Teaching with Culture in Mind: Cross-Cultural Learning in Landscape Architecture Education

Margarita M. Hill Margarita Hill, ASLA, is Professor and Head of the Landscape Architecture Department at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo. She has undergraduate and graduate degrees from the Landscape Architecture Program at the University of California, Davis. She has taught community planning and design courses for over 15 years in Maryland, Seattle, California, and as a visiting lecturer in Israel, Uruguay, Costa Rica, and Spain. She is currently conducting research on the Best Practices for Sustainable Development Program of the United Nations. Abstract: The articles included in this theme issue of Landscape Journal raise a series of questions central to the experience of cross-cultural learning in a variety of geographic and cultural settings. This introductory article examines why it is important to address the cross-cultural processes of placemaking. It also outlines approaches and methods for teaching design studio and addresses the design of the pedagogical experience in an era of globalization. The article proposes a theoretical basis for cross-cultural learning in relation to a multiculturaleven transculturalsociety, and the increasing movement between places. It identies patterns of relationships in the construction of identity and place, and provides normative guidance on meaningful cross-cultural exchange. It raises issues related to the challenges faced in cross-cultural communication and in overcoming biases and stereotypes. The article suggests how experiential learning and distance learning within a cross-cultural setting can help students to develop a range of skills and competencies, including the ability to engage multiple voices in diverse partnerships.

The great task we face now is nding a way of coexistence among the different cultures and powers of the world that will not threaten the future of the earth. In other words, the challenge facing our time is to create a multicultural and multipolar environment within a single global civilization. . . . This new spirit must grow out of a deep understanding of the broader interconnectedness of human activity, from the awareness of how everything in this world is related to everything else, from the knowledge that whatever anyone does anywhere has consequences, direct or indirect, for everyone (Havel 2001, 15).

aclav Havels address to the graduating class at Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok reects the urgent need to understand our interconnected world that is characterized by the increasing movement between places and the increasing interaction among people sharing differing cultural perspectives. In this context, it is critical for landscape architecture education to address the cross-cultural process of

placemaking, including the reciprocal formation of identities and values toward the environment and places (Schneekloth and Shibley 1995). Cross-cultural learning is particularly important in understanding the construction of culture and place, contested identities and space, and the practice of design in a globalized context. However, cross-cultural learning presents challenges on many fronts. It requires not only extraordinary commitments from teachers, students, and institutions, but also a set of pedagogical tools and methods that can appropriately immerse students and teachers in meaningful cross-cultural exchange (Bennett 1998; Gudykunst, Asante, and Newmark 2001; Martin and Nakayama 2003; York 1994). Further, it requires a theoretical basis that allows for new ways of thinking about how people within different cultural and geographic contexts construct their identities through individual and collective interactions with their environments (Cohen 1997; Jandt 2003; Kim and Gudykunst 1988; Obot 1988; Samovar and Porter 2003; Wasson and Jackson 2002).

This article serves as an introduction to the theme issue of Landscape Journal, Cross-Cultural Learning in Landscape Architecture Education. The theme issue includes articles that examine the experience of cross-cultural learning across a variety of cultural and geographic settings. This introductory article explores why it is important to adopt new pedagogical structures in landscape architecture education that expose students to a range of skills and competencies sensitive to a multicultural world, and outlines a framework that may provide normative guidance on meaningful cross-cultural exchange. The article includes four sections. The rst section discusses new constructions of place and identity that are occurring in an era of globalization. The second section probes the theoretical underpinnings to the actions of educators and raises questions regarding the role that educators can play in adopting strategies for participation and inclusion in a multicultural world. The third section presents a framework for cross-cultural design education that draws from the themes and issues presented in all the

Landscape Journal 24:205 ISSN 0277-2426 2005 by the Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System

