Ecology and Design: Frameworks For Learning

By Bart Johnson and Robert Melnick

Professionals, faculty, and students are aware of the pressing need to integrate ecological principles into environmental design and planning education, but few materials exist to facilitate that development.

Ecology and Design addresses that shortcoming by articulating priorities and approaches for incorporating ecological principles in the teaching of landscape design and planning. The book explains why landscape architecture and design and planning faculty should include ecology as a standard part of their courses and curricula, provides insights on how that can be done, and offers models from successful programs. The book:

• examines the need for change in the education and practice of landscape architecture and in the physical planning and design professions as a whole
• asks what designers and physical planners need to know about ecology and what applied ecologists can learn from design and planning
• develops conceptual frameworks needed to realize an ecologically based approach to design and planning
• offers recommendations for the integration of ecology within a landscape architecture curriculum, as an example for other design fields such as civil engineering and architecture
• considers the implications for professional practice
• explores innovative approaches to collaboration among designers and ecologists

In addition to the editors, contributors include Carolyn Adams, Jack Ahern, Richard T. T. Forman, Michael Hough, James Karr, Joan Iverson Nassauer, David Orr, Kathy Poole, H. Ronald Pulliam, Anne Whiston Spirn, Sandra Steingraber, Carl Steinitz, Ken Tamminga, and William Wenk. Ecology and Design represents an important guidepost and source of ideas for faculty, students, and professionals in landscape architecture, urban design, planning and architecture, landscape ecology, conservation biology and restoration ecology, civil and environmental engineering, and related fields.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Island Press
• Release date: Apr 9, 2013
• ISBN: 9781597268653

Book preview

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CHAPTER 1

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.¹ 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 identifying practical strategies for teaching these concepts and skills.

BOX 1-1. Conservation Biology

Conservation biology is a multidisciplinary science that has developed in response to the biodiversity crisis.

—Michael Soulé, What is conservation biology?

Conservation biology is the field of biology that studies the dynamics of diversity, scarcity and extinction.

—Reed F. Noss and Allen Y. Cooperrider, Saving nature’s legacy: Protecting and restoring biodiversity

ORGANIZATION NAME: Society for Conservation Biology (SCB)

ESTABLISHED: 1985

PRINCIPAL PUBLICATION: Conservation Biology

MEMBERSHIP: 5,200 members worldwide include resource managers, educators, government and private conservation workers, and students.

PURPOSE: SCB is dedicated to promoting the scientific study of the phenomena that affect the maintenance, loss, and restoration of biological diversity . . . the Society was formed to help develop the scientific and technical means for the protection, maintenance, and restoration of life on this planet—its species, its ecological and evolutionary processes, and its particular and total environment. To this end, members encourage communication and collaboration between conservation biology and other disciplines (including other biological and physical sciences, the behavioral and social sciences, economics, law, and philosophy) that study and advise on conservation and natural resources issues. <http://conbio.rice.edu/scb/info/>

Meffe and Carroll (1997, p. 22—25) suggest that conservation biology has a number of key characteristics that differentiate it from many other sciences. They arise from its goal of preserving the evolutionary potential and ecological viability of a vast array of biodiversity, which itself is necessitated by human predilections to attempt to control, simplify and conquer inherently complex and dynamic native ecological systems. In particular, it is a crisis discipline, based in science that is multidisciplinary, is necessarily inexact, is explicitly based in values, and requires both an evolutionary time scale and eternal vigilance.

BOX 1-2. Landscape Ecology

Landscape ecology is the study of spatial variation in landscapes at a variety of scales. It includes the biophysical and societal causes and consequences of landscape heterogeneity. Above all, it is broadly interdisciplinary.

—International Association for Landscape Ecology Web site <http://www.crle.uoguelph.ca/iale/>

ORGANIZATION NAME: International Association for Landscape Ecology (IALE)

ESTABLISHED: 1982

PRINCIPAL PUBLICATION: Landscape Ecology

MEMBERSHIP: 1,500 members worldwide include landscape architects, ecologists, land/nature managers, conservation biologists, land-use planners, biogeographers, GIS specialists, spatial statisticians, wildlife biologists, and ecosystem modelers.

