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Research in Landscape Architecture
Defining a research question, describing why it needs to be answered and
explaining how methods are selected and applied are challenging tasks for
anyone embarking on academic research within the field of landscape
architecture. Whether you are an early career researcher or a senior academic, it
is essential to draw meaningful conclusions and robust answers to research
questions.
Research in Landscape Architecture provides guidance on the rationales
needed for selecting methods and offers direction to help to frame and design
academic research within the discipline. Over the last couple of decades the
traditional orientation in landscape architecture as a field of professional practice
has gradually been complemented by a growing focus on research. This book
will help you to develop the connections between research, teaching and
practice, to help you to build a common framework of theory and research
methods.
Bringing together contributions from landscape architects across the world,
this book covers a broad range of research methodologies and examples to help
you conduct research successfully. Also included is a study in which the editors
discuss the most important priorities for the research within the discipline over
the coming years. This book will provide a definitive path to developing
research within landscape architecture.

Adri van den Brink is Professor and Chair of Landscape Architecture at

Wageningen University, the Netherlands.

Diedrich Bruns is Professor and Chair of Landscape Planning and Land Use at
Kassel University, Germany.

Hilde Tobi is Associate Professor and Coordinator of the Research

Methodology Group at Wageningen University, the Netherlands.

Simon Bell is Professor and Head of the Department of Landscape Architecture

at the Estonian University of Life Sciences and Associate Director of the
OPENspace Research Centre at the University of Edinburgh, United Kingdom.

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Landscape architecture is a potentially powerful profession and discipline: a
field poised to transform the planet for the better. This possibility will only be
realized through a more robust research agenda. The authors of Research in
Landscape Architecture have produced just such a framework. They present a
helpful, thoughtful roadmap for landscape architecture scholars.
— Frederick Steiner, Dean and Paley Professor, School of Design,
University of Pennsylvania, USA

As a practice-led discipline, landscape architecture faces a challenge when trying

to impose methodology on a somewhat theory-resistant subject. This new book
presents cases of landscape architecture research in their methodical context. We
learn how landscape architecture research questions are formulated and how
evidence for answering them can be found. We live in an era of ever increasing
complexity on the one hand and strong specialisation on the other. Where to
position the holistic perspective of this domain? This book will give valuable
orientation for anybody looking for systematic knowledge production in
landscape architecture. It will inspire especially early-career researchers.
— Ellen Fetzer, Nürtingen-Geislingen University, Germany,
International Master of Landscape Architecture
(IMLA)

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Edited by Adri van den Brink, Diedrich Bruns, Hilde
Tobi and Simon Bell

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Research in Landscape Architecture
Methods and methodology

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First published 2017
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2017 selection and editorial matter, Adri van den Brink, Diedrich Bruns, Hilde Tobi and Simon Bell;
individual chapters, the contributors
The right of Adri van den Brink, Diedrich Bruns, Hilde Tobi and Simon Bell to be identified as the authors
of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance
with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any
electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and
recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the
publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used
only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Names: Brink, Adri van den, editor.
Title: Research in landscape architecture : methods and methodology / edited by Adri van den Brink,
Diedrich Bruns, Hilde Tobi, and Simon Bell. Description: New York, NY : Routledge, 2017. | Includes
bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016026543| ISBN 9781138020924 (hardback : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781138020931
(pbk. : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781315396903 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Landscape architecture--Research--Methodology.
Classification: LCC SB469.4 .R47 2017 | DDC 712.072--dc23
LC record available at htt​ps:​//l​ccn​.lo​c.g​ov/​201​602​654​3
ISBN: 978-1-138-02092-4 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-138-02093-1 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-39690-3 (ebk)
Typeset in Frutiger
by HWA Text and Data Management, London

ECLAS
EUROPEAN COUNCIL OF
LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE
SCHOOLS

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Contents

List of figures
List of tables
List of contributors

Introduction
ADRI VAN DEN BRINK, DIEDRICH BRUNS, SIMON BEL AND HILDE TOBI

PART I: RAISING AWARENESS

1 Advancing landscape architecture research
DIEDRICH BRUNS, ADRI VAN DEN BRINK, HILDE TOBI AND SIMON BEL

2 A process approach to research in landscape architecture

HILDE TOBI AND ADRI VAN DEN BRINK

PART II: SETTING THE STAGE

3 The role of theory
IAN H. THOMPSON

4 The relationship between research and design

SANDA LENZHOLZER, INGRID DUCHART AND ADRI VAN DEN BRINK

5 The challenge of publication

MAGIE ROE

6 Assessing research priorities and quality

JURIAN MEIJERING, HILDE TOBI, ADRI VAN DEN BRINK AND DIEDRICH BRUNS

PART III: SELECTED APPROACHES AND METHODS

7 Case studies
SIMON SWAFFIELD
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 8 Landscape biography
JAN KOLEN, HANS RENES AND KOOS BOSMA

9 Social media
RON VAN LAMEREN, SIMONE THEILE, BORIS STEMER AND DIEDRICH BRUNS

10 Virtual environments
SIGRID HEHL-LANGE AND ECKART LANGE

11 Walking
HENRIK SCHULT Z AND RUDI VAN ETTEGER

12 Design guidelines
MARTIN PROMINSKI

PART IV: ADDRESSING SOME OF THE GRAND CHALLENGES

13 Cultural landscape meanings and values
KEN TAYLOR

14 Landscape and health

CATHARINE WARD THOMPSON

15 Thermally comfortable urban environments

ROBERT D. BROWN AND TERY J. GILESPIE

16 The urban water challenge

ANTJE BACKHAUS, OLE FRYD AND TORBEN DAM

Index

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Figures

1.1 Three aspects of doing research

1.2 Research process overview
1.3 Conceptual research design
1.4 Technical research design
5.1 Overlapping fields of value and sources of theory in landscape architecture
6.1 The general procedure of a Delphi study
6.2 Overview of the systematic review sampling process
7.1 Theoretical cases – different types of small town on a tourism circuit
7.2 Within-case and cross-case comparisons
7.3 Multiple perspective analyses of a single complex case – two examples
7.4 Embedded geographical cases
7.5 Cases based on types
9.1 Transdisciplinary framework with social media interface
9.2 Extended transdisciplinary framework with interaction typology
9.3 Detail of a map of public input to landscape assessment with descriptive
texts
9.4 Identified hotspots (above) and tourist route densities (below)
9.5 Effect of spatial granularity on level of detail
10.1 The path in the virtual model
10.2 Still images of the status quo and the three scenarios and five viewpoints
10.3 Filmstrip representing the animated walkthrough
10.4 Participant’s ratings of four different landscape scenarios, dynamic
walkthroughs versus static images
10.5 Long-term forest management plan indicating the year when felling takes
place
10.6 Setup of the participatory workshop using 3D visualisation
10.7 Static images of the four landscape models represented through five
images along the path
10.8 Stakeholders’ ratings of different representation media
11.1 Interplay of three walking modes
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11.2 The schematic model of the CSM method
12.1 ‘River. Space. Design.’ Design guidelines are organised in five groups of
design strategies
12.2 ‘River. Space. Design.’ Three design tools from the design strategy ‘A1-
Linear spatial expansion’
12.3 The design guideline system of high-bay racking in the project on
shrinking cities
12.4 Diagram of the research method or process to develop design guidelines
13.1 Planning model for heritage conservation management policy
13.2 Location of Wingecarribee Shire
13.3 Wingecarribee Study Model
13.4 Throsby Park, a painting by Conrad Martens
13.5 Present day view of Throsby Park
13.6 Paddock showing nineteenth century ridge and furrow plough marks
14.1 Quality of Life (QOL) predicted by various factors
14.2 Number of participants in each part of the study
14.3 Logic model of a longitudinal approach to study design
14.4 An example of two of the option tasks in the questionnaire
15.1 A small LI-COR pyranometer can be used to measure incoming solar
radiation in open areas
15.2 A Kipp & Zonen CNR1
15.3 A radiation shield should always accompany temperature and humidity
sensors to eliminate radiation error
15.4 An anemometer with three cups
15.5 A typical set-up of microclimate instruments
16.1 Sketch by Sven Ingvar Anderson (1994) showing the spiral of the design
process
16.2 Conceptual framework, outlining variations in research approaches
relevant to research on the urban water challenge
16.3 Diagram of the design process
16.4 Set-up of the design experiment
16.5 How the three studies presented in Chapter 16 differ in focus and research
approach
16.6 The different roles of the researcher in the three studies presented in
Chapter 16

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Tables

1.1 Research proposal checklist

4.1 Overview of types of RTD
5.1 Standards for assessing the quality of research
5.2 Methods reporting: survey of papers in 2009 published in Landscape
Research
5.3 Emerging themes from the Landscape Forward Symposium, 18 March
2015
6.1 Percentage of experts that selected each research domain as ‘most
important’ or ‘most useful’ in round 3 of the Delphi study
6.2 Search query applied in SCOPUS
6.3 Percentage of empirical papers reporting a research objective, question or
hypothesis
6.4 Percentage of empirical papers reporting a research objective or question
focused on a retrospective, prospective or present timeframe
6.5 Percentage of empirical papers explicitly reporting the use of a case study,
experiment or other study design
6.6 Percentage of empirical papers reporting the use of a random or non-
random sampling method
6.7 Percentage of empirical papers reporting the use of various data collection
methods
6.8 Percentage of empirical papers reporting the quantitative and qualitative
analysis of data
6.9 Percentage of empirical papers related to a particular research domain
9.1 Semantic analysis of the messages
9.2 Distribution of the harvested photos
9.3 Overview of invalid Flickr photos
13.1 Examples of heritage value typologies
13.2 Example landscape characteristics for rural landscapes
13.3 Example landscape characteristics for urban landscapes
15.1 Information for estimating temperature increase due to UHI
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16.1 Main characteristics of the three studies presented in Chapter 16
16.2 Five key parameters selected for project analysis and comparison
16.3 Key themes and recommendations identified from the authors’ general
knowledge of LSM design aspects

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Contributors

Antje Backhaus is assistant professor in landscape architecture at the University

of Copenhagen, Denmark. Her research and teaching interests include green
urban infrastructure, water sensitive cities and specifically the use of
participatory- and design-based research methods on the interface between
research and practice. Besides her work at the University, Antje is a partner in
the landscape architecture office gruppe F Landschaftsarchitekten in Berlin.

Simon Bell is professor and head of the Department of Landscape Architecture

at the Estonian University of Life Sciences and associate director of the
OPENspace Research Centre in the Edinburgh School of Architecture and
Landscape Architecture (ESALA), University of Edinburgh, UK. He is also
president of the European Council of Landscape Architecture Schools. His
research interests currently focus on the relationship between landscape and
health, especially forests and blue space.

Koos Bosma (1952–2015) was professor of architectural history and heritage

studies at VU University Amsterdam, the Netherlands. He was an expert on the
history of urban space and European planning history. His other interests
included the role of heritage in spatial design. He sadly passed away on 10
September 2015, but his personality, attitude and work will inspire his
colleagues in the Netherlands (and abroad) for many years to come.

Robert D. Brown is professor of landscape architecture at Texas A&M

University. His research focuses on microclimatic design. He models and
measures urban microclimates and applies this work to understanding how
design of urban environments modifies microclimates, and how microclimates
affect the thermal comfort of urban residents.

Diedrich Bruns is professor and chair of landscape planning and land use at
Kassel University, Germany. He has many years of experience in planning
practice and research. Current teaching and research interests are in participatory
planning methods, particularly with respect to inclusiveness and early public

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involvement.

Torben Dam is an associate professor in landscape design at the University of

Copenhagen, Denmark. His teaching and research interests are landscape
architecture, design and detailing with a focus on the design process and the
exchange between design and knowledge.

Ingrid Duchhart is a senior researcher at Wageningen University, the

Netherlands, with longstanding teaching experience in (strategic) landscape
planning and design and with practical experience in transformative co-design
and network governance, landscape architecture research methods, emerging
economies and disaster management, adaptivity and nature-based solutions and
climate change.

Ole Fryd is a lecturer in urban and environmental planning at the University of

Melbourne, Australia. His teaching and research interests include water sensitive
cities, collaborative knowledge creation and urbanisation in developing
countries.

Terry J. Gillespie is professor emeritus in the School of Environmental

Sciences at the University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada. His research and
teaching interests centre on the measurement and modelling of microclimates.
He applies his interests in microclimatology to agriculture and to methods of
evaluating human comfort in outdoor environments.

Sigrid Hehl-Lange is a research fellow in the Department of Landscape at the

University of Sheffield, UK. Through her research projects, including a senior
Marie-Curie fellowship, she has gained considerable experience in using virtual
landscapes in a decision-making context.

Jan Kolen is professor of landscape archaeology and cultural heritage at Leiden

University, the Netherlands, and the director of the Centre for Global Heritage
and Development of Leiden University, Delft University of Technology and
Erasmus University Rotterdam. His research interests include the long-term
history of landscapes (‘landscape biography’), the evolution of human niche
construction, and the value and role of environmental heritage in landscape
design and urban planning.

Eckart Lange is a professor at the Department of Landscape at the University of

Sheffield, UK. His research focuses on how digital methods in landscape and
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environmental planning can influence anthropogenic landscape change.

Sanda Lenzholzer is an associate professor in the landscape architecture group

of Wageningen University. She was trained as a landscape architect and urban
designer in international practice and specialised in urban climate matters during
her academic career. In her teaching and research she focuses on climate
responsive design and the relation between research and design, specifically
research through designing (RTD).

Jurian Meijering is a PhD candidate and lecturer within the research

methodology group at Wageningen University, the Netherlands. As a lecturer he
has taught various courses in research methodology. His PhD project focuses on
the use of the Delphi method as well as the application of the method to the
development of urban sustainability rankings.

Martin Prominski is professor and chair of Designing Urban Landscapes at

Leibniz University Hannover, Germany, and a registered landscape architect.
For many years he has been working on the interfaces between research, theory
and practice. His current interests are in design research strategies, qualification
of urban landscapes, and concepts of nature and culture in the Anthropocene.

Hans Renes is historical geographer at Utrecht University and professor of

heritage and planning at VU University Amsterdam, the Netherlands. He has a
background in human geography (Utrecht University) and rural planning
(Wageningen University). His main interests are landscape history and the
relationships between heritage and planning. He has published extensively on
the history of the cultural landscapes of Europe.

Maggie Roe is a senior lecturer at the School of Architecture, Planning and

Landscape at Newcastle University, UK. Her research focus is generally on
landscape planning and sustainability, particularly related to participatory
landscape planning, cultural landscapes and landscape change. She is an editor
of the international peer-review journal Landscape Research and has
considerable experience in reviewing research proposals, grants, papers and
books.

Henrik Schultz is co-founder of Stein+Schultz, a lecturer at Leibniz University

Hannover and a researcher at Studio Urbane Landschaften. He has many years
of experience of research and design projects for sustainable landscapes and of

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methods of exploring and understanding landscapes. His current main interest is
the role of bodily engagement in landscape transformation.

Boris Stemmer is professor and chair of landscape and recreation planning at

the University of Applied Science Ostwestfalen-Lippe, Germany. He earned his
PhD with a thesis on landscape assessment methods in Germany. His current
research interests are participatory planning methods especially for renewable
energies as well as landscape as a resource of happiness, well-being and health.

Simon Swaffield is professor of landscape architecture at Lincoln University,

New Zealand. His research and scholarship is focused upon governance and
planning of rural and peri-urban landscapes undergoing rapid change and upon
the development of theory and research methodology in landscape architecture.

Ken Taylor is an adjunct professor in the Centre for Heritage and Museum
Studies, at the Australian National University, Canberra; emeritus professor of
landscape architecture, the University of Canberra; and visiting professor at
Silpakorn University, Bangkok. He has been teaching and researching in the
field of cultural landscapes since the mid-1980s and more recently with a
particular focus on urban cultural landscapes, particularly in Asia.

Simone Theile is a lecturer and researcher in the Department of Landscape

Planning and Land Use at Kassel University, Germany. Her research focus is on
planning theory, participatory planning methods and on communication and
protest organisation in social media in the context of planning projects.

Ian H. Thompson is reader in landscape architecture in the School of

Architecture, Planning and Landscape at Newcastle University, UK, where his
research has mostly been within the fields of landscape design history and
theory.

Hilde Tobi is associate professor and coordinator of the research methodology

group at Wageningen University. She has many years of research experience in
medical, social and environmental sciences. Her current main research and
teaching interest is methodology for interdisciplinary research.

Adri van den Brink is professor and chair of landscape architecture at

Wageningen University, the Netherlands. Before that he worked as a landscape
planner, research manager and policy advisor in public service, and as a
professor of spatial planning, also at Wageningen University. In his research and
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teaching he explores the relationship between design and research.

Rudi van Etteger is assistant professor of landscape architecture at Wageningen

University, the Netherlands. Trained both as a landscape architect and a
philosopher, his research is aimed at exploring the theoretical foundations of
landscape design. His main focus is on the aesthetics of designed landscapes.

Ron van Lammeren is associate professor of geo-information science at the

Laboratory of Geo-information Science and Remote Sensing at Wageningen
University, the Netherlands. In his research and teaching he pays attention to the
role of geo-information in planning and design of landscape and environment,
especially the nature and impact of visual representations of locational data
ensembles in participatory planning and design processes.

Catharine Ward Thompson is professor of landscape architecture and director

of OPENspace Research centre at the Edinburgh School of Architecture and
Landscape Architecture (ESALA), University of Edinburgh, UK. Her research
on inclusive access to outdoor environments and environment–behaviour
interactions has informed government, public agencies and the World Health
Organization (WHO). She teaches a master’s programme on landscape and well-
being.

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Introduction

Adri van den Brink, Diedrich Bruns, Simon Bell and

Hilde Tobi

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THE GENESIS OF THE BOOK
Landscape architecture is a discipline – or a disciplinary field – which developed
from a very practical basis in park and garden design. The name was coined in
the 19th century when it became a profession along with that of architecture.
Landscape architects were originally trained as pupils or apprentices to
established practitioners, as was common for many professions. The ideas and
theories which the original practitioners applied derived from a range of sources
such as architecture, gardening, engineering, agronomy and dendrology. Formal
education in universities or colleges of higher education only started in the early
20th century. The first landscape architecture programme in the USA was
founded in 1900 at Harvard University, followed in Europe at the Norwegian
Agricultural University at Aas near Oslo in 1919, the Technical University of
Berlin Germany in 1929, the University of Reading in the UK in 1932, the
University of Lisbon in Portugal in 1942 and Wageningen University in the
Netherlands in 1948, and other institutions followed. The teachers of the early
programmes were a mix of horticulturalists, dendrologists, architects,
agronomists and engineers, perhaps with some other disciplines, depending on
the character of the institution. Studio courses were interspersed with lectures on
scientific subjects along with practical work. Studio tutors often came from
offices and many professors had offices themselves so there was a strong
connection between theory and practice. In the second half of the 20th century
there was a growth in the number of schools, in the range of work undertaken by
the profession and in the professional status of landscape architects. The original
multi-disciplinary character of the field continued to expand and specialisations
gradually developed. However, until recently there was little in the way of
academic research taking place which could be considered as strictly belonging
to landscape architecture. Professors with doctorates tended to obtain these in
associated or neighbouring subject fields and it is still the case that in a number
of places it is difficult to study for a doctoral degree in landscape architecture.
Of course, all landscape architects are familiar with the idea of carrying out
research and many, whether in offices or universities, undertake projects
commissioned by various clients which have a research component. Equally, all
planning or design projects need some research, for example into the history of a
site, using methods such as archival study or the dendrological analysis of
ancient trees. This kind of research is important and it familiarises practitioners
with a range of basic research skills but it is different from the kind of academic
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research undertaken in many other disciplines such as natural or social sciences,
humanities, art history and the like. Perhaps it takes a special kind of person to
move away from the world of site design and the satisfaction of seeing a project
built and maturing over time, serving people and conserving the environment
towards the laboratory or library in order to carry out research which will not
directly result in concrete plans or designs. We do not suggest that a landscape
architect should be either a planner/designer or a researcher – far from it, and
many combine both aspects. Be that as it may (and we will explore the nature of
academic research in comparison with project-based research in Chapter 1) there
is a desperate need for much more research in landscape architecture to equip the
profession with a solid evidential base for its practice, to help it to deal with
many of the challenges facing society and the environment, and in order to hold
its own in the competitive academic world, to name but three compelling
reasons.
The multi-disciplinary origins of landscape architecture and the diverse range
of institutions where it is taught have persisted and this is what characterises
landscape architecture: concurrent diversity. It tends not to be a field where
research can excavate deeply into a narrow seam in the way that much scientific,
art and humanities research can – focusing on a single gene, the work of a single
author or a narrow historic period. Instead, landscape architecture research must
keep its feet firmly on the ground and its head out of the clouds for the very
simple reason that landscape architects want new knowledge in order to solve
complex problems. Indeed, owing to the interaction between the physical
environment and people, which is essentially what landscape architecture
concerns, problems frequently, if not always, involve research both on people’s
surroundings and on the people together (and possibly some further dimensions).
As research within landscape architecture has developed it has tended to
borrow shamelessly from methods developed and tested in many other fields. In
2011 the European Council of Landscape Architecture Schools (ECLAS)
published an edited volume entitled ’Exploring the Boundaries of Landscape
Architecture’ (Bell et al. 2011) in which a range of experts in some of the
’neighbouring disciplines’ summarised a number of key theoretical foundations
and research methods used in each of these subject fields. ECLAS has also
carried out some surveys to see how much academic research is undertaken
across Europe within university departments and using which methods (Clewing
and Jørgensen 2006; Bell et al. 2010; Fetzer 2011; see also van den Brink and
Bruns 2014). The results tend to show that a diversity of subjects are studied and
many methods are used but that it is very difficult to identify any methods which
can strictly be said to belong solely to landscape architecture. Frequently, mixed
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methods are used, selected from a kind of á la carte menu drawn from the wide
range of neighbouring disciplines. So, to contrast the deep enquiry in a narrow
seam, much landscape architecture academic, doctoral or commissioned research
tends to look broadly at a problem from many angles but cannot (and often does
not need to) dig so deeply into them.
In its efforts to develop and strengthen landscape architecture as a discipline
(or disciplinary field), and as a result of surveys such as those noted above,
ECLAS aims to improve the understanding of the character and nature of
landscape architecture research, to raise awareness and to increase the
understanding of the specific nature of landscape architecture research and how
to approach research design and methodological development among academics
and professionals, teachers and students. This book is an attempt to capture and
present some key aspects which ECLAS believes are fundamentally important
for anyone coming into academic research, whether as a doctoral student or an
early career researcher post-doc joining a research team for a project or, for that
matter, more senior academics coming from a practice background who wish to
pursue their own research. We have tried to present a possible scenario faced by
a new researcher in developing their research in order to demonstrate how the
reader might approach the book.

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SO YOU WANT TO BE A LANDSCAPE
ARCHITECTURE RESEARCHER?
Consider this scenario: you have just been accepted as a researcher to join a team
in a well-known landscape architecture department. Your first task is to develop
one or more research proposals and to apply for research grants in order to build
up the academic reputation of the department. You report to a senior professor
who happens to be a renowned landscape architect with an impressive project
portfolio and who has already attracted several young researchers who, like
yourself, are eager to help to build up an innovative research group. You soon
discover, since your professor’s experience is mainly in project design and little
in academic research, that your need for advice about what research approach
and which methods to include in a project application is not met. You look for
help and turn to the other researchers in your group. These include, for example,
doctoral candidates, each of whom is pursuing a research topic that is different
from yours and is applying methods which seem inappropriate for what you
want. None of your immediate peers is able to provide useful assistance. You are
getting worried. What should you do? Where and to whom can you turn for help
and guidance?
You should bear in mind that it has mainly been through design solutions that
landscape architects have succeeded in the past, and continue to succeed, in
advancing their field. The proactive planning and design way of thinking has
contributed to major innovations but in almost all cases they tend to be area- or
site-specific and, although their use as precedents is common, there is also a
desire among creative people to show originality and uniqueness, as opposed to
generating solutions which may be transferred more widely. Do not
underestimate the extent to which creativity has been a feature of some of the
major scientific breakthroughs, so that we should not feel that scientific research
approaches are necessarily achieved through mechanical data analysis and
logical reasoning alone!
All the while you continue having difficulties in defining your research
question, in designing your study and in selecting your study methods. You
probably have a pretty good idea of your topic, whether it be addressing a
particular climate change issue, contributing to urban sustainability, dealing with
landscape impacts of renewable energy transition, understanding the relationship
between health and green infrastructures, or ‘something’ on water and

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biodiversity. However, even formulating a good title and set of research
questions, a task that initially appeared to be a straightforward thing to do, may
be soon turn out to be rather complicated. You are finding yourself diving deeply
into the available scholarly literature on the topic of your choice. You are finding
how, like many other design fields, landscape architecture presents itself as a
discipline integrating and synthesising knowledge from several other fields,
some of which you now need to start learning more about.
You are also finding that landscape architects not only take broad views on
the world as it is; they also have views on how the world should be. As
practitioners your senior staff and thesis supervisors may not easily free
themselves from normative thinking. They may, in fact, be confronted with the
same difficulties as you. Your research project, however, should be approached
differently from solving a design project commissioned by a client needing
spatial or procedural solutions. Your study addresses, first and foremost, the
requirements of academic research. You and your supervisor need to respond to
standards and expectations set by the academic community at large. Academic
quality standards are common to all disciplines – often ones with whom you will
be collaborating – as most of the grand landscape challenges of our time require
multi-, inter- or trans-disciplinary approaches. Both you and your supervisor
may feel overwhelmed by the need to meet such scholarly quality standards.
What are the do’s and the don’ts, what steps do you need to take before you can
actually start your research, and to find methods that are suited best to meet your
research project’s objectives and answer your research question(s)?
While attending many conferences and doctoral seminars, during the last 20
years or so, we the editors of this book, feel the scenario described above might
be true for many academic landscape architecture research groups. This is in part
because of the relatively low numbers of experienced landscape architecture
researchers and doctoral students across large numbers of departments, so that
there is no long tradition and culture of doing academic research. There are few
experienced publishers of top-quality research papers or even of doctoral
supervision or of work in major European Union (EU) or nationally funded
research projects.
It has also been our experience in various conferences, including the annual
ECLAS conferences and those of other organisations where landscape
architecture research may be presented, that when listening to oral papers, a
surprisingly large number of supposedly research presentations are found
wanting a proper research question. Also surprisingly large is the number of
researchers having difficulty in describing why they chose a specific theme,
what is the problem they are addressing, what is their objective and,
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significantly, how they selected particular methods and how they applied them.
However, the number of researchers, senior and junior, who are clear in
reporting how they went about collecting and analysing data and in extracting
from them meaningful conclusions and finding robust answers to the questions is
small (no surprise if the questions were ill-posed, of course!). It is the latter,
who, in our view, should – and in several cases already do – take the lead in
advancing the landscape architecture research community. Of course, all of the
academic community must take up the call. We all have obligations to both the
current and the next generation of researchers. The job for senior researchers is
to develop strategies, to give direction and, ultimately, to identify the route
towards research excellence. This book on research methods is but one
contribution to the many aspects that are needed.

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THE PURPOSES OF THE BOOK
This book is sponsored and published under the aegis of ECLAS, which
considers landscape architecture to be the discipline concerned with the
conscious shaping of people’s surroundings. ECLAS defines the tasks of
landscape architecture as the planning, design and management of landscapes to
create, maintain, protect and enhance places so as to be functional, beautiful and
sustainable (in every sense of the word), and appropriate to diverse human and
ecological needs (see htt​p:/​/ww​w.e​cla​s.o​rg). Academics and professionals
increasingly recognise how good practice and training both depend on excellent
education and that all benefit from top quality research. Practitioners in a range
of fields with which we interact look for evidence upon which to base design
(such as which landscape design aspects contribute to human health and
wellbeing).
To develop the connections between research on the one hand and teaching
and practice on the other, and to be able to define landscape architecture as a
discipline that relies on its own body of knowledge, it is important to build a
common framework of theory and of research practice. Any research, after
formulating objectives and research questions, needs an appropriate overall
approach and a methodology. A methodology is about selecting the most
appropriate suite of methods for answering the research question(s). This book is
firstly about the routes towards selecting the methods that landscape architects
(and others) may use in and for research and secondly about demonstrating some
of the methods most appropriate for certain kinds of research. It is, thirdly, also
about the choices researchers make: at the beginning and during designing and
conducting their research, which methods to select and how to apply them.
These choices – at both collective and personal levels – are profound. The first
purpose of this book is therefore to provide some guidance concerning the
rationales needed for selecting methods to meet specific research needs.
The second purpose of the book is to provide the discipline with a resource on
how to frame research and how to develop an appropriate research approach and
methodology. It is written to be used in courses at master’s and especially at
doctoral level where landscape architecture-specific approaches and methods are
likely to be applied and critically reflected upon. In addition to educating the
future generation of landscape architecture researchers, the book also aims to
support teachers and supervisors. Where this book is likely to find a readership
outside academia it will mainly be with research-orientated landscape
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consultants and staff members of research institutes. Many landscape
architecture design and planning firms carry out research, such as that
commissioned by government agencies and international institutions.
Professionals thus engaged in research may have an interest in keeping up to
date about landscape architecture research approaches and methods.
Landscape architecture researchers will, particularly after successfully
completing a study, feel the urge to contribute to building bodies of knowledge.
Results from studies need to be published in international peer-review journals
and high quality books; these journals and books also provide a platform for
landscape architecture researchers to take part in the scholarly debate on design
research. In this respect it should be noted that landscape architecture across the
globe still needs to catch up in advancing the scholarly dimension of the field
when compared with other design disciplines such as architecture and industrial
design. A number of peer-review journals explicitly devoted to research exist
within the larger field of design and advance the scholarly dimension of the
field. Examples include Frontiers of Architectural Research, Journal of Design
Research, Design Studies and Journal of Urban Design. While these generally
focus on a broad and interdisciplinary understanding of design and design
processes, including those of landscape architecture (Journal of Urban Design)
and ‘landscaping architecture’ (Frontiers of Architectural Research), landscape
architecture researchers rarely publish in any of these journals. We hope that, in
the future, landscape architecture researchers will be publishing in these journals
much more.
Similarly, landscape architects also need to consider contributing to book
projects. For example, although many chapters in The Routledge Companion to
Design Research (Rodgers and Yee 2015) are relevant for landscape architects
and landscape architecture researchers, none includes contributions specifically
from the field of landscape architecture. In the future, books with a focus on
landscape may be authored and co-authored by landscape architects much more.
Researchers need not restrict their focus on books and journals with the term
‘landscape’ in their title, such as Journal of Landscape Architecture (JoLA),
Landscape Research, Landscape Journal and Landscape and Urban Planning.
Indeed, these journals regularly publish articles written by landscape architects,
but the number of articles is relatively small in total, although they cover a broad
variety of subjects. Moreover, apart from JoLA these journals do not qualify as
typical landscape design journals. Nonetheless, they provide a welcome forum
for publishing the results of landscape architecture research.
It should be noted, however, that landscape architecture partly overlaps with
the broader area of landscape studies, which draws from fields such as
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hydrology, soil sciences, landscape ecology, geography and environmental
psychology, to mention a few. Through planning and designing, landscape
architecture also reaches beyond landscape studies and represents an academic
field in its own right. Hence, the third purpose of this book is to support the
further development of this academic field by, for example, addressing a number
of topics that we believe to be highly relevant for scholarly landscape research.
The fourth and final purpose of the book is to contribute to help raising
scholarly standards. Researchers may find, for example when submitting a
manuscript to a peer-review journal, that manuscripts are not readily accepted by
editors of those journals. Rejection and revisions are to be expected and they are
not the end of the world, as it were. As explained by Maggie Roe in Chapter 5 of
this book, both must be seen as part of the educational process that all, junior
researchers and experienced professors alike, profit from in the long run. If
rejected, in particular, one may initially feel misunderstood. After all the hard
work that went into reporting what we are convinced is a great study, a rejection
might turn into disappointment. Little by little, though, after taking the trouble of
finding out what may have gone wrong, one might learn how to improve, first on
the submitted manuscript, and later on future research and their publication. This
book, therefore, also aims to help people understand what good research is and
how results should best be reported in order for researchers to successfully take
part in scholarly debate, and to publish successfully in the best journals that exist
in the market.
Viewed from both inside as well as outside, landscape architecture may not
always have been recognised as a research discipline (e.g. Gobster et al. 2010;
Deming and Swaffield 2011; Brown and Corry 2011). However, over the last
15–20 years, landscape architecture research has steadily been advancing. We
are not yet out of the woods, so to speak, and much still needs to be done.

