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Landscape and Urban Planning 106 (2012) 221– 229

Contents lists available at SciVerse ScienceDirect

Landscape and Urban Planning

jou rn al h om epa ge: www.elsev ier .com/ locate / landurbplan

erspective Essay

andscape as medium and method for synthesis in urban ecological design

oan Iverson Nassauer ∗

chool of Natural Resources and Environment, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48103, USA

r t i c l e i n f o

rticle history:eceived 20 March 2012eceived in revised form 26 March 2012ccepted 26 March 2012vailable online 4 May 2012

a b s t r a c t

“Landscape” refers both to a conceptual field that examines how humans affect geographic space and toreal places, and the word has both analytical and experiential implications. Pairing the analytical and theexperiential enables landscape to be a catalyst for synthesis in science and for insight in urban ecologicaldesign. Emphasizing that science is fundamental to ecological design, this essay broadly interprets urbanecological design to include intentional change of landscapes in cities, their megaregions, and resourcehinterlands. The essay offers two laws and two related principles for employing landscape as a medium

eywords:ynthesislanningustainabilitycenarioisualization

and a method for urban ecological design. The laws observe that landscapes integrate environmentalprocesses and that landscapes are visible. Two related principles explain how these inherent character-istics can be used to effect sustain ability by using landscape as a medium for synthesis and in a methodthat invites creative invention.

© 2012 Elsevier B.V. Open access under CC BY-NC-ND license.

ransdisciplinary

Landscape is not scenery; it is not a political unit. . .it is neversimply a natural space, a feature of the natural environment; it isalways artificial, always synthetic, always subject to sudden orunpredictable change. . .[Landscape] is where the slow, naturalprocesses of growth and maturity and decay are deliberatelyset aside and history is substituted. A landscape is where wespeed up or retard or divert the cosmic program and imposeour own. . . There are many who say that the salvation of [thelandscape] depends on our relinquishing this power to alter theflow of time and on our returning to a more natural order. Butthe new ordering of time should affect not only nature, it shouldaffect ourselves. It promises us a new kind of history, a new,more responsive social order, and ultimately a new landscape.–John Brinckerhoff Jackson. Discovering the VernacularLandscape (1984, pp. 156–157).

. Introduction

More than 25 years ago Jackson (1984) described landscape ashe field where humans and nature joust for time. Jackson’s insightrew out of his study of vernacular landscapes, which he identifieds the product of “local custom, pragmatic adaptation to circum-tances, and unpredictable mobility” (p. xii). By characterizing the

andscape as “where we speed up or retard or divert the cosmic pro-ram and impose our own” and calling for a “new ordering of time”p. 157), he underscored his claim that humans make all landscapes

∗ Tel.: +1 734 763 9893.E-mail address: nassauer@umich.edu

169-2046 © 2012 Elsevier B.V. ttp://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.landurbplan.2012.03.014

Open access under CC BY-NC-ND license.

– not just the places that we immediately recognize as designed.More importantly, he pointed the way toward a new kind of mak-ing, one in which humans anticipate the social and environmentalimplications of our incessant attempts to adjust nature and adjustto nature. We now admit that we have remade nature, irretrievablyand ominously. However, Jackson concluded with the promise of “anew kind of history” (p. 157) that affects not only nature, but our-selves. In this essay, I describe how landscape can be the mediumas well as the method for design that aims toward that new kind ofhistory.

As defined by Jackson, landscape refers to both a conceptualfield that examines how humans affect geographic space, and toliteral settings: real places. I follow Jackson in claiming both theanalytical and experiential implications of the word, and this essaydescribes how it is the pairing of the experiential and the analyticalin landscape that enables it to be a catalyst for synthesis in scienceand for insight in urban ecological design.

Urban ecological design is the subject of this essay because it epit-omizes the inherent contradictions and potentials of landscapesmade by people. Ecological is the pivotal term in the phrase. Thestruggle to understand nature adequately to intelligently intervene,since we inevitably will intervene, underpins Jackson’s declarationthat “. . .the new ordering of time should affect not only nature,it should affect ourselves” (p. 157). This essay rests on the beliefthat science is fundamental to intelligent intervention, and eco-logical refers broadly to the socio-environmental sciences that can

provide knowledge to inform action. The term design is used tomean “intentional landscape change” (Nassauer & Opdam, 2008, p.636) and encompasses change affected by design professions likeengineering, landscape architecture, and planning; change affected

222 J.I. Nassauer / Landscape and Urban Planning 106 (2012) 221– 229

Fig. 1. Landscape patterns are the basis for what people directly perceive about environmental phenomena of all scales, and human experience of landscapes prompts humana

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y real estate development or natural resource management; andost importantly, change that stems from the “local custom, prag-atic adaptation to circumstances, and unpredictable mobility”

