Introduction

Abstract

AbstractThe book’s introduction, Landscape as Development, introduces the distinct positions of critic and planner in development and offers initial justifications for a “critical” practice of ecological planning, as construed by landscape architecture. Landscape architecture has the most substantial ecological mandate among its sister disciplines of architecture and urban planning and has made significant recent historical contributions to development planning, including being the origin of modern landscape ecology and geographic information systems science. In order to become “critical,” landscape architecture, as planning, must recognize the contradictions between urban or economic sustainability and the critical social theory undercurrents in sustainable development. We introduce a working definition of “critical landscape planning” as it is developed throughout the book: A practice of critical landscape planning, routed in landscape architecture, uses multiple forms of sustainability to plan for landscapes engaging in (or encountering) development. The critical landscape planner holds a cultural-technological position and simultaneously applies science to specific site conditions, is critical of that science, and in the process and practice of applying it, refines and deepens the relevant scope of work. This introduction finishes by covering the structure of this book.