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THE STRUCTURE OF THE BOOK
The book has four parts. The following is a brief overview of the chapters in
each of these parts. Part I is about raising awareness. It presents our views on
academic research in landscape architecture and provides the foundation of this
book. By relating the worlds of research and design, Chapter 1 discusses
different types of landscape architecture studies, and, using examples from this
book, explains how a landscape architecture research study might be designed. It
also outlines the research process, the conceptual research design and the
technical research design as well as addressing some practical aspects of actually
doing research. In Chapter 2 the process approach to research in landscape
architecture is discussed in more detail. The views expressed in these chapters
are those of the editors and we do not expect everyone to agree with these – in
fact we hope they will stimulate a debate about the nature of landscape
architecture research and lead people to question their current views.
Part II is setting the stage for discussing research methods. Chapter 3 provides
thoughts on the role of theory in landscape architecture and it addresses whether
theory is an input to or output from research. Chapter 4 includes reflections on
the special role that designing has in research and in landscape architecture in
particular. The act of designing is conceptualised here as an intrinsic part of
doing research. Chapter 5 offers a journal editor’s view on how to improve the
quality of research papers in landscape architecture and on key areas of future
research. Based on two studies Chapter 6 reports on the state of research in
landscape architecture, and it offers thoughts on enhancing research transparency
and developing the research agenda.
Part III discusses a number of selected approaches and methods. When
designing research projects strategic decisions have to be made. Decisions
include deliberations on research questions and methodological strategies and
also on choosing specific methods. Chapter 7 argues for making well-informed
decisions for using a case study and selecting cases to meet criteria such as being
a case of something specific or representative. This is important for landscape
architecture researchers because the option of ’doing a case study’ often presents
itself and forms a basis for many projects. The following chapters of Part III
offer a selection of the broad palette of methods from which researchers may
choose when planning their research. For example, for the purpose of informing
landscape-changing designs, it is important to study former and current changes
and also to find out what people perceive and think of landscape
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transformations. Chapter 8 presents the landscape biography approach and points
to different methods for understanding the history of landscape. Chapter 9
discusses social media as vehicles for knowledge acquisition through
collaborative processes, such as social discourse and public participation, and it
also presents methods for analysing data shared on social media sites. With a
focus on virtual environments, Chapter 10 discusses methods of landscape
visualisation appropriate for use in research, including ’real-time virtual
landscape models’ and ’virtual walks’ through landscapes. Chapter 11 also puts
the focus on landscape perception and discusses research methods related to
walking the ’real landscape’. Chapter 12 returns to the question, hinted at above,
of how to develop transferable study results when design is itself dealing with
singular and specific situations. This important question is addressed by
presenting examples of design research that lead to guidelines aimed at
informing landscape design practice.
In Part IV we address some of the grand challenges that we consider
important in landscape architecture research. Researchers are encouraged to add
their own examples to the list. Starting with heritage management, a growing
challenge in a rapidly changing world, Chapter 13 speaks about research that
puts the focus on intangible landscape meanings and values and on their role in
landscape design. Challenged by current health crises, particularly in the western
world, Chapter 14 reports on research and methods that help to generate the
knowledge needed for designing ’healthy landscapes’. Aimed at informing
designs to create microclimates that ameliorate the effects of urban heat island
intensification Chapter 15 is about researching thermally comfortable urban
environments. Finally, Chapter 16 explores how landscape architecture research
contributes to generating knowledge that helps to solve urban water challenges.
With the aim to help readers navigate through the book and easily find where
different parts connect, we have inserted a number of cross-references at several
places in the book; they generally read as (author(s) – Chapter x). Making cross-
references are not the responsibility of chapter authors but of the editors alone.
We believe we have covered a wide range of relevant aspects related to
research in landscape architecture in this book. Nevertheless, we needed to make
choices, such as, for example, restricting ourselves to a selection of grand
challenges in Part IV. We have also made choices about the research methods
presented in Part III. Needless to say, there are many more research methods that
are regularly being applied in landscape architecture research studies. As a
number of good books exist about such methods we kindly refer readers to these.
More generally we refer to text books on research methods that are highly
relevant for landscape architecture research, such as Cresswell (2014) and
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Kumar (2014). We would encourage readers to consult such sources in
combination with this book when designing a research project. We also refer
readers to the ‘Suggested further reading’ sections that are included in most (not
all) of the chapters. These sections include sources that help researchers to dive
deeper into the subject matters discussed by chapter authors.

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
We would like to thank all the authors who contributed to this book. We are
tremendously grateful for their support, which helped make this book possible.
Developing the book was a fascinating exploratory journey during which we felt
encouraged by the expertise chapter authors were generously willing to share.
We would also like to thank our colleagues at Routledge, Sade Lee and Louise
Fox, who never lingered to respond to our many questions and who greatly
helped in the book production process. At Wageningen University we would like
to thank the following colleagues for their important contributions to the book.
Adrie van ‘t Veer did a fantastic job in (re-)drawing all figures and tables, for
which he cannot be thanked enough. We also thank Monique Jansen for
preparing all photos for publication and Marit Noest for designing the research
process figures in Chapter 1, and for her assistance in preparing the manuscript.

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REFERENCES
Bell, S., Stiles, R. and Jørgensen, K. ( 2010) LE:NOTRE Two Output report: Research and teaching
(‘Teaching for Research – Research into Teaching’). European Council of Landscape
Architecture Schools, Internal report [online], available: htt​p:/​/ww​w.l​e-n​otr​e.o​rg.
Bell, S., Sarlöv Herlin, I. and Stiles, R. (eds) ( 2011) Exploring the Boundaries of Landscape Architecture,
Abingdon: Routledge.
Brown, R.D. and Corry, R.C. ( 2011) ‘ Evidence-based landscape architecture: The maturing of a
profession’, Landscape and Urban Planning, 100, 327–329.
Clewing, C. and Jørgensen, K. ( 2006) LE:NOTRE Output year 3 report: European PhD in landscape
architecture, LE:NOTRE Outputs, Year 3. Oslo, Norwegian University of Life Sciences and
European Council of Landscape Architecture Schools, internal report [online], available: htt​-
p:/​/ww​w.l​e-n​otr​e.o​rg.
Cresswell, J.W. ( 2014) Research Design: Qualitative, Quantitative, and Mixed Methods Approaches, Los
Angeles, CA: Sage.
Deming, E. and Swaffield, S. ( 2011) Landscape Architectural Research: Inquiry, Strategy, Design, New
York: John Wiley.
Fetzer, E. ( 2011) Development of a European doctoral programme in landscape architecture. Selected
results from LE:NOTRE survey on doctoral education. European Council of Landscape
Architecture Schools, internal report [online], available: htt​p:/​/ww​w.l​e-n​otr​e.o​rg.
Gobster, P.H., Nassauer, J.I. and Nadenicek, D.J. ( 2010) ‘Landscape Journal and scholarship in landscape
architecture: The next 25 years’, Landscape Journal, 29( 1), 52–70.
Kumar, R. ( 2014) Research Methodology: A Step by Step Guide for Beginners, Los Angeles, CA: Sage.
Rodgers, P.A. and Yee, J. (eds) ( 2015) The Routledge Compendium to Design Research, Abingdon and
New York: Routledge.
van den Brink, A. and Bruns, D. ( 2014) ‘ Strategies for enhancing landscape architecture research’,
Landscape Research, 39( 1), 7–20.

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PART I
RAISING AWARENESS

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Chapter 1: Advancing landscape
architecture research

Diedrich Bruns, Adri van den Brink, Hilde Tobi and

Simon Bell

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THE RELATED WORLDS OF RESEARCH AND
DESIGN
In all design disciplines, research and design go hand in hand. They are two
sides of the same coin. The founders of landscape architecture, icons such as
André le Nôtre, Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown and Frederick Law Olmsted, as
well as their successors to the present day, took thorough note of the needs of the
people who were going to use and enjoy the landscape to be created. In addition,
they studied, at every design location, land use, elevation and drainage, slope
and light, soil and vegetation, views, possible walking routes and so on. They
systematically acquired site-specific knowledge on which to base firm proposals
for landscape interventions. Through their work influential practitioners have
inspired, and continue to inspire, generations of landscape architects. Two things
are specific to a designer’s knowledge about a particular location and already
emerged as those pioneers developed their practice. First, practitioner knowledge
is defined as ’embodied’, that is it is the knowing of what to do under particular
circumstances. Second, the knowledge is situational, that is it is difficult to
transfer to other places and situations, and also time. It is not for nothing that
‘Capability’ Brown received his nickname: for seeing the capabilities in a
specific piece of land which made a unique design possible while using a
relatively restricted palette of materials.
However, it is also true that the early practitioners did not carry out any
fundamental research nor make especially systematic observations about
different phenomena as a result of their work which could have informed the
development of their ideas and designs. They came from a different tradition in
an era when science was in its infancy and scientists were amateur gentlemen
who could afford to indulge their private interests. Early landscape architects
were quick to spot the possibilities offered by the new technologies which
emerged during the industrial revolution, such as steam engines, cast iron and
glass as well as profiting from the plant collecting expeditions and botanical
research which enriched the parks and gardens. Scientific breakthroughs in pest
control, fertilisers and plant breeding impacted practice. Later, during the 20th
century, social science theories and empirical research also came to be applied.
Landscape architects have long since been the beneficiaries and recipients of the
results of research carried out by other related disciplines.
Today, the relationship between research and design is becoming increasingly

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intense. As the remit of landscape architecture has expanded from the design of
parks and gardens to much larger scales and with links to many more disciplines
than architecture, horticulture, engineering and planning, the nature of design
problems has become multi-faceted and more complex. The rather
straightforward commissioner–designer or client–designer–contractor
relationship common in the past has grown into complex societal tasks,
combined with processes in which designers can play different roles at the same
time. Ongoing technological development has opened a vast range of
possibilities for design, representation and construction but has also meant that
the range of knowledge needed to solve problems has become too great for any
one person to be an expert in. These are some of the reasons why landscape
architects are increasingly engaging in academic research. Landscape architects
need much more than embodied and situational knowledge. The need for a wide
variety of background research related to specific projects, sites or situations
remains and is a necessary part of what a practicing landscape architect does in
their day to day life. This, however, is not the same as academic research and
should not be confused with it, even if the landscape concerned is broad in
extent and rich in aspects which need to be explored before planning, design or
management can begin.
There is an ongoing open debate in the design disciplines in general, and not
only in landscape architecture, about what might be meant by ‘research’ (e.g.
Davis 2008). In this chapter we aim to clearly define how we as editors of this
book perceive research in landscape architecture from a mainly academic
perspective (though set in the context of the wider activities often described as
‘research’, including those aspects alluded to above). In doing so we provide
some classifications and definition of terms (which some readers may find
inclusive or exclusive depending on their point of view). To start with, the
relationship between research and design can be grouped according to three
categories (Lenzholzer et al. – Chapter 4). The first category is research on
design that includes studies about the products of design, in our case, for
example, historic gardens, modernist new towns or baroque parks. The second
category is research for design that covers all types of research supporting the
design process and the coming into being of the design product. Examples here
might include research from the natural or social sciences which informs and
provides evidence supporting design decisions. The third category is research
through designing that includes all research and studies that actively employ
designing as a research method. This may be comparable to developing
prototype solutions to particular problems which are tested against certain
criteria and in which the active, reflective process of design plays a fundamental
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role.
A distinction is often made in science between fundamental or basic research
and applied research. Fundamental research includes work which tries to
understand the basic structure of the universe, for example, but for which the
results have no specific and direct application to the solution of a problem,
although the knowledge gained might lead to key technological breakthroughs
later. In the context of landscape architecture the term ‘applied research’ may
need clarification. Landscape architects strive to make an impact on society
(including to make places more habitable, healthier or diverse), regardless of
their role as researcher, teacher, professional designer or a combination of all
three (which is widely accepted as a profound way of linking academia with
innovative practice). Some may speak about ‘project-based research’ rather than
‘applied research’ and the term ‘project’ includes all real-world landscape design
projects. However, this may mean that the research done for some projects only
yields situational or embodied research results.
If we are trying (as we editors believe we are) to raise the game and to move
forward in depth and quality of research we must try to make a clear distinction.
Retaining the term ‘applied research’ is more valid as it reflects the fact that this
is what we do. The difference is that, in aiming to carry out much more
evidence-based design, the quality of the evidence and its applicability must
transcend the specific site. While it may not be possible to generate generalisable
results which can be applied absolutely universally (as do the laws of physics –
except in the vicinity of black holes) the results should be generalisable within a
broad but limited set of conditions and much more so than being applicable to a
single situation. Thus, many of the results of research for landscape architecture
are very widely applicable within, for example, similar cultural settings, similar
climates or similar ecosystems. Many findings about, for example, how access to
nature enables us to recover from stress, have been found to extend very broadly
and with few limitations.
It is important not to confuse ‘project research’ with a ‘research project’, a
term used to describe any sort of study including, for example, a discrete
doctoral research project. Project research is research for a specific planning or
design project and embodied or situational research. A research project starts
with a problem which may or may not be associated with the physical landscape
and if it is, may not be concerned with planning or designing that landscape but
with understanding phenomena by using it (or more than one) as an exemplar or
case study. This is not to say that the results may be less interesting or even
valuable, it is just that they are different in kind and in purpose and this
difference is crucial for anyone moving from practice into academia or for
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anyone commissioning research. Nor does it matter whether the research project
is commissioned or non-commissioned. Non-commissioned research may be
what an individual academic does as part of their daily academic life – pursuing
an interesting and rewarding topic out of personal interest, or it may be what
many PhD students do (as long as they can get a grant for it!). Much applied
research is commissioned by national or international funding agencies where
the problem is presented to the academic world who have to compete to win the
funding. Doctoral and post-doctoral research can – and in many cases will – be
conducted as part of or in the context of commissioned research.
We also think it might be helpful to distinguish between academic research on
the one hand and non-academic research on the other in landscape architecture.
This distinction refers to principles that academics must observe individually,
amongst each other, and in their responsibility towards society, when engaging
in research. Examples of such principles are scrupulousness, reliability, validity
and impartiality. These principles can be read as general notions or norms of
good academic practice, in other words: quality standards about what research
should be and how it should be conducted in order to qualify as research that
contributes to enhancing any disciplinary knowledge base, in this case that of
landscape architecture (many countries and disciplines have a good research
practice declaration with these norms). This is the kind of research this book is
about. Such research is primarily conducted by academic, university-based
researchers and sometimes by academic researchers employed by independent
institutes. Examples are doctoral and post-doctoral studies or as senior
researchers working on medium to large-scale commissioned projects (e.g.
funded by the European Union (EU)), or else academics and professional
landscape architects doing research as part of their job and publishing their work
in peer-review journals or as high quality, refereed reports. Such research also
complies with scholarly standards in terms of its relationship to the existing body
of research in the specific field, its theoretical grounding and its methodological
soundness.
Writing for popular and professional design journals and inquiries at the
project level that inform designing can include some kind of research. Searching
databases or literature for information and writing up some conclusions to
inform policy is frequently referred to as research and companies may employ
people to do this as ‘researchers’ but they are not the same as our use of the term
in academia. Although such work can be very important and useful, it is not the
kind of academic research this book addresses.

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Table 1.1
Research proposal checklist
Questions
• What is the problem (we are generally doing applied research)?
• Why is it important (we need funding or the problem should be worth researching)?
• What do we already know about the problem (so we don’t repeat work or try to solve a problem already
solved)?
• What don’t we know (and therefore want to find out)?
• How do we do it (what methods did we apply)?
• What do we find (the results)?
• What does it mean (to what extent did we solve the problem and how significant are the results we
found)?
• What do we contribute to building and debating the knowledge base?

The scholarly principles mentioned above are strongly related to the way
research is conducted, including the methodology and methods applied. Valid
and reliable knowledge, for example, is knowledge that is the outcome of
methodologically sound research. The choice of research question, the research
set-up, the choice of method and the references to sources used all need to be
accurately documented in a form that allows for verification of each step taken
in the research process. These are necessary conditions for research to
consistently and reliably contribute to the body of knowledge in landscape
architecture. However, research may also be about ‘seeing things’ that others
don’t see, such as formulating challenging research questions that lead to new
knowledge (which is, by the way, one of the hardest aspects of doing research),
and about creatively exploring new paths to study these questions. This is where
research methodology and research methods come in to play their vital role in
enhancing the landscape architecture knowledge base.
In order to qualify as research in our terms, researchers might find it useful to
test a proposal against a set of simple questions which are in effect the logic of
academic research and which can be mirrored in the development of a research
project from a practical standpoint (see Table 1.1).

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TYPES OF LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE
STUDIES
While making indispensable design contributions landscape architects must also
continue broadening the role they are playing in society. They must contribute
by generating new knowledge which can be applied more generally, although
usually within some limits – it is difficult to expect that we can come up with
universal laws! This may be, for example, knowledge about the materiality and
concepts of landscapes, and about the processes that shape them. This may also
be about the perception and experience of landscapes, about design methods and
about the way in which knowledge from other disciplines may be combined with
design knowledge. Confronting the grand challenges society is facing from a
landscape architecture perspective will contribute our special approaches to
tackling problems. We believe we have a lot to offer, by producing research and
also by converting and melding scientific results into practical solutions. The
latter can be a viewed as a kind of post-research activity (producing planning or
design guidelines can be one such role). The challenges of climate change,
energy transition, urbanisation, health, food security and others can successfully
be addressed only if the driving processes and the spatial and human dimensions
are considered together. Landscape architects provide and will continue to make
important contributions while society is undergoing the necessary social and
physical transformations of land, space and environment (ESF/COST 2010; van
den Brink and Bruns 2014).
Landscape architecture research is designed to expand our knowledge related
to the shaping of landscapes and to processes of landscape intervention at
various scales. For the purpose of this book we define landscape by (a) the
interaction of the human and non-human, and (b) the human perception of the
resulting material phenomena, that is, features and processes (Roe 2013, p.401).
A landscape is both about the ‘phenomenon itself and our perception of it’
(Wylie 2007, p.7). A particular area may be studied in purely physical terms,
but, since each area also carries multiple meanings ‘that emanate from the values
by which people define themselves’ (Greider and Garkovich 1994, p.1)
landscapes are also studied with respect to all kinds of cultural and social
practice, including symbolic representation, memory and so on.
An integrated approach aimed at yielding knowledge through landscape
architecture research will, especially when pursued in the depth appropriate for

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academic research, often deal with three aspects in a triangle combination:
image, structure and action (Figure 1.1). Image is all about perception,
symbolism and the communication content of landscapes. Structure deals with
the fabric of the landscape spatially, materially and in depth, for example the
layers which constitute it. Action can include processes occurring in the
landscape, taking place in it (e.g. human activities) or external forces affecting it.
The integrated nature comes about when there are mutual dependencies which
need to be understood through research: for example, how people in a city make
use of a park for various activities (action) depends both on the design and
layout of the park (structure) and what they think of it – its safety or
attractiveness (image). Likewise, the research can be organised to include
methods which capture some aspects of each dimension and one of the
dimensions can act as the entry point to addressing the problem. Missing one of
the dimensions may lead to inadequate or incomplete results which cannot be
applied successfully. One of the hallmarks of landscape architecture research
therefore is its multi-faceted and multi-disciplinary nature.
Landscape architecture research involves studies that belong to a wide range
of different types. Case studies have been identified as very popular modes of
research; cases feature in the majority of published peer reviewed articles and
are often very prominent in conference presentations (Swaffield – Chapter 7).
Some researchers have attempted to study multiple cases within a single research
project and, through systematic comparison, succeeded in accumulating
generalisable knowledge (Prominski – Chapter 12). In addition to case studies,
there is wide range of study designs one may use for a specific type of study and
to plan and undertake a research project (Deming and Swaffield 2011). For
example, if research aims to inform practice about the design solutions which are
most effective for flood risk management, it might be prudent for researchers to
know how much confidence they can place on the study findings; a priority
would thus be to consider the ‘level of evidence’ one might be able to obtain
when deciding between particular types of study.

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Figure 1.1
Three aspects of doing research

A completely different strategic challenge is determining the long-term

balance of resources and benefits needed for the research to achieve its
objectives. What size should a landscape architecture study be, and for how long
should it be conducted? For example, a researcher may need to choose between
cross-sectional surveys or longitudinal studies (Ward Thompson – Chapter 14).
In a short term cross-sectional study expenses could be high because the number
of survey subjects might need to be large and several research assistants may be
needed all at once. Conversely, in a long-term (observational) study investigators
might strive to assess design outcomes in groups of participants. For example,
investigators may observe a group of adults to learn more about the effects that
specific designs or environments have on people’s wellbeing after one, three and
five (or even more) years. One research assistant might be needed who pays
annual visits to conduct interviews with participants, and the same questions
would need to be asked of the same study participants for at least five years. If
no resources for research assistants can be made available after three years, and
if no changes are observed between one and two years, the decision might be
made to save money and stop the study prematurely. What happens though, if
the really interesting effects present themselves after five years, or even later?
Funding periods do not usually even span periods of five years.
In a perfect world, landscape architecture research would strive to identify all
sorts of planning, design and management strategies to improve landscapes for
the benefit of people and their environment. It would study all possible effects,
beneficial or otherwise, that designs may produce over long periods of time.
Conducting such large and long-term studies requires planning for several years
of investigation and including large numbers of participants, possibly in
representative populations. Alas, in landscape architecture this is neither
practical nor affordable. The reality of landscape architecture research is that
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most studies that have been carried out to date are small in size and short in
duration. In particular, studies carried out in the context of a PhD are usually
done by one person and not by a large team of investigators, their timelines are
set by university regulations and their financial and other resources are limited to
their stipend or grant plus some small costs (if they are lucky).

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DESIGNING A RESEARCH PROJECT
In this section we explain our understanding of (a) the research process, (b) the
conceptual research design and (c) the technical research design. Referring to
Figures 1.2, 1.3 and 1.4 we present and discuss at a generic level the different
components of a research project. These are nested figures like matryoshka
dolls. Examples are given to make explicit what we are talking about. The
choice of examples is based on those described in the book, so that readers may
look at the relevant chapters to get a clearer view of how, for instance, a
‘conceptual framework’ and a ‘study design’ might actually look. In Chapter 2
Tobi and van den Brink discuss our process approach to research in landscape
architecture in more detail.

Research process
Figure 1.2 illustrates our understanding of the research process as a whole. One
or more ‘research questions’ are identified. A ‘research project’ is developed,
consisting of three stages: designing the research project, doing the research and
reporting on findings/results (e.g. publishing a paper or a report). Research
findings represent a knowledge gain which fills a knowledge gap. A knowledge
gap is usually the starting point for developing a research project. This structure
clearly maps onto the logic of research presented earlier.

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Figure 1.2
Research process overview

Identifying gaps in existing bodies of knowledge and generating relevant

research questions are not easy tasks. To be original and innovative, a research
question (or problem) must be identified that has been answered insufficiently or
not at all in landscape architecture or another field of study. Of course, one could
simply read a number of published articles and, by examining the parts which
include ‘suggestions for future research’, draw up a list of interesting looking
topics and choose one of them. One could also try and ask experts to offer advice
and opinion. One could also use research websites and tools such as ‘Google
Trends’ to find out about the general interest in certain topics that way.
However, creative landscape architecture researchers might rather choose a more

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ambitious approach. If so, we suggest that researchers identify and try
addressing a ‘challenge’. A challenge may be different things. It may be calling
existing assumptions into question; in the field of landscape architecture one
could include questioning and thus disrupting established ways of designing (for
example by using social media, as discussed by van Lammeren et al. – Chapter
9). A research challenge could also be based on or answering to a real-world
design challenge by simulating them as in virtual reality (as discussed by Hehl-
Lange and Lange – Chapter 10).
Then there are societal challenges that need addressing. The aim of a research
project that responds to such a challenge would be to generate or (dis)confirm
knowledge in order to help inform design solutions that would be addressing this
challenge. Included in this book are examples where researchers responded to
the need for publicly demonstrating intangible values pertaining to cultural
heritage and their landscape-based meaning (Taylor – Chapter 13), to health
related challenges (Ward Thompson – Chapter 14), also to the effects of urban
heat island intensification (Brown and Gillespie – Chapter 15) and to urban
water management challenges (Backhaus et al. in Chapter 16). The examples
collected in this book merely represent the tip of the iceberg, so to speak, and
many more challenges present themselves to be taken up by the landscape
architecture researcher. Sustainable mobility (‘green transport’), demographic
change, biological and cultural diversity and inclusive governance are just a few
of the many globally important challenges.
In addition there are the challenges and priorities set by national governments
and international organisations such as the EU’s Horizon 2020 research
framework which sets out what are considered to be the big challenges facing
society and the planet – not dissimilar to the challenges discussed in this book –
but with the added incentive of large amounts of money and the disincentive of
extreme competition for this largesse. Nevertheless, the calls for research
projects set out a series of problems and look for innovative ways of addressing
them through research.
The real-world problems that trigger the demand for new knowledge provide
both background and purpose (i.e. solving this problem) for the research, and
they are formulated in terms of one or more research objectives. The extent to
which these objectives are reached after the research is done and the findings are
reported is a measure for the contribution of the research to filling the identified
knowledge gap or to informing landscape design practice.

Conceptual research design

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Figure 1.3 puts the focus on designing the research project. This stage of the
process consists of (a) the ‘conceptual research design’, and (b) the ‘technical
research design’. The conceptual research design addresses the why and the what
of the research. The why focuses on the identification of the ‘need to know’, that
is the knowledge gap regarding a specific challenge (as discussed above). The
what is about the research questions (RQs) that relate to the identified
knowledge gap and challenge. A general research question (GRQ) might be
formulated first and then divided into a limited (usually not more than three to
five) number of specific research questions (SRQs). For example, when
researchers are generally asking how urban areas must be designed so that ‘they
will provide thermally comfortable environments and minimise the impact of
urban heat islands’, Brown and Gillespie (Chapter 15) suggest defining two
specific (interrelated) questions. The first question is ‘How do built
environments affect the macroclimate to create microclimates?’ The second
question is ‘How do humans perceive their thermal comfort under different
microclimatic conditions?’ (Also note that these relate to the structure and image
aspects of the triangle mentioned earlier – Figure 1.1 – and may lead to
consequences for the action part in terms of the interaction of physical condition
with perceived comfort.)

Figure 1.3
Conceptual research design

In her chapter on researching links between landscape and health, Ward

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Thompson (Chapter 14) first asks how landscapes must be designed that
‘support health in mind and body’ and, by putting the focus on the local
community scale, then poses several GRQs that each again leads to two or three
SRQs. For example, staying with the neighbourhood scale and targeting a
specific age group, the GRQ ‘How should environments be designed that
support outdoor access in an ageing society?’ leads researchers to specifically
ask ‘Do older adults’ perceptions of the qualities of their physical
neighbourhood environment predict their quality of life?’ and ‘What qualities of
a local park or open space are associated with older people’s varying levels of
outdoor activity and quality of life?’
Both the why and the what of the research project are informed by a
conceptual framework that describes how all or parts of the research questions
are conceptualised. The conceptual framework consists of relevant definitions
and theories (for the role of theory see Thompson – Chapter 3). Basic to
landscape architecture are definitions of ‘landscape’ (see above in this chapter),
‘cultural landscape’ (Taylor – Chapter 13), and of ‘designing’ (Lenzholzer et al.
– Chapter 4). How people perceive and understand landscape may be
conceptualised through phenomenological theory (Schulz and van Etteger –
Chapter 11), and also by constructivist theory, while discourse theory helps to
explain how ideas about landscape are constructed through communication
among different actors (van Lammeren et al. – Chapter 9). Research specifically
responding to a grand challenge includes, in the case of urban climate studies,
the ‘concept of energy budgets’ used for modelling microclimates as well as
human thermal comfort in outdoor environments (Brown and Gillespie in
Chapter 15). In addition to referring to established theory researchers may also
decide to develop a conceptual framework that specifically meets the needs of
their study. For example, in her research pertaining to landscape and health in an
ageing society Ward Thompson (Chapter 14) builds on existing theory and
develops a concept that specifically links environmental attributes of people’s
perception of them in relation to activities of older people. In the case of
analysing and exploring the history of landscapes Kolen et al. (Chapter 8) are
developing concepts that are integral parts of the landscape biography approach.

Technical research design

Figure 1.4 puts the focus on the technical research design and on finding answers
to the how-the-research-will-be-done question. In Figure 1.4 each SRQ
corresponds to one ‘research module’, but it may also be possible to respond to
more SRQs in one research module. For example, Backhaus et al. (Chapter 16)
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combined methods of site observation with photographic documentation, semi-
structured interviews and document analysis to find answers to the one specific
question of how stormwater management projects are ‘performing’ several years
after being constructed. Similarly, Taylor (Chapter 13) suggests combining a
number of different methods to find answers to the one specific challenge of
heritage landscape assessment. Ward Thompson (Chapter 14), by measuring
‘aspects of activity, wellbeing and quality of life’ and relating these to ‘outdoor
environmental attributes’ is responding to two SRQs by a ‘mixed methods
approach’ (see Chapter 2). This involved several phases, ‘starting with focus
groups and then a wider survey based on a questionnaire’.
In some instances researchers might have to choose between several different
approaches that all may appear useful to answer one SRQ. For example, aiming
to identify the thermal comfort of a person in an outdoor environment, a
common approach is to ask people. This approach has, as Brown and Gillespie
(Chapter 15) pointed out, the disadvantage, at least regarding perception of
thermal optima, of being subject to cultural effects that might lead to
considerable variance between responses. One approach without this
disadvantage would be ‘to observe where people choose to spend time in a
landscape’, assuming that humans will seek out thermally comfortable locations.
A third approach would be to take measurements of people’s core and/or skin
temperature. Again, both alternative approaches come with advantages and
disadvantages, and well-informed decision making is required. The same applies
to operationalising concepts used in the research question. For example, as a
concept thermal comfort is probably understood differently by different people
(volleyball players, people sitting on a bench). Researchers must define all
concepts as input or outcome factors. One needs to know what is meant by a
statement of ‘better or worse thermal comfort’ (e.g. too hot for ball players, too
cold for bench sitters), particularly where value judgement is included such as in
heritage values, and in aesthetic judgements.

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Figure 1.4
Technical research design

For each research module the researcher must find a way to describe (a) the
tools, or ‘instruments’, by which one collects data, and (b) the sampling strategy,
the strategy by which one selects the units from which the data will be obtained.
Both go together and are part of the research design. For the purpose of
measuring solar radiation, for instance, Brown and Gillespie (Chapter 15)
explain how data on solar radiation are collected by means of a pyranometer, a
measuring instrument that senses the strength of solar radiation. The output
(signals) from the pyranometer sensors is read and recorded using a data logger.
When the study design is experimental, protocols must be clear and rigorous
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application of rules carefully observed, for responses to be reliable (Hehl-Lange
and Lange – Chapter 10). Measuring, reading and recording of data are not
always straightforward. Schulz and van Etteger (Chapter 11) use walking to
study experiences made from the first-person point of view. Sensory impressions
are collected and detailed landscape information gathered. They obtained data at
points that are fixed along a route at equal distances from one another. Recorded
data were translated into graphs and maps. In his chapter on heritage and
landscape, Taylor (Chapter 13) explains how data are collected for the purpose
of conducting a historic landscape assessment study. When unable to obtain and
record empirical evidence through measuring things themselves, researchers will
systematically search for information on landscape history in existing sources,
and also by on-site landscape examination.
While measuring radiation is done by following operating instructions, few
generally accepted standards exist on how to extract data from a walk, or from
private and public records, family archives, newspapers, historic plans and maps.
(There are guidelines on standardised record extraction and especially on how to
document and report on it.) Researchers will need to read up on exemplary cases
and also take guidance from experienced colleagues and experts from other
fields. This is particularly true in cases where, in search of evidence about
people’s ‘history of life and work’, researchers are developing new methods for
gathering local landscape related knowledge, including memory about ‘old
practice’, anecdotes and so on (Kolen et al. – Chapter 8). Standards do exist for
preparing and using several of the methods landscape architecture researchers
regularly borrow from the social sciences. For example, a questionnaire is often
listed as a data collection ‘instrument’ by which data are obtained and interviews
are processed by transcribing. Sources from empirical social sciences are used to
prepare researchers to employ these methods that are not traditionally, but are
increasingly becoming part of, the landscape architecture research repertoire, as
can be seen in several chapters of this book. As pointed out by Ward Thompson
(Chapter 14), it is ‘always advisable to use existing, well-tried tools wherever
possible’ such as, for example, existing questionnaire modules that have
successfully been used and tested.

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CONCLUSIONS
In this chapter we have tried to clarify what we see as the precise nature of
research within landscape architecture. At the starting point research meant
collecting background information about a specific landscape for purposes of
planning or design – embodied and situational – tasks which are of course still
vital in landscape architecture practice. Then, an evolution took place where the
scope and scale of research developed away from the site specific and practical
to the more academic and generalisable. However, we still find confusion about
where the boundary lies and people still describe research for a project as a
research project in an academic sense. Academic research in all aspects of
landscape architecture as a disciplinary field has been growing. Indeed, the rate
of publication in academic journals as well as the synthesis of research into high
quality books has substantially increased over the last 10–20 years. Our
endeavour in this book is to help to stabilise the position of what academic
research is, to strengthen the understanding of what research practice involves
and to demonstrate (some of) the range of research methods which are suitable
for addressing the kinds of challenges facing us.

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REFERENCES
Davis, M. ( 2008) ‘ Why do we need doctoral study in design?’, International Journal of Design, 2( 3), 71–
79.
Deming, E. and Swaffield, S. ( 2011) Landscape Architectural Research: Inquiry, Strategy, Design, New
York: John Wiley.
ESF/COST ( 2010) Landscape in a changing world. Bridging divides, integrating disciplines, serving
society,’ Science Policy Briefing, October, No. 41.
Greider, T. and Garkovich, L. ( 1994) ‘ Landscapes: The social construction of nature and the environment’,
Rural Sociology, 59( 1), 1–24.
Roe, M. ( 2013) ‘ Animals and landscape’, Landscape Research, 38( 4), 401–403.
van den Brink, A. and Bruns, D. ( 2014) ‘ Strategies for enhancing landscape architecture research’,
Landscape Research, 39( 1), 7–20.
Wylie, J. ( 2007) Landscape (Key Ideas in Geography), London: Routledge.

