Landscape and Sustainability

John Benson, Maggie Roe, John Benson, Maggie Roe

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2007
• ISBN:
  9781134137930
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Arquitectura
• Subtopic: Arquitectura general

This unique book addresses the issue of sustainability from the point of view of landscape architecture, dealing with professional practices of planners, designers and landscape managers. This second edition contains updated and new material reflecting developments during the last five years and comprehensively addresses the relationship between landscape architecture and sustainability.

Much in the text is underpinned by landscape ecology, in contrast to the idea of landscape as only appealing to the eye or aspiring cerebrally to be fine art. Landscape and Sustainability establishes that the sustainability agenda needs a new mindset among professionals: the driving question must always be 'is it sustainable?' Developing theory into practice, from the global to the local scale and from issues of policy and planning through to detailed design and implementation and on to long-term maintenance and management, the contributors raise and re-examine a complex array of research, policy and professional issues and agendas to contribute to the necessary ongoing debate about the future of both landscape and sustainability.

1
LANDSCAPE AND SUSTAINABILITY: AN OVERVIEW

Maggie Roe

SUMMARY

This introductory chapter provides an overview of the scope and scale of both landscape and sustainability and sets the scene for what is to follow by sketching out the shape and content of the other chapters in the book.

INTRODUCTION

This book is about landscape, sustainability and the practices of the professions which plan, design and manage landscapes at many scales and in many locations: urban, suburban and rural. The book is aimed to interest and inform professionals and academics who come from a wide range of disciplines including land-use planning, agriculture, forestry, nature conservation and amenity land management. The term ‘landscape’ used here is as broad as the range of those who are now involved in the planning, design and management of landscape. In this understanding we have moved a long way from the definition of landscape as ‘the appearance of the area of land which the eye can see at once’ (Chambers, 1993). Landscape has become an increasingly important cross-disciplinary area, which draws contributions from both arts and science-based subjects including art, literature, ecology, geography and much more. The study of landscape issues is increasingly being funded by both science and arts-based agencies and grant-making bodies which indicates a growing recognition, at many levels, of a focus on ‘landscape’ as a useful way to examine a host of social, ecological and economic issues. Perhaps the most useful is that it provides a holistic and integrated basis for such examination. The terms ‘landscape design’, ‘landscape planning’, ‘landscape management’ and ‘landscape science’ are commonly used to describe the work of professionals who are involved in landscape practice. The terms ‘landscape architect’ and ‘landscape architecture’ are used throughout this book for ease of reference as collective terms for landscape professionals and their practice. This book is aimed at landscape architects and many others who may not consider themselves to be covered by such a term but whose concern is nevertheless with the landscape.

The sustainability/sustainable development terminology has been so much used in academic, professional, political and social circles across many disciplines that it has engendered complaints of overuse and dis-utility. It is now perhaps more common for the word to be left out of projects because it has become ‘tired’ and meaningless through overuse. Of course the problem with this is that the implications for thinking about sustainability are still often ignored or conveniently forgotten – for example, when new housing is built in flood plain areas – so it is imperative to be explicit about the need to think of such issues. There continues to be a particular weakness in the areas of assessment, monitoring and evaluation of so-called sustainable landscape projects and in the integration of science and art in landscape practice.

There are arguments that ‘sustainable development’ (SD) is an oxymoron, like ‘political science’, ‘business ethics’, ‘government organisation’ and ‘military intelligence’. Kristina Hill points out in Chapter 14 that Gro Harlem Bruntland has claimed that SD was an intentional juxtaposition of two irreconcilable notions in order to bring opposing camps to the same conference table. Twenty years on from the Bruntland Report (WCED, 1987) and the Earth Summit in Rio, we can clearly see effects of the thinking that emerged. It is less easy to see how the follow-up Earth Summit in Johannesburg in 2002 has affected our thinking, but looking back, some commentators have suggested that while Rio shaped and legitimised what kind of science was done, Johannesburg challenged how it was done (Potchin and Haines-Young, 2006b). Certainly for those of us who experienced the jamboree of events at Johannesburg, the broadness of the thinking represented there was in itself remarkable and showed how the concept of sustainability had reached out and developed in the intervening years. There was an overt feeling of great energy and enthusiasm from all sorts of ordinary people involved in a myriad of projects generated by sustainability issues. In the UK it is obvious that there are also now many projects and activities that could be described as being rooted in these issues, and there is a growing emphasis on the involvement by ordinary people in such local action, indicating that sustainability thinking has unleashed considerable energy in our own communities as well as those outside the UK.