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articles of this theme issue. The conclusion challenges readers to raise questions about how to act as educators and/or practitioners in a multicultural context. Cross-Cultural Processes of Placemaking: Construction of Identity and Place Even as the world is becoming increasingly more diverse and interconnected, the design and planning professions remain, for the most part, dominated by men of European descent. The profession of landscape architecture has historically underrepresented minority groups and women.1 The 1997 National Salary Survey reported that 24 percent of the total professional population in landscape architecture was female, and minorities represented less than 4 percent of the profession with about 0.4 percent African-American, 1.1 percent Hispanic, and a little less than 2 percent Asian-American (American Society of Landscape Architects 1998). Similar to other disciplines, landscape architecture faculty members in American universities are predominantly white.2 While our cities and suburbs are experiencing increased crosscultural contact, the environmental design professions may not be adequately equipped to acknowledge, facilitate, or celebrate this exchange. In City Space and Globalization: An International Perspective, Hemalata Dandekar raises some challenging questions in regard to the future role of landscape architects, planners, and other design professionals as they interface with the changing dynamics of cities transformed by the forces of globalization. She asks:
How will the concentrated and growing cities of today, increasingly integrated regionally and internationally in economy, culture, tastes and life-style, coexist in the midst of the local space, the local economy and the local culture? How will globalization shape evolving city habitat? Will this emerging city be reconciled with and recognize its past? With increasing social and physical mobility, can people develop an urban life-style sustainable in the long term, given currently under-

stood limits of the environmental and of socio-cultural exibility (Dandekar 1998, 5).

While these are difcult questions to answer, reection on them helps us to recognize the changing nature of the 21st-century landscape and the corresponding challenges we face in structuring an adaptive pedagogy that both acknowledges and is responsive to these transformations. In the United States, our cities are more culturally and ethnically diverse than ever before. For the rst time in history non-Hispanic whites are a minority in 48 of the nations 100 largest cities. An analysis by the Brookings Institution showed that in the 20 fastest growing cities the white population rose 5 percent while the Hispanic population rose 72 percent; the Asian population rose 69 percent and the African-American population rose 23 percent between 1990 and 2000 (The Brookings Institution Center on Urban and Metropolitan Policy 2001). In the same period the foreign-born population in the U.S. grew 57.4 percent, although some cities saw much greater growth rates (Singer 2004). For example, between 1980 and 2000 foreign-born populations in Atlanta grew by 817 percent and in Raleigh-Durham by 709 percent. In New York City, 43 percent of the population is foreign born. These shifting multiethnic phenomena are not limited to cities. The analysis from the Brookings Institution showed that, [by] 2000 more immigrants in metropolitan areas lived in suburbs than cities, and their growth rates exceeded those in the cities (Singer 2004, 2). A number of authors have recently written about the proliferation of ethnoburbs in major cities across the nation where we see suburban clusters characterized by deliberate concentrations of certain ethnic groups both in residential areas and in business districts (Chang 2002; Graham and Marvin 2001; Li 1999; Waldinger and Lichter 2003). A good example of this is seen in the San Gabriel Valley of Los Angeles where Chinese ethnic immigrants,

primarily from Taiwan, have established large retail complexes and a wide variety of other businesses including ethnic import-export rms, high-tech establishments, and service organizations, each employing a predominant foreign-born workforce and servicing a large foreign-born, middle-class population living within the larger suburban area (Zhou 1998). While the U.S. has always considered itself a pluralistic society, there have been long-standing debates countering the need to encourage an assimilated society with the need to accommodate and celebrate subcultures, as witnessed in the debates of America as melting pot, tossed salad, or stew (Schlesinger 1992; Shohat and Stam 1994).3 Furthermore, the approach to understanding the cultural characteristics of ethnic groups has changed over time in the social science disciplines. Culture includes learned patterns of behavior, socially acquired traditions, specic rules for acquiring and transferring information, and shared-meaning systems that often change over time (Low and Chambers 1989). We use the term multiculturalism today to acknowledge the ever-increasing diversity that is part of American society. However, post-modernists will argue that world cultures are fragmented and thus one cannot attribute normative value to specic cultural groups because their identity is fragmented, particular, and continuously evolving (Foucault 1986; Jennings 1997; Rhoads 1997). Thus, post-modernists argue for the acknowledgement of diversity and difference as a reaction against the suggestions of universal value systems posed by the modernists (Habermas 1981; Lyotard 1984). The presence of an everincreasingly diverse and fragmented society raises many challenges in the design professions and the educational institutions that support them. Some of these issues are ethical and others are practical. The emergence of pluralistic images of the past, present, and future can open the way for more complex understandings of power and social relations