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Chapter 2: A process approach to
research in landscape architecture

Hilde Tobi and Adri van den Brink

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Introduction
The research-as-a-process approach is at the foundation of this book. In Chapter
1 the editors of this book presented their view on academic research in landscape
architecture by means of three nested figures outlining the research process
(Figure 1.2), the conceptual research design (Figure 1.3) and the technical
research design (Figure 1.4) respectively. We advocate a process approach to
doing research because the actual process involves developing research
questions, developing the methodology, collecting data, analysing data and
reporting results. The process approach is especially well-suited for conducting
empirical research – research that generates evidence and derives knowledge
from such evidence rather than from theory or belief – although of course there
ought to be some theoretical foundations too. Our purpose here is to set out the
process approach and some fundamental aspects of research methodology in the
social and natural sciences as well as in the arts and the humanities.
Research methodology is the discipline that systematically studies the full
research process from designing a research project to reporting of results,
including research methods or techniques and research instruments (Kampen and
Tobi 2011). Studying research methodology lies at the heart of every academic
discipline. This chapter should help readers of this book to develop a common
understanding of what research and research methodology are and how methods
can be applied, developed and critically assessed in landscape architecture
research.
We have chosen, in this chapter, to introduce the research methodology
perspective for two reasons. Firstly, when talking about research methods the
diversity of terminology seems to make the topic rather complex. This is less the
case if the discipline of research methodology with its own common language is
used. The second reason is that enhancing landscape architecture research may
call for the critical assessment of well-known research methods and instruments
as well as the development and the assessment of new ones. This may happen,
for example, when new domains of study are being explored. These new
methods need to be embedded in a clear understanding of research methodology.
Of course, the reverse may also be true, as we think it likely that the study of
research methods in the context of landscape architecture can also contribute to
research methodology and the use of research methods in other domains.
As landscape architecture research is generally multi- or interdisciplinary and
perhaps even trans-disciplinary in nature (e.g. Deming and Swaffield 2011),
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building a common research language and methods set is a challenge. After all,
the natural sciences, the social sciences, the arts and humanities have very
different cultures (Kagan 2009) and different notions of ‘scientific research’ and
how it should be done. A literature review of the collaboration between natural
and social scientists (Fischer et al. 2011) identified two barriers relevant for
interdisciplinary domains, such as landscape architecture, that we think are best
countered by means of a process approach. First, the differences in paradigms or
epistemologies (Kuhn 2012 [1962]) used by current mono-disciplinary sciences
hinder the interpretation of the results and approaches from, for example, the
natural sciences to the social sciences and vice versa. This may be overcome by
collaboration. A process approach to interdisciplinary research focuses on what
actions need to be planned and how they can best be undertaken to answer the
research question(s) concerned. To take full advantage of this the researcher
needs to think outside the box of a single dominating disciplinary epistemology
to embrace others. The second barrier is the skills and competences of the
researchers involved who, for example, fail to understand each other’s academic
vocabulary or jargon. The process approach facilitates mutual learning through
meaningful communication because the emphasis is placed on research design,
research methods and research outcomes and less on (differences in)
epistemologies.
We believe that acquiring a common methodological language is vital for
landscape architecture if it is to advance as an academic discipline that relies on
its own body of knowledge rather than theories or beliefs. However, generating
such a common language may be both challenged and enriched by the fact that
landscape architecture research is interdisciplinary in nature. As noted in the
Introduction and Chapter 1, it draws on a variety of different knowledge areas
and their related methods of inquiry as well as its own: such an eclectic
collection of methods may prohibit a common understanding of methodology.
Acquiring a common language may be enriching if it facilitates making
connections within and between different research cultures and opens aspiring
researchers to approaches from which inspiration and experience can be derived.
This chapter also aims to identify many of the implicit and explicit decisions
that researchers make in the course of their research to increase transparency of
the research process. We also provide some hands-on advice for making
decisions on, for example, the study design and the data collection methods to be
employed. With every one of these decisions ethical considerations must be
taken into account, for example about which data to collect and which not to
collect. It is important that these decisions and considerations are thought over
and reported in a way that is as explicit and transparent as possible.
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 This chapter is structured as follows. After describing the process approach to
research methodology in more detail we discuss five major steps in research
design. These steps are: formulation of the research question, study design, data
collection and sampling, data analysis and reporting. Each of these will be
briefly described, terminology will be (re)introduced and their relevance to the
research process as a whole will be explained. Readers might like to refer to
Chapter 1 for examples from this book for each of the steps explained below.
Here we are addressing them from a methodological perspective.

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RESEARCH METHODOLOGY AND THE
PROCESS APPROACH
Research methodology takes a pragmatic stance. It is the research question(s)
that determines the choice of study design, methods of data collection, and
instruments used or developed for that data collection and so on, and not the
researcher’s preference or previous experience. Consequently, the distinction
between quantitative research (roughly characterised as research in which
numbers are collected and analysed, e.g. statistically), and qualitative research
(in which words, images, sounds, etc. are collected and not statistically analysed)
becomes blurred. In interdisciplinary research practice the classic divide between
‘traditional’ (i.e. quantitative) research methods and ‘holistic’ (i.e. qualitative)
research methods hardly exists anymore.
Many studies in natural science, traditionally focused on quantitative methods,
may nowadays also incorporate qualitative methods. For example, a study into
the outcomes of a newly introduced technology may start off with interviews in
order to decide what indicators to use for testing its success or, at the end, might
include interviews on why the new technology did (or did not) meet
expectations. At the other end of the spectrum, humanities such as linguistics
and law (traditionally known for relying on qualitative text analysis) also use
quantitative approaches, for example a quantitative analysis of text using
computer simulations in linguistics or the weighting of certain characteristics in
the assessment of legal plans. Interviews and texts but also talks and visual
materials may be analysed through both quantitative and qualitative methods.
Because of the range of options it is therefore essential to distinguish between
the data that will be collected and the method with which this data will be
analysed. Landscape analyses that aim to understand the relevant social–
ecological interactions in the landscape under study are typically based upon
such a mix of research methods from each of the ‘three cultures’ or ‘empires’ as
Thompson calls them (see Chapter 3) and also to fulfil the needs of combining
image, action and structure as noted in Chapter 1.
Research methodology, particularly in the social sciences, evolved from the
study of quantitative approaches, via the inclusion of the study of qualitative
approaches, to the quantitative and qualitative combination referred to nowadays
as ‘mixed methods’ (Creswell and Plano Clark 2011; see also Adamson 2005).
The introduction and popularity of mixed methods is based on the

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complementarity of both quantitative and qualitative methods. Obviously, this
complementarity requires readers of, for example, Cresswell and Plano Clark’s
(2011) textbook Designing and Conducting Mixed Methods Research, to be
familiar with both quantitative and qualitative research concepts. This has
probably helped to reduce the qualitative–quantitative divide within the domain
of research methodology. This may be illustrated by Creswell’s (2014)
bestseller, Research Design, in which the three approaches (i.e. qualitative,
quantitative and mixed methods approaches) are taken together in the subtitle.
The main title emphasises the importance of research design.
Kumar (1999) was one of the first authors to organise a methodology textbook
around research design as a process. He distinguished three phases: deciding on
what to research, planning a research study and conducting a research study. In
the planning phase, or as we call it the technical research design phase, decisions
on study design, method of data collection, instruments used for data collection,
sampling or selection strategies, and data analysis are distinguished and made.
When conducting the study, the field work may demand a change of plan, but
the fact remains that a departure from the plan is better than no plan at all. Then
the process approach requires an explicit and transparent description of the
changes made to allow a critical assessment of the research and methods used,
regardless of the outcomes. The advantage of applying a process approach may
be illustrated by the following example. Traditionally, a choice of either a
qualitative or a quantitative approach seemed to lead automatically to the choice
for a case study yielding qualitative data or an experiment or survey yielding
quantitative data. The process approach forces the researcher to put the research
question at the very centre of the research design. Consequently, the process
approach may lead to the choice for interviews as the data collection method
within an experiment, or quantitative questionnaires within a case study.
As shown elsewhere in this book (see Meijering et al. – Chapter 6), many
topics in landscape architecture research call for collaborative research efforts.
An open, though critical, mind for methods is required to meet the academic
challenges of the discipline. When the research question is leading, instead of
personal preference or experience, choices on methods need to be made
explicitly and shared in scientific reports. This openness on the choice and use of
methods enables systematic reviews to identify and enhance the landscape
architecture knowledge base. This would obviously benefit both researchers and
practitioners within landscape architecture as well as those from neighbouring
disciplines and helps the development of evidence-based landscape architecture
(Brown and Corry 2011).

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FORMULATING A RESEARCH QUESTION
Usually, a research project starts with a topic: a very rough idea that originates
from a real-life problem, a gap in knowledge brought to the attention of the
researcher, a debate or professional curiosity. This topic is then screened to get a
feel of context and constituting parts, and to enable identification of relevant
scientific and professional literature.
Traditionally, a literature review was prone to bias due to the researchers’
network and lack of awareness of, or access to, relevant publications and the
human tendency to cherry-pick. The introduction of computerised bibliographic
databases such as Web of Science and Scopus have enabled systematic
approaches to finding relevant articles, reports and books, regardless of the aim
of the literature review. Systematic literature review methodology was
developed a few decades ago for the medical sciences to provide academics,
professionals and policy makers with information on treatments, taking as much
scientific evidence as possible into account. More recently, systematic review
methodology has also found its way in the social sciences. Systematic review
methodology provides a range of tools to identify, select and synthesise research
articles and reports (e.g. Gough et al. 2012; Petticrew and Roberts 2006). In this
book an example of such a systematic literature review is presented by Meijering
et al. in Chapter 6, another example in landscape architecture is the systematic
review of benefits of urban parks for the IFPRA (Konijnendijk et al. 2013).
Once a knowledge gap has been identified, either a set of research questions
or a set of testable hypotheses is constructed. A testable hypothesis is
characterised by its potential to be falsified. For example, a theory may contend
that the frequency with which people visit a neighbourhood park depends on the
distance between their home and that park. This hypothesis would have to be
rejected if the researchers find no association between distance to the park and
frequency of visiting and they would have to use the data and its analysis to
construct an alternative explanation (theory) to replace the failed one. Whether it
is possible and meaningful to formulate and test hypotheses depends on what is
already considered known as well as the purpose of the research. In the past,
landscape architecture researchers appeared to be mostly interested in exploring
and describing phenomena, less in testing and predicting them. This is confirmed
by Meijering et al. (see Chapter 6).
A next step also helped by the literature review is the development of a
conceptual (theoretical) framework to study the research question. Such a
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framework may be built upon theories and concepts from different disciplines.
Examples include substantive theories, such as the Theory of Island
Biogeography (MacArthur and Wilson 1967) that formed the basis for studying
and implementing ecological networks (e.g. Bakker et al. 2015), and procedural
theories, such as the theory of communicative action (Habermas 1981) that
inspired Healy (2006 [1997]) and many others to develop their thoughts on
collaborative planning. An example from the humanities is the Aesthetic
Creation Theory that is championed by Zangwill (2007). This theory holds that
works of art have aesthetic functions that are essential to them, but also allows
that they have other, non-aesthetic functions, for example practical or ecological
ones. It thus removes the strict distinction between fine art and the useful arts to
which works of landscape architecture can be counted (van Etteger et al. 2016).
The conceptual framework should be coherent and appropriate for framing
and answering the research question. It can be seen as the lens through which the
researcher views the particular part of the real world demarcated by the research
question. It also explains how these lenses are related to theories and evidence
provided in the literature, what is known about the key concepts used in the
research question and how these key concepts are related to each other. It should
be noted, however, that the lenses are a tool to study another object and not an
object of study themselves.

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RESEARCH DESIGN AND STUDY DESIGN
Research design is the design of the research project as a whole. Study design is
the design of the set-up of data collection (e.g. cross-sectional study, panel study,
pre-test–post-test design) within the research project. Three characteristics of the
research question lead to the choice of study design: the level of control
required, the number of data collection waves, and the reference period for data
collection. The fit between study design and research question shapes the
internal validity of the research.
When the research looks for the description of a phenomenon (e.g. tourism in
nature reservations), co-occurrences (e.g. tourist and wildlife numbers), or the
identification of a set of possible post hoc explanations (decreasing wildlife
numbers results from increasing tourist numbers), an observational study may be
appropriate. Generally, an observational study is not suitable for establishing
causation, although, in an observational study design, the use of a particular
theory can make a causal claim plausible (Yin 2014; Swanborn 2010) but this
claim cannot at the same time be used as proof of the general theory, as this
would be circular reasoning (Swanborn 2010).
When knowledge claims on causation are aimed at, one of the many
experimental or quasi-experimental study designs is required (Campbell and
Stanley 1963). These designs help to ensure that the cause precedes the effects
and that the study of such a possible causal relation is not disturbed by a third
factor (e.g. a reduction in the number and size of floods in the nature reserve that
may explain the decrease in wildlife and the increase in tourist numbers). In an
experimental design the researcher has full control over the when, what and to
whom of the exposures under study and randomly assigns study participants to
the experimental conditions. Exposures can be related to behaviour (e.g. sunlight
to the growth speed of plant species) or an individual attribute (e.g. particular
tree formations to the aesthetic value according to participants). The only
differences between a quasi-experimental design and an experiment is that the
researcher cannot randomise participants to exposures in a quasi-experimental
design or have complete control over many of the variables such as weather.
Because experimental designs often require a laboratory setting, quasi-
experimental designs may, in many instances, be more useful in landscape
architecture research than experimental study designs.
Overall, threats to the internal validity of causality statements (i.e. the correct
claim of a causal relationship) are better controlled in experimental than in
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quasi-experimental designs, whereas threats to external and ecological validity
(i.e. the possibility to generalise the results of the study) may be better controlled
in quasi-experimental designs. The required number of data collection waves
(i.e. the number of times data are collected) is also determined by the research
question. This also applies to the timeframe of the study. For example, a study
on how a polder was reclaimed in the 1960s requires a retrospective study
design, whereas the evolution of the same landscape since then under a range of
changing rural development and conservation policy schemes would call for a
retrospective–prospective study design. In general, research questions with a
longitudinal component always demand multiple data collection waves.
In conclusion we would like to emphasise that, in presenting their study
design, researchers will need to be more precise than simply referring to
container concepts such as ‘experiment’ or ‘case study design’. Container
concepts are not sufficiently informative of the structure of data collection. Some
case studies have one data collection wave whilst others have multiple data
collection waves. Some include an experiment or quasi-experiment whilst others
are observational. The only characteristic that all case studies seem to have in
common is the aim to study a phenomenon in a particular context, with attention
to multiple perspectives and data sources. Examples include multiple public and
private stakeholders in an energy landscape development project and multiple
data sources (archives, historical maps, etc.) to turn to when composing the
biography of a specific landscape (Kolen et al. – Chapter 8).

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DATA COLLECTION AND SAMPLING
The key concepts in the research question should also direct decisions on the
type of data collection method to be adopted, such as observation, interviews and
questionnaires. For example, in research that aims to describe the actual
behaviour of people in an open and frequently hot city square, data are best
collected by means of observation, whereas data on the preferences of these
people is best collected by means of questionnaires or interviews. The
population under study, for example human beings or plant species phenomena,
plots of land or water bodies, further reduces the number of possible data
collection methods as only humans can fill in questionnaires and participate in
interviews.
While in chemistry, physics and biology detailed measurement procedures and
measurement instruments are generally accepted (BIPM 2012), in social sciences
and neighbouring disciplines this is not the case (Kampen and Tobi 2011). This
means that operationalisation is required (Tobi 2014). Operationalisation is the
iterative decomposition of the key concept until identifiable characteristics or
measurable variables are reached in an explicit and auditable way that is usually
structured by theory. For example, if one wants to study the effects of air quality
on urban liveability, one needs to specify which chemical elements (e.g. sulphur
oxides, nitrogen oxides or particulates) will be measured and how. One would
also need to specify how the concept of urban liveability would be made
operationally meaningful to investigate the relationship with air quality. Here the
conceptual framework is directive: it would determine whether the definition of
urban liveability includes only life expectancy and mortality rates or also
includes other aspects such as social well-being. Only after operationalisation
can appropriate scales and questionnaires be recognised as such or constructed.
The construction and assessment of data collection instruments is a full-grown
branch of research within the academic discipline of research methodology.
Some guidance on questionnaire construction and survey design can be found in
Dillman (2007) and Czaja and Blair (2005), on scale and test construction in
Shultz et al. (2014) and DeVellis (2012) and on interviews in Rubin and Rubin
(2012).
Operationalisation and data collection methods together lead to the decision
who (or what) are eligible as study objects or study participants. For example, a
researcher could observe characteristics of children’s play in a natural
playground (e.g. operationalised as the number and type of children interactions
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with different tools and with other children). However, to obtain information on
how well the children slept afterwards the researcher would need to ask either
the children or the parents, dependent on the children’s age.
After deciding who (or what) are the study participants (or objects), the
researcher can look for a sampling frame (e.g. list of children, consumers, garden
plots, historical sites) to draw a sample in a way that best reflects the theoretical
population (i.e. the population to which one aims to generalise) and the
requirements of the research question. The advantage of a random sample is that
it allows for statistical inference (e.g. Kumar 1999). The alternative would be to
choose a non-random sampling method. Non-random sampling draws on the
theory used and under investigation, to select a particular site or particular
informants (e.g. Carter and Henderson 2005). The selection of cases for a case
study is usually purposive, non-random (see also Swaffield – Chapter 7). It
should be noted that, depending on the research question, it may make perfect
sense to draw a random sample and refrain from statistical analysis because the
data collected is of a qualitative nature. Finally, in landscape planning and
design studies the claim of ‘representative sampling’ seems to lead a life of its
own. Simply calling something ‘representative’ is meaningless unless
information is given on what it is representative of and how this
representativeness resulted from the sampling frame (see also Swaffield –
Chapter 7).
In conclusion, based on the key concepts in the research question and the
population concerned, data collection methods and data collection instruments
are chosen or designed. Study objects (such as sites) or study participants (such
as people) are either sampled or selected. To allow the reader to assess and learn
from the strategy chosen, the sampling frame or the selection scheme must be
presented in scientific reports.

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DATA ANALYSIS
A distinction is usually made between data processing and data analysis. Data
processing precedes data analysis. Data processing includes the transfer of data
from one medium to another (say paper to computer), the identification of
erroneous data due to typing errors or technical problems, the handling of
missing data (e.g. the development of imputed data sets), the identification and
handling of very extreme data, the so-called outliers, and the linking of different
data sets (e.g. linking questionnaire data of individuals to geo-social data on the
neighbourhood they live in). Also simple standardised calculations (e.g. in health
sciences, calculating body mass index based on length and weight as provided
by the study participants) can be seen as data processing as can be statistical
checks on variance, representativeness and so on. The outcomes of data
processing are the data sets used for analysis. Decisions on the handling of
missing or incomplete data and the handling of outliers will also affect results.
To protect the analysis from researcher bias and incorrect inference these
decisions should be taken prior to analysis and shared in the research reports.
When proposing and especially when reporting research there must be a
section that describes the data analysis, planned or performed, to answer the
research question. The data analysis section in the research proposal will help to
reduce the tendency to cherry-pick, or to fish or mine the data for a statistical
significant result or a particular ‘juicy’ quote (although what is actually done
may differ considerably from what is proposed owing to a range of practical and
other factors). Primary and secondary analyses are often distinguished. Primary
analyses provide descriptive information and a general answer to the research
question. Secondary analyses, undertaken conditional on the outcome of the
primary analyses, are more in depth or provide greater detail (e.g. a subgroup
analysis).
Another common distinction made in data analysis uses the type of data being
analysed: qualitative data analysis and quantitative data analysis. It should be
remembered that mixed methods research also requires both qualitative and
quantitative data to be analysed separately, with the order and timing of analyses
and synthesis set by the mixed method design (Creswell and Plano Clark 2011).
A distinction in quantitative research is between descriptive and inferential
statistical analyses. Much landscape architecture research has been restricted to
descriptive statistics, for example frequencies of park use, as opposed to
regression analysis to explain who is likely to use parks the most, given certain
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conditions, for example accessibility.
In quantitative data analysis, the statistical analyses ought to be described at a
level of detail that is sufficient to allow other researchers to repeat them. Often
the software package used is also stated in the report. The combination of the
statistical techniques used and the estimated statistical proficiency of the
readership of a journal will make it appropriate either to refer to statistical
textbooks and other sources, or to describe the method used in some detail. In
qualitative data analysis the method most informative to the research question
should also be chosen and described. Different strategies and procedures can be
distinguished in qualitative data analysis methods, for example metaphor
analysis and domain analysis (Coffey and Atkinson 1996), discourse analysis
and membership categorisation analysis (Silverman 2006). Each of these
methods makes assumptions about the data (e.g. spontaneous speak or interview
exchange) and has its own strengths, weaknesses and challenges.
All qualitative data analyses involve some sort of identification and labelling
of relevant parts, the so-called coding, and can be supported by software (e.g.
Atlas.ti or QSR nVivo). A top-down coding approach refers to the attribution of
pre-defined codes to the data. Usually these codes are based on the theories used.
In bottom-up coding the codes are not pre-defined but based on the words used
in the data (e.g. in the conversation transcript or the legal document). Here too,
the researcher must make pertinent choices explicit (Silverman 2006; Flick
2006), first of all about the coding (top down or bottom up), and describe the
analytical strategy chosen. Coding enables the reader to evaluate the suitability
of the analytical strategy chosen for answering the research question with the
particular kinds of collected data. It also allows other researchers to do similar
analyses.
In conclusion, data processing needs to be distinguished from data analysis. In
data processing many pertinent decisions are usually taken on which data will be
included in the analysis. These decisions need to be made explicit. Numerous
data analysis methods are available. In the case of qualitative data the analysis
may be supported by software.

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REPORTING
The importance of good quality reporting cannot be overstated. Reporting aims
not only at sharing research with the field at large in such a way that readers can
assess the trajectory that lead to the results reported and learn from the research
choices made. In addition, the report is a constituent part of the research process
– results are no use, however good, sitting on a shelf or in a computer – they
must be reported and set in context. An academic article needs more than a
convincing story to be scientifically sound: it needs to inform the readers about
how the study was done and should provide sufficient detail to allow an
assessment of the methodological rigour within the theoretical framework
provided. It cannot be emphasised enough that the writing of the report or article
should start as early as possible. Writing is just another way of thinking; writing
helps to reflect continuously on the research process.
A research report or article typically starts with an introduction in which the
research objective and question is introduced and put into the context of, for
example, one of the grand landscape challenges or a design assignment.
Generally, a second section provides further details on the conceptual
framework, it includes the theories used for the operationalisation of the relevant
concepts. The third, methods section, obviously plays a pivotal role in light of
the theme of this book. This explains the design of the research and gives details
of different aspects of the study design. It also provides details of the data
collection methods and the measurement instruments used, the sampling or
selection of study subjects and informants, how the data were processed, and
what methods for data analysis were used and how (e.g. with the help of what
software). When a new data collection instrument is being constructed, details of
the construction and test phase of the instrument must also be included. The next
section presents the results of the study. It gives information on basic
characteristics of the study participants (e.g. species, demographics) and
outcomes of the analyses. The report or article is concluded by a discussion and
conclusion section (ideally divided into two sections). No new information from
the study is given here but the main results are discussed in the light of previous
and future research, referencing the literature review and considering the
implications of the results. The discussion section also needs to include a
reflection on the methodological strengths and weaknesses of the study, how
these may have affected the study results and which lessons can be learnt from
it. The conclusion should, ideally, formally answer the research question(s) (with
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the limitations or uncertainties to these answers made explicit). Too many
reports somehow forget what the research questions(s) was and fizzle out with
limited or rather banal conclusions.

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RESEARCH INTEGRITY
In Chapter 1 several principles of good academic practice were mentioned.
These principles belong to the field of research integrity, a wide and expanding
field that, in this context, we can only scratch the surface of. In general, codes of
conduct for scientists should be followed in order to protect both the study
object/subject and the researcher. In most countries the national scientific
community (e.g. universities and/or research institutes) has endorsed such codes
of conduct. These codes set out the core principles of research integrity and
ethics to which researchers should adhere. All refer to academic standards that
are internationally shared and that, in some form, are also practised by peer
review journals. We recommend readers to inform themselves about the content
of their national code and also about how research integrity is warranted at their
own institution and where to seek further advice on specific research integrity
issues.
When planning any type of data collection several ethical issues should be
considered. Data collection always costs someone something, not only to the
researcher (time, effort, money), but also to other people involved in the study,
for example informants or study participants. Therefore, as a first responsibility,
the researcher must be sure that the data collection is truly necessary. To help
warrant the well-being and safety of humans involved in research, basic ethical
principles, such as respect for persons, beneficence, justice and informed consent
(i.e. people under study need to be fully informed about and voluntarily agree
with the purpose of the study and to take part), need to be taken into account.
One of the consequences of these principles is that neither the data collection
method nor how the results are published must violate the privacy of those who
cooperated in collecting the data.
For audit purposes, data collection procedures should be recorded and both the
raw data and the data sets used for analyses should be securely stored and be
accessible. These data include those of, for example, (quasi-)experiments,
questionnaires and interviews, modelling results and modelling software. Data
storage is the individual responsibility of the researcher. Universities and
research institutes across the world have data management policies that should
help researchers to develop their own data management plan. Editorial boards of
peer review journals increasingly demand that authors of articles submit
statements about data management and research integrity.

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REFERENCES
Adamson, J. ( 2005) ‘ Combined qualitative and quantitative designs’, in Bowling, A. and Ebrahim, S., eds.
Handbook of Health Research Methods: Investigation, Measurement and Analysis, Oxford: Open
University Press, 230–245.
Bakker, M.M., Opdam, P.F., Jongman, R.H.G. and van den Brink, A. ( 2015) ‘ Model explorations of
ecological network performance under conditions of global change’, Landscape Ecology, 30:
763–770.
BIPM ( 2012) International Vocabulary of Metrology: Basic and General Concepts and Associated Terms
(VIM). Available at: htt​p://www​.bipm.o​rg/utils/​common/d​ocuments/​jcgm/JCG​M_200_2​012.​pdf.
Brown, R.D. and Corry, R.C. ( 2011) ‘ Evidence-based landscape architecture: The maturing of a
profession’, Landscape and Urban Planning, 100, 327–329.
Campbell, D.T. and Stanley, J.C. ( 1963) Experimental and Quasi-Experimental Designs for Research,
Chicago, IL: Rand McNally College Publishing Company.
Carter, S. and Henderson, L. ( 2005) ‘ Approaches to qualitative data collection in social science’, in
Bowling, A. and Ebrahim, S., eds. Handbook of Health Research Methods: Investigation,
Measurement and Analysis, Oxford: Open University Press, 215–229.
Coffey, A. and Atkinson, P. ( 1996) Making Sense of Qualitative Data: Complementary Research
Strategies, Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Creswell, J.W. ( 2014) Research Design: Qualitative, Quantitative & Mixed Method Approaches, 4th
edition, Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Creswell, J.W. and Plano Clark, V.L. ( 2011) Designing and Conducting Mixed Methods Research,
Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Czaja, R. and Blair, J. ( 2005) Designing Surveys: A Guide to Decisions and Procedures, Thousand Oaks,
CA: Sage.
DeVellis, R.F. ( 2012) Scale Development: Theory and Applications, Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Deming, E.M. and Swaffield, S. ( 2011) Landscape Architecture Research: Inquiry, Strategy, Design,
Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley.
Dillman, D.A. ( 2007) Mail and Internet Surveys: The Tailored Design Method: Update with New Internet,
Visual, and Mixed-Mode Guide, Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley.
Fischer, A.R.H., Tobi, H. and Ronteltap, A. ( 2011) ‘ When natural met social: A review of collaboration
between the natural and social sciences’, Interdisciplinary Science Reviews, 36( 4), 341–358.
Flick, U. ( 2006) An Introduction to Qualitative Research, Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Gough, D., Oliver, S. and Thomas, J. ( 2012) An introduction to Systematic Reviews, Thousand Oaks, CA:
Sage.
Habermas, J. ( 1981) The Theory of Communicative Action (two volumes), Boston, MA: Beacon Press.
Healy, P. ( 2006 [ 1997]) Collaborative Planning, Shaping Places in Fragmented Societies, 2nd edition,
Basingstoke: Macmillan.
Kagan, J. ( 2009) The Three Cultures: Natural Sciences, Social Sciences, and the Humanities in the 21st
Century, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Kampen, J.K. and Tobi, H. ( 2011) ‘ Social scientific metrology as the mediator between sociology and
socionomy: A cri de coeur for the systemizing of social indicators’, in Burt, C.M., ed. Social
Indicators: Statistics, Trends and Policy Development, Hauppauge, NY: Nova Science, 1–26.
Konijnendijk, C.C., Annerstedt, M., Nielsen, A.B. and Maruthaveeran, S. ( 2013) Benefits of Urban Parks:
A Systematic Review, a report for IFPRA, Copenhagen and Alnarp. Available at:
http://curis.ku.dk/ws/files/44944034/Ifpra_park_benefits_review_final_version.pdf.
Kuhn, T.S. ( 2012 [ 1962]) The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago
Press.
Kumar, R. ( 1999) Research Methodology: A Step-by-Step Guide for Beginners, 4th edition, Thousand

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 Oaks, CA: Sage.
MacArthur, R.H. and Wilson, E.O. ( 1967) The Theory of Island Biogeography, Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press.
Petticrew, M. and Roberts, H. ( 2006) Systematic Reviews in the Social Sciences: A Practical Guide,
Oxford: Blackwell.
Rubin, H.J. and Rubin, I.S. ( 2012) Qualitative Interviewing: The Art of Hearing Data, Los Angeles, CA;
London; New Delhi; Singapore; Washington, DC: Sage Publications.
Shultz, K.S., Whitney, D.J. and Zickar, M.J. ( 2014) Measurement Theory in Action, New York; London:
Routledge.
Silverman, D. ( 2006) Interpreting Qualitative Data: Methods for Analyzing Talk, Text and Interaction,
London; Thousand Oaks, CA; New Delhi: Sage Publications.
Swanborn, P.G. ( 2010) Case Study Research: What, Why and How?, Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Tobi, H. ( 2014) ‘ Measurement in interdisciplinary research: The contributions of widely-defined
measurement and portfolio representations’, Measurement, 48, 228–231.
van Etteger, R., Thompson, I. and Vicenzotti, V. ( 2016) ‘ Aesthetic creation theory and landscape
architecture’, Journal of Landscape Architecture, 11( 1), 80–91.
Yin, R.K. ( 2014) Case Study Research: Design and Methods, Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Zangwill, N. ( 2007) Aesthetic Creation, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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PART II
SETTING THE STAGE

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Chapter 3: The role of theory

Ian H. Thompson

Academics often exhort their students to declare their theoretical perspectives, so

it is right that I should declare mine before plunging into the difficult topic of
‘theory’. Prior to becoming a landscape architect, I studied philosophy as an
undergraduate. I was taught by Wittgensteinians and took an optional course in
Wittgenstein’s philosophy of language. As a result I carry around with me
certain ways of thinking, particularly about words and meanings, which are, so
to speak, tools in my theoretical toolbox. The most useful of these is the idea that
the meaning of a word is to be found by considering its use. If we encounter a
word which puzzles us, the way to understand it is to look at the many and
various ways that the term is used.

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A TROUBLESOME WORD
‘Theory’ can be just such a troublesome word. When we think we have got a
handle on it, we discover that someone else is using it in a completely different
way. If someone asks us ‘do you have a theory about this?’ they are probably
asking for an explanation. On another occasion, someone might remark ‘oh, but
that’s only a theory’ suggesting that something proposed is merely a supposition,
and doesn’t have the sort of authority that might come, for example, from
rigorous observation or scientific testing. People also talk about ‘making
contributions to theory’, ‘adding to theory’, ‘developing theory’ and so on, all of
which suggest that theory can be accumulated. Similar phrases are used about
‘knowledge’ and indeed people do sometimes talk about ‘theory’ as if it is a
synonym for ‘knowledge’. On the other hand, people say things like ‘what
theoretical perspective are you taking?’ (see my first sentence!) or ‘try looking at
this through the lens of (this or that) theory’. In landscape architecture (and I’m
sure in many other fields) one often hears the complaint that we don’t have
enough theory (as if it is a kind of stuff that we can pile up like gold) or that we
don’t have sufficient theory that is truly our own (we have only borrowed it from
other disciplines and this is somehow shameful). There is a commercial aspect to
this latter grumble. If a profession can claim to have a body of knowledge to
which it has an exclusive entitlement, and if this is the basis for its expertise,
then its practitioners have a form of monopoly in the marketplace, but this is a
matter of business or sociology rather than epistemology.
Attempting to corral all the theory that pertains to landscape architecture is
probably impossible, although a decade ago Michael D. Murphy had a good stab
at it with his Landscape Architecture Theory: An Evolving Body of Thought
(2005). He had the good sense to set some limits, focussing specifically upon
‘the body of knowledge required to inform design thinking and on ways to apply
that knowledge to improve the human/landscape condition and enhance quality
of life through design performance’ (Murphy 2005, p.vi). Notice, incidentally,
that ‘theory’, ‘knowledge’ and ‘thought’ are used virtually as synonyms here,
and this is not unusual. However, when considering the place of theory in
research design, rather more precision is required.
Another troublesome word: ‘landscape’.
To make matters even more difficult, the word ‘landscape’, which we might
expect to denote the object of our enquiries, is pretty slippery too. Murphy deals
with it rather too briskly by opting for what he calls the ‘traditional definition’,
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that is ‘an area of the earth’s surface that has been modified by human activity’,
which he takes from J.B. Jackson’s Discovering the Vernacular Landscape
(1984), but in the light of more recent scholarship, we cannot make do with this
anymore. We cannot even say that a landscape is a complicated object because,
as many theorists have pointed out, landscape is something mental as well as
something physical. Cultural geographers, such as Denis Cosgrove and Stephen
Daniels (1988; see also Cosgrove 1984), pointed out that ‘landscape’ is not a
neutral term, but an ideologically charged ‘way of seeing’. Kenneth Olwig, on
the other hand, responded to the ‘scenic’ understanding of landscape by
focussing upon landscape as a set of customary practices bound by precedent
and law (Olwig 2002). Don Mitchell has delivered a bracing materialist critique
of the notion of landscape by revealing the unjust social and economic relations
involved in the production of agricultural landscapes (such as the strawberry
fields of California) (Mitchell 1996, 2003, 2007). To shake things up further, a
raft of influential work has come out of phenomenology, non-representational
theory and performance studies, which John Wylie has admirably summarised in
his short book Landscape (2007). Perhaps the most challenging idea to emerge
from this recent work, for landscape architects at least, is the notion that the
landscape, far from being designed, is performed, that is made and remade by a
succession of repetitive actions, often guided by custom and precedence. How
these customary actions relate to designed interventions by landscape architects,
planners and managers has yet to be fully explored.
Although I am reluctant to draw a distinction between researchers in
landscape architecture and researchers who approach landscape from some other
perspective, that of an archaeologist, say, or a geologist, ecologist,
environmental psychologist or cultural geographer, the fact is that landscape is a
transdisciplinary concept. This book may be written primarily for landscape
architects who want to do research, but such readers need to be aware of where
their own research might fit into the much broader field of landscape studies. It
is worth asking ‘What particular topics might a researcher who is a landscape
architect be better placed to tackle than someone from a different discipline?’
Perhaps these topics include such things as: the landscape design process in
general, the design practices of particular landscape designers or offices, the
history of designed landscapes, the education of landscape architects, the
aesthetic, social and ecological values underlying landscape interventions,
evaluations of the effectiveness of design interventions and so on. Murphy
(following Ndubisi 1997) draws a distinction between ‘substantive theories’,
which ‘promote a better understanding of the landscape as the interface between
human and natural process and are descriptive and predictive’, and ‘procedural
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theories’ which ‘originate from design practice and the academic development
and technical application of knowledge in a social setting’ (Murphy 2005, p.27).
However, many aspects of natural science, which one might have expected to be
included under substantive theory, including geology, ecology, climatology, soil
science, hydrology and so on, are left to a later chapter which deals with ‘the
biophysical environment’, while his chapter on substantive theory bundles
together sustainable development, environmental psychology and systems
theory. I confess that I don’t know what was in his mind here. Knowledge in all
of these fields is certainly relevant to landscape architecture, but his criteria for
identifying theory, let alone landscape architecture theory per se, are not very
clear. Murphy’s chapter on procedural theory is much more straightforward.
Under this rubric come such matters as the design process, design programming,
data gathering and analysis, landscape planning and landscape suitability
analysis. He might also have included the material concerning design practice
and design collaboration which appears towards the end of the book. All of these
topics are closely related to the profession of landscape architecture and if one
were looking solely for theory that has developed out of the practice of
landscape architects themselves, these would probably be the best places to look.