It is therefore unhelpful to remark that sustainability is a cliché, a stereotypical, hackneyed term used to justify such a bundle of dislocated, contradictory and ill-defined notions, or that the term has lost all value and should be consigned to the dustbin. It is clearly not so, and the continuing interest in landscape and sustainability issues as reflected by a new edition of this book is testament to such thinking. In fact our view, and that of the contributors to this book, is that there is much yet to be said about landscape and sustainability, that ‘landscape’ is a concept par excellence for thinking about sustainability and that landscape professionals do have a significant contribution to make. The aim of this book is therefore to shed light on some of the questions that naturally arise and to weave together the interlocking parts of the grand puzzle which is landscape and sustainability. Landscape professionals can think globally and act locally to make a difference. But the real question is how to do it?

It is encouraging to see the growing number of texts and projects which try to address particular issues relating to the practice of sustainability in the landscape. But despite the ‘sustainability’ epidemic, we still need further development of the theoretical basis on which to practice sustainability and greater rigour in our policy and practice. New and exciting ideas are emerging, and some further interpretation is needed to set future agendas for landscape research and practice and to help influence those responsible for policies which aim to manage change in the landscape. The aim of this chapter is to provide an introduction to some of these key issues, and to set the scene for the following chapters.

THE SCOPE OF ‘LANDSCAPE’ AS USED IN THIS BOOK

The word ‘landscape’ has entered our vocabulary as a noun, adjective and verb. Laurie Olin, a well-known American landscape architect, has described it as that ‘vast, difficult, slippery and mercurial subject’. The Oxford English Dictionary cites its first use in its major modern sense – ‘a tract of land with its distinguishing characteristics and features, esp. considered as a product of shaping processes and agents (usually natural)’ (Burchfield, 1976) – in a book of 1886 by Geikie, a geologist. Before that it had been used in an evaluative sense to mean ‘an ideal place’, the use prevalent in the art, landscape painting and landscape design of earlier centuries. We have come to realise, of course, that human agency has shaped the landscape too and not just in the patently manmade rural, urban and industrial landscapes of a place like the UK, but also the allegedly natural landscapes or wildernesses of the American great plains or the Australian outback. The term is now used in a wider sense to mean a tract of land shaped over time by geological and biological processes and by human occupation and agency and by human imagination. The essence and unifying value of the concept is the way in which it signifies and captures both natural and cultural features and values, with a special emphasis on the relationships between these. It is different to ‘environment’ which is either, unhelpfully, the world minus oneself or, more usually, the physical, chemical or biological components and processes which comprise the planet.

However, the apparently unbreakable, dominating link between landscape and visual matters – ‘scenery’ and ‘art’ and ‘aesthetics’ – with an emphasis on how we see landscapes and treat them, by the act of ‘landscaping’, as a wholly or mainly visual act concerned with beauty and art (to the exclusion of our other senses and values) is an unfortunate throw-back to an earlier time. The sustainability agenda has been one of the major catalysts in trying to challenge and change this view and through its wide ambit, this book argues in support of landscape as having multifaceted potential. As a noun its original sense as a term of geologists and geographers is still used to refer to a tract of the earth’s surface but expanded to include natural–cultural relationships. It is used as a theoretical concept and social construct around which an array of disciplines including geography, art, literature and science coalesce to explore these nature–human interrelationships. It is used as an adjective to qualify the shape or scene of almost anything, but there is also a political landscape of sustainability. It is used as a verb (‘to landscape’) – much deplored and abhorred by many in the landscape professions – to signify the practice of designing, making, using and managing landscapes and places. Reinterpretation of the narrow role traditionally attributed to landscape architects now includes the evolution of transdisciplinary thinking (Tress et al., 2003; Turner, 1998) which reflects the more integrated thinking also reflected in this book with regard to landscape and sustainability.

