Full Citation- 2005- IAPLE

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Full Citation:

Nassauer, J. I. 2005. Using Cultural Knowledge to Make New Landscape Patterns. In Issues in Landscape

Ecology. J. A. Wiens and M. R. Moss, eds. Cambridge University Press. Cambridge UK. Pp. 274‐280.

Revised from Culture as a Means of Experimentation and Action. In Issues in Landscape Ecology J. A.

Wiens and M. R. Moss, eds. International Association for Landscape Ecology.



274

JOAN IVERSON NASSAUER

27

Using cultural knowledge to make new

landscape patterns

Human interactions with ecological systems are typically described as

impacts. Thinking of culture not only as the source of impacts but also as

the source of clues to what motivates human behavior may help us integrate

hum an effects into landscape ecological research and action. We can simulate

and model the landscape ecological effects not only of current trends but also

of distinctly different futures. Motivations may be difficult to change, but the

particular behaviors that disturb, pollute, and consume landscapes may bemalleable to the extent that human needs, including cultural preferences anddesires, continue to be met (Bailly et ai., 2000).

For example, two very different land-use behaviors, sprawl and urban

habitat restoration, may be motivated by similar needs. Both sprawl, the

large-lot development pattern that has spread from metropolitan farmland

to scenic rangeland and wildlands, and habitat restoration of abandoned

urban industrial sites may fulfill the desire to live close to nature (Strong,

1965; Grove and Cresswell, 1983; Nelessen, 1994; Hough, 1995; Nassauer,

1995; Romme, 1997; Nasar, 1998). Sprawl disturbs habitats, pollutes water

and air, and consumes agricultural land. Urban habitat restoration establishes

small patches that may have aggregative effects across the larger landscape

matrix (Collinge, 1996; Corry and Nassauer, 2002). If we understand thedesire to live close to nature as part of what motivates people to choose to

live on large lots far from traditional centers of cities and towns, we can

propose different ways to meet the same perceived need.We can ask ourselves:

what are ecologically beneficial substitutes for ecologically destructive behav

ior? What new landscape patterns would be improvements compared with

present landscape patterns if they continue into the future?

People are not inherently averse to improvement. In fact, most intentional

landscape change, from the eighteenth-century enclosure movement in

England to the post-war rise of suburbia in the United States, has been

Issues and Perspectives In Landscape Ecology, ed. John A. Wiens and Michael R. Moss. Published by Cambridge University Press.~ , Cambridge University Press 2005.

Using cultural knowledge to make new landscape patterns 275

understood and advocated as improvement. In contrast, people generally are

unwilling to deny their desires and needs. Telling people to do less of what

they are doing can sound more like piety than a plan. New landscape patterns

that are immediately recognizable as improvements will be seen as real

alternatives to present l a n ~ s c a p e trends.

Recognition is not automatic. I t requires that what is new match what

people know they value, and culture provides the clues to recognition. What

people value is not surprising. People want to feel safe, they want to feel Ihealthy, they want to take care of their children, they want to be proud of IIwhere they live, they want to get along with their neighbors, and they want to !

make a liv ing (Nelessen, 1994; Nasar, 1998). Perhaps because these values are

so common, they are sometimes unexamined. How particular cultures make

these values concrete in the landscape is the source of our clues for designing Inew landscape patterns. We need to understand what people recognize when

they look at the newest subdivision. What do people see that they want when

they look at "Mountain Creek," or "Brookfield Farms," or any other develop

ment named to evoke the image of home that we desire? We can respect

people's values at the same time as we invent new ways to fulfill them. The

new should be familiar, looking like nature and home, at the same time as it isfundamentally new in the way it embodies ecological function (Nassauer,

1997).

The initial precepts of landscape ecology suggest how we can approach

inventing new landscapes that accommodate human needs and also embody

ecological function. Landscape ecology includes human behavior in ecosys-

tems; it attends to inhabited as well as pristine ecosystems; it studies eco-

logical function across landscapes at multiple scales including scales of

everyday human experience; and it is interdisciplinary (Risser et ai., 1984).