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and richer, more diverse design expressions throughout the globe, or they can be largely ignored and marginalized, giving way to architecture, urban spaces, and landscapes that reect the homogenizing effects of modernization and globalization (Czaplicka, Ruble, and Crabtree 2003; Duncan and Duncan 2003; Helphand 2002; Tzonis, Lefaivre, and Stagno 2001). The contributions to date of African Americans, Latin Americans, Asian Americans and Native Americans have, for the most part, either been marginalized or not made visible in the discussion of histories, formal aesthetics, and theories of built-environment process (Barton 2001; Hayden 1997; Swentzell 1990). People from a range of ethnicities, and women, discover very little about how their histories, values, worldviews, and identities are translated into built form or aesthetic traditions. We know even less of the contributions of a myriad of cultures coming out of the shadow of colonization, which are often referred to as the third world. This is the case even though there is evidence that cross-cultural contact is increasing in the United States and abroad (Rhinesmith 1986). Communities increasingly sponsor international youth exchange programs, more students study abroad than ever before, and more Americans live, work, and travel abroad than in previous decades. It is estimated that more than two million Americans live and work abroad in a variety of professional capacities (Fontaine 1986). People from different cultural backgrounds are exposed to a range of experiences in their lifetimes that generate a different set of needs and preferences. In an age in which advocacy and participatory planning suggest more involvement of people in the design and planning of their community spaces, students and professionals face the challenge of developing a range of cross-cultural communication skills in order to understand the needs of people from diverse social and cultural backgrounds. While there is increased national attention on the

importance of historic preservation, the call to preserve multicultural landscapes is relatively new. Dolores Hayden (1990) highlights a number of nonprot history groups interested in preserving cultural heritage in urban spaces in Los Angeles. This has important implications for public space design. Designers and planners need to develop the knowledge base and techniques that allow them to understand differences in the use of public space to sensitively design spaces that represent a range of perceptions and user preferences (Carr, Francis, Rivlin and Stone 1992; Francis 2003; Marcus and Francis 1997). The rise of new immigrant and multiethnic communities in the nation is fueling a renaissance in some urban centers and causing conict and pressures for additional social services in others. In the greater Washington, D.C. region, as in many urban centers across the nation, new immigrants are revitalizing neglected neighborhoods as they are drawn by cheap housing stock in close proximity to work centers, and convenient access to public transportation. These new neighbors have a range of special needs that are often overlooked by designers and planners that include their preferences for density, shopping facilities, employment opportunities, social services, cultural facilities, parks, and public spaces. In addition, they often bring a different aesthetic sensitivity or different patterns of land use that sometimes generate conicts with existing residents. These can range from the use of colorful patterns, motifs, details and storefronts to dissimilar use of community spaces including an increase of street vendors, multiuse environments, pedestrians, utilization of public spaces for hanging out, and multiple languages on public signs (Duncan and Duncan 2003; Forsyth, Lu, and McGirr 2001; LoukaitouSideris 1995). As Alan Jacobs and Donald Appleyard (1987), and Kevin Lynch (1960) have pointed out, good public environments should be accessible to all peoples and all citizens are entitled to some level of expression of identity, control, and

opportunity. How do designers and planners better meet the needs of ethnically and culturally diverse communities and how do they avoid replicating standardized solutions from previous eras characterized by more cultural homogeneity? One response to the increased diversity witnessed across the globe has been to increase intercultural, multicultural, cross-cultural, or international education. Although education alone cannot change many problems facing communities across the globe, it can inuence the future by preparing the minds of young people to include a diversity of viewpoints, behaviors, and values. Cross-cultural education can work on many fronts as it strives to eliminate stereotypes, prejudice, and racism by creating an awareness of dissimilar viewpoints and thus a rejection of absolute ethnocentrism. It assists people in acquiring the skills needed to interact more effectively with people different from themselves, and demonstrates that despite the differences that seem to separate people, many similarities do, in fact, exist across groups (Cushner 1998). Theoretical Basis for Cross-Cultural Learning Whether we are consciously aware of the consequences, there is a theoretical base to all actions of educators. We implement pedagogic theory when we organize our lectures; choose certain readings over others; plan the content and approach to instruction; choose the site and scope of the studio project; conceptualize the type of exchange between teacher and students; establish the type of relationship the students will have with the client, user groups, or professional base; and so on. These actions go beyond the transmission of knowledge and skill development and simultaneously engage students in power relationships that constitute what some educational theorists refer to as cultural politics (Barber 1994; Brown and Jennings 2003; Martin and Nakayama 2003; Ward 1991). In the introduction to his book, Voices in Architectural Education:

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Cultural Politics and Pedagogy, Dutton states:

In the shift away from pedagogy as a form of transmission, there is an increasing attempt to engage pedagogy as a form of cultural politics. Both inside and outside the academy this has meant a concern with analyses of the production and representation of meaning and how these practices and the practices they provoke are implicated in dynamics of social power (1991, x).