PURPOSE: The mission of IALE is to develop landscape ecology as a scientific basis for analysis, planning and management of the landscapes of the world. IALE advances international co-operation and interdisciplinary synergism within the field, through scientific, scholarly, educational and communication activities. IALE encourages landscape ecologists to transcend boundaries and to work together building theory and developing knowledge of landscape pattern and process, developing integrative tools, and making them applicable to real landscape situations and applying them to solve problems. Its core themes include the spatial pattern or structure of landscapes ranging from wilderness to cities, the relationship between pattern and process in landscapes, the relationship of human activity to landscape pattern, process, and change, and the effect of scale and disturbance on the landscape. <http://www.crle.uoguelph.ca/iale/>

BOX 1-3. Restoration Ecology

Ecological restoration is the process of assisting the recovery and management of ecological integrity. Ecological integrity includes a critical range of variability in biodiversity, ecological processes and structures, regional and historical context, and sustainable cultural practices.

—Society for Ecological Restoration Web site <http://ser.org/>

ORGANIZATION NAME: Society for Ecological Restoration (SER)

ESTABLISHED: 1988

PRINCIPAL PUBLICATIONS: Restoration Ecology and Ecological Restoration

MEMBERSHIP: 2,300 members worldwide include scientists, planners, administrators, ecological consultants, first peoples, landscape architects, philosophers, teachers, engineers, natural areas managers, writers, growers, community activists, and volunteers, among others.

PURPOSE: The mission of SER is to promote ecological restoration as a means of sustaining the diversity of life on Earth and reestablishing an ecologically healthy relationship between nature and culture. To this end, SER encourages the development of restoration, including restorative management, as a scientific and technical discipline, as a strategy for environmental conservation, as a technique for ecological research, and as a means of developing a mutually beneficial relationship between human beings and the rest of nature. The society has endorsed nine Environmental Policies and seven Project Policies that offer specific guidelines for restoration efforts and their evaluation. <http://wwwser.org/>

Debates about the scope and nature of restoration and its sometimes imprecise or divergent usage have led to distinctions of the five Rs of restoration ecology: restoration, rehabilitation, reclamation, re-creation, and recovery (MacMahon 1997). When considering restorative approaches, it is important to recognize differences among these and to see the entire set as a toolbox of approaches, with restoration to some previous state as one among a continuum of possibilities.

BOX 1-4. Ecosystem Management

Ecosystem management integrates scientific knowledge of ecological relationships within a complex sociopolitical and values framework toward the general goal of protecting native ecosystem integrity over the long term.

—R. Edward Grumbine, What is ecosystem management?

Ecosystem management is management driven by explicit goals, executed by policies, protocols, and practices, and made adaptable by monitoring and research based on our best understanding of the ecological interactions and processes necessary to sustain ecosystem structure and function.

—Norman L. Christensen et al., The report of the Ecological Society of America committee on the scientific basis for ecosystem management

Despite (or perhaps because of) the fact that there is no organization dedicated to its development, ecosystem management has become the primary paradigm of federal land management agencies. At the same time, it is clear that different agencies, organizations, and individuals use the term in very different ways. Most definitions rely on some concept of sustainability that includes ideas of ecological health or integrity as well as the delivery of goods and services for humans, but the relative emphasis on those qualities varies, as does the level of confidence that they can be jointly optimized. The Ecological Society of America report emphasizes that ecosystem management focuses primarily on the sustainability of ecosystem structures and processes necessary to deliver goods and services, rather than on the deliverables. To do so, it must incorporate eight key factors: long-term sustainability; clear operational goals; sound ecological models and understanding; complexity and interconnectedness; the dynamic character of ecosystems; attention to context and scale; humans as ecosystem components; and adaptability and accountability (Christensen et al. 1996).

In addition to a desire to encourage collaboration, our motivation for this book was to explore and debate the idea that all designs should be held accountable for their ecological impacts. We wanted to address the philosophical divide between designers who want to inspire through art and designers who want to sustain natural processes by asking both groups to pursue a higher standard. That standard would call for designs that are aesthetically challenging, in the best sense of fine art, and ecologically sustainable, enabling humans to coexist with the other species that have evolved on this planet.