As Ian Thompson explores partly in Chapter 2 and more fully in Thompson (1999), landscape architecture draws its theoretical foundations and approaches from many sources and this book is similarly eclectic. However, it will be seen that landscape ecology is an important influence on much of the discussion, reflecting the influence on the development of many areas of landscape theory and practice over the last 20 years, particularly in relation to landscape scale approaches, the importance of processes and networks and the understanding of human influence on long-term ecological change in the landscape. So here is the view that is offered of landscape and sustainability. Not simply one that can be seen, but one that delves deep behind the scenes to understand the whole complexity of landscape, including the aesthetic. Stuart-Murray pushes the theoretical discussion further in Chapter 11 with regard to the dilemmas of a ‘sustainable aesthetic’ in relation to recent projects. His succinct identification of the heated debate now occurring around this issue is a healthy indicator that we are moving on from the realisation that sustainable landscapes are not just about ecological, economic and social issues, but also about ‘delight’ – or part of making fit places which people enjoy fitting into.¹

The landscape profession might be inclined to feel that it has been practising sustainability for decades, although Ian Thompson challenges this complacency in Chapter 2. The sustainability agenda demands a change in mind-set among professionals, landscape architects included. We need to stop – or at least postpone – asking, ‘Is it affordable? Is it beautiful? Is it what the client wants? Is it art? Will my professional colleagues approve?’ – and instead start asking, first and foremost, ‘how sustainable is it?’ Or at least how can it be less unsustainable? The next section tries to bring some semblance of order to definitions and terms, but because sustainability is such a multi-faceted concept, and there are few (no?) absolutes, readers are asked to tolerate the use throughout this book of the terms ‘sustainability’, ‘sustainable’ and ‘sustainable development’ when, by any strict definition, the authors sometimes mean ‘less unsustainable’ and sometimes they simply mean an integrated and coherent approach which is different from ‘business as usual’. In many ways the diagnoses and lessons for the landscape profession in this book are familiar, and many will undoubtedly say ‘fine, we know that, we do all these things already – we’ve been pursuing integration, a sense of place, local distinctiveness, protecting the environment, aiding economic and social regeneration for decades – so what’s the problem?’ The reply is that, even if this were true (and we acknowledge that it is partly true) previous and much current policy and practice is still only very weakly sustainable and its impact has been modest. Creating new or restoring damaged landscapes does not always involve sustainable practices and the tyranny of small decisions applies in landscape, just as in every other sphere of human endeavour. As the sustainability debate shows, the issues are complex and challenging, the scale of thinking and action needed in response to these in landscape terms is large and grows ever more critical as unsustainable development accelerates around the world. This is a considerable challenge to a nominally small profession, but a large interest group, and we should take heart from the way that landscape and environmental issues can act as a rallying point and a catalyst for action by politicians and ordinary people in a way that few other things in life can (save perhaps football and furry animals).