Or, as explained by another theorist, Henry Giroux, Inherent in any educational design are value assumptions and choices about the nature of humankind, the use of authority, the value of specic forms of knowledge and, nally, a vision of what constitutes the good life (1981, 129). The relationships between knowledge and power, and between social context and the professional school curriculum, is central to the issue of cross-cultural learning. This is particularly true in landscape architecture education where art, ecology, and human interests interlace. Landscape architects work with diverse constituencies that represent a range of multicultural ideas, values, and voices, and they work in a context that often requires them to step outside the traditional disciplinary boundaries. Thus, the complexity inherent in a multipolar world, along with the multifaceted, interdisciplinary requirements of landscape architecture, necessitates the transformation of our educational system. The challenge for the 21st-century university, and for our profession, is to adopt strategies for global education and a new intellectualism that breaks from the reductionistic approaches of the modern era and inculcates new perspectives, references, content, alternative creative process, and decision-making skills. This call for transformation is not newPaulo Frieres (1970) call for conscientization in Pedagogy of the Oppressed comes to mindbut it might shift the way we think about landscape architecture education by reecting on what this means to our professional training. In this model,

students become more engaged in the production of knowledge as they become aware of the power and validity of other voices, beginning with their own. One of the major goals of cross-cultural education is to restructure the approach to learning so that students acquire the knowledge, skills, and attitudes needed to function in a diverse and democratic world. Consequently, it is an education focused on freedom, and thus, should raise questions related to power and inclusion (Diaz, Buss, and Turcuit 1991). Whose issues are central to landscape architecture education and practice and whose are marginal? Whose world is celebrated and whose is trivialized? A cross-cultural education is one that is designed to reduce race, class, and gender divisions and to encourage a more full participation in a democratic society. Meaningful Cross-Cultural Exchange Dorotich and Stephan argue that cultural diversity is a political fact and social fact and economic fact and cultural fact and psychological fact (1984, 96). Each of us becomes culturally socialized during childhood when we internalize the values of our own community along with its customs, stereotypes, beliefs, and perspectives. Students who are socialized within a mainstream culture rarely have the opportunity to question their identity or challenge their misconceptions or stereotypes because the school culture typically reinforces what they learn in their home community. These students often have difculty working effectively with diverse cultures and they often lack the skills and the motivation to benet from cross-cultural participation. At the same time, minority students are often forced to examine, confront, and question their cultural assumptions when they enter the academy.4 To fully participate in our democratic, pluralistic society, all students need to develop skills and perspectives that allow them to understand others and to engage in a rapidly changing and diverse

world. It is particularly important for educators to train preprofessionals to become more sensitive to crosscultural issues as a basis for becoming more effective practitioners (Ponterotto and Pedersen 1993). One of the important challenges facing educators within a pluralistic society is to help students understand their local community culture while also liberating them from their cultural boundaries. Thus, landscape architecture education in a democratizing world should help students acquire knowledge, skills, and attitudes they will need to frame professional actions that make societies more equitable and just. This implies that design and planning education go beyond a professionally-driven curriculum primarily focused on developing competencies needed to gain employment, and toward a pedagogy that strives to develop the whole person. These may seem like lofty goals in todays consumer-driven society, but within a democratic, multicultural pedagogy we have a responsibility to prepare students to solve problems within both the local and global context by preparing them to be responsible citizens who can make personal choices to serve their own needs while contributing toward the benet of society. In reshaping landscape architecture education to include a cross-cultural context one must ask, What essential elements characterize a meaningful cross-cultural exchange? Together, the articles that comprise this theme issue of Landscape Journal examine concerns of cultural processes in landscape architecture education. These processes include cultural-spatial experiences in a globalized world and the development of specic pedagogical tools for cross-cultural learning. The articles speak for themselves; an overview of all the articles in this issue is presented in the preceding Editors Introduction. However, the four articles that follow this introductory piece have a series of themes in common that provide a framework for normative guidance on meaningful cross-cultural exchange. An examination of these