Jackson, 1984, p. xii) of people living their lives. Urban is usedere to refer not only to cities but to their megaregions which areightly intermeshed in infrastructure, trade, and travel patterns, asell as their hinterlands that feed the global supply chain (Dewar

Epstein, 2007). By this definition, in the century when the humanopulation has become predominantly urban, all landscapes cane considered urban to the degree that they are managed to pro-ide ecosystem services. While ecosystems in cities obviously haveeen radically changed for human purposes, agriculture, forestry,ining, and transportation landscapes are arguably equally urban,

ven when they appear to be countryside (Cronon, 1992).Since the establishment of this journal, landscape planning

as evolved from addressing rural landscapes (Weddle, 1974), toncompassing urban design and planning (Rodiek, 1992; Spirn,986) and doing so in the context of landscape ecology (Rodiek,995). Its current scope recognizes that understanding and man-ging landscape change to achieve and protect ecosystem servicesequires not only science but ecological design, which aims to syn-hetically achieve ecological, social, and economic goals (Nassauer,

ang, & Dayrell, 2009; Palmer et al., 2004). Cities, metropolitanreas, megaregions, and the urban support landscapes of agricul-ure, forestry, mining, and transportation all are the legitimatebjects of urban ecological design in support of “a new kind ofistory.”

Perhaps because landscape does have both analytical andxperiential connotations, it is a word used by many differentisciplines, which have given it different specific, sometimes con-radictory, meanings. The resonance and adaptability of the wordandscape also makes it vulnerable to misuse. Spare parts are dis-arded when it is butchered for consumption, cutting land fromcape. But even left intact, particular uses of the word can triv-alize its more complete meaning. The ecological connotations

f landscape are trivialized when landscape ecology is employeds only an implicit metaphor. Its esthetic connotations are triv-alized when landscape esthetic experiences are identified withaguely defined spiritual values or compartmentalized as only a

part of outdoor recreation. When images of landscapes as seenby people in everyday life are considered to be mere illustrations,the power of human experience to motivate landscape change isgrossly underestimated. And in vernacular speech, landscape isoften trivialized as a verb, meaning to act on the landscape byconstruction or maintenance. Jackson defines “vernacular land-scapes” very differently, to include all the spaces at all scales that liebetween obviously designed places, which Jackson dubbed “politi-cal landscapes.” Vernacular landscapes constitute the global matrix,embodying a complex array of human intentions that are resilienteven where politics and planning fail. And understanding vernac-ular landscapes in this broad sense suggests how landscape can bea medium and method for synthesis–among different inhabitants,disciplines, and forms of practice. All landscapes (whether conceptsabout geographic space or literal places) are visible spatial entities,and this simple characteristic is the basis for a powerfully practi-cal analytical and synthetic device for bringing ecological insight tourban design.

Landscape is a visible and noticeable artifact of often unnoticedand sometimes invisible natural and societal processes. Becauselandscapes are visible, landscape can bring different people into acommon experience of environmental systems. Across all scales ofenvironmental phenomena, the scale at which landscape patternsare perceived by humans, the “perceptible realm,” is decisive forlandscape change (Fig. 1) (Gobster, Nassauer, Daniel, & Fry, 2007).This landscape scale links everyday experience with other envi-ronmental phenomena that are not directly perceived, from globalatmospheric processes to submicroscopic processes of soil chem-istry. The perceptible realm is where humans imagine, negotiate,and decide about design, intentional landscape change.

Ecological design of vernacular landscapes calls for innovation,applied invention, a prerequisite for the “new kind of history” thatJackson foretold. Rather than attempting to return to a more nat-ural order, mimicking nature, or compromising between humandesires and the limits of nature, ecological design invites the

invention and realization of new, resilient landscapes that visiblyembody societal values, thoughtfully incorporate our best knowl-edge of environmental processes, and are adaptable to surprisingchange. To achieve this, ecological design must employ ecology not

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erely as a metaphor (Pickett, Cadenasso, & Grove, 2004), but asn analytical engine that propels designers to work with dynamicnvironmental and human phenomena, anticipate surprises, andormulate synthetic normative approaches to intentional landscapehange. It must grow from knowledge that integrates science andractice to produce landscapes that synthesize apparently distinctocietal and environmental functions (Carpenter et al., 2009; Hill,009; Palmer et al., 2005) and anticipate the future (Meinke et al.,006).