Fulfilling these precepts requires landscape ecologists to continue to experi

ment with our ways of working.

The best cultural indicators of landscape ecological quality may not be

readily available numbers, like the economic and demographic data we havegathered for decades. The science and scholarship practised by environmental

psychologists, cultural geographers, design behaviorists, and environmental

historians have examined causes rather than only trends in human landscape

perception and behavior. Knowledge about causes allows us to realign trends

toward normative goals. For example, we know that people seek landscapes

that afford perceived opportunities for the display of pride to others (e.g.,

Lowenthal and Prince, 1965; Nassauer, 1988; Gobster, 1997; Nasar, 1998;

Westphal, 1999), rest and psychological restoration (e.g., Kaplan, 1995), safety

(e.g., Schroeder and Anderson, 1984; Nasar, 1993; Bailly et ai., 2000; Ness and

Low, 2000), information and locomotion (e.g., Lynch, 1960; Gibson, 1979;



276 J. I. NASSAUER

Kaplan and Kaplan, 1982; Golledge and Stimson, 1987), prospect and refuge .

(Appleton 1975), and closeness to nature (e.g., Grove and Cresswell, 1983;

Kaplan and Kaplan, 1989; Gobster and Westphal, 1998; Gobster, 2001).

Humans will seek landscapes that are designed and planned to protect and

enhance ecological function if they also provide these apparen t opportunities.

To propose new landscapes, we need to be able to make good judgments

and good hypotheses about how they will function ecologically. We need

ecological data and models that describe subdivisions and cities as well as

forest patterns and reserves. Landscape ecology has given us the strongestbasis for judging the ecological functi on of settled landscapes to date, but we

know our understanding is dramatically incomplete (Peck, 1998). By working

together in our shared medi um, the landscape, landscape ecologistsof several

disciplines can propose new landscapes for exper imentat ion and for action.

One example of this kind of new landscape is a model 120-ha subdivision

for the city of Cambridge, Minnesota (Nassauer et ai., 1997). The city of 5700

within the expanding commutershed of MinneapoliS-St. Paul, a metropolis

of 2.5 million, wanted this model to inform its negotiations with developers

who see a burgeoni ng market for new homes. Using our best understanding

of the evolving ecological principles in landscape ecology and seeking the

critique and insights of our ecology and hydrology colleagues, we proposed a

form of subdivision that was both familiar and radically new (Fig. 27.1). Todevelopers and homebuyers, the unusual ecological function of this new

subdivision would likely be oflittle immediat e value. However, the familiar

cultural cues that are appare nt in the landscape patt ern would be of immedi

ate value. We designed the landscape to be a sourceof pride, to lookwell cared

for, to createa senseofownership, to looksafe, to be legible, to afford prospect

and refuge, to create a feeling of closeness to nature. We also designed it to

include affordable housing, to be accessible by public transportation, to

provide public access to high-amenity landscape features, and to minimize

infrastructure costs. Improving surface- and groundwater quality and

increasing habitat quality, connectivity, and extent were our leading goals,

but not the leading goals for homebuyers or the developer. We designed with

ecological goals and cultural means.Compared with a large-lot subdivision designed unde r a typical ordinance

intended to maintain rural character with 10-acre (4-ha) lots (Fig. 27.2), this

plan provides more than 15 times as many homes on the same area at lower

net costs to taxpayers. It keeps all homes close to nature and keeps the m ost

high-amenity landscape, t he lakeshore, open to p ublic access. Compared wit h

the typical plan, this pl an creates greate r connectivity and habitat patch size

and restores some lake edge habitats. By cleaning storm water through

detention and infiltration, and developing at a sufficiently high density to


FIGURE 27.1.

Ecological corridor neighborhood design plan: reconnects heterogeneousecosystems, cleans storm water before it reaches wetlands, and includes affordablehousing within a mix of types of sewered residential development.

make extension of the municipal sewer system economical, this plan pro

duces higher water quality than the large lots on septic systems and wells

(Fig. 27.2).

Will the extended and connected patches of woodland, storm-water wet

lands, "natural" wetlands, and lake shown in Fig. 27.1 support greater

biodiversity than the "present trend" development shown in Fig. 27.2?