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articles reveals that the cross-cultural context should be experiential, provide for reection and self-knowledge, develop new knowledge and skills, and provide for new strategies for engagement and transformation. Experiential Learning. All of the articles heed the call for experiential learning promoted in a variety of disciplines and in the education eld. Students, themselves, often demand educational experiences that allow them to understand how theories relate to the real world by applying them in practice. This is the basis of the studio education where students learn by doing and where abstract concepts are applied in a problemsolving experience related to their professional training and development. However, as service-learning theorists point out, the traditional studio experience is often a topdown approach with the instructor acting as the master professional who values individual creativity over real community involvement (Forsyth, Lu, and McGirr 1999). A discussion in the educational elds on the concept of experiential learning describes an approach that goes beyond the problem-solving method that can be devoid of real-life constraints and instead outlines an approach where students become directly involved in learning the complexities of their society. Experiential education conceptualizes learning as multidimensional and encompasses a four-stage cycle: beginning with a specic experience, it progresses to observation and reection of the experience, then forms abstract concepts and generalizations, and, ultimately, tests the implications of these concepts in new settings (Kolb 1984). Instead of students being given a theory or principle to apply to a design or planning problem, in an experiential-learning setting students draw their own principles from the cross-cultural experience (Walsh 1996). When these principles are then applied to the professional action, it has more meaning for the students. Experiential education is critical in cross-cultural learning since it

makes the subject matter more relevant in settings where the student is exposed to different ways of acting and thinking about the world. These types of experiences broaden the personalities of people sharing in the experience (Gordon 1976). There are a number of other important benets that come from experiential learning. James Coleman describes the self assurance and . . . sense of accomplishment and mastery that successful action provides. Since experiential learning involves more investment on the part of the student, this often increases motivation and provides an associative structure of events in memory that helps insure that whatever has been learned is not lost (Coleman 1976, 60). Self and Reective Learning. Cross-cultural learning programs often help develop an awareness of ingrained values, ideas, and attitudes within oneself and in others. In the cross-cultural exchange, students often report that they value the knowledge gained not only in reference to the unfamiliar culture, but also in reference to the new awareness of their own cultural identity. The benet of self-knowledge is frequently acknowledged by those who study or work abroad. A returning study-abroad student can be typically heard to say, I learned more about myself in Quito than I did about Ecuador. I discovered who I am. Interaction with another culture not only puts our own culture into focus but also allows us to reexamine our assumptions, beliefs, stereotypes, and worldviews; this seldom occurs within the context of our own culture. The articles in this theme issue describe what happens when students are exposed to realities different from their own histories and experiences. The experience often leads students to reect on their own assumptions, sometimes creating an impetus for change, other times leading to a deeper knowledge of the self. In a cross-cultural context, the design process can thus become not only a vehicle for problem solving but also one that can lead students on a transformative journey.

The journey can be a humbling experience, in its most positive connotation, where in learning to appreciate the contributions of others, we become open to learning from a wide variety of sources and inputs. This can liberate us from the juvenile grip of hubris that leads us to thinkin our overcondent sense of selfthat we have the best answers, the best assumptions, and the best methods. It can, instead, offer awareness that the guiding truths or principles we present as professionals are framed by our cultural experiences and thus are not necessarily meaningful when translated to different cultural settings. From Knowledge to Action. Crosscultural education challenges students to examine their own myths, attitudes, and worldviews. In a multicultural environment, students must draw from information that presents political, economic, and historical frameworks within specic cultures; these serve to break down stereotypical preconceptions. The process helps students develop culturally sensitive design and planning strategies and an expanded range of communication skills. The articles in this theme issue discuss different strategies for developing professional and personal skill sets that result from a realization of the limitations of traditional teaching methods for data inventory, analysis, and design. They raise questions about the cognitive appropriateness of forms that arise from constructed identities. They attempt to focus on difference as well as shared characteristics between ethnic groups, and introduce ways to value and reinterpret peoples voices and their vernacular places. While a variety of approaches to design studio are suggested in the articles that follow, they share a process of questioning, struggle, tension, and the attempt to structure a nonhierarchical dialogue. Paolo Freire warns against the banking approach to education that limits the freedom of the learner and prescribes the subject matter by depositing the knowledge that the educator gained from direct experience, and from the interpretation of the