Ecological design should focus on vernacular landscapesecause places that do not bear the stamp of professional designersccupy the largest part of the terrestrial planet, including a grow-ng proportion of megaregions. For example, suburban and exurbanandscapes (often summarized under the pejorative label sprawl)re the fastest growing land use in America. Squatter cities are theredominant type defining many sprawling cities in the developingorld. Agricultural landscapes, which occupy more than 40% of the

uropean Union and more than 30% of the contiguous Americantates, are arguably the largest urban land use, since the functionalcosystems of cities extend to agricultural watersheds that provideotable water and other ecosystem services, and the supply chainsf urban food processing and consumption begin in agriculturalandscapes. Such vernacular landscapes are designed in the sensef being intentionally changed, often by people who are pragmat-cally using what they know to make a living, to take care of whathey own, or to manage the quality of life in their communities.hese landscapes are only indirectly affected by formal design deci-ions; they are not part of Jackson’s “political landscape.” However,rofessional design and science can affect vernacular landscapes ifhey employ knowledge of “local custom, pragmatic adaption to cir-umstances, and unpredictable mobility” as valuable informationor science and practice.

For cities to be resilient socio-environmental systems in theidst of global change, landscape change that is managed by pro-

essionals should achieve vernacular status. This is a formidableoal. Even integrative science that describes functional character-stics of healthy urban ecosystems (e.g., Brauman, Daily, Duarte, &

ooney, 2007; Pickett et al., 2001) describes ecosystem servicesn ways that may seem irrelevant to people who make vernacularandscapes (Peters, 2010). Making human-dominated landscapesesilient requires translating science into a vernacular. Landscapes a medium and method for this translation.

. Two landscape laws and two principles

To show how landscape can be used for synthesis science andcological design, I offer two laws of landscape function and twoelated landscape principles. The two laws state the obvious: thatandscapes integrate environmental processes and that landscapesre visible. The two principles explain how landscape character-stics can be used to effect sustainability: The Landscape Mediumrinciple demonstrates that the process of designing a shared land-cape can synthesize disparate perceptions of a landscape and itsunctions. The Landscape Method principle pragmatically employshe imaginative artifice of design to produce potential innovationshat anticipate the future.

.1. Landscapes and integration of environmental processes

Landscape Law 1: integration of environmental processes. Differentenvironmental processes operate in and through the same land-

scape, and each landscape inherently integrates these processes.

Landscapes inherently integrate different processes, indica-ors, and design goals (Dramstad & Fjellstad, 2011; Palmer et al.,

Planning 106 (2012) 221– 229 223

2005; Swanwick, 2009). From the standpoint of human expe-rience, Termorshuizen and Opdam (2009) see such a strongrelationship between landscapes and ecosystem services that theyrecommend adopting the characterization “landscape services.”They argue that this could make knowledge about ecosystemservices relevant at more local scales, where people make con-crete decisions about landscape change. This law suggests thatthe common sense of 19th century naturalists and geogra-phers who found scientific insight by field investigation in thelandscape is relevant for addressing local and global environ-mental challenges in the 21st century. 21st century science isin search of a way to integrate methods and conclusions fromdiverse specialized sciences, and a focus on landscapes is oneapproach.

Because they inherently integrate the effects of fragmentedanalyses and decisions, landscapes can confront society with“unintended effects,” consequences of human actions that do notanticipate synthetic properties. Transportation systems, economicdevelopment policy, housing technology and policy, agriculturaltechnology and policy, water infrastructure systems, construc-tion techniques, and even ecological restoration efforts are allreplete with such unintended effects. For example, U.S. federalpolicy promotes the use of “smart growth” techniques includ-ing distributed stormwater management systems (a.k.a., greeninfrastructure) on urban brownfield sites through the U.S. GreenBuilding Council’s “LEED-ND” (Leadership in Energy and Envi-ronmental Design for Neighborhood Development) system (U.S.Environmental Protection Agency, 2010). However, green infras-tructure systems typically enhance connectivity between surfaceand groundwater, and brownfield sites often have contaminatedgroundwater that is not remediated as part of the redevelop-ment process. Consequently, brownfield redevelopment that is notattentive to the synthetic properties of green infrastructure withcontaminated groundwater could unintentionally cause the migra-tion of contaminants to surface ecosystems. In contrast, designand planning processes that recognize how landscapes integrateenvironmental processes can identify advantageous synergies. Inanother example related to green infrastructure, the City of NewYork recognized that maintenance of distributed stormwater sys-tems was essential to sustainability, and found that rights-of-waythat are already maintained by the city (as part of the transportationsystem) would provide an armature to ensure adequate mainte-nance of green infrastructure (PlaNYC, 2008). The Landscape Lawof Integration of Environmental Processes contributes to findingbeneficial synergies and avoiding unintended effects of landscapechange.