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DISCIPLINE AND PROFESSION
There isn’t space to fully examine the complex relationship between the
academic discipline1 of landscape architecture and the profession that goes by
the same name. Landscape professionals have to compete for business with other
professionals, such as engineers and architects, and the institutional apparatus of
accredited training, examinations, continuing professional development and so
on was created as much to secure territory as to guarantee expertise. It isn’t quite
the same for academics, who may be more open to overlaps and
transdisciplinary ways of thinking, but there would be no discipline (no schools,
no teachers and no researchers) without the profession. Theory is often invoked
in relation to practice, where it means something like ‘a statement of method’ or
‘knowledge of general principles’. A couple of examples spring to mind. One is
the Survey-Analysis-Design (S-A-D) methodology which was a staple of
landscape architecture, in Britain anyway, in the 1970s and ’80s and was based
upon the idea of Survey-Analysis-Plan model originally developed by the
Scottish town planner Patrick Geddes (1854–1932). S-A-D was later criticised
for being too deterministic and inimical to imaginative design, but it held sway
for a long time and, to the extent that tutors still ask students to undertake
surveys and analyses, it is still with us. Interestingly this is not mentioned in
Murphy’s book – perhaps it was not taught in the US – although similar models,
such as the ‘six-step design process’, do appear (Murphy 2005, pp.63–64).
The second example, also from landscape planning, is Carl Steiniz’s
Landscape Change Model (1994), which he developed further under the label
Geodesign (2013). Steinitz, who is now emeritus professor of landscape
architecture at the Graduate School of Design, Harvard University, was a
pioneer in the use of computer technology in landscape planning. He was
particularly concerned with the methods landscape professionals use to analyse
large areas of land and make important design decisions (see also Lenzholzer et
al. in this book – Chapter 4). He produced a flowchart which organised the
landscape planning process around a series of models, each associated with a
question. For example, ‘representational models’ of the landscape were
associated with the question ‘How should the landscape be described?’, ‘process
models’ with the question ‘How does the landscape operate?’ and so on, through
six stages. In the full version of the process, each of these steps must be gone
through three times, first to establish the context and scope of the enquiry,
second (in reverse order) to specify the project methodology and a third time to
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actually perform the study.
Steinitz’s research amounts to a formulation or codification of data gathering,
analysis, testing and decision procedures which might otherwise be undertaken
in a haphazard or unsystematic manner. As such, it appeals to those who wish to
bring rigour to their practice, though it probably has little appeal to intuitive
designers and those who place themselves at the more artistic pole of the
landscape profession.
Another important figure is Ian McHarg, author of the seminal book Design
with Nature (1969), who developed the technique of suitability analysis while
Professor of Landscape Architecture and Regional Planning at the University of
Pennsylvania. In terms of Murphy’s distinction between substantive and
procedural theory, both Steinitz and McHarg can be seen to have made major
contributions to procedural theory. It is worth noting that both of these thinkers
have been borrowed or even claimed by other disciplines, largely on the basis of
their contributions to the development and use of geographical information
systems. Here, at least, are instances of landscape architecture exporting theory,
rather than importing it.

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BETWEEN THREE EMPIRES
Some of landscape architecture’s difficulties with theory arise as a consequence
of its relationship to the three great empires of academia: the natural sciences,
the social sciences, and the arts and humanities. My use of the word ‘science’, it
is worth mentioning before going any further, follows the anglophone
conventions in which its extension does not include the arts and humanities.
Anglophone readers are sometimes startled to find that their conference papers
on garden history or modernist design principles are being considered by a
‘scientific committee’ which conjures up a vision of investigators in white lab
coats. In much of Europe, ‘science’ can mean any sort of scholarly activity. I use
the metaphor of ‘empire’ to hint at the rivalry and territorial friction between
these blocs, but Jerome Kagan, emeritus professor of psychology at Harvard
University, chose the title The Three Cultures for his revealing discussion of the
differences between three ways of investigating and understanding the world
(Kagan 2009). In this he was following the usage coined by C.P. Snow (2012)
whose provocative book The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution, was
first published in 1959. Snow, both a physical chemist and a novelist, had been
concerned to reveal the extent to which scientists were ignorant of the arts, but –
more seriously for Snow – the extent to which highly educated British elites,
educated in the humanities, were illiterate in science. The social sciences,
however, he entirely ignored, despite their growing influence after the Second
World War, when, for a few decades at least, it seemed that they might hold the
answers to problems as wide-ranging as alcoholism, school failure and mental
illness. Kagan’s book gives them their place, but as a psychologist he is aware of
the borderline position of his own discipline. Some psychologists, he notes,
gravitated towards the study of brain activity and were embraced by biology.
Others, more humanistic in their approach, stayed with social science. It is also
worth noting that ideas born of humanistic psychology, such as the theories of
Freud, Jung, Klein and later Irigaray, Kristeva and Lacan, have been hugely
influential in the humanities.
Landscape architecture occupies a similar position in the borderlands and
researchers have a similar choice of paradigms. Murphy contrasts two positions
within landscape architecture, one exemplified by the American landscape
architect Garrett Eckbo (1910–2000), who took a creative stance and argued that
it was the profession’s role to create fresh and innovative ways for people to
relate to their physical environment, the other epitomised by McHarg’s
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approach, which emphasised the scientific approach to ecologically sound
landscape planning. Murphy, optimistically perhaps, thinks that the discipline
has transcended this apparent battle between the empires of art and science (he
does not suggest a champion for social science) and says that all landscape
architects are holists now (Murphy 2005, pp.26–27). Nevertheless, it is clearly
important, when setting out on a piece of research, to know which of the three
cultures it most closely relates to, because, as I will show, there are different
norms, values and even language in each. At present, within the academic world
as a whole, there is much emphasis on collaborative and cross-disciplinary
working, which suggests that methods from the three cultures might be
creatively brought together. Landscape architects ought to be well placed to
facilitate or participate in such collaborations. Landscape architects are
sometimes inter-disciplinarians par excellence, able to bring together and
synthesise very different perspectives and forms of knowledge, and equally
capable of talking the language of aesthetes, agronomists or archaeologists. At
other times this in-between position can be a headache. Certainly when
considering theory it can be a problem, since ‘theory’ tends to mean different
things within these three domains.

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THEORY IN NATURAL SCIENCE
In the natural sciences (physics, chemistry, biology etc.) a theory is an
explanation which is generally accepted to be true. A hypothesis, on the other
hand, is an informed guess, based upon observation. The philosopher of science
Karl Popper suggested that hypotheses can never be proved, only disproved,
arguing that if a hypothesis, or a group of linked hypotheses, survives repeated
experimental testing, it may come to be accepted as a theory (Popper 2002
[1934]). A theory offers an explanation of how nature works. Important theories
are named and often come to be well-known outside the confines of their
disciplines. Some have great predictive power and offer abundant benefits to
humanity. A good example is the Germ Theory of Disease which replaced the
earlier idea that diseases were spontaneously generated, thus opening up the way
to life-saving medical procedures such as sterilisation. In some scientific
disciplines, particularly physics and chemistry, one also finds ‘laws’ and it is
reasonable to ask what is the difference between a theory and a law. The term
‘law’ tends to be used to predict what nature will do in certain conditions and
this is often expressed mathematically. An example from chemistry would be
Boyle’s Law which states that the pressure exerted by a gas held at a constant
temperature varies inversely with the volume of the gas. Biology, perhaps the
scientific field with the most bearing upon landscape architecture, has produced
many theories but few laws and this is probably an indication of the complexity
of the living world, which is not easily reduced to simple mathematical
formulae. Natural science, which for our purposes can also be taken to include
applied science, medical research and all varieties of engineering, is so useful
and has such commercial potential that it is generally very well-funded and
institutionally secure. Part of the appeal of McHargian landscape theory was that
it sought to place landscape architecture on a scientific basis, which, it was felt,
would improve the discipline’s standing in the academy and the profession’s
offer to potential clients.
Landscape architecture has, therefore, often aligned with natural science. This
accounts for the interest in environmental psychology which came to the fore in
the 1980s through the work of researchers like Rachel and Stephen Kaplan at the
University of Michigan (Kaplan and Kaplan 1989; Kaplan 1995b). As Kagan
notes, psychology, because of its central interest in human behaviour, is often
classified among the social sciences, but Kagan considers ‘investigators who
study the biological bases for, or evolutionary contributions to, animal or human
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behaviour as natural scientists’ (Kagan 2009, p.4). The Kaplans’ Information
Processing Theory offered an experimentally based explanation of landscape
preference, which builds upon evolutionary theory. The researchers were
psychologists working within the School of Natural Resources and Environment,
which is also the home of a long-standing landscape architecture programme.
Later work looked at the restorative potential of natural environments (Kaplan
1995a), a topic also explored by Terry Hartig of the Department of Psychology
at Uppsala University and his collaborators (Hartig et al. 1991, 2003). Catharine
Ward Thompson and her multidisciplinary research team at Edinburgh
University called OPENSpace, which included the psychologist Peter Aspinall,
looked at the influence of outdoor environments on people’s physical activity,
particularly walking (Ward Thompson and Aspinall, 2011; see also Ward
Thompson in this book – Chapter 14). One might say that all of these examples
rightly belong to the discipline of psychology, but landscape architects have
been integral to many of these research projects and the research findings are
directly relevant to the activities of landscape design and planning. This work
can therefore also be considered as part of the body of theory which pertains to
the discipline.
Another example is landscape ecology, which can be considered a sub-
discipline of ecology, although, once again, the fuzziness or porosity of
boundaries allows us to say that it also belongs within the disciplinary field of
landscape architecture. It took off with the publication of landmark books by
Naveh and Lieberman (1984), and Forman and Godron (1986). Arthur
Lieberman is an emeritus professor of landscape architecture who collaborated
with the agronomist Nev Naveh to write Landscape Ecology: Theory and
Application which was the first English language monograph on the
transdisciplinary science of landscape ecology. Richard T.T. Forman is an
ecologist working within the Graduate School of Design at Harvard University,
which also hosts one of the world’s pre-eminent master’s programmes in
landscape architecture. Landscape ecology held the promise that landscapes
could be designed and planned to achieve ‘an optimal spatial arrangement of
ecosystems and land uses to maximize ecological integrity’ (Forman 1995,
p.522). Robert Riley, who edited Landscape Journal from 1987 to 1995, argued
for a narrow, science-based definition of ‘theory’ that would limit its use to
‘knowledge that explains some real-world phenomenon’ (Swaffield 2002, p.2).
‘Anything concerned with what to do or why to do it, instead of how to do it, is
proudly proclaimed as theory. This is not theory; this is pseudotheory’
(emphasis in the original) Riley proclaimed, in an argument which is reminiscent
of the logical positivists’ strictures against discussions of aesthetics and ethics
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(Riley 1990, p.48). Logical positivism was a mid-twentieth-century school of
philosophy which argued that the only propositions which had meaning were
either analytic (i.e. statements in logic and mathematics that were tautologically
true by the meaning of their terms) or those that could be empirically verified,
such as those of natural science. Everything else was, quite literally,
meaningless, including for instance statements about landscapes being beautiful
or democratic decision-making being a good thing. Riley did not go quite so far,
but he thought that discussions about the place of landscape architecture in
society, for example, should be labelled ‘frameworks’, not dignified by the term
‘theory’. But logical positivism’s influence has waned and attempts to regulate
language in the way Riley proposed are generally doomed to failure. If
landscape architecture were simply a natural science, Riley’s directive might
have had some chance of sticking, but as the discipline overlaps with the arts and
social sciences it simply could not hold.
In large swathes of the academy, positivism is now out of favour, indeed we
are in the midst of a kind of intellectual war between two camps, characterised
by the philosopher Simon Blackburn as ‘Objectivists’ versus ‘Subjectivists’
(Blackburn 2005). Among the objectivists are traditionalists, modernists,
rationalists, universalists and natural scientists. In the ranks of the subjectivists
are relativists, postmodernists, social constructionists and contextualists,
including many in the social sciences and humanities. Riley and those who think
along similar lines clearly belong with the objectivists, but it is not clear that
they remain in the ascendant. Deming and Swaffield (2011, p.3) suggest that
there are three epistemological positions: reality may be independent of its
relationship to the investigator, it may be dependent upon that relationship or it
might be interdependent with it. Only the first of these follows the positivist
model of (most) natural science (when we get to relativity and quantum physics,
things get more complicated). The second concerns the sort of insight that might
be delivered by an artist or by a social scientist using subjectivist methods (see
the section below ‘Theory in the arts and humanities’ on phenomenology). The
third involves what Deming and Swaffield, following Crotty (1998), call
‘constructionist’ methods. These presume ‘that knowledge is generated through
the interaction between the investigators (and their society) and a reality (or
realities) that exists but can never be known independently of the presumptions
of the investigators’ (2011, pp.8–9). Students and early career researchers need
to be clear about which of these models they are employing when designing their
research.

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SCIENTISM
In the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1922) Wittgenstein, wrote ‘even if all
possible scientific questions be answered, the problems of life have still not been
touched at all’ (6.52). A healthy respect for natural science and the benefits it
can bring should be distinguished from scientism, which is the belief that
empirical science alone can answer every question that has ever troubled
humanity, including matters of morality, aesthetics, consciousness and religion,
which have historically been seen to lie beyond its reach. Critics of scientism
often accuse its proponents of reductionism, which can involve the translation of
complex phenomena, such as the appreciation of art, the appeal of music or ideas
of justice, into simple physical processes like the firing of neurons, or may offer
socio-biological explanations which interpret the development of these human
capacities in terms of evolutionary biology. Some biological explanations of
landscape preference, such as the Savannah Theory advanced by Gordon Orions,
do indeed belong in sociobiology. The theory is mentioned in E.O. Wilson’s The
Diversity of Life (2001 [1992]). Wilson, now an emeritus professor of biology at
Harvard, contributed to the development of the theory of island biogeography
which was one of the launch points for landscape ecology. He has also been a
prominent advocate for biodiversity and conservation. However, he is also
regarded as the father of sociobiology on the strength of his controversial book
Sociobiology. The New Synthesis (1975). Critics have accused sociobiology of
being biologically deterministic, and an instance of the naturalistic fallacy
whereby something is considered good or right because it is natural. Theories of
this stamp continue to appear in the landscape literature. For example, Barrett et
al. (2009) argue for the conceptualisation of landscape aesthetics as an ‘economy
essential to survival’. Even today it remains controversial whether humans have
any behavioural traits which are near universal biological adaptations.
Opponents of sociobiology would argue for the significance of learning and
culture.

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THEORY IN SOCIAL SCIENCE
Across the border in the social sciences, the word ‘theory’ has different
connotations. Landscape architects probably do not regard themselves as social
scientists, but town planners (or ‘urban planners’ or ‘spatial planners’ – or
whatever they currently prefer to be called) customarily do. Gert de Roo, an
eminent Dutch planner, recently addressed a workshop of PhD students at
Newcastle University and remarked ‘of course, you are social scientists, so you
don’t prove anything’. His point was that social science offered frameworks of
understanding and ways of interpreting evidence, but it cannot provide certainty.
Indeed much of De Roo’s own work has been concerned with the ways planners
can operate in conditions of complexity, fuzziness and unpredictability (e.g. de
Roo and Silva 2010; de Roo 2011); these are just the same conditions faced by
landscape architects.
‘Certainty’ and ‘truth’ have almost become dirty words in some parts of the
academy, but nevertheless some social scientists still seek to emulate natural
scientists, developing quantitative methods for use in disciplines such as
sociology, political science, economics and psychology to produce knowledge
that could be considered on a par with the findings of physics or chemistry. Even
in postmodern times, some social scientists retain a positivist stance,
investigating observable social phenomena and employing measurement,
statistical techniques and mathematical modelling to test hypotheses. Social
psychologists, for instance, run experiments and produce theories. Among the
research that bears upon landscape architecture there are, for example, theories
of personal space (or proxemics) and of territoriality (for example: Hall 1966;
Sommer 1969; Becker and Mayo 1971). Other researchers work with large data
sets, such as the information gathered for national census. It is fair to say that
landscape is seldom foregrounded in such work, although the economic
geographer Danny Dorling’s work on the UK housing market has profound
implications for the future of the countryside (he dissents from the popular view
that there is a shortage of houses in Britain, arguing that there is no need to rip
up the green belt) (Dorling 2014).
‘Big data’, as it is often called, may turn out to be very important for
landscape architecture, not just census data, but also the data produced by social
media. This ties in with initiatives under the rubric of ‘smart cities’ to provide
urban planners and managers real time information on a whole range of
indicators which could include traffic and pollution levels through to data on
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park usage or refuse collection. Such work is still relatively new and its
implications for landscape research have yet to be fully explored. An example is
a Wageningen University MSc thesis on running routes in Amsterdam, for which
the students used the data from two apps, representing in total some 11,000 runs.
They could analyse this data to show how the city was used from a runner’s
perspective, and then propose design interventions to improve running
possibilities (Reiling and Dolders 2015; for other examples, see van Lammeren
et al. – Chapter 9). Their analysis relied on numbers and, hence, is considered
quantitative research. Alternatives to quantitative research are qualitative
research and mixed methods research (see also Tobi and van den Brink –
Chapter 2). In qualitative analysis the data are analysed by means of words
without using numbers or statistics. Analogously to statistical analyses there is a
range of qualitative data analyses, and their suitability depends on the research
question and the paradigm of the researcher. Data gathered using such methods
as unstructured or semi-structured interviews, focus groups and participant
observation are often suited for qualitative analysis. The sample size is typically
small, but researchers are often able to access deeper attitudes, opinions and
motivations than would be possible using a purely quantitative approach.
Qualitative and quantitative methods may be combined in mixed methods
research, and it is not uncommon for exploratory qualitative work to prepare the
way for quantitative work. Qualitative research generally involves interpretation
and intuition and this places it at some distance from the methods of natural
science and much closer to the sorts of activities which take place in the arts and
humanities. Closely reading the transcript of a focus group is not so different
from trying to elucidate the text of a novel or the script of a play. Indeed, we
might be tempted to redraw our territorial map of the academic empires,
following David Macey, the author of The Penguin Dictionary of Critical
Theory, and talk instead of ‘the modern human sciences’, an area which covers
‘the domains of literature, philosophy, psychoanalysis, film and the visual arts,
historiography and sexual politics’ (Macey 2000). It may be the case that there is
more flexibility than there used to be in the choice of methods available, but
researchers still need to be clear about the paradigm within which they are
working.
The term ‘critical theory’ means something very different from the sort of
theory produced by natural science. It is a confusing term because it has two
distinct origins, one in social science and one in the arts and humanities. Max
Horkheimer, a founding member of the neo-Marxist Frankfurt School of social
scientists in the 1930s, saw critical theory as the kind of social theory that was
aimed at critiquing and changing society, rather than just understanding it. In the
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arts and humanities, as we will see later, the same term means something closer
to ‘theory of criticism’ and encompasses a wide range of tools and perspectives
for examining cultural products, such as films and plays (and indeed
landscapes).
Marxism provided the basis for the Frankfurt School and can thus be
considered the original ‘critical theory’ and it illustrates the way in which theory
can be used as the basis for social critique (Macey 2000, p.139). In its original
form it was both an explanatory theory which offered an account of why certain
conditions and injustices existed and an ethical theory which suggested what
should be done about them. The theory predicted that certain contradictions
within capitalism would bring the system down; the ethical injunction was to
bring this about more swiftly through revolution. Many cultural geographers,
including Cosgrove, Daniels and Mitchell, all mentioned earlier, have employed
Marxian understandings of social and economic relations.
In his seminal book The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge
(1984) the French philosopher Jean-François Lyotard labelled Marxism a ‘grand
narrative’, a universal and totalising explanation of all aspects of society, indeed
all societies, throughout the span of history. Religious worldviews also purport
to offer complete accounts, as do the narratives of Enlightenment reason,
scientific progress and the spread of liberal democracy. In many instances, grand
narratives serve to legitimate and reinforce existing social norms and power
relations, but the Marxist story seemed to be different, in that it offered
emancipation and issued a call to arms. Taking a Marxist position allows one to
consider any activity or aspect of life and evaluate it in terms of the extent to
which it helps or hinders the project of remaking society along more just lines. A
complication is that most versions of the Marxist mission involve revolutionary
upheaval, and anything which delays the revolution or makes it less likely to
happen must be condemned. The nineteenth-century urban parks movement,
which was in many ways the foundation upon which landscape architecture
developed, could be a target for this sort of criticism, since parks were provided
paternalistically to improve conditions for working people and to lessen tensions
between different social classes. Intuitively these seem like good things to do,
unless one takes the ideological position that they delayed the revolution and
thus locked in systemic injustice.
In its baldest form, the Marxist narrative can seem a crude one about the
clashing interests of two blocks in society: workers and bourgeoisie. At the heart
of the theory was the difference in the relationship of each group to the means of
production, but it was an oversimplification or reduction, since it overlooked the
myriad differences that characterise pluralistic society and the many and varied
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ways in which particular groups – women, ethnic groups, homosexuals, the
disabled, the elderly and so on – come to be excluded, marginalised or
disadvantaged. Lyotard suggested that the postmodern world had become
incredulous about grand narratives, so he did not propose one of his own,
arguing instead for ‘little narratives’ (or ‘language games’, a term he borrowed
from Wittgenstein). Typically postmodern theorists see ‘truth’ as something
limited, situated and contingent. When words like ‘truth’ and ‘knowledge’ are
used in postmodern discourse, they are often given quotation marks (‘scare
quotes’) to indicate that no claim is being made to universality, or they are
discussed in the plural – truths, knowledges – to show that the author knows that
no group or individual has a monopoly on truth. Elizabeth Meyer, who describes
herself as a feminist landscape architect, has stated that ‘theoretical work should
be contingent, particular, and situated. Grounding in the immediate, the
particular, and the circumstantial—the attributes of situational criticism—is an
essential characteristic of landscape architectural design and theory. Landscape
theory must rely on the specific, not the general’ (2002 [1997]). Meyer then says
that design and theory must be based on observation and experience, the
immediate and sensory (all of the senses, not just vision) and that landscape
architectural theory is situational, ‘it is explicitly historical, contingent,
pragmatic, and ad hoc’. Meyer clearly belongs to the camp which Blackburn
calls the subjectivists.
Balance is needed here. Postmodernism has been a fecund source of new
perspectives and critical tools and it has provided a counter-weight to the cool,
distanced, objectifying gaze of science. Recognising the myriad differences
between human beings has been a much-needed corrective to the homogenising
tendencies of modernism. However, when Meyer says that grounding in the
immediate is an essential characteristic of landscape architectural theory, she
stumbles upon a difficulty. How can anyone so committed to the contingent and
situational say anything about an ‘essence’ (i.e. something immutable)? She
wants to say that all knowledge is situated and relativistic, but wishes to exempt
her own statements about the character of landscape architecture theory which
she thinks are essentially (i.e. universally and fundamentally) true.
The postmodern (or post-structural) turn has sensitised researchers and
landscape practitioners to the differences between people and this has
undoubtedly had important benefits such as the development of new techniques
for community consultation and participatory design. If modernism led to the
cult of the ‘expert’, who was generally a ‘landscape outsider’ in the sense
suggested by the geographer Edward Relph (1976), postmodernism has favoured
the local knowledge which can be provided by ‘landscape insiders’, that is
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people who live and work in a particular place. However, if all knowledge is
local knowledge, as some would assert, how are we to identify mumbo-jumbo
and irrational ideas? How are we to apply knowledge gained in one geographical
or historical context in any other? Moreover, there will be instances when an
outside expert, an ecologist, say, or a hydrologist, actually does know more
about a particular topic than anyone who lives in the area. The imperative is to
reconcile these viewpoints, but it can be a difficult work of mediation. The
integration of local and scientific knowledge has become a research topic in its
own right: see for example Failing et al. (2007); Raymond et al. (2010).

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THEORY IN THE ARTS AND HUMANITIES
The easiest way to distinguish between theory in the social sciences and theory
in the arts and humanities is to consider their objects. If a theory offers an
explanation or critique of the way society functions, then it belongs in social
theory. If it offers an explanation or critique of cultural production or cultural
products, then it belongs to cultural theory. That said, it is by no means a clear or
simple distinction. How could it be? Consideration of cultural products, whether
they are symphonies, detective novels, plays, video installations or gardens and
designed landscapes, involves consideration of the societies in which they were
produced. Indeed, criticism of such artefacts or cultural practices can provide a
way into critique of the societies which produced them.
The Marxist critic, Raymond Williams (1921–1988), understood the
relationship between the economic organisation of a society and its cultural
production as the relationship between a determining substructure and a
determined superstructure. Arts of production – and we can include the
production of designed landscapes – are generally an articulation of the
dominant culture, and embody meanings and values (Williams 1959). But, as the
Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci asserted, this ‘determination’ cannot operate in
a straightforward way. Gramsci disputed Marxism’s claim to be ‘scientific’ and
objectively, ahistorically true, arguing instead that the dominant class in any
society rules not just through physical coercion, but by persuading everyone in
that society (or at least the vast majority) that the prevailing arrangements are
natural, normal and valid. The word Gramsci used to refer to this form of control
was ‘hegemony’ (Gramsci 2011).
For the Marxist cultural geographers, Cosgrove and Daniels, ‘a landscape park
is more palpable but no more real, no less imaginary, than a landscape painting
or a poem…’ (1988, p.1). In other words, a landscape, whatever else it may be,
is always a symbolic representation, a cultural product. Their argument depends
upon a conception of landscape as visual, a view over land, rather than as a tract
of land. Raymond Williams, they observe, suggested that ‘a working landscape
is hardly ever a landscape’, because landscape is a way of seeing (ibid.). The
ploughmen and harvesters are too busy with their labours to look at the land in
an objective and aestheticising way.
Picturesque aesthetics have had a particularly hard time at the hands of
cultural critics. They have been accused of aestheticising and therefore
legitimising poverty (and it is true that picturesque paintings sometimes feature
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hovels, beggars and poor barefoot children). Picturesque aesthetics are said to be
distancing: they set up a picture plane between the landscape and the observer:
they are thus the antithesis of an immersed or engaged aesthetic. They represent
the commodification of land and the unjust distribution of wealth; Mr and Mrs
Andrews, in Gainsborough’s portrait of 1750, look out smugly over their well-
tended fields (though there is not a labourer in sight). The critic John Berger
thought that ‘their proprietary attitude towards what surrounds them is visible in
their stance and expressions’ (Berger 1972, pp.106–107).
I have dwelt upon theory derived from Marx at length because of its
prominence in critiques of landscape produced by cultural geographers, but the
realm of critical theory has expanded vastly beyond its origins to include a
plethora of -isms, many of which also have a bearing upon landscape
architecture. Freudian psychoanalytic theory and its derivatives, such as Kleinian
and Lacanian psychoanalysis, are often said to be the other major source of
critical theory, but they have not featured prominently in landscape theory,
though the British landscape architect, Sir Geoffrey Jellicoe (1900–1996)
elaborated a theory which attempted to explain the design process and the
apparent power of some designed landscapes by an appeal to the Jungian notion
of the collective unconscious. Feminism, however, has employed psychoanalytic
concepts to critique the masculine gaze upon landscape. The geographer Gillian
Rose, for example, has considered the way that particular sets of power relations,
in particular those between men and women, have structured the meanings of
images of landscape (Rose 1993, 1996). Rose identifies a dualism between
masculine forms of geographical knowledge, which she identifies with rational
approaches in the social sciences, and the aesthetic approach to landscape
associated with the arts, which feminises places.
Within this dualism it has traditionally been the masculine form of knowledge
which has occupied the dominant position. In a similar vein the philosopher
Caroline Merchant has combined feminist and ecological critique to examine the
culture–nature binary. The earth, according to Merchant, was seen as a wild but
beneficent mother until the emergence of modern science. Merchant expressly
links the exploitation of nature to the oppression of women (Merchant 1980,
2005). A feminist ethics of care has emerged from environmental ethics which
has a direct bearing upon notions of stewardship in landscape architecture (see
also Plumwood 1993). Literary studies was the seedbed for postcolonial theory,
another productive strand within critical theory; it seeks to understand the
impacts of European colonialism upon the rest of the world (NB it is a slightly
misleading title, because it studies the colonial period, not just what happened
after countries acquired their independence). In terms of landscape theory,
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research has often been focussed upon the imposition of European ways of
seeing and controlling landscape at the expense of indigenous understandings.
For example, Paul Carter in The Road to Botany Bay (1987), examines the way
in which picturesque tropes were employed to entice settlers into making the
land their own, while Allaine Cerwonka has studied the impacts of importing
European garden plants into the Australian landscape (Cerwonka 2004). Jacky
Bowring (1997) has shown how the language of the picturesque permeated the
development of the landscape architecture profession in New Zealand, through a
close reading of the published discourse of the New Zealand Institute of
Landscape Architects.
The smorgasbord of cultural theory is laden with -ologies and -isms, so many
in fact that a complete review is not possible within the confines of this chapter;
I will have to leave it to readers to decide whether queer theory, semiology,
biopolitics, communicative action, deconstruction, hermeneutics, existentialism,
structuralism, post-structuralism, speciesism, surrealism and the rest have a
bearing upon landscape architecture. However, there is one -ism which stands
out as being particularly pertinent to research in landscape research. It
approaches investigation from an angle which is so radically different from
positivist science that it can seem antithetical to it. This, of course, is
phenomenology and the emphasis it places upon subjective knowledge and the
knowing subject. When writing conventional scientific papers it is usual for
authors to efface themselves in order to achieve a properly objective tone. If they
have to mention that the research was carried out by living human beings, they
adopt some distancing epithet like ‘the researchers’ or ‘the author’. In
phenomenological writing, whether in the humanities or the social sciences,
there is no such imperative and first-person accounts are quite normal. On the
battlefield of Blackburn’s truth wars, phenomenologists would be found in the
subjectivist camp. Indeed, the adjective phenomenological is sometimes used
rather lazily as a synonym for subjective.
However, if we consider the origins of phenomenology in the writings of the
philosopher Edmund Husserl (1859–1938), we find that his approach was rooted
in the rational scepticism of Rene Descartes. Like Descartes, Husserl wanted to
build our knowledge on rock-solid foundations. Sceptics, such as Descartes,
have wondered whether there is an external world and whether it matches up
with our experiences of it. Husserl deliberately side-stepped this problem. The
things we can be absolutely certain about, he argued, are the contents of our
conscious awareness, which include perceptions, thoughts, bodily awareness,
memories, emotions and volitions. We have direct access to these and can study
them. In this respect the phenomenological enterprise is empirical, something it
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shares with science. However, Husserl’s version of phenomenology features less
in landscape theory than that of his successor, Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908–
1961). Whereas Husserl, true to his Cartesian inclinations, regarded the
conscious subject as transcendental and dis-embodied, Merleau-Ponty took an
altogether different line, regarding the body as the seat of perception. For
Merleau-Ponty our knowledge comes through our bodies (Merleau-Ponty 2012
[1945]). We could not have a world, if we did not have a body. This is much
closer to common-sense ideas of our relationship to our environment, and for
those, like landscape architects, who are interested in human–environment
interactions, this notion of embodied consciousness has much to recommend it.
The contrast between positivist and phenomenological methods of investigation
can be illustrated by the work of one of my PhD students who has been
investigating the microclimate of public parks in Cairo, Egypt, her home city.
Her initial inclination was to use the measuring instruments of the climate
scientist, but she ultimately rejected this in favour of a phenomenological
approach which focussed upon subjective accounts of climate as experienced by
a number of subjects in the park (including herself). Her respondents provided
rich data about how they experienced sun and shade within the park and how the
microclimate influenced their behaviour there. Arguably this sort of data is more
useful to would-be park designers than the objective charts and tables of
scientific investigation, or if not more useful then at least as useful, but in a
different way (see also Schultz and van Etteger – Chapter 11).
The shift from Husserl to Merleau-Ponty has focussed attention upon the
materiality of landscape. The anthropologist Tim Ingold published an essay
entitled ‘The temporality of landscape’ (Ingold 1993) which stressed that a
landscape was a lived-in world, rather than just a way of viewing land. There are
strong resonances here with the work of another philosopher, Martin Heidegger
(1889–1976), who asked what it meant to ‘dwell’ upon the earth (as opposed to
merely existing or surviving) (Heidegger 1971). Many writers, including the
American geographer J.B. Jackson, have laid emphasis upon the often repetitive
landscape practices (ploughing a field, trimming a hedgerow, tending an
allotment, walking a footpath etc.) which create everyday landscapes, and
interest in these practices now extends to artists and specialists in performance
studies.