Defining the goodness of design is clearly an ethical and philosophical question, and we wish our position as editors to be explicit. We do not believe there is an inherent trade-off between beauty and ecological integrity in landscapes that are built or managed by humans. We believe that design excellence must be judged by both aesthetic and ecological criteria. Indeed, we find it ethically unacceptable for our students and for practitioners in the design fields to decide to concern themselves with art but not ecology. The decision to pursue ecological sustainability without art also is flawed, because art—whether fine or folk—may be the key to touching human hearts and minds in new ways. Artful design can be a means to affirm that being human is a profoundly beautiful expression of nature, an expression of the fundamental bonds that we share with all other forms of life. Our art can offer inspiration and hope in the face of negative environmental trends that are linked to human behavior. Joining art with a scientific basis for design can be a profound means to anchor and firm our art in the realities of these same relationships. As designers we are interested in new visions for the future, not the paralysis that results from recrimination and blame. This book is about taking practical steps to achieve a future in which artists and scientists collaborate and understand each other.

Frameworks for Learning and Collaboration

Human cultures and ecosystems exist in a reciprocal relationship. In essence, all landscape design is ecological, whether by intent or default, because every landscape place, no matter how large or small, includes multiple species and biophysical processes that will be affected by human actions. In similar fashion, every ecological conservation or restoration plan is cultural, involving and affecting people. In particular, such plans are likely to distribute costs and benefits differentially among people with different socioeconomic and cultural status. Moreover, a plan’s success ultimately depends on satisfying human needs and values. To ignore this reciprocal relationship of human culture and ecosystems is to turn away from a fundamental reality of the landscapes we share with other people and other species. As a basic principle for collaboration among the design disciplines and the new fields of applied ecology, we propose that all landscape design, planning, and management should be evaluated through a thorough accounting of its consequences for ecological health, biotic integrity, and cultural well-being (human, social, and economic).

BOX 1-5. Landscape Architecture

Landscape architecture is the art and science of analysis, planning, design, management, preservation and rehabilitation of the land.

—American Society of Landscape Architects Web site

<http://www.asla.org/nonmembers/hq.html>

ORGANIZATION NAME: American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA)

ESTABLISHED: 1899

PRINCIPAL PUBLICATIONS: Landscape Journal (not affiliated with ASLA) and Landscape Architecture Magazine

MEMBERSHIP: 12,000 members. ASLA is a national professional society that represents landscape architects in the United States. It includes private, public, and academic practitioners.

PURPOSE: The mission of ASLA is to lead, to educate and to participate in the careful stewardship, wise planning and artful design of our cultural and natural environments. <http://wwwasla.org/>.

ASLA Declaration on Environment and Development

ASLA has attempted to secure a place for landscape architecture as a leading land stewardship profession, as reflected in the ASLA Declaration on Environment and Development <http://www.asla.org/nonmembers/declarn_env_dev.html>. The declaration offers a set of principles that it states represent fundamental and long-established values of ASLA. These include how the health and well-being of people, their cultures and settlements [and] of other species and of global ecosystems are interconnected, vulnerable, and dependent on each other; the rights of future generations to landscapes with environmental assets at least comparable to those of today; the interdependence of environmental and cultural integrity, human well-being, and long-term economic development; sustainable development through integrating environmental protection and ecological function in development processes; and the responsibilities of developed countries to pursue internal and international sustainability.

The declaration concludes that because landscapes are living complexes that encompass the basic processes that support life, meeting human needs requires healthy landscapes. Thus, nurturing the processes of regeneration and self-renewal in the world’s healthy landscapes and reestablishing these in the vast areas of the world’s degraded landscapes are fundamental purposes of landscape architecture. The declaration follows with a conceptual framework of five objectives for the ethics, education, and practice of landscape architects, accompanied by specific strategies to achieve each objective.

BOX 1-6. Civil Engineering

ORGANIZATION NAME: American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE)

ESTABLISHED: 1852

PRINCIPAL PUBLICATIONS: Civil Engineering, as well as 28 technical and professional journals, and a variety of books, manuals of practice, standards, and monographs

MEMBERSHIP: 123,000 members worldwide include civil engineers and those in related disciplines. The Environmental and Water Resources Institute (EWRI) was created in 1999 as a semiautonomous institute to attract allied professionals. EWRI has 20,000 members.