A corollary of this law is that: Landscapes function at nested scales.This corollary is well-known and thoroughly examined as partof landscape ecology (e.g., Allen & Hoekstra, 1987), and it shouldbe equally well-known by anyone determining the boundaries oflandscapes to be considered in urban ecological design. Allen andHoekstra’s (1992) recommendation to always think up one scaleand down one scale from the function of central interest remainsa good rule for experimenting with the relationship betweenenvironmental processes and landscapes at different scales. Forexample, green infrastructure must be designed as a response toits location within a functional watershed, but also with attentionto subtleties of surface slope and texture of the landscape surfaceat scales so fine as to demand that some final design decisions bemade in the field, at 1′ = 1′ scale (Hill, 2009; Walsh et al., 2005). Akey challenge for ecological design is to make the hierarchies ofecological processes (e.g., watersheds, materials life cycles, habi-

tats) integral to the multiple governance hierarchies (e.g., federal,state, counties, watershed districts, school districts, municipali-ties) that affect ecological systems (Innes, Booher, & Di Vittorio,2010).

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.2. Visible landscapes and common experience

Landscape Law 2: Common experience of visible characteristics.Landscapes are visible in everyday experience and can be madevisible in spatial representations. This makes it possible for differ-ent people to have the same experience of visible characteristicsof a given landscape.

This law emphasizes that because landscapes can be seen, differ-nt people can point to characteristics that they notice and discusshe different meanings those characteristics convey. What the char-cteristics mean and how they are valued depends on many aspectsf context, and the complexity of landscape meaning and value haseen richly explored (e.g., Spirn, 1998; Treib, 1995). However, this

aw establishes that with reference to visible characteristics, differ-nt meanings and values of can be described and compared, makingynthesis possible.

Landscapes are visible evidence of the integral natural and cul-ural processes that produce and change dynamic environments.or some scientists or other knowledgeable viewers, landscapeppearance may be directly linked to environmental or culturalrocesses that are not immediately apparent to most people. Forost people, however, the link between what landscapes mean

nd how they look is self-evident. It is part of everyday life. Land-cape pattern is what people notice and change as they remakehe environment to suit their needs; it defines a scale at whicheople intentionally intervene to change landscapes, a scale of ver-acular design. Paying attention to what people notice about the

andscape and what it means to them in everyday life will help sci-ntists, designers, and policy-makers reach synthetic conclusionshat are useful in affecting change (Nassauer, 1992; Termorshuizen

Opdam, 2009).Examining and designing a single, shared landscape engages

roups with different languages and cultures (design and science,cience and society, policymakers and local stakeholders) in grap-ling with the same object (Nassauer & Corry, 2004). While weight “see” the landscape through different disciplinary or experi-

ntial frameworks, we can point to the same locations or relevantharacteristics in a landscape or in a spatial representation of theandscape, and describe what we see there. Used in this way, land-cape functions as a boundary object as Star (2010) defined it: aaterial or organizational structure that allows different people

o work together without having achieved consensus but ratherooperating by iteratively “tacking back and forth” between per-pectives that refer to properties of the boundary object and thatre more or less well-understood by different participants (Star,010).

The visibility of landscape and its faithfulness of representationake it possible for different people to refer to what they see as they

teratively tack back and forth, literally or conceptually pointing toifferent characteristics of the landscape, and progressing towardaving a common experience and a common basis for decidingbout landscape change. This potential has been widely demon-trated (e.g., Bohnet & Smith, 2007; Hulse, Branscomb, & Payne,004; Lewis & Sheppard, 2006; Sheppard, 2005). In an urban exam-le from my own work, all neighborhood residents were familiarith the small two-block area (approximately 20 acres or 8 ha) ofaplewood, MN, USA, where my team designed rainwater gardens

n 1995–1996. The small size of the project area and neighbors’amiliarity with it made it possible for designers and residents tohare a visible landscape, pointing to particular locations and char-cteristics that everyone could see, until we reached a common

onception of what the landscape was and could be (Nassauer,997). If landscape representations offer apparently realistic visualxperiences, representation can advance synthesis by making novelut relevant landscapes immediately comprehensible as well. In

Planning 106 (2012) 221– 229

a second example, which explored potential ecosystem servicesof exurban landscapes, we examined landscape innovations thathadn’t yet been constructed and were somewhat unfamiliar to thehomeowners who might adopt them. Faithfulness of representa-tion was important to help people see these novel landscape types(Fig. 2), and we aimed for photorealistic representations that accu-rately simulated the appearance of the future landscapes (Nassaueret al., 2009).