Could we have hypothesized a different patt ern that would have had a greater

landscape ecological benefit? will developers and homebuyers recognize the

familiar cues to cultural values that were built into this design? This example

demonstrates the necessity for both biophysical and cultural knowledge to

inform new landscape actions. It also implies the wide-ranging possibilities



278 J. I. NASSAUER

FIGURE 27.2.

A conventional development alternative: further fragments in situ ecosystems, provides

housing for 0.06 the number of households in Fig. 27.1, and does not use available localsewer capacity.

for more generalizable experiments that propose and test new prototypes for

culturally recognizable and ecologically beneficial landscape structure.

In her 1998 presidential address to the American Association for the

Advancement of Science, Jane Lubchenco called for a redirection of

American science - away from the single-discipline basic science tha t was

geared toward national defense in the years immediately following the

Second World War and toward a new social contract for science that will

"help society move toward a more sustainable biosphere," a science that

"exercises good judgment, wisdom, and humility." Such a science should

look for strategic intersections with culture, as examined by the humanities

and social sciences and also as interpreted by design and planning. Strategy

new landscape patterns.

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11' 11

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1 IIdoes not need to be a compromise of our sense of ecological integrity or our1

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Ichange; it moves us toward goals. By definition, landscape ecology can help

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1

111 ,

II,scapes between disciplines, so that each can examine and rework those ideasilll' 'from particular disciplinary perspectives.

,\1

We do need to know more about culture just as we need to know more ,.

about ecosystems, but we cannot afford to wait. We can begin to act by I

looking at what we know now in a different way. We should see culture notI

as a constraint but as a means forlandscapeinnovation. If culture is the means "

IIby which humans achieve our needs (sometimes in convoluted and misguided

ways), then it also can be the medium for inventing new forms of humanII1 11

,

settlement that support ecological function. We should study culture not only III Ito predict what will happen if current trends continue but also to conceive

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scrapers and subdivisions, by factory farms and seaside resorts? Rather than11

1 : \accepting these settings as the inevitable detritus of human frailty, we shouldI

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11 1

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NANCY POLLOCK-ELLWAND' 1 11 1

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iThe critical divide: landscape policy

and its implementation

I

II II

Forecasts made in planning policy are rarely achieved in the practicalities

oflocal application, and the case for landscape conservation is no exception.

The critical divide between landscape policy developed by upper-tier govern

ment agencies and the implementation of those conservation measures at

a local level is a phenomenon common to many locations. A specific case of

this divide was studied in Ontario, Canada over a span of time between the

passing and defeat of one planning act and the introduction of another.

Through a series of interviews conducted with both the creators and the

future implementers of the landscape policy in those acts, central issues

that contribute to conservation resistance were examined. This qualitative

study compares the responses, identifies the differences, and in the end

suggests strategies that may be useful to other jurisdictions to help foster a

better land-use planning environment for landscape interpretation, use, and

protection in the development process.

The concept oflandscape: theory an d application

"Landscape" is an idea that has a long tradition in academic literature

(Sauer, 1925; Hartshorne, 1939; Hoskins, 1969; Meinig, 1979; Cosgrove,

1984; Schama, 1995). Interest in the concept's utility for planning has

grown in the last decade (Mitchell et ai., 1993; Maines and Bridger, 1992;

Watson and Labelle, 1997; CardinalI and Day, 1998; Rydin, 1998; McGinnis et

ai., 1999). It has been acknowledged that it can serve as a basis from which

planners can integrate natural and cultural elements and issues - historically,

two realms polarized from each other (01wig, 1996). And as a ubiquitous I1

resource it exists as the common ground between various interests in land ,' I " ~'1"1';:

"use development decisions (Stilgoe, 1982; Jackson, 1984). In this Canadian"

I,

Istudy, "landscape" was explored in its broadest interp retation from natural

Issues and Perspectives in Landscape Ecology, ed. John A. Wiens and Michael R. Moss. published by Cambridge Universiry Press. 28 1

c-. Cambridge University Press 200S.

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Full Citation- 2005- IAPLE