Landscape and Sustainability

Book excerpt: 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.