Following from these two landscape laws, are two principlesstating that landscape can be used as a medium for synthesisand a method to promote innovation. These principles articulateJackson’s assertion that landscapes are “always artificial, alwayssynthetic.” Both the landscape medium principle and the landscapemethod principle employ design, intentional landscape change.From Jackson’s perspective, design is both a shared artifact ofhuman interaction with the environment and the making of a newkind of history. Design has inherent potential to produce innova-tions, applied inventions, and, consequently, designs can be treatedas experiments, hypotheses about interactions between humanintentions and ecological processes (Nassauer, 1999; Pickett et al.,2004). This is important because it demonstrates how the land-scape medium and method can bring innovation into the analyticalframework of science, acting as a catalyst for communicationbetween science and practice (Nassauer & Opdam, 2008). The Land-scape Medium principle demonstrates that because landscape canbe a boundary object shared by different experts and stakeholders,it is a medium by which they can synthesize disparate perceptionsof the landscape and its functions and move toward a commonconception for design. The Landscape Method principle uses thelandscape medium, but it employs the imaginative potential ofdesign to invent alternative future landscapes, and it focuses onadvancing innovation by comparing and assessing these differentalternatives for a particular place or for a particular type of place.

2.3. The landscape medium for synthesis

• Landscape Principle 1. The landscape medium. Because landscapesare visible and inherently integrative, landscape can be a mediumthat synthesizes diverse environmental functions and humanperspectives. A design process that uses landscape to engagepeople with diverse perspectives in manipulating this sharedmedium can promote synthesis and advance synthesis science.

Any landscape is simultaneously seen and valued in many differ-ent ways. As a geographic entity with specific location and extent, asingle landscape simultaneously embodies numerous biogeochem-ical and ecological processes, is a home to many species – includinghumans, may produce materials or market goods, and is the subjectof laws and legal inquiries, capital valuations and related financialtransactions, study by scientists of many disciplines, study by schol-ars of the humanities, inspiration for artists, and manipulation bydesigners and builders of many disciplines. In fact, as Meinig (1979)famously observed, there are (at least) ten ways to view the samelandscape – as nature, habitat, artifact, system, problem, wealth,ideology, history, place, and esthetic. Meinig asserted that:

. . .even though we gather together and look in the same direc-tion at the same instant, we will not – we cannot – see the samelandscape. We may certainly agree that we will see many of thesame elements – houses, roads, trees, hills – in terms of suchdenotations as number, form, dimension, and color, but suchfacts take on meaning only through association; they must be

fitted together according to some coherent body of ideas. Thuswe confront the central problem: any landscape is composednot only of what lies before our eyes but what lies within ourheads. (Meinig, 1979, pp. 33–34)

J.I. Nassauer / Landscape and Urban Planning 106 (2012) 221– 229 225

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However, this principle asserts that by being attached tohe same reference object, a landscape, different views can bexchanged, and that a design process can move that exchangeoward synthesis in relationship to some question or problem.

Sciences, the design professions, and vernacular landscapehange operate almost independently, describing and chang-ng the same landscape in ways that may be only incidentallyelated, inadequately understood, or contradictory – and some-imes destructive. In metropolitan areas, development typicallyndermines habitat values, reduces water quality, and increaseser capita emissions of greenhouse gases. The ecosystem servicesf a landscape may or may not be immediately apparent becauseany ecological processes are not visible to the naked eye or can-

ot be interpreted by those who are not knowledgeable about

hat they can see (Hein, Vankoppen, Degroot, & Vanierland, 2006;assauer, 1992). The landscape medium principle employs the

andscape as a medium to align what is visible and may havemmediately apparent value for some, with what is invisible or not

ere otherwise somewhat unfamiliar to homeowners.

widely understood, the ecosystem services supported by a land-scape (Nassauer, 1997).

While different disciplines conceptualize the meaning and valueof a landscape in different ways, and often different membersof a community disagree about proposed landscape changes, thisprinciple emphasizes that landscape is a medium that facilitatessynthesis. Establishing the grain, extent, and boundaries of a land-scape can be contentious, depending upon the values and functionsof interest: for example, watersheds at different scales in a hierar-chy, or political boundaries compared with watersheds. But oncethe landscape of interest has been agreed upon, people with verydifferent purposes have a basis for discussing the same landscape,even though their immediate specific conceptions, interests, andexperiences may differ. If a design process approaches the land-

scape as a synthetic medium, scientists and stakeholders whomay perceive different functions and services when they see alandscape, can experiment with manipulating the landscape as acommon material. To manipulate this common material together,

226 J.I. Nassauer / Landscape and Urban

Fig. 3. Evaluative responses to place-specific designs can suggest how generalpattern rules or best management practices might be improved and also suggestr

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hey must address gaps and contradictions among their distincterspectives.

Some key hallmarks of a transdisciplinary (Fry, 2001) designrocess are elaborated below. These are: inclusion of diverse con-eptions, development of a shared reference or boundary objecta landscape), design by iteration, breadth of conception, andpecificity and accessibility of the design product. The resultingransdisciplinary landscapes are synthetic products of diverse per-pectives.