PURPOSE: The mission of ASCE is to advance professional knowledge and improve the practice of civil engineering. To this end, it attempts to provide a focal point for development and transfer of research results and technical, policy, and managerial information, and serve as the catalyst for effective and efficient service through cooperation with other engineering and related organizations. <http://wwwasce.org>

Role of the Engineer in Sustainable Development

ASCE Policy Statement 418. <http://wwwasce.org/govnpub/policy/po1418_sustain.html>

The Code of Ethics of ASCE requires civil engineers to strive to comply with the principles of sustainable development. Further, the Vision of the ASCE Strategic Plan calls for global leadership in the promotion of responsible, economically sound, and environmentally sustainable solutions that enhance the quality of life, [and] protect and efficiently use natural resources. To this end, ASCE will work to develop and encourage the use of evolving technologies required to achieve an ecologically sustainable world for future generations . . . in this role, engineers must participate in interdisciplinary teams with ecologists, economists, sociologists and professionals from other disciplines.

The key issue is that the demand on natural resources is fast outstripping supply in the developed and developing world. Likewise, the ability of natural systems to assimilate wastes is taxed, almost to exhaustion. Environmental, technological, economic and social development must, therefore, be seen as interdependent concepts in which industrial competitiveness and ecological sustainability will be addressed together as complementary aspects of a common goal. Furthermore, sustainable development requires broadening the education of engineers and finding new ways to do business: i.e., doing more with less—less resources, less energy consumption and less waste generation. It requires focus on upstream prevention in preference to ‘end of pipe’ treatment, new manufacturing processes and equipment, expanded use of recyclable materials and the development of regenerative/recyclable products and packaging. Sustainable development requires approaches that imitate natural or biological processes.

BOX 1-7. Planning

Planning involves many tools, including economic and demographic analysis, natural and cultural resource evaluation, goal-setting, and strategic planning. . . [planners] offer options—so that communities and their citizens can achieve their vision of the future.

—American Planning Association Web site

<http://www.planning.org/info/whatis.htm>

ORGANIZATION NAME: American Planning Association (APA)

ESTABLISHED: Created by merging the American Institute of Planners (est. 1917) and the American Society of Planning Officials (est. 1934)

PRINCIPAL PUBLICATIONS: Journal of the American Planning Association and Planning

MEMBERSHIP: 30,000 members, including practicing planners, officials, and citizens involved with urban and rural planning issues.

PURPOSE: APA is organized to advance the art and science of planning and to foster the activity of planning—physical, economic, and social—at the local, regional, state, and national levels. Its objective is to contribute to public well-being by developing communities and environments that meet the needs of people and society more effectively. Planners’ ethical responsibilities include fostering meaningful citizen participation in planning decisions and protecting the integrity of the natural environment and the heritage of the built environment. <http://www.planning.org/>

Endangered Species, Habitat Protection, and Sustainability

The APA Policy Guide on Endangered Species and Habitat Protection <http://www.planning.org/govt/endanger.htm> states that protecting natural system functions. . . is critical to the support of human, animal and plant populations and recommends a proactive approach to protect natural communities. It states further that the preservation and enhancement of wildlife and its habitat cannot be distinguished from preservation of human habitat and so is a core function of government. The policy guide lists ten specific policies endorsed by APA toward these ends.

The APA Policy Guide on Planning for Sustainability ‹http://www.planning.org/govt/sustdvpg.htm› relates physical, social, and economic patterns of human development to a definition of sustainability that includes communities as good places to live; societal values of individual liberty and democracy; diversity of the natural environment; and the ability of natural systems to provide life-supporting services. The guide lists social and biophysical factors that limit sustainability and provides a strategy for participatory planning that integrates environmental, economic, and social goals and actions.

BOX 1-8. Architecture

ORGANIZATION NAME: American Institute of Architects (AIA)

ESTABLISHED: 1857

PRINCIPAL PUBLICATIONS: Architectural Record (affiliated with AIA) and Architecture, among many other journals.