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THE RIGHT SORT OF THEORY FOR THE JOB
One of the most interesting things about Wittgenstein’s later philosophy was that
it was supposed to be therapeutic. By showing philosophers how their misuse of
everyday language led them into perplexity, Wittgenstein hoped that he could
dissolve, rather than solve, the problems that had perplexed them for centuries.
This was hugely radical, in its way, but at the same time it was conservative. It
left everything alone and didn’t call for any drastic revision of everyday
language. If we didn’t push words into uses for which they were not suited,
everything was fine – we all knew our way about. I feel the need to say
something similar here. The word ‘theory’, as we have seen, is used in a great
variety of contexts. We sometimes muddle ourselves when we think we are
dealing with one sense of ‘theory’ and it turns out that our interlocutors are using
another. We have seen that attempts to police the use of ‘theory’ within the
discipline of landscape architecture (by Riley and others) have failed. I suggest
that we do no tinkering at all and that we leave things pretty much as they are.
Landscape architecture is never going to move wholesale into the natural
sciences, nor will it be absorbed by the social sciences or swallowed by the arts.
Its position, uncomfortably perhaps, will always be at the borders, and as long as
that remains so, competing notions of theory are likely to persist. We might as
well get used to this and cultivate our awareness of the ways words are used
within our neighbouring empires.
However, knowing our way about becomes even more important. One thing I
have not tried to do in this chapter is to tabulate the various types of theory
encountered along the way. In part this is because it would replicate efforts
already undertaken by Elen Deming and Simon Swaffield in their book
Landscape Architecture Research: Inquiry, Strategy and Design (2011), where
they categorise research strategies against two axes, one labelled Inductive-
Deductive (with ‘Abduction’ forming a third possibility between) and the other
labelled ‘Objectivist-Subjectivist’ and then come up with nine ‘strategies of
inquiry’. For the most part, their categorisation is useful, though phenomenology
is oddly absent. Rather than spending this entire chapter critiquing or elaborating
their framework, I wanted to show, in a more discursive way, how the
puzzlement about the role of theory in landscape architecture might have come
about.
James Corner has suggested that a theory can be both a ‘stabilizer’ and a
‘disruptive mechanism’ (1990). In the sciences, a good theory can provide an
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explanation for a diverse range of data or phenomena, gathering them together,
so to speak, and making them intelligible. However, even a well-established
theory can be overturned, if it is found wanting in explanatory power. In what
Thomas Kuhn has called a ‘paradigm shift’, the old explanatory model can be
rapidly superseded by a new one. The example always mentioned here is the
way that the Theory of Relativity displaced Newtonian mechanics. So, even
within objective science, a new theory can be radically disruptive. However,
there are species of critical theory, both social and cultural, which find their
raison d’ être in disrupting the status quo. A fashionable though ugly word for
this is ‘problematising’, which we seem to owe to Michel Foucault.
Problematising occurs when a critical thinker calls into question a piece of
common knowledge or a commonplace practice. This problematisation generally
involves the revelation of some hidden operation of power in the everyday
routines. Thinkers who would regard themselves as progressive are often
enthusiastic about the disruption of settled forms of knowledge because it seems
to offer opportunities for new consciousness, hope or action to emerge.
More pragmatically the budding researcher needs to understand how theory
(and what sort of theory) is relevant to her research design. It has a direct and
immediate bearing upon the framing of research questions and the selection of
methods. To return to the example of my Egyptian research student, her reading
of phenomenological theory, particularly Gernot Böhme’s work on atmospheres
and aesthetics (Böhme 1993, 2005), led her to reject her original ideas about
gathering climatic data with scientific instruments, in favour of ‘walk-along’
interviews with subjects in a Cairo park, recording and later analysing their
perceptions of microclimate and place. Böhme is a philosopher with interests in
anthropology, another borderland discipline sometimes classified among the
social sciences, but sometimes considered a humanity. The methods this student
selected came from social science, but they were qualitative rather than
quantitative. Another student (from Thailand) wished to undertake largely
historical research into open space in Bangkok. From the outset, this suggested
archival research, but the investigation was shaped by an understanding of both
Henri Lefebvre’s theories concerning the production of social space and also
postcolonial theory. Thailand was never colonised, so the interesting question
was ‘why not?’; the answer, as this researcher was able to demonstrate, was that
the Thai monarchy was able to present the country as a modern European-style
state. The design and use of public spaces contributed to the projection of this
image.
These two, very different, examples show that the researcher needs to engage
with existing theory from the outset and to be prepared to find it anywhere. As it
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happens, neither of these theses drew upon theory produced from within the
discipline of landscape architecture, though both students were landscape
architecture graduates. If theory is important from the outset, as a kind of
framing input into the research process, does research also produce theory? The
answer must be sometimes, but not necessarily. All PhD level work ought to
make a contribution to knowledge, although it does not need to be an earth-
shattering one to earn the degree. The research might test a theory in new
circumstances. For example, another of my students took well-tried European
methods of collaborative design and sought to discover whether they could be
applied in Malaysia. His thesis added to the evidence which showed that these
methods worked, while identifying a number of particular difficulties which
needed to be addressed when they were used in Malaysian society. Sometimes
PhDs do add to theory (as opposed to knowledge) because they offer a new
theoretical framework for looking at a particular topic or issue. My own thesis
was of this kind. I was interested in the values and motivations of landscape
architects, so I went and interviewed a number of them in-depth. On the basis of
these interviews and a wide-ranging literature review, I suggested that their
values fell into three areas: ecology and environment, social and political, and
creative and aesthetic. I also suggested that there were inevitable clashes
between these values, which each practitioner had to resolve in their own way. I
was able to develop this framework further in the book Ecology, Community and
Delight (Thompson 2000). One might say, I suppose, that the empirical research
(i.e. the interviews) provided a snapshot of the way British landscape architects
considered their vocation at the end of the twentieth century, but I think that it
was the framework, the theoretical innovation, that readers found more
interesting.
Theory does, of course, move on, and this is true whichever of the three
cultures it belongs to. We have noted how paradigms in natural science can be
overthrown by new evidence. The social sciences and the humanities are more
prone to enthusiasms, as particular critical thinkers become fashionable, then fall
from favour. We saw this with Derrida and Deconstruction, for example, with
the Parc de la Villette as an unusually concrete monument to an academic craze.
Then the mantle passed to Deleuze and Guittari, who provided the intellectual
underpinning (or maybe just the gloss) for Landscape Urbanism. This is just the
academic weather, but scholars and researchers to be able to read it. The newest
idea is not necessarily the best and seemingly dead theory can sometimes be
reanimated, albeit in a slightly new guise.
I was originally approached to write a chapter with the title ‘Theory: Chicken
or Egg?’ I think the thought was: ‘what comes first, the theory or the method’?
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For the most part, I believe it is the theory, though theory may be stretched or
otherwise modified by the outcome of the research. In the humanities and the
social sciences, theory provides frameworks or lenses through which to consider
phenomena, and sometimes to define and evaluate them. It is different when we
are thinking about procedural research. As we saw, when thinking about Steinitz
and McHarg, in these instances the research starts from consideration of existing
practices and results in some recommended codification of these procedures.
Perhaps the question was ‘Is theory an input or an output?’ I hope that I have
shown that it can be either (or both).

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NOTE
1 I note that elsewhere in this volume my colleague Maggie Roe argues that landscape architecture is not
a ‘discipline’ but a ‘disciplinary field’. I think she does this in order to acknowledge the breadth of
research which informs landscape architectural practice and the degree to which that knowledge is
shared with others. The Oxford English Dictionary gives as one of its definitions ‘discipline: a branch
of learning or scholarly instruction’. I don’t have much difficulty with this. There are things which
need to be passed on to future generations of landscape architects, but I agree with Roe that there need
not be anything exclusive about this.

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REFERENCES
Barrett, T.L., Farina, A. and Barrett, G.W. ( 2009) ‘ Aesthetic landscapes: An emergent component in
sustaining societies’, Landscape Ecology, 24( 8), 1029–1035.
Becker, F.D. and Mayo, C. ( 1971) ‘ Delineating personal distance and territoriality’, Environment and
Behavior, 3, 375–381.
Berger, J. ( 1972) Ways of Seeing, London: British Broadcasting Association and Penguin.
Blackburn, S. ( 2005) Truth: A Guide for the Perplexed, London: Allen Lane.
Böhme, G. ( 1993) ‘ Atmosphere as the fundamental concept of a new aesthetics’, Thesis Eleven, 36( 1),
113–126.
Böhme, G. ( 2005) ‘ Atmosphere as the subject matter of architecture’, in Ursprung, P., ed. Herzog &
DeMeuron: Natural History, Montreal: Lars Müller and Canadian Centre for Architecture, 398–
406.
Bowring, J. ( 1997) ‘ Institutionalising the picturesque: The discourse of the New Zealand Institute of
Landscape Architects ’, PhD thesis, Lincoln University, New Zealand.
Carter, P. ( 1987) The Road to Botany Bay, London: Faber & Faber.
Cerwonka, A. ( 2004) Native to the Nation: Disciplining Landscapes and Bodies in Australia, Minneapolis,
MN: University of Minnesota Press.
Corner, J. ( 1990) ‘ Origins of theory’, in Swaffield, S., ed. ( 2002) Theory in Landscape Architecture: A
Reader, Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Cosgrove, D. ( 1984) Symbolic Formation and Symbolic Landscape, London: Croom Helm.
Cosgrove, D. and Daniels, S. ( 1988) The Iconography of Landscape: Essays on the Symbolic
Representation, Design and Use of Past Environments, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Crotty, M. ( 1998) The Foundations of Social Research: Meaning and Perspective in the Research Process,
St. Leonards, Australia: Allen & Unwin.
de Roo, G. ( 2011) ‘ The ecosystem approach: Complexity, uncertainty, and managing for sustainability’,
Planning Theory, 10( 1), 92–95.
de Roo, G. and Silva, E.A. ( 2010) A Planners’ Encounter with Complexity, Farnham: Ashgate Publishing.
Deming, M.E. and Swaffield, S. ( 2011) Landscape Architecture Research: Inquiry, Strategy and Design,
Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons.
Dorling, D. ( 2014) All That is Solid: How the Great Housing Disaster Defines Our Times, and What We
Can Do About It, London: Penguin.
Failing, L., Gregory, R. and Harstone, M. ( 2007) ‘ Integrating science and local knowledge in
environmental risk management: A decision-focused approach’, Ecological Economics, 64( 1),
47–60.
Forman, R.T.T. ( 1995) Land Mosaics: The Ecology of Landscapes and Regions, Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Forman, R.T.T. and Godron, M. ( 1986) Landscape Ecology, New York: John Wiley & Sons.
Gramsci, A. ( 2011) Prison Notebooks, Volumes 1–3, Columbia University Press.
Hall, H. ( 1966) The Hidden Dimension, New York: Doubleday.
Hartig, T., Mang, M. and Evans, G.W. ( 1991) ‘ Restorative effects of natural environment experiences’,
Environment and Behavior, 23( 1), 3–26.
Hartig, T., Evans, G.W., Jamner, L.D., Davis, D.S. and Gärling, T. ( 2003) ‘ Tracking restoration in natural
and urban field settings’, Journal of Environmental Psychology, 23( 2), 109–123.
Heidegger, M. ( 1971) ‘ Building dwelling thinking’, in Poetry, Language, Thought, New York: Harper and
Row, 143–159.
Ingold, T. ( 1993) ‘ The temporality of the landscape’, World Archaeology, 25( 2), 152–174.
Jackson, J.B. ( 1984) Discovering the Vernacular Landscape, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Kagan, J. ( 2009) The Three Cultures: Natural Sciences, Social Sciences, and the Humanities in the 21st

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 Century, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Kaplan, R. and Kaplan, S. ( 1989) The Experience of Nature: A Psychological Perspective, Cambridge
University Press Archive.
Kaplan, S. ( 1995a) ‘ The restorative benefits of nature: Toward an integrative framework’, Journal of
Environmental Psychology, 15, 169–182.
Kaplan, S. ( 1995b) ‘ The urban forest as a source of psychological well-being’, in Bradley G.A., ed. Urban
Forest Landscapes: Integrating Multidisciplinary Perspectives, Seattle, WA: University of
Washington Press, 101–108.
Lyotard, J.-F. ( 1984) The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge, Manchester: Manchester
University Press.
Macey, D. ( 2000) The Penguin Dictionary of Critical Theory, London: Penguin.
McHarg, I.L. ( 1969) Design with Nature, Garden City, NY: Natural History Press.
Merchant, C. ( 1980) The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology, and the Scientific Revolution, New York:
Harper.
Merchant, C. ( 2005) Radical Ecology: The Search for a Liveable World, London: Routledge.
Merleau-Ponty, M. ( 2012 [ 1945]) Phenomenology of Perception, London: Routledge.
Meyer, E. ( 2002) ‘ The expanded field of landscape architecture’, in Swaffield, S., ed. Theory in
Landscape Architecture: A Reader, Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 167–172.
Mitchell, D. ( 1996) The Lie of the Land: Migrant Workers and the California Landscape, Minneapolis,
MN: University of Minnesota Press.
Mitchell, D. ( 2003) ‘ Cultural landscapes: Just landscapes or landscapes of justice?’, Progress in Human
Geography, 27( 6), 787–796.
Mitchell, D. ( 2007) ‘ Work, struggle, death, and geographies of justice: The transformation of landscape in
and beyond California’s Imperial Valley’, Landscape Research, 32( 5), 559–577.
Murphy, M.D. ( 2005) Landscape Architecture Theory: An Evolving Body of Thought, Long Grove, IL:
Waveland Press.
Naveh, Z. and Lieberman, Y.A. ( 1984) Landscape Ecology: Theory and Applications, New York: Springer
Verlag.
Ndubisi, F. ( 1997) ‘ Landscape ecological planning’, in Thompson, G.F. and Steiner, F.R., eds. Ecological
Design and Planning, New York: John Wiley & Sons, 9–45.
Olwig, K. ( 2002) Landscape, Nature and the Body Politic, Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press.
Plumwood, V. ( 1993) Feminism and the Mastery of Nature, London: Routledge.
Popper, K. ( 2002 [ 1934]) The Logic of Scientific Discovery, 2nd ed., London: Routledge.
Raymond, C.M., Fazey, I., Reed, M.S., Stringer, L.C., Robinson, G.M. and Evely, A.C. ( 2010) ‘
Integrating local and scientific knowledge for environmental management’, Journal of
Environmental Management, 91( 8), 1766–1777.
Reiling, M. and Dolders, T. ( 2015) ‘ Running Amsterdam: Designing a running friendly city ’, MSc thesis,
Wageningen University, the Netherlands.
Relph, E. ( 1976) Place and Placelessness, London: Pion.
Riley, R. ( 1990) ‘ Editorial commentary: Some thoughts on scholarship and publication’, Landscape
Journal, 9( 1), 47–50.
Rose, G. ( 1993) Feminism and Geography. The Limits of Geographical Knowledge, London: Polity Press.
Rose, G. ( 1996) ‘ Teaching visualised geographies: Towards a methodology for the interpretation of visual
materials’, Journal of Geography in Higher Education, 20( 3), 281–294.
Sommer, R. ( 1969) Personal Space, Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
Snow, C.P. ( 2012 [ 1959]) The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution, Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Steinitz, C. ( 1994) ‘ A framework for theory and practice in landscape planning’, Ekistics, 61( 364–365),
4–9.
Steinitz, C. ( 2013) A Framework for Geodesign: Changing Geography by Design, Redlands, CA:
Environmental Systems Research Institute.
Swaffield, S., ed. ( 2002) Theory in Landscape Architecture: A Reader, Philadelphia, PA: University of

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 Pennsylvania Press.
Thompson, I.H. ( 2000) Ecology, Community and Delight: Sources of Values in Landscape Architecture,
London: Spon.
Ward Thompson, C. and Aspinall, P.A. ( 2011) ‘ Natural environments and their impact on activity, health,
and quality of life’, Applied Psychology: Health and Well-Being, 3( 3), 230–260.
Wilson, E.O. ( 1975) Sociobiology: The New Synthesis, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Wilson, E.O. ( 2001 [ 1992]) The Diversity of Life, 2nd ed., London: Penguin.
Williams, R. ( 1959) Culture and Society, London: Chatto & Windus.
Wittgenstein, L. ( 1922) Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, London: Kegan-Paul.
Wylie, J. ( 2007) Landscape, London: Routledge.

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Chapter 4: The relationship between
research and design

Sanda Lenzholzer, Ingrid Duchhart and Adri van den

Brink

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CONTEXT
In a societal context of ‘scientification’ (Bayazit 2004; Cross 2006), landscape
architecture research faces new perspectives: scope and scale of research studies
is growing (Cushing and Renata 2015; Hewitt 2014; Weber 2015) and so is the
involvement of other disciplines and citizens (Findeli 2001; Jonas 2007;
Nowotny et al. 2001). The complexities arising from these developments,
coupled with an increasing necessity to deal with uncertainty (Prominski 2005),
call for a sound relationship of landscape architectural design and academic
research.
In this chapter we discuss the nature of this ‘sound relationship’. We focus on
three relationships between research and design – that is research on design,
research for design and research through design/ing – within landscape
architecture. It is from these perspectives that landscape architecture can make
significant contributions to scholarly design research in general and more
specifically to the 21st century’s intra-scalar landscape transitions, for example
from the design of outdoor objects to designing within regional development, as
addressed by, among others Kempenaar et al. (2016). Our aim is to reflect on
these different relationships, while referring to literature from both landscape
architecture and neighbouring design disciplines. We pay particular attention to
‘research through designing’, its evolution to date, its current state and future
potential. The subsequent methods may perhaps represent the most intimate
relationship between research and design – the act of designing as an intrinsic
part of research.

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SOME DEFINITIONS AND BASIC CONCEPTS
Although there are many different definitions of both research and design, we
will use the terms as described within the general design disciplines’ discourse.
Glanville (2015) concluded from this discourse that research in the academic
sense means a rigorous and in-depth search for answers to research questions
and to find new insights. He also makes a clear distinction between ‘design’ as a
noun and as a verb (see also Steinitz 1995). ‘Design’ as a noun is described as
the outcome of the design process in which a product, that is the design, has
been drawn and given shape, and, in the case of a positive outcome of decision-
making, may be implemented. In landscape architecture we talk about ‘design’
in the sense of giving three-dimensional form and function to, for example, the
direct external living environment, be it urban, peri-urban or rural. Limiting the
definition of ‘design’ to spatial dimensions is important in this context because
many other definitions of ‘design’ exist that have no relation to shaping space in
any sense (e.g. IT, policy sciences, mechanical engineering, bioprocess
technology and many other disciplines). Drawing, mapping, visualising,
representing, and giving shape are the unique activities that constitute the act of
designing. Lenzholzer et al. (2013) proposed to use the gerund form – designing
– to more clearly distinguish the verb from the noun. Both – verb and noun – can
be the subject of research. Designs (as a noun) can be studied after their
implementation (post hoc), whereas design/ing (as a verb) can be studied during
the design process. Important for this chapter is the role of designing as a part of
a research process.
Basically, all design disciplines connect design and research and there has
been a growing body of literature since major figures such as Herbert Simon
sparked the discussion in the 1970s (Simon 1975). Various architecture research
theorists who built upon his insights had a strong focus on the engineering
disciplines (Eder 1995; Hubka and Eder 1987; Simon 1996), but were also
concerned with the artistic aspect of design. Subsequently, other design
disciplines that represent artistic approaches also entered the discussion. In 1993
the art and design theorist Christopher Frayling published a seminal paper
suggesting that there are three models of design research: research into design,
research for design and research by design (Frayling 1993). This categorisation
presented a widely used framework to describe the relationship between research
and design. Although later on extended with other pronouns (see Archer 1995;
de Jong and van der Voordt 2002; Jonas 2014) that denominate similar relations
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between research and design, the categorisation essentially remained the same
and was also recently used in landscape architecture publications on the topic
(Deming and Swaffield 2011, p.37; Lenzholzer 2010, p.19). In the following
section we give hints on the meaning of these categories within landscape
architecture.

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RESEARCH INTO, FOR AND THROUGH
DESIGN(ING)
The first category described by Frayling is research into design, sometimes also
referred to as research on or about design. Here, design is used as a noun, so
studies in this field concern the design product (post hoc). Very typical for such
research is a reflection on design products. In landscape architecture this can
concern studies on garden, urban and landscape designs that can be interpreted
from different points of view, that is historical (Nijhuis 2014; Treib 1993) or
technological (Salingaros 2005), but also philosophical or aesthetical (van
Etteger et al. 2016). Other typical research of this category are comparative case
studies, plan analyses or design criticism (e.g. Brinkhuijsen 2008; Francis 2001).
Additionally, empirical methods from the natural and social sciences can be used
to assess designs after realisation, such as Post Occupancy Evaluation of
buildings or public spaces (Meir et al. 2009; Sherman et al. 2005). This kind of
research has already been conducted for a long time – also for the design
products of landscape architecture. A wide range of examples can be found in
Deming and Swaffield (2011). Remarkably, however, much of the research
presented there was not conducted by landscape architects but by historians,
geographers, environmental psychologists and social scientists.
The second category pertains to research for design. This category covers all
types of research that support the design product or design process. Here, both
product and process benefit from research activities in the sense that the research
outcomes inform the design process. Since design in landscape architecture is a
highly complex undertaking, this research for design consequently requires a
very wide knowledge base, ranging from the natural sciences and social sciences
to the arts and humanities (see Thompson – Chapter 3). Research for design can
be conceived of as the creation of substantive knowledge through the generation
of scientific data for application in ‘evidence based’ design (Brown and Corry
2011) (examples in Deming and Swaffield 2011; Groat and Wang 2002). In this
context we can think of examples such as material studies, for example for green
roofs (Blanusa et al. 2013; Susca et al. 2011) or for soil bioengineering in nature
development projects (Simon and Steinemann 2000). It can also concern the
generation of design guidelines for a user-friendly environment by translating
knowledge from social sciences or environmental psychology (e.g.
Groenewegen et al. 2006; Herzog 1992; Teel et al. 2010). When ‘design’ is

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addressed as a verb, the creation of knowledge for design can also be procedural:
knowledge that aids the structuring of design processes (e.g. Dorst 1997; Schön
1987). In this category, too, the actual research part is not always conducted by
landscape architects. However, the translation of the data into meaningful design
guidelines is usually done by designers.
The third category is research through design(ing), covering all the research
processes that actively employ designing. Research through designing (RTD in
the remainder of this chapter) is at the heart of all design disciplines. Its methods
have been widely discussed and amongst design theorists there is no doubt that
designing can be a valid research method (e.g. Rodgers and Yee 2015). Within
landscape architecture, however, such ideas were regarded with reservation (see
e.g. Deming and Swaffield 2011; Milburn and Brown 2003). It was correctly
stated that for design to qualify as research it would need to meet certain
methodological criteria, such as a clear research question, a theoretical
framework and appropriate methods. Nonetheless, how to apply such criteria
was not self-evident. This might be a result of the novelty of the discourse on
research methods within landscape architecture (one of the major reasons for
creating this book). The lack of methodological criteria might also result from
historical applications of design/ing as a so-called research method within
landscape architecture and related fields that would not always qualify as an
established academic research method. In the next section we give a brief
overview and discussion of these historical applications.

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THE EVOLUTION OF RESEARCH THROUGH
DESIGNING
There are various developments within landscape architecture and neighbouring
disciplines that led to the evolution of designing as a research method. We can
observe three major strands occurring in this evolution. The first strand consisted
of the developments in architecture, urbanism and landscape architecture on
‘rationalising’ design and planning processes. The second strand was the
evolution of ‘research by design’ that occurred in the Netherlands. The third
strand highlights the renewed international attention to research in landscape
architecture design processes. In this section we discuss these strands in more
depth and how a slow development took place from practice-oriented design
towards RTD as a sound research method that generates new design-relevant
knowledge.
The first strand in the evolution of design as research dates back to the 1930s.
There had been a tradition of a rational, science-oriented approach in
architecture since the advent of modernism. Many architects, amongst them
prominent figures like Le Corbusier, proposed architecture as a science (Le
Corbusier, in Cross et al. 1981) and, for instance, in his version of ‘The Athens
Charter of the International Congress of Modern Architecture’, Le Corbusier
described urbanism as a ‘three-dimensional … science’ (CIAM 1943, section
82). Alexander, in the earlier years of his career, also pursued a strictly rational,
mathematically inspired approach to design in his Notes on the Synthesis of
Form (1964), whereas in the 1970s Hillier et al. (1972) suggested bringing a
scientific empirical method into design. However, many architects also denied
the possibility that design can be scientific or ‘research’. Jones (1970, p.10)
posited that ‘designing should not be confused with … science, or with
mathematics’. He emphasised that ‘when they [designers] deal with the future
itself, as opposed to the present, scientific doubt is of no use’ (p.11). Lang (1987,
p.19) asserted that ‘by definition, design cannot be scientific’, even though
design should be based on scientific knowledge.
In 1984 John Zeisel took the debate further and suggested that an architectural
design can be a hypothesis or conjecture and that these hypotheses or conjectures
can be tested (Zeisel 2006, pp.19–25). His ideas inspired many colleagues. For
instance Ungers (1997, in Steenbergen et al. 2002, p.24) suggested ‘… first there
is the hypothesis, the idea, the image. Then there will be strategies of refutation

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– in fact. The real job.’ Especially at Delft Technical University in the
Netherlands these methods were taken further during a major conference in
2001. Research by design was understood ‘as the development of knowledge by
designing, studying the effects of this design, changing the design itself or its
context, and studying the effects of the transformations’ (de Jong and van der
Voordt 2002, p.455). Other scholars in Delft came up with similar models and
claimed that research by design is literally the same procedure as used in the
‘classical’ empirical sciences:
From a general scientific point of view, there appears to be, on closer examination, no essential
difference between the steps in the empirical research cycle (statement of problem – analysis –
generation of possible testable answers – formulation of hypotheses) and those of design research
(task – analysis – generation of schematic … models – design).
(Steenbergen et al. 2002, p.25)

Since then, the debate in architecture has grown towards full acceptance of
design(ing) as a sound scientific research method.
In landscape architecture the debate about the relationship between design and
research was sparked off during the 1960s by McHarg (1968) and Steinitz and
Rogers (1970). They argued that landscape architecture had to respond to the
increasing complexity and the scale of issues of unprecedented growth through
the adoption of ecological and rational planning and design methodologies. In
1969, Ian McHarg published his seminal book Design with Nature in which he
presented new analysis tools by depicting various abiotic, biotic and human
characteristics of the landscape as separate layers. This approach found many
followers across the globe, but also received hefty critique for (apparently)
denying the artistic aspect of designing, its weak academic qualities and lack of
inclusiveness of the design process (e.g. Krieger and Litton 1971). Steinitz and
Rogers (1970) responded by proposing a design methodology that included an
iterative process of designing spatial configurations and testing them for their
impact on, for example, hydrology, biodiversity and land use. Although the
iterative nature and the testing process pointed towards basic principles of RTD,
it was not coined as such; rather it reinforced a perceived antagonism between
research and design (Milburn et al. 2003; Steiner 2006). In spite of the many
experiments that were conducted at universities around the world, most of these
experiments were actually typical research for design approaches that ran
aground not only because of methodological complexities but also because
landscape analyses dominating the design process left little room for creative
and normative prospective designing. Moreover, in those early days digital data
were scarce and geographic information system (GIS) technology still had little
capacity – the powerful analytical tools we now take for granted were still
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primitive.
In an attempt to solve the complexities outlined above a new design process
evolved, one that brought designing to the forefront of the designing process, at
least in the Netherlands. In this second strand of thinking about the relationship
between design and research Meto Vroom, from 1966 to 1994 professor of
landscape architecture at Wageningen University, the Netherlands, played a
prominent role. As a former student of McHarg, he and his students
experimented with McHargian design procedures, but soon they realised that for
innovative solutions, designing had to be brought to play a central role in the
research process. In the mid-1970s, this resulted in the tandem ‘research-based-
design / design-based-research’ (ontwerpend onderzoeken / onderzoekend
ontwerpen), a method explicitly aiming at connecting scientific research and
designing without prioritising the one over the other. Te Boekhorst (2006)
narrates how foresters, ecologists, agricultural scientists and landscape architects
came together in a design charrette and co-designed a first conceptual design for
a pilot case study area. This conceptual design generated various questions that
were rephrased as research questions for each discipline involved. The outcomes
of the subsequent (disciplinary) research were brought into the design process in
a second design charrette. Several cycles of co-design activities and disciplinary
research took place, slowly generating new knowledge and applying it in
designs. This approach, in which research and design are linked by co-design
sessions, can be best described as taking intermediate steps to explore and test
evolving design alternatives. Unfortunately this ‘research-based-design / design-
based-research’ discourse was not taken further in the years to follow (te
Boekhorst 2006). However, the idea of the research-by-design charrette is still
widely practiced as a means of facilitating community participation (e.g.
Bouwmeester et al. 2009) or in solving multi-disciplinary problems through
design (e.g. in forests, see Bell and Apostol 2008). It should be noted, however,
that the actual research component of these charrettes neither meets the criteria
of proper academic research, nor is designing appropriately elucidated as (part
of) sound academic landscape architecture research.
Next to the developments in landscape architecture practice in the
Netherlands, a renewed interest – the third strand of thinking – for research in
landscape architecture design processes occurred internationally (e.g. Kapper
and Chenoweth 2000; Milburn and Brown 2003; Milburn et al. 2003; Milburn et
al. 2001). Milburn and Brown, for example, defined five different model
relationships between research and design: artistic, intuitive, adaptive, analytical
and systematic. Each model is inclusive of both planning and design, but with a
greater or lesser focus on aesthetics (2003, pp.47–49). Nassauer and Opdam
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(2008) encouraged interdisciplinary collaboration with landscape designers to
increase the usability of the results of academic research, arguing that jointly
produced designs would enhance social acceptance and increase innovation.
While acknowledging designing as part of doing research, they still suggested a
sequential process, that is first research, then designing. Carl Steinitz, however,
in his recent book A Framework for Geodesign (2012), gives designing in
research and in inter- and trans-disciplinary interactions a much more prominent
role. Nonetheless, the role of designing and its intrinsic values for the research
process were still left obscure. Or as Deming and Swaffield (2011, p.205)
observed, ‘design as an investigative strategy remains poorly understood and
inconsistently applied, even if frequently invoked’. They used the term
‘projective design’ to emphasise ‘the unique quality of design process for
research outcomes’, and explain how ‘[d]esign only becomes an autonomous
research strategy when it produces new generalizable knowledge about the world
through its purposes, protocols, and outcome’ (p.206). In their view, research-
by-design is neither inductive (something must be: insights emerge from the
design setting or context) nor deductive (something is actually operative:
insights emerge from the testing and challenging of established concepts), but
rather an approach in which ‘researchers move back and forth between inductive
and deductive perspectives, modifying their theoretical propositions in the light
of the evidence, revising their understanding of the evidence (its categories, and
its meaning and significance) in light of theoretical concepts and exploring new
possibilities of understanding and new ways of knowing’. This ‘reflexive
approach’ is called abduction, that is ‘an investigation of what might be’ (pp.8,
209) and is a hitherto overlooked approach to research in landscape architecture.
This overview of the evolution of designing as a research method in landscape
architecture shows that design(ing) as a research approach has gradually
developed over more than four decades. We can observe that design(ing) as
research was described using different and often multi-interpretable names. In all
approaches, landscape and urban design remained the predominant focus of
attention. However, the notion of designing as a part of soundly based research,
following acknowledged criteria for research quality (e.g. Deming and Swaffield
2011, p.206; Milburn et al. 2003), was still not well addressed.

