LANDSCAPE ECOLOGY AND

ENIVORNMENT AND EIA

CARL STEINITZ:
• Carl Steinitz is the Alexander and Victoria Wiley Professor of Landscape
Architecture and Planning, Emeritus, at the Graduate School of Design,
Harvard University.

• Professor Steinitz has devoted much of his academic and professional career
to improving methods to analyze large land areas and make design
decisions about conservation and development.

• His applied research and teaching focus is on highly valued landscapes that CARL STEINITZ
are undergoing substantial pressures for change.

• He is principal author of Alternative Futures for Changing Landscapes (Island

Press 2003), author of A Framework for Geodesign.

• Professor Steinitz with the Outstanding Educator Award for his “extraordinary
contribution to environmental design education” and for his “pioneering
exploration in the use of computer technology in landscape planning,
especially in the areas of resource management and visual impact
assessment.”

SOURCE: https://www.gsd.harvard.edu/person/carl-steinitz/
GEODEISGN :

“Geodesign applies systems thinking to the creation of

proposals for change and their impact simulations,
informed their geographic contexts, and usually
supported by digital technology.”

Geodesign changes geography by design“

 ON SCALE AND COMPLEXITY AND THE NEED FOR SPATIAL ANALYSIS

SCALE MATTERS:

• Many methods, many processes, many ideas that work at

one scale don't work at another scale.

• Problems dealing with the landscape include placing a

building on a site; designing a garden; and designing an
urban complex in a difficult ecology, or a large urban park.

• Geographers, cultural historians, hydrologists, geologists,

ecologists, political scientists, and even lawyers and bankers
tend to see things and work from large to small, and they
almost never get to the details so important to architects and
landscape architects.

• He focus of design decision changes with scale.

• At large scale, which dealing with strategy; at middle scale,

you are dealing with tactics; and at small scale, you are
really dealing with details, and here the details do matter.

SOURCE: https://www.esri.com/news/arcnews/spring11articles/on-scale-and-complexity-and-the-need-for-spatial-analysis.html
SCALE MATTERS:

• At the large scale, if we make a mistake or decide something badly, which leads to very high risk of
harmful impact. Because the landscape is big, it has lots of people, lots of money, lots of change, and
the larger decisions are very important.

• The benefits can be great, but the risks are serious.

• As you go to a smaller scale, the risk goes down.

• The greater the risk, the greater the need for serious analysis, and this is much more a need as scale-
related risk gets larger.

• Minimizing social risk, economic risk, ecological risk, etc., makes a landscape plan essentially
defensive.

• At large scale, it is more supply based and defensive: Have to understand the landscape and the
cultural values & have to establish priorities, and then we have to defend them.

• At small scale, it can get famous for making new changes, while at large scale, it do not generally get
famous for protecting old landscapes.

SOURCE: https://www.esri.com/news/arcnews/spring11articles/on-scale-and-complexity-and-the-need-for-spatial-analysis.html
SCALE MATTERS:

• In making a design at large scale, It has four fundamental considerations.

• One of them is history. We must know the history of the place, and especially the history of the
plans for the place.

• And the people who made them were not stupid.

• The next things are facts. Facts will not change in the life of our own plan and our own study.

• It might work toward 20 years or 30 years in the future, and the bedrock geology is not going to
change (if it is not volcanic).

• Then there are constants, which are the things that are going to happen during the course of your
plan.

• It must find out about them, because if you don't, our plan will never be implemented.

• And then there are the contingencies, the things that could happen, and here it is really important
to capture the major generating assumptions and their alternative choices.

SOURCE: https://www.esri.com/news/arcnews/spring11articles/on-scale-and-complexity-and-the-need-for-spatial-analysis.html
SOURCE: https://www.esri.com/news/arcnews/spring11articles/on-scale-and-complexity-and-the-need-for-spatial-analysis.html
 COMPLEXITY:

• The second theme, complexity, interacts with scale.

• It represents the level of complexity that the analytic methods underpinning any design must
achieve, especially in its understanding of process models.

• He provide six set of questions that must be asked in any design problem and at any scale.

SOURCE: https://www.esri.com/news/arcnews/spring11articles/on-scale-and-complexity-and-the-need-for-spatial-analysis.html
Sustainable planning at the landscape scale:
Landscape Assessment:

• The first question, “how should the landscape be described,” consists of abstracting landscape
(geography) into a series of inventory data layers.

• The second question, “how does the landscape operate,” requires combining geospatial data
and the use of spatial analysis techniques to describe landscape processes and predict how
spatial phenomena and processes might change over time.

• The third question, “is the landscape working well,” involves the creation of composite maps that
combine a number of dissimilar things in a way that reveals areas that may be more favorable
than others for certain activities.