MEMBERSHIP: 66,500 members.

PURPOSE: The mission of AIA is to serve its members, advance their value, and improve the quality of the built environment. To this end, AIA serves architects and their clients by promoting ethical, educational, and practice standards for the profession and by advocating excellence in design, defined here but not restricted to aesthetics, functionality, constructability, and cost effectiveness (Aligning the Institute for the Millennium, <http://www.e-architect.com>).

Sustainable Design

The 1993 Declaration of Interdependence for a Sustainable Future of AIA and UIA (International Union of Architects) called on architects to place environmental and social sustainability at the core of their practices and professional responsibilities. Toward this end, AIA has taken the position that the sustainable redevelopment of the built environment must begin as rapidly as possible. This will include designing buildings to be minimal consumers, and even generators, of energy and other resources; using building materials that have a benign impact on the environment throughout their life cycle; constructing buildings with internal environments that are health-giving and inspiring; arranging buildings so they foster community; developing urban areas and regions so they have natural environments within walking distance of every residence; and developing the infrastructure of transportation, utilities, and communications to enhance human scale community, and so that the automobile is optional for most people, most of the time. <http://www.e-architect.com/pia/cote/AIA-COTE/main/hlth_bld.asp>

One important arena for building common ground in design and ecology, for example, would be developing an understanding of health that integrates ecological health and human health. In ecology, health has most often been thought of from the standpoint of biodiversity and sustainability (Chapter 13), whereas landscape design in its early formulations included human health as one of its core concerns through civic design. A more unified concept of health than either discipline has embraced to date might conceive of human health in ecological terms, and in ways that dispel the illusion that we and our bodies are somehow separate from ecological realities. To this end, Steingraber and Hill (Chapter 8) propose that health encompasses (1) relationships among living bodies, (2) relationships among processes and organisms within living bodies, and (3) relationships between living bodies and the physical earth.

We realize that many designers and planners want to believe that their work already has positive affects on both cultural well-being and ecological health. But are we doing enough? The authors we worked with in this book generally shared the belief that the design professions, and their educational programs, are not sufficiently committed to understanding and sustaining ecological health. To get real, design and planning education must embrace ecological knowledge as deeply as it does cultural knowledge. This is not to imply that designers must become ecologists or vice versa. Rather, the education of each must be grounded in a framework that unifies ecological and cultural ways of knowing. As Joan Nassauer (Chapter 9) points out, design is cultural action that structures ecosystems. We believe that design and planning education must be steeped in knowledge of how humans, as biological, social, and spiritual beings, inhabit a world filled with myriad other species, a world that is maintained and changing through crucial biophysical processes often invisible to the immediate senses.

In David Orr’s (2001) words, ecological designers should aim to cause no ugliness, human or ecological, somewhere else or at some later time. As every designer knows, what is ugly is a matter of opinion. But we know Orr’s work well enough to believe he did not mean it in a superficial or arbitrary manner but rather with deep respect for the beauty of life. He calls for responsible design in space and time, and in human and nonhuman terms that have deep implications for how we act as members of what Aldo Leopold named the land community. We argue that to meet this charge we must move beyond separate visions for humans and nature, guided by the recognition that humans are a key species in contemporary earth ecosystems and the premise that cultural well-being and ecological integrity are intimately linked. Further, we advocate a vision of community that is founded in diversity and that explicitly includes consideration for the intrinsic values of all species and for cultural, social, racial, gender, and intergenerational equity. Social and human justice should not be divorced from biological justice.

To reach these higher standards for design, new approaches are needed in both education and practice. We must collaborate more deeply with applied ecologists. We must find ways to interpret and apply new understandings from ecological science in physical planning and landscape design. We must understand the implications of our work for both social equity and ecological sustainability. And we must heal the historical schisms that have developed between practitioners who base their design work on artistic principles and those who look for a basis in scientific principles.

A working knowledge of design and planning processes is also essential to the emerging fields of applied ecology, if they are to translate the essentially descriptive and predictive knowledge of science into normative prescriptions for land conservation and development. Collaboration is also essential to their success. We should work together to build shared knowledge among people who are learning to restore ecological systems, people who are trained in the rigorous rules of testing and evidence that have shaped science, and people skilled in articulating and responding to human needs and aspirations.