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CURRENT MEANING OF RESEARCH THROUGH
DESIGNING
Lenzholzer et al. (2013) proposed that designing can be research provided it
complies with the procedures, protocols and values of academic research. They
suggested a framework of research criteria for design based on the widely used
criteria set by Creswell (2014). Creswell described three different types of
research strategies: qualitative, quantitative and mixed. He further distinguished
four substantially different worldviews within which these approaches can be
applied: (post)positivist, constructivist, transformative and pragmatic.
Regardless of the worldview, the choice of the appropriate research strategy and
subsequent research methods is always guided by the research question(s).
Based on this categorisation and on Lenzholzer et al. (2013) we propose four
different types of RTD in landscape architecture (see Table 4.1). For each type
of RTD the overview addresses the kind of questions that can be answered, the
kind of (new) knowledge that can be produced, the methods that can be
employed and appropriate types of evaluation. The output of RTD should be
new knowledge that is applicable in design practice or in further research.
Typical outcomes can be generic design prototypes or design guidelines, but also
‘thick descriptions’ of lessons learnt in transformative RTD. The outcomes thus
fundamentally differ from design products arising from ‘non-academic’,
practical design processes that are site-specific and not created with the aim of
broadening the disciplinary knowledge base.
RTD methods within a (post)positivist approach are applied in many
engineering-oriented landscape architectural projects. If, for instance, dike
systems have to be improved, designs will usually be tested with computer
simulations or mock-ups, evaluated, tested again in a range of predominantly
quantitative feedback loops until an optimised solution is found. Typical
constructivist RTD methods entail the generation of designs that are assessed
according to their cultural, aesthetic, ethical or other socially ‘constructed’
values – either by expert groups or through citizens and are also brought to a
satisficing (as opposed to optimal) result through predominantly qualitative
feedback loops. The inclusion of citizens can lead to transformative RTD. Such
research is oriented on co-creation and co-ownership of knowledge and process.
The researcher uses a combination of participatory and ‘designerly’ research
techniques. This RTD often concerns the development of a commonly shared

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vision on the endeavoured (future) quality of the living environment and an
action plan to achieving and maintaining it.
Table 4.1
Overview of types of RTD (source: based on Lenzholzer et al. 2013)

(Post)positivism Constructivism Transformative Pragmatism

Type of – Physical/functional – New forms – Adaptation – Various
‘research – Psychological – Cultural/aesthetic – Socio-cultural – Problem-
through – Social – Emancipatory solving
designing’ – Appreciative – Real-world
questions – Real-world
Kind of – Prescriptive – Suggestive – Transformative – Practice-
new design – ‘Objective’ – ‘Individual’, – Collaborative oriented
knowledge – Deductive/ meaning – Contextual/situational/ knowledge,
generalizable – Contextual – Normative including
– Quantitative – Qualitative – Agendas for action several
– Patterns, prototypes – Interpretive types of
– Qualitative (and
design
– Verified theory/design – Artifacts/projects sometimes quantitative)
knowledge
guidelines – Procedural/ theoretical
Research – Design hypothesis – ‘Creative’ – Collaborative/interactive – Mixed
methods testing reflection-in- – Recursive design and methods,
– ‘Before and after action participant feedback depending
design’ experiments – Personal loops on research
tested with surveys of involvement – Emergent question(s)
measurements – Open-ended – Sequential/concurrent
– Strict protocol design process
– Thick description
– Triangulation
Research – Quantitative/numerical – Qualitative – Internal and external – Depends on
evaluation – Statistical analysis – Inductive monitoring on use and research
criteria – Objective – Personal perception question and
– Generalizable interpretation – Shift in values method
– Aesthetics – Ownership of chosen
knowledge

However, we would like to stress that the fourth category – the ‘pragmatist’
RTD – might have the highest significance amongst the RTD methods. The
pragmatic worldview is concerned with the research problem and uses pluralistic
approaches to derive new knowledge about the problem and its solution.
Landscape architectural design also deals with complex tasks and the smart
integration of many interests to solve and/or identify a design problem and,
accordingly, the new generated knowledge has to address such complexities too.
Therefore, when research methods only follow one of the approaches, for
instance, a positivist one, the new knowledge that is generated can only partially
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address the problem due to the reductionism inherent in this approach. In the
case where transformative methods are used exclusively, the use of certain
research techniques or questions that are culturally unacceptable may also render
the new knowledge inadequate. Design guidelines, spatial prototypes or other
generalisable design knowledge will have to include various aspects in order to
make it usable, design-relevant knowledge. For instance, aesthetics or social
aspects need to be considered and these would have to be studied with a
constructivist RTD approach. The pragmatic researchers ‘look to the what and
how to research … where they want to go with it. Mixed methods researchers
need to establish a purpose for their mixing, a rationale for the reasons why
quantitative and qualitative data need to be mixed in the first place’ (Creswell
2014, p.11). These characteristics for pragmatic research show strong similarities
with legitimate design processes. Thus, we suggest to use the strength of the
landscape architect’s integrative and ‘designerly’ thinking and employ a
pragmatic RTD, mixing approaches and methods when complex design-relevant
knowledge is needed. The categorisation presented in Table 4.1 should,
therefore, not only be understood as a dissection of RTD approaches but rather
as an overview of different types of RTD and their potential to address the
research questions at hand in the most suitable way. We assume that in most
cases this will involve a combination of the different RTD methods we
portrayed.

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FUTURE POTENTIALS
The discussion so far has indicated that RTD, as long as it is conducted
according to academic standards, can yield reliable and valuable design-relevant
knowledge. We hope that the RTD approaches we described above will be
employed and developed further in future landscape architecture research.
Where the pioneers of RTD had technological problems in handling large
amounts of data, we believe that new perspectives may be induced by rapid
developments in the IT sector, such as big data and virtual reality (e.g. Portman
et al. 2015). For (post)positivist RTD methods new possibilities arise due to the
growing capacity of computers because simulations of design hypotheses and
proposals can be done much quicker and tested by prospective users. The
software that enables such simulations is becoming increasingly sophisticated.
Coupled with more computing capacity and more sophisticated simulation
methods is ‘parametric design’. Parametric design is based on algorithms that
express parameters and rules that define the eventual design responses (e.g.
Gerber and Lin 2014). So actually, parts of the evaluation of the design to be
tested in a (post)positivist RTD can be built into the algorithm. This can reduce
feedback loops for certain parameters that would otherwise have to be tested by
other means.
Constructivist and transformative RTD will possibly profit from new
representation techniques, such as virtual reality, that enable immersion of
people into new spatial environments that do not yet exist. Virtual reality offers
increasingly realistic simulations of visual, auditory and sensory environments
and even the olfactory realm can be included. The potential for people to
undergo ‘total immersion’ can be used to give their subjective evaluations of
(aesthetic) experiences. Transformative RTD methods will also profit from these
new possibilities. People will have easier access to new design proposals that
need to be assessed, for instance via smartphone apps or other digital platforms.
They have exciting opportunities to communicate more efficiently through new
media and to vote for design proposals or to upload their own research data. The
great amount of data supports the validity of the collected data. This will further
advance community empowerment through transformative RTD processes.
Generally speaking, we see many possibilities for the existing RTD methods,
and even more for the future RTD methods, to generate new knowledge relevant
for shaping the spatial environment. Since our world is changing ever faster, the
‘transformative’ sciences that deal with the potential future states of our
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environment are likely to become increasingly important. RTD is expected to
play an increasingly significant role in landscape architecture and in shaping
landscape architecture as one of the ‘transformative’ sciences of the future.

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SUGGESTED FURTHER READING
Creswell, J.W. (2014) Research Design, Qualitative, Quantitative, and Mixed Methods Approaches, 4th ed.,
Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. This book gives a broad overview of different approaches to academic
research and is widely used in various academic disciplines.
Duchhart, I. (2011) Annotated Bibliography on ‘Research by design’ (Ontwerpend Onderzoek), Landscape
Architecture Group, Wageningen University, The Netherlands. This annotated bibliography
provides insights into the backgrounds of RTD and related discussions in landscape architecture
and neighbouring disciplines.
Jonas, W. (2007) ‘Research through DESIGN through research: A cybernetic model of designing design
foundations’, Kybernetes, 36(9/10), 1362–1380. Wolfgang Jonas has addressed RTD in different
design fields. He has a rigorous approach to RTD as a valid research method, embedding his ideas
in the current discourse on academic methods.
Lenzholzer, S., Duchhart, I. and Koh, J. (2013). ‘”Research through designing“in landscape architecture‘,’
Landscape and Urban Planning, 113, 120–127. This paper introduced RTD in landscape
architecture. It is based on Creswell’s commonly shared academic values and shows that RTD
plays a central role in landscape architectural research.
Nowotny, H., Scott, P. and Gibbons, M. (2001) Re-Thinking Science: Knowledge and the Public in an Age
of Uncertainty, Cambridge: Polity. This book introduces new approaches in science that
incorporate the role of society as a generator of new knowledge.
Rodgers, P. and Yee, J. (2015) The Routledge Companion to Design Research, Abingdon: Routledge. This
recent book gives a broad overview of different relations between research and design in different
disciplines.

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Landscape Ecology, 23, 633–644.
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architectonic compositions’, in Lees, D.J., Dias, E. and Scholten, H.J., eds. Geodesign by
Integrating Design and Geospatial Sciences, Cham: Springer, 193–217.
Nowotny, H., Scott, P. and Gibbons, M. (2001) Re-Thinking Science: Knowledge and the Public in an Age
of Uncertainty, Cambridge: Polity.
Portman, M., Natapov, A. and Fisher-Gewirtzman, D. (2015) ‘To go where no man has gone before: Virtual
reality in architecture, landscape architecture and environmental planning’, Computers,
Environment and Urban Systems, 54, 376–384.
Prominski, M. (2005) ‘Designing landscapes as evolutionary systems’, The Design Journal, 8(3), 25–34.
Rodgers, P.A. and Yee, J. (2015) The Routledge Companion to Design Research, Abingdon: Routledge.
Salingaros, N. (2005) Principles of Urban Structure, Amsterdam: Techne Press.
Schön, D.A. (1987) Educating the Reflective Practitioner: Toward a New Design for Teaching and
Learning in the Professions, San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

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Sherman, S.A., Varni, J.W., Ulrich, R.S. and Malcarne, V.L. (2005) ‘Post-occupancy evaluation of healing
gardens in a pediatric cancer center’, Landscape and Urban Planning, 73(2), 167–183.
Simon, H.A. (1975) ‘Style in design’, in Eastman, C.N., ed. Spatial Synthesis in Computer-Aided Building
Design, Chichester: John Wiley, 287–309.
Simon, H.A. (1996) The Sciences of the Artificial, 3rd ed., Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
Simon, K. and Steinemann, A. (2000) ‘Soil bioengineering: Challenges for planning and engineering’,
Journal of Urban Planning and Development, 126(2), 89–102.
Steenbergen, C., Mihl, H. and Reh, W. (2002) ‘Introduction: Design research, research by design’, in
Steenbergen, C., Mihl, H., Reh, W. and Aerts, F.A.M.F., eds. Architectural Design and
Composition, Bussum: THOTH, 12–25.
Steiner, F.R., ed. (2006) The Essential Ian McHarg: Writings on Design and Nature, Washington, DC:
Island Press.
Steinitz, C. (1995) ‘Design is a verb; design is a noun’, Landscape Journal, 14(2), 188–200.
Steinitz, C. (2012) A Framework for Geodesign: Changing Geography by Design, Redlands, CA: Esri
Press.
Steinitz, C. and Rogers, P. (1970) A Systems Analysis Model of Urbanization and Change: An Experiment
in Interdisciplinary Education, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Susca, T., Gaffin, S.R. and Dell’Osso, G.R. (2011) ‘Positive effects of vegetation: Urban heat island and
green roofs’, Environmental Pollution, 159(8), 2119–2126.
te Boekhorst, J. (2006) Landschapsarchitectuur en onderzoek: Een korte geschiedenis van de
landschapsarchitectuur binnen DLO, Wageningen: ESG-Alterra.
Teel, T.L., Manfredo, M.J., Jensen, F.S., Buijs, A.E., Fischer, A., Riepe, C., Arlinghaus, R. and Jacobs,
M.H. (2010) ‘Understanding the cognitive basis for human-wildlife relationships as a key to
successful protected-area management’, International Journal of Sociology, 40(3), 104–123.
Treib, M., ed. (1993) Modern Landscape Architecture: A Critical Review, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
van Etteger, R., Thompson, I.H. and Vicenzotti, V. (2016) ‘Aesthetic creation theory and landscape
architecture’, Journal of Landscape Architecture, 11(1), 80–91.
Weber, G. (2015) ‘Auxiliary specialization opportunities in landscape architecture: Nature of profession,
current view, allied relationships, skills & knowledge, and future directions‘, MSc thesis, Kansas
State University. Available at: htt​ps:​//k​rex​.k-​sta​te.​edu​/ds​pac​e/b​its​tre​am/​han​-
dle​/2097/19044/GabrielaWeber2015.pdf? sequence=1.
Zeisel, J. (2006) Inquiry by Design: Environment/Behavior/Neuroscience in Architecture, Interiors,
Landscape, and Planning, New York: W.W. Norton & Company.

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Chapter 5: The challenge of publication

Maggie Roe

Editors are craftsmen, ghosts, psychiatrists, bullies, sparring partners, experts, enablers,
ignoramuses, translators, writers, goalies, friends, foremen, wimps, ditch diggers, mind readers,
coaches, bomb throwers, muses and spittoons – sometimes all while working on the same piece
… But an editor’s primary responsibility is not to the writer but to the reader. He or she must be
ruthlessly dedicated to making the piece stronger.
(Gary Kamiya 2007)

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INTRODUCTION
This chapter aims to provide an ‘editor’s view’ of landscape architecture
research in order to help understand if or where enhancement is necessary. This
leads to three strands of thought: first, to consider the notion that landscape
architecture should be regarded as a specific academic discipline in terms of
research outputs; second, to provide a view on how to improve the quality of
research papers in the field; and third, to provide some observations on the
identification of possible useful future relevant research areas. In this chapter
‘landscape architecture’ is used in the broad sense defined by the UK Landscape
Institute to include landscape planning, design, management and landscape
science. The basis for the reflection and comment in this chapter is a review of a
number of papers including research-based, viewpoint and comment-based
editorials which examine the content of journals relevant to research published
by landscape academics. In reflecting on these reviews I have also used my
experience of editing the international peer-review journal Landscape Research
for the last 12 years, and surveys I have carried out during that period as well as
various discussions with researchers and colleagues over the last 20 years.

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A VIEW OF ‘LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE
RESEARCH’
In 1998 I took part in a symposium that aimed to review the state of landscape
architecture research in the UK; this led to a number of useful papers that
questioned what landscape architecture research actually is or should be (e.g.
Benson 1998; Selman 1998; Thwaites 1998). Now, 17 years later, this debate
has moved slowly forward. Most recently Milburn and Brown (2016) suggest
that landscape architecture practitioners in the USA do not regard research being
produced as particularly useful to practice. While a gap between academics’
views of what is ‘useful’ in terms of research and that of practitioners is not
particularly surprising, what is more interesting to consider is whether it is really
important for there to be an identifiable ‘landscape architecture’ body of
research.
Landscape architecture can be seen as a form of ‘mode 2’ or ‘post-academic
science’ (see Gibbons et al. 1994), that is where the acquisition of cross-
disciplinary knowledge is through a collaborative approach in specialist areas
and where the applicability of the findings is important rather than research for
scientific knowledge alone, as is generally seen in fundamental (or ‘mode 1’)
research. While the landscape architecture profession can be seen as a discipline
with a particular training, there is a strong case to say that landscape architecture
research is not ‘a’ discipline, rather a disciplinary field which uses many
different methodologies and methods and examines many areas of interest that
lie outside what may be relevant to the (generally applied) research interests of
the landscape architecture profession.
In most countries where landscape architecture is recognised as a profession
such as the UK there is a professional body with specific codes of conduct to
ensure that ‘practice, knowledge, skills and techniques are up to date’ (LI 2012,
p.5). Professions ‘profess’ particular knowledge about and expertise concerning
their subject, in this case the landscape. But as many commentators suggest, this
knowledge is pulled from a wide variety of research areas and fields of study
including natural sciences, arts and humanities, with research methods primarily
developed and adapted from human, physical and cultural geography,
psychology, aesthetics and philosophy, history and archaeology, agriculture and
horticulture, fine arts and design. Academics who teach landscape architecture
may be researching in fields very much on the edge of the areas of interest of

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those in practice (hence perhaps the results of Milburn and Brown), and may be
involved in teaching other disciplines, and/or may not be professionally qualified
in landscape architecture. The character of landscape architecture research is
similar to planning and architecture fields of study that derive from ‘a broad
interdisciplinary knowledge-base which can be distinguished from its
professional application’ (Dyck 1994, p.143). Planning and architecture, like
landscape architecture, are identified as ‘professionally oriented’ and not
primarily focused on developing knowledge for its own sake.
Cushing and Renata (2015) suggest that landscape architecture as a discipline
is relatively new, then go on to cite the establishment of ASLA (American
Society of Landscape Architects, which is the professional body in USA) as
being over 100 years old. In the UK the professional body, the Landscape
Institute, which was founded in 1929, is to date 86 years old. What Cushing and
Renata are actually talking about is the profession. There are many early texts
which contain relevant knowledge in terms of the disciplinary field of landscape
architecture research. The first theoretical text that could be said to be based on
ideas of landscape architecture was ‘A Treatise on the Theory and Practice of
Landscape Gardening, Adapted to North America’ by Andrew Jackson Downing
(1841). The research methods used by Downing to develop his theory seem to
have been observation, cogitation and discussion. Since then there have been
many kinds of publications that include relevant research emanating from both
practice and academia. Academic journals that publish relevant work include
Landscape Research which has been published in one form or another since
1968 (47 years) (Roe 2009). Another important outlet is Landscape and Urban
Planning which has been published since 1974 (41 years) with Arnold Weddle
as the first editor. The journal was then called Landscape Planning & Urban
Ecology (Gobster 2011). Weddle was a landscape architect who was also a
practitioner; he became the first professor of landscape architecture in the UK in
1967 at Sheffield University, UK. Weddle himself suggested that ‘landscape
design (or landscape architecture...) is an activity rather than a discipline’
(Woudstra 2010, p.255). This brief outline of key events suggests that the field is
not in its infancy. There is, however, a perceived need to develop a research
profile within a multi-disciplinary field. Certainly in the UK the actual numbers
of landscape architects who are in academia are small; it is also generally a small
profession. An important issue is perhaps, do landscape architects in practice use
research of any kind to inform their practice? Is it necessary for there to be
identifiable ‘landscape architecture research’ that generates new knowledge, new
methodologies and is then assumed to ‘strengthen the academic position of
landscape architecture’ (Lenzholzer et al. 2013, p.120)? How can a small body
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of academics help raise the profile of the disciplinary field?
The distinguishing activity for landscape and architecture professionals can be
identified as problem-solving and the development of design methods including
visioning. Thwaites (1998) critiques the lack of a cohesive research agenda
grounded in design itself. Therefore perhaps a specific area where landscape
architecture might make a unique contribution to the development of research
methods is in relation to design(ing). The problem is that, as has already been
suggested, this is only one potential area of research that may be relevant to
landscape architecture, and many landscape architects would consider
themselves to be other than primarily designers, for example they are landscape
planners and assessors, landscape managers, landscape scientists and so on who
are all brought together under the banner of ‘landscape architecture’.
Another issue that is often suggested as important is that of the number of
doctoral students identifiable as landscape architects. As discussed in Milburn
and Brown (2003), there is a long-held view that there is a lack of research
training within landscape architecture studies programmes and this is a key
reason for the lack of profile for landscape architecture research. An analysis of
landscape architecture research and the numbers of doctoral candidates that are
registered as ‘landscape architecture’ candidates is reportedly relative low (van
den Brink and Bruns 2014). Such assessments are problematic to use as an
indicator of the state of landscape architecture research in institutions, primarily
because in some academic institutions doctoral candidates receive a PhD or
DPhil without an identifiable discipline ‘label’. Another problem is that
candidates who may be qualified landscape architects may be studying under
supervisors who do not identify themselves as landscape architects, and are
situated within schools which are also not labelled as such either. Those
supervisors that are in landscape architecture schools may or may not have
landscape architecture as a first degree.
Does all this matter? If trying to identify specific ‘landscape architecture
research’ is difficult, how can the profile of landscape architecture research be
raised and how can landscape architects make a greater contribution to the
growing and important body of research related to landscape, mostly not done by
trained landscape architects? The boundaries of the wider field of landscape
research are constantly changing and under discussion (e.g. Jorgensen 2014).
Landscapes are the focus for many different disciplines and disciplinary fields of
study using various approaches, epistemologies, strategies, methods, discourses,
framings, constructions of knowledge, ideologies, values and research
objectives, some of which overlap with those of the disciplinary field of
landscape architecture, and some of which are very different. Robust research is
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becoming more relevant in policy-making. If landscape architecture is to be seen
by both the public and policy-makers as more than a way to ‘design out’
problems, it would seem important that those primarily concerned with
landscape change (landscape architects) have awareness of these different
viewpoints and are able to justify their practice on an authoritative basis of good
research which indicates an in-depth understanding of the how and why of
materials used as well as the wider consequences of design decisions.
Both academics and practitioners are engaged in research in terms of being
commissioned by a variety of funders or through various funding mechanisms to
carry out research projects. Many funders consider landscape research as
important in relation to cross-disciplinary problems where overlapping discipline
areas are relevant and multi-disciplinary approaches are encouraged. In this
research environment it is increasingly unlikely for ‘pure’ landscape architecture
research to be widely funded. Funders seem to be interested in integrated and
interdisciplinary research and in encouraging larger projects. There is movement
in both academic funding and practice to encourage venture into the ‘boundary
areas between disciplines’ (see Roe 2012). While disciplinary training is useful
to address specific disciplinary issues and there is still emphasis in academic
institutions for single-disciplinary research strength, researchers who wish to
engage in multi-disciplinary teams need to develop collaborative skills, often the
ability to see an overview – or see ‘outside the box’ of the discipline – good
communication skills and be creative in problem-solving. A landscape
architectural training would seem to provide a good basis for all these necessary
attributes for collaboration. However, training in research methods within
landscape architecture programmes seems still to be an issue of concern.
There are two critical questions that the rest of this chapter discusses in
relation to research in the disciplinary field of landscape architecture:

• How can the field be strengthened?

• What emerging and possible future research themes and research areas can
be identified?

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IS LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE RESEARCH
‘WISHY-WASHY’?
One of the common cries is that landscape architecture does not have a good
quantitative research basis and therefore is generally regarded by ‘hard’
scientists as ‘wishy-washy’. If landscape architecture is regarded as a crossover
field then the expectation would be to see both quantitative and qualitative
research as well as predominantly mixed methods, including the use of creative
practice methods which respond to the arts and design aspects of the profession.
It has been suggested that qualitative research in particular is less valued
generally in academia although it is seen as having a particular ability in
introducing new ideas into a field (Gilgun 2005). In academia generally, the
focus is on the quality and novelty of the research, therefore a focus on how to
improve quality should be of primarily importance. In addition, a key issue in
crossover research areas is that there are often limited outlets for publication
because many journals still tend to focus upon disciplinary lines. This indicates a
mismatch between the emphasis of research funders and academic publishing. In
particular there is a problem of finding good reviewers for multi-disciplinary
papers and in the case of landscape architecture this is particularly a problem
where papers not only cross disciplines, but may fall between the two stools in
terms of paper structure – between design expression and more classic IMRAD
(introduction, methods, results and discussion) type papers.
A criticism often levelled is that there is no distinct theoretical base for
landscape architecture research or practice. This is hard to address if it is seen as
necessary to have a unique theory rather than base research on theory gathered
from the many source disciplines evident in landscape architecture research.
There are few real attempts to tackle this issue in a clear and evidence-based
manner. Thompson carried out a survey of landscape professionals which
resulted in his book Ecology, Community, Delight (2000). His proposition was
that three overlapping value systems provide the theoretical basis for landscape
architects (Figure 5.1). This book has been highly influential around the world,
partly because it was the first real in-depth attempt to examine the issue of
landscape architecture practice values through research. Since then a number of
guidance texts have been published which further clarify useful theoretical
approaches and set out the range of methods and methodologies for landscape
architects and landscape studies. Wylie’s (2007) Landscape is a particularly

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helpful summary of theoretical approaches. Wylie is a cultural geographer, but
this book is one that is constantly on academic reading lists in landscape
architecture programmes and is commonly found on research papers focusing on
landscape. Other relevant texts are Swaffield’s (2002) Theory in Landscape
Architecture: A Reader, Howard et al.’s (2013) The Routledge Companion to
Landscape Studies edited by a cross-disciplinary team, and Bell et al.’s (2012)
Exploring the Boundaries of Landscape Architecture. The first two of these
contain contributions from a wide variety of disciplines, not just from landscape
architecture. Howard et al.’s (2013) text very specifically takes an eclectic
approach to the subject of landscape. Based on Howard’s experience of editing
the journal Landscape Research he uses four key themes: experiencing
landscape; landscape culture and heritage; landscape, society and justice; and
design and planning for landscape. In a slightly older text James Corner (2000)
used writings of various contributors and disciplines to support the notion of the
importance of landscape.

Figure 5.1
Overlapping fields of value and sources of theory in landscape architecture (source: based on Thompson
2000)

There are other examples of notable contributions to relevant conceptual and

theoretical ideas and emerging evidence from landscape architecture researchers,
but on the whole, these do not call themselves ‘theories’, but rather
‘approaches’. These include: landscape urbanism (Waldheim 2006; Thompson
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2012), landscape planning (Potschin et al. 2010), resilience and ‘reconnection’
(Selman 2012), green infrastructure (Benedict and McMahon 2006) and social
constructivist approaches (e.g. Gailing and Leibenath 2015) to name a few. In
terms of research methods recommended as particularly useful for landscape
architecture, Mark Francis (2001) suggested that the case study method – as used
in many other professions – could provide both a ‘primary form of education,
innovation and testing for the profession’ and a ‘collective record of the
advancement and development of new knowledge in landscape architecture’
(p.15). Landscape ecology texts also often provide useful pickings for landscape
architects and indicate that landscape ecology also demonstrates multi-
dimensional, multi-disciplinary approaches to landscape issues (e.g. see
Dramstad et al. 1994; Dupont and Jacobs 2008). Of course there are many other
relevant texts based on landscape research issues, a number of which are based
on multi-disciplinary contributions; this supports the view that the field of
landscape research is broad and cross-disciplinary.
In particular, Simon Swaffield has made a considerable contribution to the
development of theoretical and methodological thinking in landscape
architecture. He identifies six key themes in theoretical development that are
particularly relevant to landscape architecture: ‘the central importance of the
aesthetic and symbolic configuration of geological, hydrological, and biological
forms and processes, and their ecological interrelationships. This has always
underpinned questions of space, form and meaning in landscape architecture’
(Swaffield 2002, p.5). The focus in this text is primarily on helping to build a
theoretical basis for landscape architecture practice (rather than wider landscape
studies). Landscape architecture is referred to as ‘a discipline’. There is
recognition of the wide range and potential for ‘fragmentation’ of the profession
into ‘discrete subdisciplines’ (ibid., p.227). Meyer (1997 in Swaffield 2013) gets
close to suggesting how an identifiable landscape architectural theory might
develop. She suggests that theoretical development for landscape architecture
should
be contingent, particular, and situational. Grounding in the immediate, the particular, and the
circumstantial – the attributes of situated criticism – is an essential characteristic of landscape
architectural design and theory. Landscape theory must rely on the specific, not the general … It
is not about idealist or absolute universals. It finds meaning, form, and structure in the site as it is
… The site – and land – speaks prior to the act of design.
(Meyer (1997) in Swaffield 2013, pp.167–168)

She remarks upon a potential ‘reconstructive’ approach that ‘assumes a multi-

layered fabric that weaves together threads from primary sources and documents
written by landscape architects and about landscape architecture with the
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concurrent history of ecological ideas, cultural and historical geography, design
and planning criticism, and site interpretation’ (p.168). Herrington (2013)
recognises how conceptual thinking has been ‘borrowed from a range of
disciplines’ (p.356) and identifies three types of theory relevant to landscape
design approaches: explanatory, normative and resistant. She identifies a very
wide range of sources as inspiration in landscape design, describing the
development of the profession as one of the reasons for this diversity.
Academics such as Swaffield, Meyer and Herrington publish widely in many
different outlets including books, professional publications and international
peer-review academic journals such as Landscape Research. In 1,543 research
papers published and available on the web in November 2015 in Landscape
Research, only 24 had a keyword of ‘landscape architecture’ and 202 had
‘landscape architecture’ in the abstract. However, it would be difficult to dismiss
any of the papers published in this journal as being irrelevant to landscape
architecture practice, so perhaps the problem is in the understanding of
relevance, in the identification by authors of where their work lies and in using
keywords and abstracts to indicate allegiance to landscape architecture? Another
view, of course, would be that authors in the journal are primarily not landscape
architects or do not see their work as relevant to landscape architecture practice.

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RESEARCH AND RESEARCH PAPERS: HOW TO
IMPROVE THE QUALITY?
If the breadth of research is potentially not a problem, but can rather be seen as a
strength, then the focus should be on research quality. Brown and Corry (2011)
suggest that the key issue for making landscape architecture a ‘more scholarly
profession’ is that it should ‘become a discipline of evidence-based landscape
architecture’ based on an analysis of the development of the relationship
between research and the medical professions. In the UK, the government has
become completely obsessed with evidence-based policy-making and practice
and there is a concentration in many academic disciplines on ‘evidence’ gained
from traditional laboratory-based controlled experiments. Such methods are only
relevant to a small area of landscape architecture practice.
Landscape architecture research does not develop in an academic vacuum:
there are many guidelines and standards for judging the quality of research that
emanate from different disciplines and discipline fields around the world. While
approaches and methods may differ enormously as suggested above, many of the
standards for judging research quality are very similar and can be useful in
developing guidelines for landscape architecture. In the UK there is a common
framework established by the UK Government for assessing research quality
(Research Excellence Framework) in all disciplines and fields. Medical research
in particular is continually under the spotlight: there is a large research
infrastructure and, in the UK, a legal requirement to promote research.
Practitioners have to use evidence obtained through research in decision-making.
Many of the research organisations linked to the medical profession have
responsibilities for developing innovative research and links to practice (AMRC
2014). Medicine can be used as a model for improving the rigour of landscape
architecture research in relation to practice needs (Brown and Corry 2011; Yang
et al. 2016). It is therefore useful to look at some of the means by which medical
research examines its outputs. Table 5.1 summarises the guidelines for research
standards produced by the National Center for the Dissemination of Disability
Research (USA) as a technical note following a review of primarily North
American and UK literature (e.g. see Table 5.1) (NCDDR 2005). As with most
other disciplinary areas, this shows a focus on the quality of peer-review
publication (research output) as an indicator of quality resulting from the
research rather than an examination of the research itself.

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Table 5.1
Standards for assessing the quality of research (source: adapted from NCDDR 2005)

Standards for assessing the quality of research which can be used to assess standard research
described in research papers often include the following:

• Pose a significant, important question that can be investigated empirically and that contributes to the
knowledge base
• Test questions that are linked to relevant theory
• Apply methods that best address the research questions of interest
• Base research on clear chains of inferential reasoning supported and justified by a complete coverage
of the relevant literature
• Provide the necessary information to reproduce or replicate the study
• Ensure the study design, methods, and procedures are sufficiently transparent and ensure an
independent, balanced, and objective approach to the research
• Provide sufficient description of the sample, the intervention, and any comparison groups
• Use appropriate and reliable conceptualization and measurement of variables
• Evaluate alternative explanations for any findings
• Assess the possible impact of systematic bias
• Submit research to a peer-review process
• Adhere to quality standards for reporting (i.e. clear, cogent, complete)

What could or should the possible products (or outputs) of research be in

relation to landscape architecture? Products and outputs can be seen in terms of
knowledge exchange methods with a wide range of possibilities. Traditional
outputs of academic research are peer-review papers and books, reports,
verbal/oral communications, discussions and presentations. But increasingly
other forms of outputs are both possible and recognised in cross-disciplinary
design, arts and humanities subjects such as performances, exhibitions,
exhibition catalogues, paintings, installations, films, poetry, compositions,
photography, stories, novels, pieces of music, artefacts, buildings, sculpture,
curatorships, tweets, blogs, websites, screen writing, dance and actual landscape
designs. Evidence of this in the UK can be seen in the submissions to the UK
government Research Excellence Framework assessment (REF2014 2014).
There is also a growth in non-traditional PhD routes such as through creative
practice, which support new forms of research outputs as well as theoretical
approaches. Creative practice approaches would seem interesting and pertinent
to a design-based professionally focused subject like landscape architecture that
is examining new possible ideas in research. Creative practice approaches aim to
look at new ways to link research and practice by drawing on ‘subjective,
interdisciplinary and emergent methodologies that have the potential to extend

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the frontiers of research’ (Barrett 2009, p.1). Also relevant is research that aims
to develop methods to assess the benefits of creative outputs (designs). Yang et
al. (2016, p.315) suggest the need for ‘performance research’ to determine the
level of efficiency by which ‘designed landscape solutions fulfil their intended
purpose and contribute to sustainability’. The discussion of how research or
post-design analysis can evaluate designed landscapes is not new (see for
example Manning 1995), but the approach by Yang et al. (2016) employs
methods that are clearly aimed to attract the attention of policy-makers in
focusing on the development of methods responding to the perceived need for
evidence-based designs using quantitative performance measures relating to
social benefits.
In REF2014 the landscape architecture research outputs were assessed within
several peer-review ‘panels’, but the majority came within the sub-panel 16
Architecture, Built Environment and Planning which accepted a range of
research outputs. The main outputs were traditional research papers published in
various peer-review journals (not just those specifically labelled as ‘landscape’
journals). In this panel there was a significant volume of work in the form of
authored and edited books and monographs and design outputs; however, nearly
80 per cent were research papers (REF2014). The results also showed an
increase in outputs that reported collaborative interdisciplinary research using
mixed methodologies and methods funded by a range of sponsors with the
objective of addressing major and global challenges, for example sustainability,
carbon reduction and resilience to climate change. In the UK, the assessment of
the impact of research has become increasingly important along with the
development of the identification of indicators and measures to assess such
impact. This is particularly significant for landscape architecture research in
considering how research feeds into the development of policy and practice.
Measurements of the recognition by scholars and research sponsors of outputs
are extremely complex and increasingly used worldwide (Kelly and Burrows
2012).
There is a plethora of metrics, league tables and attempts to measure quality
and value of research outputs by academic institutions. The REF2014 peer-
review panels examined various aspects of institutional research output
including perceived ‘impact’ based on impact statements provided by those
institutions and the amount of research funding gained per academic. The use of
citation indices was not used by sub-panel 16 in this assessment because of the
unreliability of the metrics for the subjects covered. Indices (e.g. Google
Scholar) are hotly debated as signifiers of quality. Citation metrics have been
used to develop journal rankings, but it is important to remember that metrics
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have many influences and, as suggested by Kelly and Burrows (2012, p.150), the
impact factors of journals are shaped to a considerable extent by the ‘public life
of data… and/or perhaps these very metrics are themselves the outcome of prior
academic reputation (people read journals with a good historical reputation so
they are the ones that get the citations and thus high impact factors)’. In the UK,
post-REF2014 indications from government are that quantitative indicators
(citation metrics etc.) will become more important in research quality assessment
because they are seen as a ‘shorthand’ for assessing outputs and using such
indices costs less than peer-review methods carried out nationally (DBIS 2015).
The problem is that although good citation metrics may indicate significant
impact in a particular field, weak metrics may not indicate lack of impact in a
field, particularly if the field within which the academic is working is small, the
publications are predominantly not in the English language and/or if much of the
research is published in books (Harzing and van der Wal 2008). All these
caveats would seem important for landscape architecture research.
In improving the quality of research outputs, perhaps the first question to ask
is: What makes what you are doing ‘research’? The objective of research,
broadly speaking, can be seen to be knowledge formation so then the focus is on
the form of the production and how the work sits within the disciplinary field. It
is important to clarify what else is already out there. Basic issues need to be
addressed such as a clear statement of the research question and hypothesis (if
appropriate), and demonstration of the appropriateness of the
approach/methodology (individual/sole researcher, collaborative, engagement,
co-production, observational, insider/outsider, community action etc.). It is
important to define the character of the research, for example whether it is
experimental/testing, observational, deconstructive, critical, creative, and it is
generally suggested that methods need to be stated in enough detail to make the
approach to the research question clear, to explain the design of the study, to
provide enough information to understand, evaluate and potentially replicate the
study, and because to communicate an understanding of research results it is
important that you communicate how the research was carried out.
It is important that methods are appropriate to the answering of the research
question; they can be innovative or well-used. Christensen (2006, p.2) as co-
editor of the Journal of Planning Education and Research (JPER) suggests:
Explain what evidence and research methods are appropriate for your research question and why.
Then explain what data you collected, sources, how you sampled, how you collected it, how you
coded it, and how you analysed it. Demonstrate that your methods are ‘explicit, sound and
appropriate’. If you believe you need to explain highly technical methods, present them briefly in
the text and provide more information and references to further detailed explanations in an
appendix. Discuss any limitations, drawbacks or possible biases in your methodology and what
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 you did to correct or compensate for the problem.