Include diverse disciplines or stakeholders to design a single land-cape together. Since only one landscape pattern can be imposed on

given landscape at a particular time, the differences, incompletenderstandings, misunderstandings, and synergies among diverseisciplines’ or diverse stakeholders’ conceptions and values canmerge and be rectified in a landscape design process. Whetherhe design of the landscape is merely selecting the location andoundaries of a place of interest, establishing the relevant charac-eristics of a real place, or establishing the relevant characteristicsf landscape type more conceptual than real, having diverse par-icipants agree on a single pattern forces each to consider how theunctions of interest to them can be rectified with other functionshat they would not have otherwise considered (Berkes, 2009).

Develop a shared reference or boundary object, a common land-cape, represented by a shared data set. How diverse landscapeonceptions are rectified depends on the overarching purpose ofhe design: how the landscape must function in the context of aarticular research, policy, planning, or construction project, andow it inherently does function in the context of resident commu-ities and socio-environmental processes that may not be explicitlyddressed in the initial definition of a project. In a particular project,hared landscape data might serve to support models of many dif-erent environmental functions and models of different economicnd cultural values (e.g., Mahmoud et al., 2009). It might help policyakers, developers, or the ultimate inhabitants of a place anticipate

r affect landscape change (Hulse et al., 2004). When a commonandscape is employed as a boundary object between science and

ractice, it can promote collaboration between these realms (Fig. 3).esigning landscapes together across diverse participants is notnly a means of engagement, it is a means of mutual learning and

Planning 106 (2012) 221– 229

rectification of differences, at least within the frame of the selectedlandscape (Albert, Zimmermann, Kneilling, & von Haaren, 2012).In some cases where community visioning is a critical element oflandscape change, literal scale models of the local landscape – largeenough so that local people can use their own hands to experimentfuture alternatives – may be the appropriate medium (e.g., Bohnet,2010).

Once a landscape is designed (selected, constructed, or rep-resented in shared field experiences, images, and data sets),perhaps the most direct way that the landscape medium integratesdisparate conceptions of landscape is by presenting different dis-ciplines, professions, and stakeholders with the same landscaperepresentations and shared data sets, the same image or map ofa specific place. Landscapes can be represented by precise datathat support different assessments by different groups of the samelandscape (Hulse et al., 2004; Nassauer & Corry, 2004). Not alldata will be shared, but a foundation of shared data helps to pro-mote synthesis, ensure meaningful integrated assessments andadaptive management of a landscape, and set up the potentialuse of the landscape method to generate alternative futures, asdescribed in Principle 2. High resolution spatial data in fine classifi-cation schemes for land cover/land use, soils, relief, and surface andgroundwater data are typical fundamentals to represent the sharedlandscape in ecological design processes. For example, as partof the Baltimore Ecosystem Study, Zhou, Troy, and Grove (2008)employed 1 m resolution land cover data to examine the relation-ship between lawn appearance and lawn fertilization practices byindividual households across two small urban watersheds. Simi-larly, our team employed 1 m data representing 24 classes of landcover in our integrated assessment of alternative futures for twosmall Corn Belt agricultural watersheds (Nassauer, Santelmann, &Scavia, 2007; Santelmann et al., 2001).

While different investigations query and select from a singledata set in different ways and augment it with more specializeddata in different experiments or assessments, the data set in itsentirety inherently represents a shared conception of the land-scape. This is a starting point for noticing potential conflicts andcontradictions, for finding synergies, and for conducting an inte-grated assessment of different alternatives for future landscapechange (Scavia & Nassauer, 2007).

Design a common landscape iteratively. The landscape mediuminvites iterative redesign, as participants critically examine result-ing landscape patterns and compositions and “tack back and forth”sharing their different perspectives on what they see in the field,in maps, or in other images. Reviewing alternatives as landscaperepresentations, different disciplines or stakeholder groups occupya meeting ground for identifying their differences and integrat-ing their knowledge. Errors, omissions, and ideas for innovationcan emerge even before a formal assessment or design of land-scape alternatives (Fig. 4). The design process elicits participants’responses to place-specific designs, whether these designs are onlyproposals or fully constructed and inhabited places, and theseresponses are the basis for group discussion, negotiation, and learn-ing. This learning can take the form of revising rules of thumb forpattern design based on place specific response alone, new policyideas, or new socio-environmental research questions (Fig. 3).

Initiate the design process with relevant criteria for possible land-scape functions. The emergent common landscape may embodymultiple ecosystem services and multiple societal values thatmight not otherwise intentionally occur in the same place, or thatmight otherwise be at odds with each other in a single landscape.This emergent common landscape will be accessible to integrated

ceptualized with an awareness of those functions, at a scale that isrelevant to the science, policy, or design questions at hand (Doering,Kling, Nassauer, & Scavia, 2007; Termorshuizen & Opdam, 2009).

