The Vulnerable Metropolitan Landscape

To encourage interdisciplinary dialogue and collaboration, one of the first steps is to find themes that matter to all participants. During the symposium, Robert Thayer and Laura Jackson were scheduled consecutively because of the parallels in their clear recognition of landscape vulnerability. Both authors have strong commitments to environmental ethics, .expressed through different disciplinary lenses—landscape architecture and conservation biology. Both have written articles that provide complementary perspectives about the vulnerability and sustainability of contemporary metropolitan landscapes—Thayer about urban landscapes, and Jackson about rural ones.

Robert Thayer (University of California-Davis) reflects on the spatial order of cities and regions, especially how the scale of human experiences may shrink dramatically in the post-oil-peak age. His article links to a central theme in the literature of landscape architecture that emphasizes ecology, design, and sustainability in metropolitan landscapes (e.g., Lyle 1996; Spun 1985; Steiner 2000; Hough 2004). Within this context, the ethical use of landscapes and ecosystems is an important underlying concern and often emphasizes the human connection to nature through design. This theme also emphasizes the negative impacts of urbanization on people, such as increased social isolation, alienation, negative emotions, stress, and physical diseases. In contemporary environmental literature, these ideas are related to a number of classics like Rachel Carson's Silent Spring (1962) and, more recently, Richard Louv's Last Child in the Woods (2006).

  However, landscape architects are not the only ones concerned about the vulnerability of the cities and the countryside to environmental change. Exploring the competing myths of the protein production landscape, biologist Laura Jackson (University of Northern Iowa) poses the question: "Who ‘designs' the agricultural landscape?" in the American Corn Belt, the breadbasket of our national metropolitan landscape. Ecologists have a time-honored tradition of social critique, and many of their works, such as Aldo Leopold's The Sand County Almanac (1966), have had a deep influence on landscape architecture. In this spirit, Jackson is representative of the next generation of critical ecologists that have something important to say to landscape professionals.

Perspectives on Metropolitan Landscape Sustainability

Both Thayer and Jackson present alternative paths to a more sustainable future for metropolitan landscapes, and both pose important questions about how we will get there. Yet, the idea of sustainability in these two articles is nuanced differently according to their applications in landscape architecture, planning, and ecology. It is therefore important to recognize that metropolitan sustainability has its roots in both sustainable design and sustainability science. In his book The Nature of Design: Ecology, Culture, and Human Intention (2002), David Orr captures the essence of sustainability by emphasizing the need to harmonize systems-human, physical, and moral. His message resonates deeply with concerned academics and students whose environmental ethics inspire them to push for more sustainable metropolitan landscapes in a world governed by cost efficiency, energy consumption, and rampant materialism. Not since the environmental movement of the 1960s and 1970s has a phenomenon like the sustainability paradigm succeeded in transforming university curriculums and institutional priorities so profoundly.,源^自!吹冰/文-论/文*网[www.chuibin.com

Two articles, one by landscape ecologist Jianguo Wu and the other by landscape architect and planner Forster Ndubisi, harness this momentum and reveal the complementary views of metropolitan landscape sustainability emerging from ecology, design, and planning. Connecting the two articles is an intellectual convergence on sustainability and its role in solving regional environmental problems. However, each article presents a unique perspective influenced by the author's particular disciplinary history and epistemology.