques including distributed stormwater management systems (a.k.a., green
infrastructure) on urban browneld sites through the U.S. Green
Building Councils LEED-ND (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design for Neighborhood Development) system (U.S.
Environmental Protection Agency, 2010). However, green infrastructure systems typically enhance connectivity between surface
and groundwater, and browneld sites often have contaminated
groundwater that is not remediated as part of the redevelopment process. Consequently, browneld redevelopment that is not
attentive to the synthetic properties of green infrastructure with
contaminated groundwater could unintentionally cause the migration of contaminants to surface ecosystems. In contrast, design
and planning processes that recognize how landscapes integrate
environmental processes can identify advantageous synergies. In
another example related to green infrastructure, the City of New
York recognized that maintenance of distributed stormwater systems was essential to sustainability, and found that rights-of-way
that are already maintained by the city (as part of the transportation
system) would provide an armature to ensure adequate maintenance of green infrastructure (PlaNYC, 2008). The Landscape Law
of Integration of Environmental Processes contributes to nding
benecial synergies and avoiding unintended effects of landscape
change.
A corollary of this law is that: Landscapes function at nested scales.
This corollary is well-known and thoroughly examined as part
of landscape ecology (e.g., Allen & Hoekstra, 1987), and it should
be equally well-known by anyone determining the boundaries of
landscapes to be considered in urban ecological design. Allen and
Hoekstras (1992) recommendation to always think up one scale
and down one scale from the function of central interest remains
a good rule for experimenting with the relationship between
environmental processes and landscapes at different scales. For
example, green infrastructure must be designed as a response to
its location within a functional watershed, but also with attention
to subtleties of surface slope and texture of the landscape surface
at scales so ne as to demand that some nal design decisions be
made in the eld, at 1 = 1 scale (Hill, 2009; Walsh et al., 2005). A
key challenge for ecological design is to make the hierarchies of
ecological processes (e.g., watersheds, materials life cycles, habitats) integral to the multiple governance hierarchies (e.g., federal,
state, counties, watershed districts, school districts, municipalities) that affect ecological systems (Innes, Booher, & Di Vittorio,
2010).
224
225
Fig. 2. Photorealistic simulations represent landscapes that were otherwise somewhat unfamiliar to homeowners.
Adapted from Nassauer et al. (2009)
226
227
Fig. 4. An iterative design process in which different conceptions of future landscapes (termed design scenarios in this gure) become increasingly specic as transdisciplinary
groups of scientists and stakeholders critically review shared landscapes, ultimately in a precise set of land allocation models and GIS coverage.
Adapted from Nassauer and Corry (2004).
228
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