J.I. Nassauer / Landscape and Urban Planning 106 (2012) 221– 229 227

Fig. 4. An iterative design process in which different conceptions of future landscapes (termed design scenarios in this figure) become increasingly specific as transdisciplinaryg y in a

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Complete the design process with an accessible, replicable, clearlypecified landscape description at the relevant scale. If the syntheticandscape medium is described in ways that are useful to both sci-nce and society (Fig. 3), it supports translation between the twoealms. The landscape description should be sufficient to enablentegrated assessment that includes any relevant environmentalnd societal functions (Scavia & Nassauer, 2007) and to establish aaseline for adaptive management; it should be sufficiently acces-ible to be salient to society; sufficiently clear and replicable toe credible in science; and sufficiently balanced and informed toe legitimate in both science and society (White et al., 2010; Casht al., 2003).

The landscape medium can contribute urban ecological designnowledge to science and make science knowledge applicable torban ecological design. By explicitly promoting synthesis, the

andscape medium broadens scientific conceptions of landscapetructure and function (McAlpine et al., 2010). Especially in cities,here virtually every place functions as part of many different

ocial milieus and environmental systems, the landscape methodnvites science to engage local landscape knowledge and the soci-tal values that often propel urban landscape change. It alsoomplements known advantages of ecosystem management andlace-based studies by bringing specific characteristics of land-capes and the design process into play.

The products can be landscapes that are generalizable patterns,pplicable to many different places of a given type, or designs thatre specific to a place (Fig. 3). The key to making design useful inhis way is to use design of generalizable patterns to link scien-ific knowledge of environmental or societal processes with designroposals to change specific places. Generalizable pattern rulesxplicitly make conceptual connections between the necessaryimplifications of science and the infinite complexity of local soci-tal and environmental characteristics in particular places. Thoseonnections go two ways: allowing science knowledge to affect

ocal landscape change and allowing local knowledge to informuture pattern rules and science questions. In this way, the land-cape medium can powerfully complement adaptive managements a response to landscape change.

precise set of land allocation models and GIS coverage.

2.4. The landscape method and invention

• Principle 2. The landscape method. Because landscape represen-tations can be manipulated as a shared medium, they inviteinvention. They can be employed to imagine and represent alter-native future landscapes: creative design products that embodynovel possibilities, respond to uncertainty, anticipate risk, andpromote innovation.

The landscape method takes the landscape medium one stepfurther to anticipate the future. It employs design process to discovermultiple synthetic design products: landscape inventions, which canengage the sciences, design and policy disciplines, and stakehold-ers in generating and comparing alternative future landscapes. Thismethod invites creative, imaginative transdisciplinary experimen-tation with different possibilities for intentional change towardalternative future landscapes (Nassauer & Corry, 2004; Steinitzet al., 2003; White et al., 2010). The alternatives are based on hypo-thetical circumstances, often termed alternative scenarios, thathelp to anticipate challenges to society and ecosystem services andlead to adaptive innovations (Barton & Haslett, 2007).

Alternative future landscapes are a particular method foremploying alternative scenarios. While alternative scenarioapproaches are familiar to economists and landscape ecologists(e.g., Ahern, 1999) and in the wake of the Millennium Assess-ment have been increasingly employed to anticipate change insocio-environmental systems (Carpenter & Folke, 2006), the alter-native future landscape approach has specific advantages for urbanecological design because it employs the landscape medium andmethod. It always represents alternative futures as landscapes in,spatially explicit representations based on shared data, as discussedin Principle 1. The representations might be models, maps, orimages that demonstrate the implications of the alternative scenar-

ios in a landscape. Such representations are not mere illustrations,nor are they only quantitative outcomes. Rather, they are repre-sentations of integrated processes at a selected relevant landscapescale.

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28 J.I. Nassauer / Landscape and U

The landscape method is fundamentally creative (Ford & Gioia,000; Gilson & Shalley, 2004; Lyle, 1985). It allows transdisciplinaryeams of scientists, policy-makers, and stakeholders to be imagina-ive, speculative, or didactic in their assumptions about landscapehange, design or policy as they iterate through the design processFig. 4) several times, creating a related series of design products,lternative landscape futures. Furthermore, it is a proven meansf engaging stakeholders in affecting landscape change (Mahmoudt al., 2009; Potschin, Klug, & Haines-Young, 2010; Shearer et al.,006).

