THE FUTURE of the landscape architecture profession lies in taking a leadership role in the stewardship of the environment, and planning walkable, urban communities.
When asked in the December 1999 issue of Landscape Architecture Magazine, leading landscape architects stressed environmental protection, and our sprawling land development practices as the most important issues facing the profession.
"The most important issue of the 21st century will be the condition of the global environment." -Ian McHarg
"The most important issue facing landscape architects and all environmental planners and designers in the 21st century will be precisely the integration, perhaps by shotgun, of current economic / political thinking with ecological reality." -Garrett Eckbo
"Without question, urban sprawl - unplanned, scattered, and disruptive development bursting out from thus desolated cities into the open countryside. Precluding and remedying this phenomenon can and must be a central thrust of our future endeavors as a profession, for we are uniquely qualified to deal in a positive way with this increasingly evident problem." -John Simonds
"One of the great prospects for the 21st century is the continuation of currently tentative global trends towards preserving and building more livable, more sustainable communities. It means continuing to move away from the single-purpose, bits-and-pieces mind-set marking our current norms, to work with more integrative approaches to human settlements." -William J. Johnson
"Landscape architects should be in the vanguard of the environmental movement, discovering ways to help design environments that at the most fundamental level 'do no harm' - and beyond that, in ways large and small, contribute to the renewal of the earth and of the human spirit." - Catherine Howett
True Sustainability = Renewable Energy + Electric Transportation + Walkable Urbanism
THE ONLY WAY to design environments that 'do no harm' and are sustainable is to design environments that don't require everyone to own and drive a car.
Cars cause of a multitude of problems at many levels of society. They are causing massive damage to the planet and us along with it. We as a profession need to realize this, and that the only real solution to our problems is to design dense, walkable environments where cars are not necessary for everyone.
WE HAVE the knowledge and creativity to design great environments without cars. We have the influence to persuade our clients to build compact communities. By joining with the other design professions, we have the power to demand that new, state-of-the-art train systems get built all over America, instead of more highways and roads. Trains solve problems and encourage compact land development, while cars encourage sprawl and an enormous amount of environmental and community destruction.
URBANISM is a large part of the solution since it has worked out the details of compact town planning, and has started the transition of the land development industry, and the outdated zoning laws. Urbanism should be encouraged and embraced, and incorporated into every landscape architecture practice world-wide. Building compact towns and restoring our cities is a large part of the solution to our current problems, and lays the foundation for the building of a new modern train system across America.
THE MONEY we now spend on highways, roads, parking lots, and airports is more than enough to build the greatest train system in the world! As more and more trains get built, the problems will begin to disappear. If we continue to build more roads, our problems will persist and grow to environmentally devastating proportions.
Urbanism promotes the creation and restoration of compact, walkable, mixed-use cities, towns, and neighborhoods that are a pleasure to live in. It promotes the increased use of trains and light rail, instead of more roads and highways. Currently, there are over 500 new urbanist projects planned or under construction in the United States alone, half of which are in historic urban centers.
True Sustainability = Renewable Energy + Electric Transportation + Walkable Urbanism
Sprawling land use patterns and auto-dominated transportation choices are the largest contributor to global warming and dwindling oil supplies. Major changes to transportation and land planning are the most important solutions. Landscape architects are at the center of the planning and design for this transformation.