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thinking of others, into the relatively empty, receptive mind of the learner. As Freire cautions, this approach, which prescribes ofcial truths and concepts, can also reproduce injustice in society and create a passive acceptance in the learner. Instead, he encourages dialogue and peer interaction, the use of peoples knowledge as the basis for the curriculum and critical thought based on reection that exposes the realities of everyday life (Freire 1970). The articles in this issue introduce ways to mediate information from academic sources with local knowledge. They suggest different strategies to develop students listening skills that allow them to ask questions of peers, community people, professionals, as well as the locale, and to reect this knowledge in multiple ways. They consider ways to transform traditional analytical and design skills by overlaying them with personal stories that imbue the process with richer strata of meaning colored by personal perspectives and alternative value systems. Furthermore, these articles suggest the importance of developing a range of communication skills, including graphic communication skills and different collaboration styles in the cross-cultural setting, and outline how these can assist in the development of improved interpersonal and inter-group relationships. Engagement and Transformation. All of the articles in this issue outline approaches for engagement that redene the traditional relationships of client/professional, teacher/student, student/student, or university/community. These models for engagement are sometimes referred to by a number of new pedagogical approaches: collaborative learning, reciprocal learning, or service learning. Regardless of the model, they reect a transformation that redenes the nature of the engagement and the relationship of the parties involved in the exchange, and they foster relationships in which the ow of information and education goes in both directions. Two of the articles point to a cross-cultural educational process

that involves knowledge transfer to the community. This implies that the cross-cultural learning experience has the capacity not only to empower students but also to empower the community. The knowledge transfer happens through a range of approaches that illustrate the power of civil society as a transformative agent in the community renewal process. In some cases, the studio builds on theories and methods of participatory planning while acknowledging the shifting role of who is being taught and who is learning. In other cases, community empowerment happens as a result of a process directed at physical change, as well as the establishment of meaningful relationships and opportunities for dialogue that present communities with the opportunity to reinvent democracy. Conclusions As an immigrant to this country, I have maintained a lifelong interest in the relationship between people, or culture, and place. My life history does not resonate with the concept of the homogeneous identity of the melting-pot. Growing up in a multicultural neighborhood in North Florida, I was surrounded by other Latino families who retained some aspects of their ancestors culture, lost others, adopted some of the customs of the Anglo-American culture, adapted others, but also borrowed from other non-Anglo cultures. In my experience, diversity breeds more diversity. In a post 9/11 world, there seem to be many calls for national unity, and new immigrant groups are falling under increased scrutiny. Yet in our modern, interconnected world, it seems likely that diversity will continue to increase. The question facing all nations that struggle with increasing cultural diversity is: What type of diversity will we have? Will we be plagued with stranger anxiety and retreat from change by building fences that try to return to an age of conformity and homogeneity, or will we develop a respect and tolerance for diverse groups? Will we try to embrace one answer or give voice to many answers? Will

the dominant group try to impose a rigid set of values and identities on the minority, or will native and newcomers borrow from each other? Contact with a cross-cultural, diverse world is increasing. As an educator, I recall that 10 to 15 years ago, nding few non-European prospects, students would come to me for help in identifying opportunities to study or work abroad. Now, more than half of my students have studied or traveled abroad before they graduate with a degree in landscape architecture. In addition, many of the professionals who give guest lectures, including alumni from our program, share the work they are doing overseas in a range of countries including Eastern Europe, Latin America, the Middle East and China. As a researcher, I recall the sessions at the Environmental Design Research Association (EDRA) in the 1980s that addressed issues of cross-cultural design and struggled to develop the knowledge base and methods that would encourage a culturally-appropriate response to place. That task is even more complex now in a multicultural and hybridized world. The challenge of teaching with culture in mind is not unlike the challenge facing any open society. How do you manage conict while showing respect for dissenting views? In a truly open society, majority rule cannot win out all the time. How does one construct processes to resolve conicts or to provide for multiple perspectives? In a multicultural context, a designer might nd herself or himself working alongside a cultural group that treats gender, class, religion, or interaction with other cultural groups with a different set of values that the designer nds distasteful, or that go against the concept of an open society. Since there is no common set of values for all humanity, how does a designer decide how to act? All societies structure a series of laws to dene appropriate sets of behaviors for people with shared value systems. But how does a designer strike a balance between the need to protect the shared values and the need to be permeable in order to accommodate