Like other types of alternative scenarios, alternative futureandscapes require an adequately complete and precise descrip-ion of a baseline or present situation, a number of alternativeuture scenarios, and possible contextual circumstances (e.g., plau-ible future policies or possible changes in technologies or globalnvironmental phenomena) that could connect the baseline withlternative future scenarios (Schoonenboom, 1995). Determinationf whether an alternative future is plausible should account forocietal relevance and significance for ecosystem services ratherhan only calculated probabilities of change from the present toome future state. Using the landscape medium, selected landscapeharacteristics vary among alternatives based on broader scenariossumptions and goals. Landscape characteristics (location, config-ration, composition, and management) are selected because theyre hypothesized to exhibit relevant characteristics of ecological,conomic, or cultural processes. Like other creative processes, theandscape method succeeds best when participants have been fullyngaged in developing initial assumptions and goals for the arrayf scenarios so that these understood by all as a starting point forenerating alternative landscapes. The method is also creative inhe breadth and divergence of landscape conceptions that it pro-

otes; participants should be prepared to welcome ideas that areot part of their discipline or their own experience. Ideas that areovel and might initially seem unlikely should be incorporated aslternatives are generated. Importantly, the landscape method isexibly iterative (Fig. 4), allowing alternatives to adjust and novel

deas to be edited as they are compared with other alternatives inhe context of project goals.

Selecting characteristics of each alternative future landscapepens the way for different groups to describe what natural anduman processes should be represented in the landscape futurese.g., Albert et al., 2012; Hulse et al., 2004). Aspects of processhat may appear to be accounted for in one alternative may bebsent in others. Aiming to take a precautionary stance towardrotecting ecosystem services, some would argue that selectingelevant ecosystem services is first and last a matter of expert judg-ent by scientists who understand the environmental processes

n play. On the other hand, Termorshuizen and Opdam (2009) sug-est that what they term landscape services should be determinedn a community process of selecting ecological functions that theommunity values. Using the landscape method, different alterna-ives can reflect different concerns and values, and observation andssessment of landscape alternatives can suggest common ground.iven a certain set of ecosystem services that exist or are desired

n a landscape, there are many possible landscape patterns thatould embody those services, and the determinative difference maye in which landscape patterns the community values – regard-

ess of whether community members understand their ecosystemervices.

Each alternative landscape is a design product represented by ahared data set that can be used for measuring or modeling relevantnvironmental and societal functions. This enables alternatives to

e compared in an integrated assessment, as described in Prin-iple 1. It also supports adaptive management, complementingnstitutional interventions by giving decision makers and stake-olders shared visible experimental objects, alternative landscapes

Planning 106 (2012) 221– 229

that they can iteratively co-create and compare. Experimentationwith different alternative landscapes allows the design processto incorporate uncertainty, acknowledging that there may bemany different ways to synthesize diverse perspectives and invit-ing landscape innovation in response to imaginative, normative,and surprising possible futures (Liu et al., 2007; Walker, Holling,Carpenter, & Kinzig, 2004).

3. Conclusions

The integrity and visibility of landscapes may be so common-place that their inherent potential to prompt synthetic discoveryhas been ignored or trivialized. J.B. Jackson’s description of thevernacular landscape “where we speed up or retard or divert thecosmic program and impose our own”. . .with the promise of “anew kind of history” jolts us out of the trivial. If we think moreclosely about the landscape and are willing to learn from landscapeecology and landscape design, we may find an approach to urbanecological design that invites imagination and promotes innovationat the same time as it is firmly grounded in scientific inquiry. Thelandscape laws and principles I have offered here are intended toshow that landscape is a powerful conceptual device for syntheticthinking across disciplines in the sciences, design, policy, and prac-tice and for collaboration among experts and stakeholders. It canlink creativity to analysis and scientific knowledge of process withplace-specific design, leading to more broadly anticipatory inquiryin science and more intelligent design. A medium and a method thatlead participants to see and manipulate the same landscape charac-teristics can bring experts in different disciplines and stakeholderswith different experiences to understand the landscape as part ofa system that incorporates many different natural and human pro-cesses, seen or unseen. Looking at extensive regions or specific sitesthrough the landscape medium can focus the perspectives of dis-parate disciplines on the same object, a landscape pattern seenby all. While different viewers are experts in different processes,they are united in paying attention to that pattern. Anticipating thefuture through the landscape method marries science to creativity,nurturing innovation and effective adaptation to changing environ-mental phenomena. Not all answers lie in the landscape, but, if weuse landscape as a medium and a method for synthesis in urbanecological design, we will be able to test a new kind of history bythe way it looks to all of us.

Acknowledgments

Work on this essay was supported by funds from the NationalSocio-Environmental Synthesis Center, a Center funded by NSF(Grant #DBI-1052875) and the University of Maryland. The essaywill appear in a forthcoming Springer Press book: Resilience inUrban Ecology and Design (Pickett, Cadenasso, & McGrath). It bene-fited greatly from the thoughtful critical review of Steward Pickett,Mary Cadenasso, Joshua Newell, Paul Gobster and Wei-Ning Xiang.I sincerely thank them.

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