Robust methods are often used by assessors as an indicator of quality of

research (but not necessarily quality of paper). If there is any doubt about the
robustness or appropriateness of the methodology or methods it often means
immediate rejection by assessors of the research, and methods quality may be
used as an indication of clarity of thinking about the whole process or project.
There is commonly confusion in landscape studies as to how long methods
reporting should be within a paper. Again this should be appropriate to the type
and character of the paper. In a survey I carried out of papers published in
Landscape Research in 2009 methods reporting varied from 10 lines to 3.5
pages, or sometimes a general description of less than a page, or a critique
throughout the paper (in relation to a ‘methodology’ paper) (see Table 5.2).

Table 5.2
Methods reporting: survey of papers in 2009 published in Landscape Research

Paper type / methods type Methods reporting

Cognitive/perception studies; landscape ecology ‘Methods/Methodology/Methods & Materials’

studies; ethnographic studies; land cover analyses; sections
behavioural studies; preference studies; landscape
biography; discourse analysis; landscape change 10 lines to 3.5 pages (total pages = 15-20 appr. / 4-
studies; content analysis; review papers; 7K words)
interpretative analysis; policy analysis

Ethnographic studies; cultural studies; position General description

papers
Objectives/focus/purpose set out

Methodology paper Critique throughout paper

Perhaps the most important question for any researcher to consider is: ‘What
is new?’ In the UK REF2014, the highest quality research was based on the
assessment that the research quality was world-leading in terms of originality,
significance and rigour. This was applied to landscape architecture research in
whatever form of output; whether traditional research paper or submission of a
design-as-research, the criteria for assessment were the same. The impact of
research was regarded as high quality if it was outstanding in terms of the reach
and significance. These descriptions are on the face of it quite helpful, but the
detailed assessment of such terminology spawns a host of sub-categories and
description and the need for indicators and evaluations.
It is perhaps useful to return to what knowledge formation is in the field of
landscape architecture as a fundamental issue. If a key potential and defining
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characteristic of landscape architecture is the design and creative component,
then it is helpful to examine the ideas around the growing area of creative
practice research. In creative practice research knowledge formation is
potentially through making, performing and inventing, often with communities
or individuals in a ‘shared’ or co-produced methodological framework. The
methodologies for creative practice research equate to the ‘how’ of the research.
Key issues are how to engage critically with the theories/literature and provide
the contextual framework, thinking about how to ask questions and seek
answers, making use and sense of data and ideas, reflection on material practices
and actions and the importance of the framework which helps the creation in a
critical and reflexive manner (Grierson and Brearley 2009).
In the standard research output, the research paper can be defined as a report
that is based on an original idea, argument or thesis backed up by evidence of
some kind. Depending on the discipline there are various forms of research
paper so that it may be an exploration or thoughtful reading on a particular
subject which allows for the development of an argument. The reading material
may come from several sources and may be some kind of systematic review of
past research which locates the context of the research, but also the use of ‘facts’
from surveys, experiments and so on with interpretive analysis, theoretical
development (often) and conclusions. There are many sources which provide
guidance on the detail of writing research papers which are relevant to landscape
architecture questions (see for example Deming and Swaffield 2011; Azlan
2013). In relation to writing high quality papers, some further reflection on this
is perhaps useful.
In 2013 a survey I carried out of editors’ views provided information
concerning what makes a high quality research paper. Simin Davoudi (associate
editor, Journal of Environmental Planning and Management (JEPM) (pers.
comm. 2013) suggests four key issues:

1 A clear and specific argument

2 A clear and logical structure
3 Something that is well-written and well-crafted
4 Something that leaves the reader with a feeling that they have actually
learned something

Clarity is obviously important here – not just clarity of writing, but also clarity
of the argument; there is also another point to be gained from what she says:
there must be something to say – that is there must be some new knowledge to
be imparted by the paper, and the new knowledge must be understandable. This
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is critical: you must have something worth saying first; second you must
consider your audience and construct your argument throughout the paper that is
understandable to that audience. Identification of the audience can be
particularly difficult in a cross-disciplinary paper. In their advice the editors
identified some basic errors that are often committed by authors of papers. Neil
Powe (managing editor, JEPM) suggests that more care needs to be taken over
the abstract, the introduction and the conclusion: ‘Don’t rush the writing of the
abstract – often this is written last and in a rush but it is the first thing that editors
and potential reviewers often see’ (pers. comm. 2013). Paul Selman (former
managing editor, Landscape Research) suggests that a good paper tells ‘an
interesting story. There is a clear and overarching purpose to the paper, and that
purpose is so clear in the author’s mind that they tell it with lucidity and
conclusiveness’ (pers. comm. 2013).
A key issue is to provide the context for the research through the literature
review and as Klosterman (in Christensen 2006, p.2) suggests:
Tying the research to the relevant literature helps to construct and show your conceptual
framework. ‘This is not just a matter of recognizing one’s intellectual debts. More importantly,
this literature can provide a wealth of intellectual and practical guidance in conducting the
research. … [R]esearch deals with a host of important, complex and difficult topics and needs to
draw on as much of the relevant literature as possible to insure that the research is as rigorous and
intellectually sound as it can be.’

The literature for landscape architecture research is potentially very large,

which is a considerable problem; this indicates the need to carry out a scoping
exercise to map the relevant literature in response to the research questions. Ken
Taylor (associate editor, Landscape Research) suggests that it is important to ask
‘what new or different perspectives or critique does the paper address if it’s a
well-trodden topic?’ (pers. comm. 2013). He goes on to say that ‘nothing is more
irritating than an author who claims this is a new approach and has not been
done before, when rigorous review of literature and work in the area would
reveal it is not new’. Although it is always interesting to have new robust
methods demonstrated in research papers, it is also useful to consider that it is
not necessary to ‘reinvent the wheel’ and part of the job of a good literature
review is to review methods used, and use this review to develop appropriate
methods for the research as well as understand the locus of the ideas of the
research.
Clarity is something that all the editors consulted kept repeating in relation to
various aspects of papers. For example, the nature or character of the paper
should be clear. As Ken Taylor (pers. comm. 2013) suggests: ‘Is the paper
focused on theoretical matters or practice and if the latter what theoretical
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underpinnings are included?’ Paul Selman (pers. comm. 2013) suggests that the
paper should make
a clear and original contribution, either by new evidence or independent critical insight. Too often
I find myself reviewing a paper and thinking ‘but what did they actually do’? Sometimes authors
will then re-write it in a way which much more clearly sets out their aims, methods, results, and
original findings. A pity they couldn’t have done that first time round!

Most papers submitted to high quality peer-review journals get rejected; so if

you get rejected it is the norm and the important thing is to try and learn from the
process, resubmit after revision or submit the paper elsewhere. As Neil Powe
(pers. comm. 2013) suggests: ‘Papers first have to get past the editor so they
have to meet basic editorial standards.’ In particular the issue of language is one
that frustrates editors. Although editors have sympathy with non-native English
speakers, the English language journals are increasingly pressed because of the
large number of papers submitted by non-native speakers. The demand for high
quality language skills is important. This is not just about good language, but
appropriate language, so disciplinary jargon is discouraged. As Peter Howard
(former managing editor, Landscape Research) suggests: ‘Try and write English
which is clear and concise; you are writing to be understood, not to prove how
clever you are’ (pers. comm. 2013). Heather Campbell (senior editor, Planning
Theory & Practice) suggests: ‘Plain speaking should not … be confused with
over-simplification’ (2003, p.390), and Gary Fry (2001, p.162) wrote:
I react against the trend [to use jargon] for several reasons, but mainly because it is fuzzy, it is
sometimes patronising, and because this jargon externalises and objectifies landscapes and the
people living in them. We talk about actors, stakeholders, customers, cross-compliance payments,
sectoral targets, and we engage in optionalising, foresighting, outreaching, rightsizing, clustering
and consensual reporting. Oh for simple, direct language and a drastic reduction of euphemisms!

Basic advice such as considering whether ‘paragraphs link together logically

to give sense of flow’ (Ken Taylor, pers. comm. 2013) is surprisingly often
ignored by research paper authors.
An increasing issue with transdisciplinary or participatory methods is how to
ensure that the ‘voices’ of the research emerge and/or are portrayed in the paper.
This is linked to ethical concerns in research. Peter Howard (pers. comm. 2013)
suggests: ‘When dealing with qualitative data (for example interviews) there
should be a balance between your analysis of the respondents’ views, and
allowing their own voices to be heard.’ Direct quotations used judiciously within
the reporting of the data are often important and also some analysis of how
things are being said, not just what is being said can be critical to understanding
the data. The voice of the researcher should also be considered and should be

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clearly linked to methods used; so use ‘I’ (rather than the more traditional third
person style) only when the ‘I’ matters in the research. Most research papers are
not conversations, but you want to ‘engage’ the reader in the research because
readers, in particular reviewers, have lots of reading to do, so interesting the
reader is important. Some disciplines may prefer to see the researcher reflected
in the research through the style of reporting, but most readers do not care about
your impressions or feelings; they want to be stimulated to think or simply gain
knowledge/understanding. However, indicating a little passion about your
subject is engaging, and writing in the active rather than passive tense is
generally recommended.
It is not easy to write a good research paper; it takes a lot of drafting and
redrafting and one of the best pieces of advice is to find a critical reader who will
examine drafts of the text carefully. In particular as Strunk and White (1979,
p.12) suggest:
Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no
unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a
machine no unnecessary parts. This requires not that the writer make all his sentences short, or
that he avoid all detail and treat his subjects only in outline, but that every word tell.

Originally written in 1918, this advice is still valid for today’s researchers.

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KEY AREAS OF RESEARCH: PRESENT AND
FUTURE POTENTIALS
The issue of whether trends in published landscape research respond to
perceived needs of landscape architecture practitioners is a difficult one to
determine because the demands for academic publishing and research are not the
same as the needs of practitioners as identified above. In addition different
journals provide particular emphasis often according to the interests of the
editors and in response to various other issues. Practitioners on the whole
probably wish to read papers relating to applied science rather than theoretical
approaches, while the remit of academia is to promote the acquisition of
knowledge and understanding in a broader form. The question then is, should
landscape architecture research respond solely to the needs of practice? Cushing
and Renata (2015) suggest there is a mismatch between research and practice,
but there are all kinds of difficult variables at work in this kind of assessment.
Perhaps landscape architecture practitioners need to extend the breadth of their
reading and perhaps landscape researchers need to provide research knowledge
in a format that is more useful to practitioners. From a practitioner’s point of
view there is much relevant research that is not published in any ‘landscape’
journal; the problem is more likely to be accessibility to papers and knowledge
than that such research exists. This situation may change fairly quickly as more
research publication becomes open access and is therefore more generally
available. In addition journals such as the Journal of Landscape Architecture
(JoLA), established in 2006 by the European Council of Landscape Architecture
Schools (ECLAS), have pioneered a publishing approach that contains rigorous
peer-review research content with high quality and lavish illustrative material
and a variety of paper formats with the potential to attract a wide academic and
practitioner audience.
In looking at possible themes that may be of particular interest to landscape
architects a number of issues are discussed by Meijering et al. in Chapter 6, this
volume. Cushing and Renata (2015) identify climate change, active living,
energy and health as areas of particular importance presently poorly represented
from a landscape architecture research framing. In 2011 Howard identified six
key future trend areas in landscape management which provide an additional
guide to important potential areas of landscape research: access, wider
protection, participation, intangible elements, mobility and climate change

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(Howard 2011). In Europe, there is still much to be gained from a close
examination of the European Landscape Convention (ELC) text in relation to
developing relevant landscape research topics. The ELC has provided and
continues to provide the inspiration for new research questions, particularly in
relation to how ordinary landscapes can be protected, enhanced, restored and
created. Quality and quality objectives are particularly important in the
interpretation of the ELC text and the value of all landscapes need to be reflected
and landscape values better understood. We need better ways that are more
inclusive for evaluating landscapes which build on landscape character work and
emphasise the role of landscapes in local distinctiveness. In order to engage with
policy-makers the links between quality of landscape and economic and social
success, health and wellbeing and so on need to be made clearly and with
supporting evidence of the role landscapes can play in addressing these issues.
It seems that an integrated and innovative or creative landscape approach may
be useful as the basis for forward (visionary) planning to protect, manage and
plan landscapes, but the ways in which landscape design can incorporate
understandings that provide more just livelihoods are also important. The role
landscape architecture can play in issues of social and ecological justice (e.g.
climate change adaptation) is often ignored or forgotten as discussed above. As
Sheppard (2015) suggests, there is a key role for landscape professionals in
making climate change ‘visible’. Evidence that can be mobilised by practitioners
and policy-makers is important and assessments of past landscape projects
through, for example, landscape performance research (Yang et al. 2016), which
focus on quantitative measurements of social benefits, may help to strengthen
the justification for landscape change by design.
Jorgensen (2014) identifies various potential research topics, particularly the
threats to habitats and landscapes through increasing world population, urban
densification, economic growth, and social and economic inequities. She throws
out a considerable challenge to landscape architects to respond to such issues
particularly those resulting from conditions where global populations live in
unplanned settlements with basic facilities and infrastructure and little or no
access to non-human environments. In identifying the frontiers in urban
ecological design and planning research, Steiner (2014) identifies three key
challenges: population growth, increasing habitation of urban areas and human
influence on ecosystem change. The four interrelated fields of research he then
identifies as a result of this as being of primary importance are: ecosystem
services, the impact of natural disasters, the role of green infrastructure, the
renewal of degraded urban places and the capacity of people to adapt to
knowledge about their surroundings. Steiner suggests that these build on the
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expertise of landscape architects and planners and have the potential ‘to advance
sustainable design and regenerative design’ (p.305).
In March 2015 a one-day cross-disciplinary symposium was held at Newcastle
University, UK, that aimed specifically to bring together practitioners, policy-
makers and academics for discussion and to identify the key issues for policy,
practice and research, primarily in the context of England and the wider UK. A
number of emerging themes were identified which were articulated as questions
(see Table 5.3). These provide useful indicators as to the kind of issues that are
concerning landscape practitioners (planners, managers and designers) and
policy-makers in particular. Many of these suggest the need to develop improved
methods of practice and communication; many could be developed into research
questions that would be of immediate relevance to practice and policy-making.
In the UK, new, more collaborative and exploratory ways of working in both
research and practice are emerging in spite of or perhaps in response to the
demand for better evidence. For example, there is considerable interest by
research funders in co-production and co-creation of knowledge. This is related
to action research and participatory methods. It acknowledges approaches that
have emerged from planning, cultural geography, ethnography and heritage
studies. Methods now being used are often associated with participatory
approaches and include oral histories, artistic expression and direct contact
explorations of landscape using performance, walk-and-talk and so on. Many
methods being developed owe some inspiration to experiential approaches with
particular relevance to the perceptual, sensory and intangible aspects of
landscape. Researching landscape perception through walking the landscape has
long been used by educators and researchers based on the understanding that ‘the
body is central to our understanding of landscape’ (Macpherson 2006), but there
are some new and interesting methodological developments and much interest
from cognate disciplines in landscape studies (see also Schultz and van Etteger –
Chapter 11). Concepts based on sensory perceptions such a ‘smellscapes’,
‘soundscapes’, ‘touchscapes’ and ‘tastescapes’ are encouraging evaluative
methods in landscape research, and also encouraging new ideas of what
‘landscape’ might be. But as Macpherson (2006) suggests, perceptions are
complex and integrated; a whole body approach that understands people’s
perceptions, embodiment and the dynamic nature of landscape is being
encouraged through references to philosophers and cultural geographers, and
being taken up in many different ways by those interested in the wider field of
landscape studies. An example is the idea of the ‘underwater landscape’
explored by Musard et al. (2014); another is the examination of how people’s
sensory perception of birdsong contributes to positive values in urban green
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spaces (Hedblom et al. 2014).

Table 5.3
Emerging themes from the Landscape Forward Symposium, 18 March 2015 (source: based on Roe 2015)

Emerging themes as identified at the conference ‘Landscape Forward: Policy, Practice, Research’,
18th March 2015 Newcastle University

• How can we facilitate more proactive and positive approaches to ‘spreading the landscape word’ e.g.
through best practice examples and particularly through the media?
• Do landscape skills need to be raised? If so in which areas?
• How can we use the ELC as a framework to link into other frameworks?
• How can the ELC be implemented?
• How can we identify and facilitate methods for increased integration such as that required with
ecosystems approaches and biodiversity monitoring?
• How can the ELC initiatives be used to help share experience more widely? How can those with
responsibilities under the ELC be challenged to meet them?
• How do we raise the profile of landscape within the agriculture/rural agendas?
• How do we raise the national status of landscape? Could a national statement on landscape be
promoted?
• How can the characterisation approach be expanded and extended within policy and practice?
• How can others such as businesses be encouraged to advocate on behalf of landscape to raise the
profile of landscape issues? How can long-term relationships be created?
• How can facilitation of the establishment of networks, partnerships and method development be
encouraged to engage communities in landscape issues?
• What ideas can be developed for creating initiatives to celebrate and raise the profile of landscape
awareness and activities? Should we have a national celebration of landscape?

On the natural sciences angle of landscape, empirical methods are expanding

to potentially include DNA analysis of species, satellite imagery and other
digital methods. Data gathering methods are also developing using web-based
platforms and apps to gather crowd-based information and utilise citizen science
methods in understanding attitudes to landscape as well as gather day-to-day
data (Natural England 2012; UKEOF 2016). Research in cognate discipline
fields such as planning provides pertinent examples of potential future use of
such methods. One example has indicated the use of ‘mobile participation’
through a variety of apps, particularly in relation to location-based data and local
knowledge changing the role of ordinary people from information ‘receivers’, to
‘sensors’ and ‘partners’ in data observation and collection (Ertiö 2015). Another
example uses a map-based app to gather spatial and character detail of a
neighbourhood and for use as a visioning tool for future change (Jones et al.
2015). An example of a citizen-instigated project that has been used in policy
discussions to provide evidence of the attachment to landscapes is the
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‘Placebook Scotland’ (2016) which ‘is a community of people who love to share
what Scotland’s landscapes and places mean to them’ through a website, blog
and forum. Such tools would seem to have considerable potential for landscape
research; however, they require critical use, and creativity in both the purpose
and attitude of researchers. Through such methods exciting new worlds are
opening up to landscape architecture researchers if only they are willing to
investigate them (see also van Lammeren et al. – Chapter 9).

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REFLECTIONS
In 2013 Marc Antrop reflected that academic and applied landscape research
was diverging as a result of a shifting focus in research goals, and funding
sources, the academic merit system and the focus on pure research encouraged in
PhD research. He also identified a shift in landscape research topics including, in
Europe, a move away from quantitative landscape metrics to more holistic
approaches that reference various disciplinary areas. This shifting and
fragmenting picture provides many difficulties for landscape architecture
researchers, but it also provides many opportunities to look outward and
embrace change. Bell et al.’s (2012) brave attempt to explore the boundary areas
of landscape architecture as a way of helping to develop the potential for cross-
and inter-disciplinary working and to ‘re-evaluate its old assumptions and above
all to engage more closely and creatively with the many other disciplines who
also have an interest in understanding and shaping our common landscape’ (p.2)
is a call not just to landscape professionals, but also to researchers to ‘beef up’
their efforts towards and openness to transdisciplinary approaches. It was clear
to me in reviewing the contributions to the book in order to write the concluding
chapter, that intellectual agility is a key attribute that many landscape architects
have and need to mobilise in order to respond to such challenges, as well as
embracing and celebrating the wide range of influences on landscape
architecture, rather than be bowed down by it (Roe 2012). My own approach to
the issue of landscape architecture research is a pragmatic one (see Lenzholzer et
al. 2013). So, for example multiple research methods that cross-reference and
support understandings would seem sensible, and careful integration of new
knowledge from various research and knowledge sources into existing
knowledge (including indigenous and local knowledge for example) can be
important. An outward gaze that embraces boundary crossing by other
disciplines and fields of study is helpful in a world where environmental and
social issues are increasingly complex. A key question is, ‘What can those with a
landscape architecture training and outlook offer in terms of research insights or
approaches that others cannot?’ What questions should we be asking?
In an anniversary edition of the journal, Landscape and Urban Planning, Paul
Gobster (2011) suggests that the major challenge for future research and practice
is how we conceive of landscape itself; quoting Peter Jacobs, he suggests the
importance of moving

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 beyond questions of landscape that ask: What is it? or: How can it be measured? and toward
questions of: What does it mean? ‘Landscape embodies the memory of natural process and human
endeavor; the expression of who we are and what we value; it provides critical support for what
we wish to become and how we wish to live within nature.’
(p.316)

As an editor of an international peer-review journal I see myriad potentials for

landscape architecture research as indicated in Gobster’s suggestions, but as
Kamiya indicates in the quotation used at the preface to this chapter, editors are
ruthless and dedicated to raising the quality of research, so while there are many
potentials for researchers, the quality of the outputs needs to be high to have the
kind of impact needed to raise the profile of the disciplinary field.
The exploration in this chapter suggests that landscape architecture research is
based on composite knowledge and theoretical and methodological approaches
drawn from many disciplinary fields. The key task for landscape architecture
research is to define clearly what the important research questions are and what
theories or methods will be appropriate and helpful in answering these questions.
There is considerable potential for multi-disciplinary and interdisciplinary if not
transdisciplinary research relating to landscape and increasing funding available
for research in these areas. In particular the ability to see the overview of
landscape and use creativity, that also allows landscape architects to solve
problems on the ground, may be employed in the research context. This is
particularly useful within research teams to identify innovative approaches to
answering difficult research questions. Also important is an outward-looking
approach that embraces the diversity and complexities of wider landscape
research.

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SUGGESTED FURTHER READING
Benson, J.F. (2001) ‘Inside the Editor’s black box: 10 years of the Journal of Environmental Planning &
Management’, Journal of Environmental Planning and Management, 44(1), 3–19.
Cassatella, C. (2009) Landscape to be (Paesaggio al futuro), Torino: Marsilio.
Council of Europe (2000) The European Landscape Convention text. Available at: htt​p:/​/co​nve​nti​ons​.co​e.i​-
nt/​Tre​aty​/en​/Tr​eat​ies​/Ht​ml/​176​.ht​m (accessed 30.06.2016).
Council of Europe (2009) Guidelines for the Implementation of the European Landscape Convention, CEP-
CDPATEP (2009) 2E, Strasbourg: Council of Europe. Available at: htt​p:/​/ww​w.c​oe.​int​/en​/we​b/l​-
and​sca​pe/​gui​del​ine​s-f​or-​the​-im​ple​men​tat​ion​-on​-th​e-e​uro​pea​n-l​and​sca​pe-​con​ven​tio​n (accessed
30.06.2016).
Dupont, A. and Jacobs, H., eds (2008) Landscape Ecology Research Trends, New York: Nova Science.
Grierson E. and Brearley, L., eds (2009) Creative Arts Research, Rotterdam: Sense.
Kienast, F., Wildi, O. and Ghosh, S., eds (2007) A Changing World: Challenges for Landscape Research,
Dordrecht: Springer.
Roe, M.H. and Taylor, K., eds (2014) New Cultural Landscapes, London: Routledge.
Smith, H. and Dean, R.T., eds (2009) Practice-Led Research, Research-Led Practice in the Creative Arts,
Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

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REFERENCES
AMRC (Association of Medical Research Charities) (2014) Research in the NHS. Available at: htt​p:/​/ww​-
w.a​mrc​.or​g.u​k/o​ur-​wor​k/r​ese​arc​h-n​hs#​sth​ash​.TX​Eju​ZZx​.dp​uf (accessed 07.04.2016).
Antrop, M. (2013) ‘A brief history of landscape research’, in Howard, P., Thompson, I. and Waterton, E.,
eds. The Routledge Companion to Landscape Studies, Abingdon: Routledge, 12–22.
Azlan, N.I. (2013) Research Methodology in Landscape Architecture, Singapore: Trafford.
Barrett, E. (2009) ‘Introduction’, in Barrett, E. and Bolt, B., eds. Practice as Research Approaches to
Creative Arts Enquiry, London: Tauris, 1–13.
Bell, S., Sarlöv Herlin, I. and Stiles, R., eds (2012) Exploring the Boundaries of Landscape Architecture,
Abingdon: Routledge.
Benedict, M.A. and McMahon, E.T. (2006) Green Infrastructure, Linking Landscapes and Communities,
Washington, DC: Island Press.
Benson, J.F. (1998) ‘On research, scholarship and design in landscape architecture’, Landscape Research,
23(2), 198–204.
Brown, R. and Corry, R. (2011) ‘Evidence-based landscape architecture: The maturing of a profession’,
Landscape and Urban Planning, 100, 327–329.
Campbell, H. (2003) ‘Talking the same words by speaking different languages: The need for more
meaningful dialogue’, Planning Theory & Practice, 4(4), 389–392.
Christensen, K.S. (2006) ‘The scholarly paper’, Journal of Planning Education and Research. Available at:
htt​p:/​/ww​w.s​age​pub​.co​m/s​ite​s/d​efa​ult​/fi​les​/up​m-b​ina​rie​s/1​294​6_M​anu​scr​ipt​_Ti​ps.​pdf​ (accessed
10.11.2015).
Corner, J. (2000) Recovering Landscape: Essays in Contemporary Landscape Theory, New York: Princeton
Architectural Press.
Cushing, D.F. and Renata, A. (2015) ‘Themes in landscape architecture publishing: Past trends, future
needs’, Landscape Journal, 34(1), 15–36.
DBIS (Department for Business, Innovation & Skills) (2015) Review of Research Excellence Framework
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REF 2014’ Research Excellence Framework Reports. Available at: htt​p:/​/ww​w.r​ef.​ac.​uk (accessed
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Boundaries of Landscape Architecture, Abingdon: Routledge, 299–315.
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Landscape Research, 39(1), 7–20.
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Chapter 6: Assessing research priorities
and quality

Jurian Meijering, Hilde Tobi, Adri van den Brink and

Diedrich Bruns

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INTRODUCTION
In its commitment to serve people and society the field of landscape architecture
has generated substantial knowledge through practice and research, especially in
the last twenty or so years. The field has become very diverse in the topics it
addresses, the areas and regions it develops, and the scales it covers. Moreover,
the type of contributions that landscape architects make to planning, design and
management processes are changing and today landscape architects fulfil a
number of different roles. These changes to the substance of landscape
architecture and the broadening of the role of landscape architects in society call
for the generation of new knowledge. As a consequence, the scope of landscape
architecture research includes a wide array of different research domains, many
of which considerably overlap with each other as well as with the domains of a
number of ’neighbouring disciplines’ such as architecture, landscape ecology,
geography and environmental psychology. This calls for a discourse on
specifying and prioritizing research that would, without sacrificing the field’s
diversity, contribute to the promotion of landscape architecture as a discipline
with a specific identity, defined by its own body of knowledge (van den Brink
and Bruns 2014). To do so, landscape architecture must strive to focus and
sharpen its research agenda, and to address the grand landscape challenges of
our time successfully, it must continue to develop its body of knowledge.
The purpose of this chapter is to give an indication of how to focus the
landscape architecture research agenda and how to enhance the reporting of the
resulting research. These insights may also help to set the stage for a discourse
about the nature of landscape architecture research. They may also serve as a
kind of baseline for the remaining chapters of this book. So, in this chapter, we
report on and synthesize the results of two recent studies.
The first is a Delphi study with an international sample of landscape
architecture experts from academia and practice. The study aimed to answer two
research questions

• Which research domains do these experts prioritize as the most important for
landscape architecture as a scientific discipline?
• Which research domains do these experts prioritize as the most useful for
landscape architecture practice?

The second study is a concise systematic review of a sample of papers

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published in 2013 in a number of international peer-reviewed journals which
publish landscape architecture research and/or research relevant to landscape
architecture. This systematic review aimed to answer the following questions:

• What percentage of papers reported empirical studies and their findings?

• What is the quality of empirical papers in terms of methodological
transparency?
• To what extent are the most important and useful research domains, as
identified in the Delphi study, represented in the empirical papers?

This chapter is organized as follows: the next section presents and discusses
the Delphi study. A description of the Delphi method as a research method is
given, and the methods and results of the study are reported. The systematic
review is then addressed. This section begins with a description of the systematic
review as a research method, followed by a report on the methods and the results
of the study. Several recommendations for improving the methodological quality
of empirical papers are also provided. By synthesizing and discussing the results
of the Delphi study and the systematic review, the final section sets the stage for
a wider discourse on landscape architecture research.

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MAPPING THE TERRAIN: RESEARCH
PRIORITIES FOR LANDSCAPE
ARCHITECTURE1

Understanding the Delphi method as a research method

The Delphi method was developed in the 1950s (Dalkey and Helmer 1963) and
has, since the 1960s, been applied in the context of many different disciplines
such as health care and education as a means of allowing a group of experts to
achieve agreement on various aspects of a particular topic.
The Delphi method has several defining characteristics (see among others
Hung et al. 2008; Linstone and Turoff 1975). Participation of experts on the
topic of interest is required. It is generally recommended to select experts based
on specific criteria (Keeney et al. 2006) and to assemble a heterogeneous sample
so as to reflect a wide range of views (Powell 2003). A Delphi study consists of
at least two rounds. In the first round experts are questioned about their opinion
on the topic of interest, usually by means of a standardized questionnaire. In this
questionnaire experts express their opinion by rating a number of items that were
presented to them by the study team (see below). In some instances the experts
are also asked to provide a rationale for their ratings. To prevent undue influence
from dominant people and group pressure, commonly present in everyday
meetings, the experts remain anonymous throughout the course of the study and
are not expected to communicate with one another. Instead, the study manager
(i.e. the researcher) provides experts with so called ‘controlled opinion feedback’
based on the answers given in the previous round. In most Delphi studies this
feedback includes summary statistics showing majority opinions (Boulkedid et
al. 2011). Feedback of the rationales indicating why experts hold certain
opinions is also strongly advocated (Bolger and Wright 2011). Starting from the
second round, the experts receive feedback and are presented with a more-or-less
adapted second version of the questionnaire. Based on the feedback the experts
are allowed to reconsider and possibly change their ratings. This procedure
continues until a desired level of agreement has been achieved or until a certain
stability in experts’ responses has been reached. Figure 6.1 illustrates the general
procedure of a Delphi study.