Designers, however, have a longer record of considering the relevance of ecology to their work than ecologists have for considering the relevance of human cultural action to theirs. It is only recently that the practice of prescribing spatially explicit landscape futures has assumed a prominent role in ecology. While the fields of restoration ecology and landscape ecology have been jointly developed by designers, planners, and ecologists, among others, this collaborative relationship has not been prominent in other applied ecologies. Notably, those writing about partnerships needed for conservation biology and ecosystem management rarely mention a role for designers and physical planners, even when they offer wide-ranging lists of needed disciplines (e.g., Grumbine 1994; Meffe and Carroll 1997; Jacobson and McDuff 1998; Kohm et al. 2000). In part, this omission may be due to what Howett (1998) characterizes as the difference between the mission of landscape design and the manner in which it is carried out in everyday practice, where it is heavily influenced by a market-based economy and the politics of multiple uses on public lands. This frequent omission of the design fields from ecologists’ lists of necessary collaborators raises important questions that the design professions must face for their future in public practice (Chapter 5).

Teaching collaborative skills is as necessary as teaching new knowledge in designers’ and ecologists’ efforts to integrate fragmented understanding of how landscapes function as both ecological and cultural places.² To create a living bridge between design and ecology requires more than tweaking the margins of their respective educational curricula. It requires a deep reconceptualization of how designers, planners, and ecologists conceive of humans as members of Earth ecosystems. If we don’t get real by tracking the ways in which humans affect those ecosystems, using consistent monitoring of built designs to detect failures and retrofitting them to improve their performance, we are teaching no more than good intentions. And good intentions alone will not address the problems we have created.

Following the Shire Conference, we reflected on the tremendous energy and sense of imperative brought by the participants. How could we encapsulate the pragmatic, ethical, and philosophical issues raised by our need to get real about the ecological performance of designed landscapes? What kind of transformation is needed to move from design with nature to a design that includes humans in nature? As editors, we decided that the term landscape realism captured much of what we desired. Realism, in our usage, is not a philosophical position that claims there is only one true reality; rather, in the sense of the artistic movement of social realism, it is the position that the diversity of life forms and lived experience matters and must be addressed in designing landscapes. This form of realism is necessary for the creative synthesis of human culture and ecological processes, and of science and art, that we envision. We offer the idea solely as a potential, knowing that it remains for future dialogues to determine what new words are truly needed.

Gardens and Scaffolding: Metaphors for Reenvisioning Design

Olmsted’s founding vision of landscape architecture was that it would involve a melding of artistic, environmental, and social goals. Yet the field has experienced recurring schisms between proponents of art and proponents of science, and in the prioritization of beauty and function (Howett 1998). Even those who have advocated ecological priorities in design have asserted different roles for science. Consider the characterizations of design by McHarg or Garrett Eckbo as preeminently guided by science, in contrast to Olmsted and others who saw design as an imaginative art informed by science, an art that harnesses daring and original leaps of. . . insight. . . to express the mystery that lies at the heart of the human/nature dialectic (Howett 1998, p. 90).

How can we envision new relationships between science and art, and ecology and design? James Corner (1997) argues that metaphors are an important source of visions for the future and that they are essential to imagining a future in which design and ecology enjoy a closer relationship. We agree, and note that the metaphors that have recurred frequently in the language of landscape architecture may offer the greatest potential for imagining its future. For example, we find that the metaphor of the garden can encourage shared understanding between designers and ecologists. In Chapter 2 of this book, Anne Spirn proposes that the garden, as a well-tended region, is useful, both literally and metaporically, in working out a new relationship with nature. Similarly, Dan Janzen, a prominent ecologist, has also called attention to the potential of the garden. Janzen is a well-known and provocative tropical biologist who has devoted himself to protecting the extraordinary and endangered biodiversity of the tropics. In a recent article in Science, he asks how we can secure the enormity of natural diversity in an increasingly human-dominated world. His answer? In the wildland garden as an unruly extension of the human genome (Janzen 1998, p.