Introduction: Toward Landscape Realism

Bart R. Johnson and Kristina Hill

Ecology, the study of interactions between organisms and their environments, has long been a compelling theme for faculty, practitioners, and students of landscape design and planning. Frederick Law Olmsted's visionary public designs, Jens Jensen's native plantings, May Watt's observations of vernacular landscapes, and Ian McHarg's book, Design with Nature, are all milestones of ecological thinking in landscape design and planning. Many contemporary designers and planners identify an understanding of ecology as crucial to their work (Spirn 1984; Lyle 1985; Hough 1995; Thompson and Steiner 1997; Nassauer 1997). Yet ecology is a rapidly evolving field that has undergone major paradigm shifts in the past two decades. It no longer presupposes a "balance of nature," but instead describes the natural world in terms of flux and change. Moreover, new fields of applied ecology such as conservation biology and restoration ecology have emerged in response to the global biodiversity crisis, a crisis inherently linked to the need to provide burgeoning human populations a reasonable quality of life. How can designers and planners respond to these increasingly global challenges, which require an integrated understanding of human societies and ecosystems? How will new theories of nature affect the theory and practice of landscape design and the collaborations that take place between scientists and designers?

Designers and planners are not alone in grappling with the interdependence of humans and natural systems. Many ecologists have come to recognize humans as keystone species in most, if not all, ecosystems. In a key development, some are beginning to emphasize urban ecosystems as critical landscape features (Pickett et al. 1997; Parlange 1998; Collins et al. 2000). Other ecologists have identified training in human dimensions of landscape change as an emerging need in conservation science education (e.g., Jacobson and McDuff 1998). Scientific practitioners are looking for new ways to collaborate as well.

Landscape designers, planners, and applied ecologists belong to a diverse group of disciplines that face common needs to integrate cultural and ecological understanding toward prescriptions for land protection and change. The extent to which they succeed in this endeavor depends not only on how scholars and professionals rethink their research and practice, but also on the priorities they establish for the next generation of scholars and practitioners through education.

That education, particularly its foundations and methods, is the subject of this book. We intend to stimulate faculty to think broadly and creatively about how they incorporate ecological knowledge in design and physical planning curricula, and to offer specific approaches to teaching. We ask what conceptual foundation and practical skills are needed for practitioners to develop ecologically responsible practices, and how they can adapt to a regulatory environment that is increasingly shaped by technical debates about environmental trends and impacts. How can we initiate collaborations with colleagues from the natural sciences to stimulate mutual learning and improved design and planning? How can we bring ecological accountability to design education while supporting our traditions of innovation and inspiration through art?

Common Ground for Dialogue

Within the last two decades, new ecological subdisciplines that seek to use ecological science as a foundation for solving environmental problems have gained prominence. Each has its own focus and approaches, and each is rapidly evolving (Boxes 1-1 to 1-4). New ideas for design subdisciplines have also emerged, including ecological engineering and ecorevelatory design. Meanwhile the established design professions have increasingly recognized the need for ecological awareness and responsibility, and have begun to adopt ecological guidelines for professional practice (Boxes 1-5 to 1-8). Whether these fields choose to learn from one another at this critical time, and whether they build collaborative approaches to land development and conservation, could have impacts that resonate throughout this century. One thing is abundantly clear—no single discipline possesses sufficient knowledge or skills to address the combined complexities of cultural and ecological issues across the diverse set of contexts and scales in which they occur.

This book project began with the idea that educational restructuring can be a means to plant the seeds of future professional and research collaborations among many fields, including landscape architecture, urban design, planning, architecture, civil and environmental engineering, landscape ecology, conservation biology, and restoration ecology. There are significant opportunities for these fields to learn from each other and, in so doing, to increase their relevance to contemporary issues. We feel that the core of such collaborations is twofold: first, to develop deep and meaningful understandings of places, including how each place is imbued with interdependent cultural and ecological attributes; and second, to assist individuals, organizations, communities, and regions to envision new courses of action and select from among alternatives. The essays contained in this book focus on...