• From Steinitz’s point of view, the assessment process consists of examining existing conditions and
determining whether the current conditions are operating well or not.
Landscape Intervention:

• Once the assessment is complete, the landscape intervention process begins.

• The fourth question, “how might the landscape be altered,” involves the sketching of design
alternatives directly onto a geospatially referenced data layer.

• The fifth question, “what differences might the changes cause,” is answered by the quick
evaluation of the impacts of those potential changes.

• Finally, the sixth question, “should the landscape be changed,” integrates considerations of
policies and values into the decision process.

• The information produced by these intervention models is used to help designers and decision
makers weigh the pros and cons of each decision factor so they can weigh alternative solutions
and make the most informed decision possible.
A brief summary of the organization of all the learning modules is listed below:

(1) Representation model: How should the landscape be described?

• Learning modules for this stage focus on building GIS database, linking external data such as
demographic data from Census, attribute-based operation, imagery registering, and 3D
representation.

• Data can be gathered through online resources, such as data files provided by the City, and
through site visits to the city.

(2) Process model: How does the landscape operate?

• Learning modules for this stage include: map overlay (vector-based), map algebra (raster-
based), network analysis.

• Students working in teams examined patterns in the urban and natural environments found in
the City.
3) Evaluation model: Is the landscape working well?

• Learning modules for this stage focus on setting up measures for design performance assessment
based on metrics of judgment, community value, design intent, and goals/objectives.

• This assessment phase involved the participation of a diverse set of subject matter experts from the
city who were involved in defining issues, metrics, and the proper method of analysis.

(4) Change model: How might the landscape be altered?

• Learning modules for this stage focus on building scenarios

(5) Impact model: What differences might the changes cause?

• Learning modules for this stage focus on testing scenarios based on indicators, measurements,
and performance assessment.

(6) Decision model: Should the landscape be changed?

• Learning modules for this stage focus on finalizing criteria for decision making, producing
outcomes, and presenting outputs.
CASE STUDY 1:

AN ALTERNATIVE FUTURE FOR EASTERN SUBURBS, SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA

ASSUMPTIONS AND THE PROBLEM STATEMENT
•Approximate land area of study site: 5553 ha
Assumptions:

•Sydney’s population is set to grow from 4.7 million (as of 2012) to 7.9 million by 2050 based
on the largest population.

THE SYDNEY REGIONAL POLICIES PERSPECTIVE:

Projected changes within the study area:

• 180,000 additional dwellings needed between 2016 and 2050 in the Eastern Suburbs to serve an
added 360,000 population.

•Increase in younger population and cultural diversity is expected due to overseas migration.

•While the Eastern part of the study area may be relatively unaffected by rise in sea level due to its
topography, low-lying areas in the Western part of the study area may experience more
nuisance flooding.

•Growth of High Value Industry drives demand for a new university/expansion of UNSW.

•The hospital will also expand.

•There is a need to remake the region’s “Green Infrastructure” and “Blue infrastructure”.
EVALUATION MODELS:
SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS BY YEAR 2050
CROSS-SYSTEMS IMPACT MODEL
SCENARIOS AND TARGETS:
• Environmental Sustainability and Resilience
• Housing Development
• University + Hospital employment cluster
• Efficient Public service
• Tourism and Recreation
• Compact City
 CASE STUDY 2:

KING COUNTY, WASHINGTON

• King County plans at four scales: region-wide; county-wide; small area; and sub-area.

• Two sub-watersheds within Green Duwamish River watershed, or what Washington State
agencies call Water Resource Inventory Area 9 (WRIA9), were selected as the study area to
allow participants to investigate watershed sustainability as a complex systems problem.

• The Lower Green River subwatershed lies inside the King County designated urban growth area
boundary while the Middle Green subwatershed is largely outside the urban growth boundary.

• Both contain a mixture of urban, suburban, and rural land uses.

• The study was scoped to address change for +20- and +40-year plan time horizons.

• Population predictions estimate that 200,000 new people are likely be added to the
combination of subwatershed areas by 2035, and that number will grow by an additional 220,000
people by 2055.

Source: Journal: Geodesign dynamics for sustainable urban watershed development

Source: Journal: Geodesign dynamics for sustainable urban watershed development
 The study area focuses on the Lower Green River and Middle Green River sub-watersheds.
Source: Journal: Geodesign dynamics for sustainable urban watershed development
 Cross-systems impacts template

Source: Journal: Geodesign dynamics for sustainable urban watershed development

 Agreement among all design teams on a single final plan,
and its impacts for a +40-year horizon.
Source: Journal: Geodesign dynamics for sustainable urban watershed development
Reference:
Journal: Geodesign dynamics for sustainable urban watershed development.
https://www.esri.com/news/arcnews/spring11articles/on-scale-and-complexity-and-the-need-for-
spatial-analysis.html
https://www.gsd.harvard.edu/person/carl-steinitz/