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newly emerging needs? These questions provide much opportunity for reection and discussion. Our hope in presenting this theme issue of Landscape Journal is that readers will be challenged to reect on the impact of globalization on the design and planning professions. These forces are, on the one hand, fueling a global process of homogenization while simultaneously creating increased contact with people from a diverse range of cultures who possess a multiplicity of values and a differing set of user needs. We hope that this reection will lead to a discussion centered on the role of cross-cultural education within landscape architecture and that the discourse will eventually allow us to develop new understandings of appropriate pedagogies for a multicultural world.

Notes
1. So called minorities, when lumped together, represent more than one third of the U.S. population, and, in about half of the 100 largest urban centers, non-Hispanic whites are now an actual minority of the total population (Schmitt 2001). This phenomenon is now spawning the use of a new oxymoron, the majority minority. However, to a growing number of people in the U.S., the term minority is being resisted because it does not represent the growing multiethnic, multiracial nation and because it articially separates people of color from the so-called majority (Grant 1992). Some argue that what are designated as minority issues are actually issues of equity, pluralism, social justice, and anti-oppression, and thus include members of other oppressed groups, e.g., persons with disabilities and persons who are gay, lesbian or bisexual, known as sexual minorities (Shade 1997; Thomas, Sleeter, and Grant, 2002). As one reviewer for this article pointed out, minority issues are more often addressed from the perspective of the majority and the language that we use in the discourse inevitably excludes. For example, people of color excludes white Hispanics and does nothing to express ethnic identity, while Latin American excludes large numbers of people in the Caribbean Basin that are not of Ibero-American origin and may, instead, have ethnic ties to Africa or Asia. All of these Anglophonic terms also fail in describing the ever-increasing mixing and mobility that is occurring across the globe. An interesting book on this topic is, The Diversity Advantage by G. Pascal Zachary (2003, xxiii). In it he states, The new multicultural American transcends these hyphenated identities of a generation ago. New Americans live both within and

beyond the traditional boundaries of ethnoracial identities. The old constellation of hyphenated Americans still imposes its grid on society, presenting a view of America as a kind of United Nations, when actually these metaphorical nations have bled into one another. Or rather, hybrid identities are increasingly the preferred way of showing allegiance to these groups. People live through layers of afliation, putting on another layer or taking one off, depending on the setting. 2. Only four percent of full-time faculty at four-year state universities and colleges are African American and the number appears to be dropping. Between 1980 and 1990 the total number of black doctorates dropped by nearly one-third (Stephan 1991). According to the Council of Education, less than 10% of faculty in four-year colleges and universities were people of color (12.2% of all faculty). While more than half of all undergraduates in the nation are women, 33.6% of all faculty members are women and these are more concentrated in the lower ranks. [See: http://www.pbs.org/shattering/theprogram. html and http://www.diversityweb.org/ diversity_innovations/faculty_staff_ development/recruitment_tenure_ promotion/faculty_recruitment.cfm.] 3. The melting pot, of course, is where different identities are lost by assimilation into the mainstream identity of a relatively homogenous society. A tossed salad or a stew has different elements that are brought together and inter-mixed but each retains their original form although transformed by their combination into a mixture where none of the individual elements stand alone. 4. There is a discussion of this phenomenon in the narrative by Julie Diaz, Shirl Buss, and Sheryl Tircuit where they discuss their struggle for social and intellectual empowerment as graduate students of architecture at the University of California, Los Angeles. As womenone an African American and another an Hispanicdescribe how their aspirations, histories, and experiences were often marginalized, ignored, and even put down by those they encountered in the academy: their professors, their fellow students and the professional community with which they interfaced. They describe the Eurocentric bias of their experience and question its appropriateness given the multicultural history of their community of Los Angeles (Diaz, Buss, and Tircuit 1991).

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