SUSTAINABILITY AND SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT IN RELATION TO LANDSCAPE

It has often been remarked that Prime Minister Gro Harlem Bruntland and her United Nations Commission performed a remarkable feat in offering a definition of sustainable development (SD) – ‘development which meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs’ – which must be the most often quoted definition in the whole debate and which has (apparently and at least superficially) gathered world-wide political consensus around the need for a new approach in almost every sphere of human activity. But many have argued that this consensus has only emerged because the definition offered, and its many progeny (e.g. Pearce et al., 1989; Pezzey, 1989), is an oxymoron and can mean anything one wishes. The harshest critics will argue that SD is an idea and label so over-used, manipulated and debased as to be worthless without some definition and precision, from which has developed a large industry providing sustainability indicators designed to provide the measurable criteria needed to allow individuals and groups with widely differing ethics and values to find common ground. The focus on indicators is based on the quite reasonable notion that if judgements are to be made about whether or not we’ve achieved sustainable development, or whether this or that policy or project is moving us in the right direction, then we need to make measurements to give us the answer. Indicators have of course been used for years in many fields – biologists measure species diversity or species richness (now commonly called ‘biodiversity’), hydrologists measure flow rates or pollution concentrations, foresters count trees or measure growth rates or seek to estimate maximum sustainable yield – whilst in the social sciences and in the economy generally we measure jobs created, houses built, roads widened or Gross National Product, inflation and interest rates, and so on. All of these indicators are used routinely in policy evaluation and formulation, so it is no surprise that SD has attracted much work on the use of indicators as a means of operationalising the issue. But even here analysts argue that this is trying to measure the immeasurable (Bell and Morse, 1999).

So the landscape of sustainability is just as vast, difficult, slippery and mercurial as landscape itself. An important starting point is to realise that the term SD has ideological and political content, as well as the more familiar ecological, economic and social content. The bottom line perhaps in landscape is the need to focus on the damage we are presently doing, not only to the present and past landscape, but also to the future landscape – to areas not presently valued or recognised as valuable – by not understanding or considering sustainability issues. The complex ideological and political dimensions are not explored in detail in this book because other books and reviews abound (e.g. Baker et al., 1997; Pezzoli, 1997a, b), but Chapter 2 does deal with aspects of philosophy and ethics related to landscape. The view that SD is a social and political construct like ‘democracy’, ‘liberty’ and ‘social justice’, is helpful and that society – and landscape professionals – need to move forward beyond a sterile search for a single, precise definition, or single measuring rod, into the interpretation and application of SD in practice.

To sustain means ‘to hold up, to bear, to support, to keep going, to support the life of and to prolong’ and sustainability, as a noun, means ‘that which is capable of being sustained’ (Chambers, 1993). Time is therefore crucially important because sustainability focuses on long, inter-generational timescales, in contrast to the alleged short-termism and intragenerational emphasis of contemporary societies (of course Bruntland’s definition captures both but our neo-classical economic systems, discussed by Colin Price in Chapter 3, reflect the fact that presentlyliving humans do have time preferences and they discount the future in myriad ways). SD requires us to look to the long term whilst our present systems and behaviour are designed for the short term. However, strictly nothing is sustainable forever, socially, politically, ecologically, geologically or cosmologically, and so sustainability cannot, technically, be infinite; most commentators would probably settle for ‘to all intents and purposes forever’, that is, far beyond a future which is conceivable by the present generation.

Commentators (e.g. Kidd, 1992) have traced the roots of contemporary sustainability into several conceptual areas, including ‘ecological carrying capacity’, ‘resource–environment links’, ‘the biosphere’, ‘the critique of technology’, ‘no/low growth’ and ‘ecodevelopment’, all of which have a primary focus on concerns for the environment, especially the global resource base, humankind’s place within it and the social and physical environments. A series of seminal reports and developments starting from the 1960s and 1970s (e.g. the Club of Rome report The Limits to Growth [Meadows et al., 1972]) pointed out the long pedigree and the diversity of environmental concern but called for zero-growth strategies. The term ‘sustainable development’ was invented to describe a notion that rather than zero-growth, what was required and was feasible was a strategy which developed a mutual compatibility between environmental protection and continuing economic growth (a common but inadequate metric for ‘development’). These multiple histories and debates are endlessly described and discussed elsewhere and will be familiar to most readers.

The debate has now developed to the point where three key components of SD are defined – economic sustainability, social sustainability and environmental sustainability, each with a strong focus on equity and futurity. However, the strongest roots derive from biological or environmental debates, especially discussions about harvesting and managing renewable resources such as crop plants, forests and fisheries. Such biologically renewable resources can, theoretically, be maintained in perpetuity, whilst harvesting a maximum sustainable yield and of course whilst protecting the integrity and resilience of the resource and...