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Figure 6.1
The general procedure of a Delphi study

Methodology of the landscape architecture Delphi study

We conducted the Delphi study to achieve agreement among international
landscape architecture experts from academia and professional practice on two
issues: (1) the most important research domains for landscape architecture as a
scientific discipline, and (2) the most useful research domains for landscape
architecture practice. The methodology of this study involved the sampling of
landscape architecture experts, the development of a list of research domains in
landscape architecture, the design of the Delphi questionnaire and the analysis of
the collected data.
We assembled a sample of landscape architecture academics and professionals
from around the world. Names and contact details of landscape architects were
acquired from various sources, including websites of (inter)national landscape
architecture organizations affiliated with the International Federation of
Landscape Architects (IFLA) and conference proceedings of the European
Council of Landscape Architecture Schools (ECLAS) and the Council of
Educators in Landscape Architecture (CELA). Several criteria were used to
select the landscape architects to include as ‘experts’ in the sample. We decided
only to include academics who hold a position at an academic institution and
who were known to be actively engaged in research, having published at least
one landscape architecture research paper in an international peer-reviewed
journal. We also decided only to include professionals engaged in professional
practice (i.e. with a position in a private company or public institution involved
in landscape architecture) and, to ensure the inclusion of high quality
professionals, who were also either jurors or winners of competitions
administered or promoted by IFLA. Eventually, 279 landscape architecture
academics and professionals from Africa, Asia, Australia, Europe, North
America and South America were selected and invited to enrol in the Delphi
study.
We then compiled a list of 12 landscape architecture research domains to be
presented to the experts who took part in the Delphi study. The main sources of
these domains were the list of research areas presented by Deming and Swaffield
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(2011, p.25), inventories of contents of scholarly journals (i.e. Gobster et al.
2010) and the authors’ own knowledge of the field. Participating experts were
asked to give their opinion on this selection of research domains and also invited
to suggest additional ones. Four groups of research domains were defined:
‘academic perspectives’, ‘subjects of study’, ‘competencies of the landscape
architect’ and ‘other areas of knowledge and expertise’.
The first group, academic perspectives, included the domains of historical,
human and biophysical dimensions of planning and design. Examples of
corresponding research topics include landscape architecture history, cultural
heritage preservation, landscape perception, place attachment, green
infrastructure and agro-ecology. The second group, subjects of study, included
the domains of rural and natural environments, built environment and
infrastructure, and aquatic environments. Examples of corresponding research
topics include agriculture, nature reserves, public squares, motorways, coastal
management and urban water fronts. The third group, competencies of the
landscape architect, included the domains of theories, tools and technologies,
and artistic creativity. Examples of corresponding research topics include design
theories, geo-information technology and modelling tools. Finally, the fourth
group included the following other areas of knowledge and expertise: values and
ethics (e.g. landscape values, multiculturalism), global landscape issues (e.g.
climate change, energy transition), and policy and governance (e.g. landscape
governance, policies affecting landscapes).
For round one, a questionnaire was designed in which experts were asked to
rate these 12 research domains according to how they saw their importance for
landscape architecture as a scientific research discipline and also according to
their usefulness for landscape architecture practice. The experts were also
invited to provide their rationale for some of the ratings and to make suggestions
for domains that should be added to the list. For round two a questionnaire was
designed that was very similar to that of the first round. The experts were asked
to rate the importance and usefulness of the 12 original research domains as well
as several new domains that were added following suggestions from the first
round. Each of the 12 original domains was accompanied by controlled opinion
feedback. This feedback consisted of a summary of the rationale that experts had
provided, sometimes complemented by summary statistics. The questionnaire
that was used for the third and final round had a different set-up. The experts
were first given the opportunity to receive feedback before selecting their three
most important and three most useful research domains. Because of the many
different nationalities included in the study, all three questionnaires were written
in English and programmed as web surveys. Data were collected from April to
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June 2013.
Data collected in rounds one and two were analysed to develop the summaries
that were fed back to the experts in rounds two and three respectively. Per
research domain, the median importance and usefulness were calculated, as well
as the percentage of ‘very important’ and ‘very useful’ ratings. Experts’
rationales regarding the importance and usefulness of each domain were
analysed by means of content analysis. Based on the data that were collected in
round three the most important and useful domains were identified. For each
domain the percentage of experts that selected it as most important and as most
useful was calculated. The strict agreement index (Meijering et al. 2013) was
used to estimate the level of agreement among experts.

Results of the Delphi study

Of the 279 landscape architecture experts who were invited to participate in the
Delphi study, 86 completed the first round. Of these, 55 and 46 also completed
the second and third rounds respectively. More experts from academia than from
professional practice participated as well as more experts from Europe than from
other continents. Nonetheless, the final round included experts from academia
and professional practice as well as experts from all six continents.
After the first and second rounds of the Delphi study, experts rated the
research domains ‘human dimensions of planning and design’, ‘green urban
development’, ‘built environments and infrastructure’ and ‘global landscape
issues’ most often as ‘very important’ for landscape architecture research. The
domains ‘human dimensions of planning and design’ and ‘built environments
and infrastructure’ were also rated most often as ‘very useful’ for landscape
architecture practice. Table 6.1 shows that consistent results were found in the
third and final round of the Delphi study.

Table 6.1
Percentage of experts that selected each research domain as ‘most important’ or ‘most useful’ in round 3 of
the Delphi study
Research domain % selected as most % selected as most
important useful
Human dimensions of planning and design 37 48

Green urban developmenta 33 -

Built environments and infrastructure 30 41
Global landscape issues 30 13

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Theories 24 9
Measuring landscape architecture performance and 24 -
impacta
Rural and natural environments 22 11
Historic dimensions of planning and design 20 9
Biophysical dimensions of planning and design 20 26
Values and ethics 17 0
Artistic creativity 13 15
Policy and governance 9 15
Aquatic environments 7 15
Tools and technologies 7 37
Landscape architecture education 4 -

Development of applied methods and techniquesb - 24

Education of landscape architectsb - 26

a This research domain was formed based on experts' suggestions (as important for landscape architecture
research).
b This research domain was formed based on experts' suggestions (as useful for landscape architecture
practice)

Experts gave various reasons for why they selected the domains as most
important or most useful. With regard to the domain ‘human dimensions of
planning and design’, experts explained that landscape planning and design is
done for people and that research into this domain is needed to understand how
people perceive and respond to landscapes. With regard to the domain ‘built
environments and infrastructure’, experts explained that the world is urbanizing
and that research is needed to improve the sustainability of cities and to provide
practice with knowledge, ideas and solutions necessary to meet future
challenges.
While the domains ‘human dimensions of planning and design’ and ‘built
environments and infrastructure’ were most frequently selected as most
important and most useful, even these two domains were not selected by a
majority of experts. This indicates that there was considerable disagreement
among the experts about which domains are the most important and most useful.
The experts seemed to agree, however, that the domains ‘landscape architecture
education’, ‘tools and technologies’, ‘aquatic environments’ and ‘policy and
governance’ are not the most important for landscape architecture research.
Likewise, they also seemed to agree that research into ‘values and ethics’,
‘theories’ and ‘historic dimensions of planning and design’ would probably not
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be the most useful for landscape architecture practice.
Some substantial differences regarding the importance and usefulness of
domains were identified between experts from academia and professional
practice as well as between experts from different parts of the world. Most
notably, in the final round of the Delphi study, experts from Europe selected the
domain ‘human dimensions of planning and design’ more often as most useful
for practice (70%) than experts from outside Europe (26%).

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THE SYSTEMATIC REVIEW OF LANDSCAPE
ARCHITECTURE PAPERS

Understanding the systematic review as a research method

Fink (2009, p.3) defines a systematic review as a ‘systematic, explicit, and
reproducible method for identifying, evaluating, and synthesizing the existing
body of work produced by researchers, scholars, and practitioners’. This means
that a systematic review should be conducted and reported in such a way that
another researcher can repeat the work and obtain similar results. Every
systematic review starts with one or more explicit research questions, followed
by the sampling of research units from which data can be collected. In a
systematic review the research units are publications in the form of papers,
books chapters and reports. Publications are usually acquired from one or more
bibliographic databases. Popular online databases for scientific papers are
Scopus and the Web of Science. Based on the research question(s) a search
query is developed and entered into the selected database(s) to acquire
appropriate publications. Usually these publications are screened by the
researcher who, based on certain criteria, excludes those that are considered
irrelevant or which have a poor methodological quality. The remaining
publications are read in detail. Data are extracted from the text of the
publications by one or more researchers using a standardized form or coding
scheme to identify and code (i.e. mark) relevant text fragments. The coded
fragments are then evaluated and synthesized descriptively.

The methodology of the landscape architecture systematic review

We conducted a systematic review in order to explore how many landscape
architecture papers (i.e. papers that report landscape architecture research but are
not necessarily written by landscape architects), published in international peer-
reviewed journals, report empirical studies and their findings. We also evaluated
the quality of the empirical papers in terms of their methodological transparency.
This means that we read the empirical papers to find out to what extent they
report various aspects of the methods they used, such as the study design, the
sampling of research units and the data analysis. Finally, we determined to what
extent the most important and useful research domains, as identified in the
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Delphi study, were represented in the sample. The methodology of this study
involved the sampling of landscape architecture papers, the extraction of data
from those papers by means of a coding scheme and the analysis of the data.
The sampling of papers followed a stepwise and iterative procedure. The first
step involved selecting the appropriate international peer-reviewed journals from
which papers would be sampled. To make sure that the selection included
journals that at least partly focus on landscape architecture, the selection was
limited to journals with the word ‘landscape’ in their title (as indexed in Scopus,
the world’s largest database of scientific literature; see http://www.scopus.com/).
This resulted in the selection of 12 journals: Journal of Environmental
Engineering and Landscape Management, Journal of Landscape Architecture,
Journal of Landscape Ecology, Landscape and Ecological Engineering,
Landscape and Urban Planning, Landscape Ecology, Landscape History,
Landscape Journal, Landscape Online, Landscape Research, Living Reviews in
Landscape Research, Studies in the History of Gardens & Designed Landscapes.
The next step involved the sampling of papers. In 2013, the last fully
completed year at the time this study was conducted, a total of 591 papers were
published in the 12 selected journals. To make sure that the sample only
included papers reporting relevant landscape architecture research, a search
query was developed and applied in Scopus (see Table 6.2). This search query
contained terms about important study objects (e.g. landscapes) and activities
(e.g. designing) in landscape architecture that were searched for in the title,
abstract and keywords of the papers. Search terms were derived from definitions
of landscape architecture according to the American Society of Landscape
Architects (ASLA), the International Federation of Landscape Architects, the
European Council of Landscape Architecture Schools, the Landscape Institute
and the Oxford English Dictionary. The search query also defined the
publication year (2013) and the type of publications to exclude from the search
(such as conference reviews, editorials and business articles). After the
application of the search query, 379 papers remained to be considered further in
the study.

Table 6.2
Search query applied in SCOPUSa
Block Search term
Object of study TITLE-ABS-KEY (landscape* OR land OR lands OR environment*
OR space OR spaces OR place OR places)
AND

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Landscape architecture TITLE-ABS-KEY (design* OR plan OR plans OR planned OR
activities planning OR manag* OR stewardship OR shape OR
shapes OR shaped OR shaping OR create OR creates
OR created OR creating OR creation OR protect*
OR conserv* OR maintain* OR maintenance OR
enhanc* OR implement* OR assess* OR develop*)
Publication year AND
PUBYEAR = 2013
AND NOT

Type of documentb DOCTYPE (ip OR ab OR bk OR ch OR bz OR cp OR cr OR ed

OR er OR le OR no OR pr OR rp)

a Search query is based on definitions of landscape architecture according toASLA, IFLA, ECLAS,
Landscape Institute, and the Oxford dictionary.
b paper-in-press, abstract report, book, book chapter, business paper, conference paper, conference review,
editorial, erratum, letter, note, press release, report.

Next, we randomly selected, within each of the 12 journals, 25 per cent of the
remaining papers, with a minimum of five and a maximum of 30 papers per
journal. Within the journals Landscape History and Landscape Online fewer
than five papers matched the search query and hence all of these papers were
selected. The final sample comprised 99 papers. The abstracts of these papers
were read by two of the authors of this chapter (van den Brink and Bruns) after
which they decided to remove a further 36 papers from the sample because they
did not report landscape architecture research. Five more papers were also
removed from the sample as they were not written in English. The remaining 58
papers were then checked to find out if they reported empirical research. Papers
were defined as empirical if they described a study in which one of the following
types of data were collected and analysed: primary data (i.e. data collected
within the researcher’s own study), secondary data (i.e. data collected in a
previous study) or simulated data (i.e. data generated by the researcher by means
of computer simulations). As 16 papers did not report empirical research we
were left with 42 empirical papers. Figure 6.2 gives an overview of the entire
sampling process.
The final sample of 42 papers was read in full. Data were extracted from the
papers by means of a coding scheme which comprised several steps, as
explained over the page (also described in the Introduction to this book and
further elaborated by Tobi and van den Brink in Chapter 2). For each step
several codes were created and applied to relevant data (i.e. text fragments)
within the papers. For example, a code ‘research question’ was created to code
one or more explicitly reported research questions within each paper. If, within a
paper, a particular code could not be applied, this meant that no relevant text
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fragments about that aspect of the research could be found.

Figure 6.2
Overview of the systematic review sampling process

For the step formulation of the research question codes were created (e.g.
‘research question’ and ‘hypothesis’) to code the research questions as well as
any explicitly reported research objectives and hypotheses. For the step study
design a code (‘study design’) was created to code text fragments that explicitly
stated the applied study design. Furthermore, codes were created (e.g. ‘level of
control researcher’) to code text fragments about the researchers level of control
(i.e. concerning a possible intervention or manipulation and the random
assignment of research units to groups), the number of data collection waves,
and the timeframe of the study (i.e. retrospective, present, prospective). For the
step sampling and data collection separate codes were created (e.g. ‘landscapes:
sampling method used’ and ‘other research units: sampling method used’) to
code text fragments about the sampling of landscapes and about the sampling of
other research units such as humans and animals. This was done because in
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landscape architecture research the research units are usually landscapes. Codes
were also created (e.g. ‘sampling frame’) to code text fragments about the
applied sampling frame (i.e. the list of research units from which a random
sample was drawn) and selection scheme (i.e. the criteria or logic on the basis of
which research units were included in a non-random sample). Additionally,
codes were created (e.g. ‘data collection methods used’) to code text fragments
about the applied data collection methods and the year(s) in which data were
collected. For the step data analysis separate codes were created (‘description
quantitative data analysis’ and ‘description qualitative data analysis’) to code
text fragments about the quantitative and qualitative analysis of data. Finally, the
overall structure of the paper was scanned to determine whether the information
was properly organized in the following sections: introduction, methods, results,
discussion. Sections about the applied theory or conceptual framework were
disregarded as they were not important for the purpose of the current study.
Within each paper the coded text fragments were examined and evaluated to
gain an insight into their methodological transparency. For example, text
fragments with the code ‘data collection methods used’ were examined to find
out exactly which methods were applied (e.g. standardized questionnaire,
interview) and text fragments with the code ‘description quantitative data
analysis’ were evaluated to find out whether the reporting of the quantitative
data analysis was complete or incomplete. Finally, two of the authors of this
chapter (van den Brink and Bruns) read the abstracts of the papers and
independently decided for each paper to what extent it was related to any of the
research domains arising from the Delphi study. Differences of opinion were
discussed and resolved.

Results of the systematic review

Seventy-two per cent of the sampled papers described the collection of primary,
secondary or simulated data and were thus considered to be empirical. Table 6.3
shows that most (83%) of these papers explicitly reported a research objective
that clearly stated which knowledge was to be acquired. However, research
questions and hypotheses were far less commonly found: only in 12 per cent and
14 per cent of the papers respectively. In some papers (12%) no research
question, objective or hypothesis could be found at all.
Table 6.4 shows that the research objectives and questions reported in most
(76%) empirical papers were focused on acquiring knowledge on a current issue,
while far fewer objectives and questions were focused on investigating an issue
of the past or in the future (in 2% and 14% of the papers respectively). As stated
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earlier, a number of papers (12%) did not state a research question, objective or
hypothesis and thus their timeframe could not be established. In other papers
(7%) the research objectives were unclear regarding the timeframe, for example
when a research objective focused on the measurement of landscape change but
did not indicate whether it concerned only change that occurred in the past or
change that was tracked into the future. Furthermore, the timeframe as suggested
by the research objective or question did not always match the timeframe as
suggested by the applied study design. For example, an objective could be
focused on a present timeframe, while the study design as described in the
methods section made clear that the research had a retrospective timeframe.

Table 6.3
Percentage of empirical papers reporting a research objective, question or hypothesis
Research objective, question, or hypothesis reported % of papers (n=42)
Research objective 83 (n=35)
Research question 12 (n= 5)
Hypothesis 14 (n= 6)
Neither 12 (n= 5)

Note: seven papers report a research question and a research objective or hypothesis, while one
paper reports a research objective and hypothesis.

Table 6.4
Percentage of empirical papers reporting a research objective or question focused on a retrospective,
prospective or present timeframe
Timeframe % of papers
(n=42)
Present timeframe 76 (n=32)
Prospective timeframe 14 (n= 6)
Retrospective timeframe 2 (n= 1)
No research objective or question reported 12 (n= 5)
Unclear 7 (n= 3)

Note: four papers report multiple objectives/questions with different timeframes.

Table 6.5
Percentage of empirical papers explicitly reporting the use of a case study, experiment or other study design
Study design % of papers
(n=42)

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 Case study 33 (n=14)
Experiment 5 (n= 2)

Othera 7 (n= 3)
No study design explicitly reported 55 (n=23)

a e.g. longitudinal design, research by design methodology.

Table 6.5 shows that a small majority (55%) of the papers did not explicitly
report their study design. If a study design was explicitly reported, it was mostly
a case study (33%). Only two papers reported an experiment as the applied study
design. These were also the only two papers in which the level of control of the
researchers, regarding the introduction of a manipulation or intervention and the
assignment of research units across groups, could actually be regarded as truly
experimental (i.e. the studies included a manipulation or intervention and the
researchers randomly assigned research units to a control and experimental
group). In all other papers the researchers had neither experimental nor quasi-
experimental control. Furthermore, in the great majority of papers (88%, not
presented in the table) only one data collection wave could be identified. This
demonstrates a lack of longitudinal research in which the change of a
phenomenon across time is studied.

Table 6.6
Percentage of empirical papers reporting the use of a random or non-random sampling method
Sampling method % of papers
(n=42)
For the selection of landscapes:

Random samplinga 10 (n= 4)

Non-random samplingb 48 (n=20)

Unclear (wholly or partly) 67 (n=28)
For the selection of other research units:

Random samplingc 10 (n= 4)

Non-random samplingd 31 (n=13)

Note: some papers report the use of multiple different sampling frames:
a of which two papers also report the sampling frame.
b of which eleven papers also report a selection scheme.
c of which two papers also report the sampling frame.
d of which eight papers also report a selection scheme.

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 In all but two of the papers, landscapes (e.g. natural parks, cities, gardens)
were selected as research units. Some papers contained a nested sampling design
in which, for example, several cities were purposively selected as study cases
and a large number of smaller research units (e.g. neighbourhoods) were
randomly selected within these cases. For each step in such a nested sampling
design the sampling method should normally be reported. This includes the
selection of one or more cases as explained in more detail by Swaffield in
Chapter 7. Table 6.6 shows that two thirds of the papers were wholly or partly
unclear about the method(s) applied for selecting landscapes. In many of these
papers one or more cases or study areas were described but it remained unclear
how or why these particular ones were selected. Although it is highly probable
that a non-random (e.g. purposive) sampling method was applied, no indication
of this could be found anywhere. Almost half of the papers clearly reported the
use of a non-random sampling method for the selection of landscapes, while
only a few clearly reported the use of a random sampling method (e.g. the
random selection of landscape grids from a map). Roughly half of the papers that
clearly reported a random or non-random sampling method did not report a
corresponding sampling frame or selection scheme.
Table 6.6 shows that a minority (10%) of papers reported the selection of
research units other than landscapes, such as people or animals. In all these
papers the sampling method applied was clearly described. The use of non-
random sampling methods (in 31% of the papers) seemed to be more common
than the use of random sampling methods. Remarkably, as with the sampling of
landscapes, a description of the corresponding sampling frame or selection
scheme was often missing.
Table 6.7 shows that the retrieval of secondary data and observation were
most often reported as data collection methods (45% and 38% respectively). In
this regard it is worth noting that in 36 per cent of the papers (not shown in the
table) landscape imagery was retrieved and processed for data analysis. In some
papers the imagery consisted of actual hardcopy or digital images (e.g. maps,
satellite images, photographs), whether or not equipped with some form of data,
for example concerning land use or land cover types, the height of the landscape,
or temperature. In other papers the imagery took the form of a spatial data set
which could be converted into a map using geographic information system (GIS)
software. Depending on how the imagery was processed, it was either
considered to be secondary data or an observation. In this systematic review
(digitized) images and spatial data sets were considered to be secondary data
when they were automatically processed for the purpose of (further) data
analysis. In some papers, however, images or spatial data sets (converted into
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images) were processed manually based on visual inspection by human actors,
for example when researchers divided a satellite image of a city into grids and
decided for each grid which type of land use is most prevalent. In these papers
images or spatial data sets were used in place of field observations during which
researchers actually visit a place to observe the landscape (or the actors/artefacts
within the landscape). Therefore, the manual processing of images or spatial data
sets based on visual inspection by human actors was considered to be an
observation. Generally, the papers that described the retrieval of landscape
imagery did not clearly describe how it was processed. Nevertheless, for most of
these papers, some information could be found indicating the automatic or
manual processing of the imagery and thus a decision whether to consider it as
secondary data or as an observation could be made.

Table 6.7
Percentage of empirical papers reporting the use of various data collection methods
Data-collection methods % of papers
(n=42)
Retrieval of secondary data 45 (n=19)
Observation 38 (n=16)
Data-simulation 29 (n=12)
Unclear 24 (n=10)
Standardized questionnaire 21 (n= 9)

Othera 17 (n= 7)
Interview 12 (n= 5)
Focus group 5 (n= 2)

Note: some papers report the use of multiple data-collection methods.

a e.g. design charrette, document study, walking audio methodology.

Other data collection methods which were quite frequently reported within the
papers are data simulation (29%) and the standardized questionnaire (21%).
Methods that are mainly focused on the collection of qualitative data, such as the
interview and the focus group, were less common. Remarkably, in almost one
quarter of the papers it was partly unclear how data were collected. Furthermore,
only 36 per cent of the papers (not shown in the table) clearly and completely
stated the year(s) in which data were collected. In particular, often no
information could be found stating how old the retrieved secondary data were
and in which year an observation of imagery was performed (based on visual
inspection by human actors).
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 Table 6.8 shows that almost all papers (90%) reported research in which
quantitative data were analysed. Most of these (66%) also offered a complete
description of how this analysis was done by clearly describing all the
calculations and statistical analyses which were performed to arrive at the
reported results. Nevertheless, in a number of papers the description was either
incomplete (21%) or even wholly missing (13%). A minority of papers (29%)
reported research in which qualitative data were (also) analysed. However, in
most of these papers (58%) a description of the qualitative analysis was wholly
missing. Only two papers provided a complete description by clearly describing
the type of qualitative analysis performed (e.g. content analysis), the coding
procedure, and the strategy by which main themes or constructs were identified.
Finally, a few papers (10%) were at least partly unclear about what kinds of data
were collected and how these data were analysed.

Table 6.8
Percentage of empirical papers reporting the quantitative and qualitative analysis of data
Type of data-analysis % of papers
(n=42)
Quantitative 90 (n=38) of which:
Complete description reported 66 (n=25)
Incomplete description reported 21 (n= 8)
Description missing 13 (n= 5)
Qualitative 29 (n=12) of which:
Complete description reported 17 (n= 2)
Incomplete description reported 25 (n= 3)
Description missing 58 (n= 7)

Uncleara 10 (n= 4)

Note: some papers report the analysis of both quantitative and qualitative data.
a it was wholly or partly unclear what kind of data were collected and how they were analysed.

The majority of the empirical papers (62%) had a basic scientific structure in
the sense that at least the following four sections were clearly distinguished:
introduction, methods, results and discussion. A paper was considered to have an
incomplete scientific structure when one or more of these four sections was
missing, when large amounts of information that ought to be reported in one of
the four sections was reported in one or more additional sections, or when the
results and discussion sections were combined. Combining the results and

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discussion sections is undesirable as a clear distinction between the actual results
of the study and the interpretation of those results by the researcher is lost.
Table 6.9 shows that the papers were spread across a wide range of the
research domains identified from the Delphi study. A considerable proportion
were classified as fitting the domains ‘built environments and infrastructure’
(45%) and ‘human dimensions of planning and design’ (33%), both of which
were identified in the Delphi study as most important for landscape architecture
research and most useful for landscape architecture practice. However, a number
of papers were (also) classified as fitting the domains ‘biophysical dimensions of
planning and design’ (45%), ‘development of applied methods and techniques’
(43%), and ‘tools and technologies’ (36%), a domain that experts considered to
be less important for landscape architecture research. Remarkably, few papers
fitted the domains ‘green urban development’ (17%) and ‘global landscape
issues’ (2%), both of which were identified in the Delphi study as important for
landscape architecture research.
Table 6.9
Percentage of empirical papers related to a particular research domain
Research domain % of papers
(n=42)
Biophysical dimensions of planning and design 45

Built environments and infrastructurea, b 45

Development of applied methods and techniques 43
Tools and technologies 36

Human dimensions of planning and designa,b 33

Rural and natural environments 24
Measuring landscape architecture performance and impact 21
Green urban developmenta 17
Values and ethics 14
Aquatic environments 10
Historic dimensions of planning and design 7
Policy and governance 5

Global landscape issuesa 2

Artistic creativity 0
Theories 0
Landscape architecture education 0
Education of landscape architects 0

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Note: most papers were regarded as being about multiple domains:
a most important domain for landscape architecture research according to experts in the Delphi study.
b most useful domain for landscape architecture practice according to experts in the Delphi study.

Recommendations
Based on the results of the systematic review we have several recommendations
for researchers who report their empirical research in the field of landscape
architecture. First of all, the introduction of a paper should explicitly state a clear
research objective, question and/or hypothesis. Without a research objective or
question it is impossible for readers to judge whether an appropriate study design
was used and whether the results properly filled the knowledge gap identified at
the outset of the research. Simply put: a paper without a research objective or
question does not contribute anything to the landscape architecture body of
knowledge.
If landscapes were sampled as research units (e.g. as case studies), a paper
should also report how they were selected. In most of the empirical papers that
we analysed, landscapes such as parks, cities and gardens were selected as
research units. Often, however, it was not entirely clear whether these landscapes
were selected by means of a random or non-random sampling method. This is
important, because the applied sampling method determines the extent to which
the results of a study may be generalized to other landscapes. With the use of a
random sampling method results may potentially be (statistically) generalized to
all other research units listed in the corresponding sampling frame. With the use
of a non-random sampling method, generalization of results is always doubtful
and should at best be limited to research units that fit the criteria or logic of the
applied selection scheme. It is therefore important that the reporting of the
sampling method is accompanied by a clear description of the corresponding
sampling frame or selection scheme, both of which were missing in many
empirical papers. If a nested sampling design is used, researchers should report
the sampling method for each step, including the initial (and usually non-
random) selection of one or more cases or study areas. After all, as explained by
Swaffield in Chapter 7, it matters quite a lot whether the results of a study are
based on a paradigmatic or extreme case.
If imagery was used as a data source, a paper should describe how it was
processed. A number of papers reported the use of imagery but it was often not
entirely clear whether this imagery was processed automatically by some kind of
GIS software or processed manually based on visual inspection by human actors.

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If imagery was processed manually this needs to be clearly reported, for example
by describing how many human actors were involved and which criteria were
used in the categorization of image polygons. In this way readers are able to
judge the quality of the observational data. Furthermore, authors should not
forget to report the year in which the imagery was obtained and manually
processed.
A paper should offer a complete description of how the data collected were
analysed. In a substantial number of papers the description of the quantitative
and especially the qualitative data analysis was incomplete or even entirely
missing. Without a complete description of how the data were analysed readers
cannot judge the appropriateness of the data analysis techniques and thus the
validity of the subsequent results.
Quite often papers did not follow a basic scientific reporting structure. Every
empirical research paper should consist of at least four sections: introduction,
methods, results, discussion. By organizing a research paper in such a way,
readers are easily able to find the information they are looking for, regardless of
the journal in which the paper was published.
A final important result of the systematic review concerns the study designs
used: in most papers researchers were unable to exercise experimental control
and only one data collection wave could be identified. The results of the
systematic review thereby seem to confirm the suggestion made by Tobi and van
den Brink in Chapter 2 that landscape architecture research tends to be more
about exploring and describing phenomena and less about explaining why
certain phenomena occur and predicting their future occurrence. Both
explanatory and predictive research may require the application of a longitudinal
study design, in which a phenomenon is monitored over time by collecting data
in several waves, or an experimental study design, in which researchers test a
specific hypothesis about the future occurrence of a phenomenon by introducing
an intervention in a controlled environment. To develop further the landscape
architecture body of knowledge it is important that more explanatory and
predictive research is conducted.

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SYNTHESIS AND DISCUSSION
In this chapter a summary of a Delphi study among landscape architecture
experts was presented as well as a fuller report on a systematic review of
landscape architecture journal papers. The results of the studies should help to
(1) focus landscape architecture research agendas towards the issues which are
important, and (2) enhance the reporting of research and thereby improve the
way in which research is approached and conducted – with improved rigour,
clear objectives, well-defined methods and improved analysis. By synthesizing
results of both studies insight is gained that should also help to guide discourses
about the future of landscape architecture research.
The results of the Delphi study suggest that the research domains ‘human
dimensions of planning and design’, ‘built environments and infrastructure’,
‘green urban development’ and ‘global landscape issues’ were perceived as
being the most important for landscape architecture as a field of academic
research. Research into the domains ‘human dimensions of planning and design’
and ‘built environments and infrastructure’ was also seen as most useful for
landscape architecture practice. Hence, both of these domains in particular may
be put at the top of landscape architecture research agendas. These results
confirm what we have observed, for example at international conferences,
namely that social and human studies in relation to urban environments and
global issues have become central to landscape architecture research. The
relevance of research into ‘human dimensions of planning and design’ also
corresponds with studies in which comparable domains were identified as
important within the academic journals, Landscape and Urban Planning
(Gobster 2014) and Landscape Journal (Powers and Walker 2009). The Delphi
study also showed that some research domains were clearly not regarded as most
important for landscape architecture research (landscape architecture education,
tools and technologies, aquatic environments, policy and governance) or most
useful for landscape architecture practice (values and ethics, theories, historic
dimensions of planning and design). This does not mean, however, that research
into these domains is irrelevant. It merely indicates that these domains should
perhaps not form the core of landscape architecture research agendas.
The research domains as used in the Delphi study are rather broad and may
seem to be overlapping with one another. ‘Built environments and infrastructure’
may, for example, also include parts of ‘green urban development’, while ‘global
landscape issues’ may encompass several parts of other separate domains. The
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list of research domains was inspired by existing ones; in fact, we discovered
that in the field of landscape architecture several different lists exist that contain
many different research domains (see among others: Deming and Swaffield
2011, p.25; Weber 2015, p.84). Some of them are rather narrowly defined, while
others are broader. This abundance of different research domains represents, to a
large degree, the lack of clarity that has developed over the years within the field
of landscape architecture. This lack of clarity may be related, at least partly, to
the interdisciplinary character of landscape architecture, both as an academic
discipline and as professional practice. Other assumptions may also be
reasonable: for example, the large number of research domains may hint at –
already existing or envisaged – opportunities for specialization (cf. Weber 2015).
Furthermore, the fact that none of the domains was selected by a majority of
experts may hint at several ‘schools of thought’ and/or regionally different
priorities. Obviously, within an applied discipline such as landscape architecture,
such prioritizations are context-dependent, and, as a consequence, different
issues have emerged as important in different parts of the world.
Therefore, to continue developing landscape architecture as a discipline that
relies on and builds its own body of knowledge, it would be advisable to become
more specific about the domains that, together, constitute its intellectual core. In
this light, the results of the Delphi study mark a first step on a longer path of
specifying research needs within landscape architecture. A necessary next step
would be, for example, to further delineate the research domains and also to
clarify the knowledge gaps that need bridging. Taking such steps would provide
a basis for a continuously focused discourse on research agendas.
The results of the systematic review of journal papers show that a
considerable portion of the sample addresses the two research domains that
experts considered important and useful (i.e. human dimensions of planning and
design, built environments and infrastructure). More work may also be needed to
collect evidence on the domains ‘global landscape issues’ and ‘green urban
development’. Both were identified, in the Delphi study, as important for
landscape architecture research, while the systematic review showed that only a
few papers addressed these domains. The systematic review also clearly shows
that, generally speaking, future empirical research papers ought to be more
transparent about the methodology used. Most papers did not describe one or
more crucial aspects of research design. Methodological clarity is a prerequisite
for all research so that anyone is able to understand how the research was
conducted, is able to replicate it and can judge the validity of the results.
Therefore, the lack of methodological transparency in the sample must be of
concern for the pursuit of further developing the body of knowledge on which
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landscape architecture may rely as an evidence-based discipline. Results clearly
indicate that researchers in or related to landscape architecture need to pay more
attention to research methodology.
In summary, for landscape architecture to continue developing its body of
knowledge, researchers need to conduct more empirical research that is based on
observed and measured phenomena. Researchers also ought to report their
findings in such a way that anyone can understand how the research was done
and, therefore, is able to assess the methodological rigour that was applied. A
reliable body of knowledge is one upon which future research agendas may be
developed pro-actively and, eventually, without reliance on a few experts’
opinions. Where evidence has been established, knowledge gaps may be
identified more safely. Review papers might be written that would support the
field discussing how research agendas might be established regionally or around
specific themes. Monitoring research activity might also reveal how legacies are
evolving and how specific sub-disciplines are establishing.

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NOTE
1 This section is largely a summary of an empirical study that has been published in the journal
Landscape and Urban Planning. For more details on the methodology and results of the study we
kindly refer the reader to Meijering et al. (2015).

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SUGGESTED FURTHER READING
The following may be consulted to obtain a general understanding of the Delphi
method:
Keeney, S., Hasson, F. and McKenna, H. ( 2006) ‘ Consulting the oracle: Ten lessons from using the Delphi
technique in nursing research’, Journal of Advanced Nursing, 53( 2), 205–212.
Linstone, H.A. and Turoff, M., eds ( 1975) The Delphi Method: Techniques and Applications, Boston, MA:
Addison-Wesley.
Powell, C. ( 2003) ‘ The Delphi technique: Myths and realities’, Journal of Advanced Nursing, 41( 4), 376–
382.
The following offer insight into several specific methodological issues of the
Delphi method, such as the measurement of agreement and the provision of
controlled opinion feedback:
Bolger, F., Stranieri, A., Wright, G. and Yearwood, J. ( 2011) ‘ Does the Delphi process lead to increased
accuracy in group-based judgmental forecasts or does it simply induce consensus amongst
judgmental forecasters?’, Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 78( 9), 1671–1680.
Meijering, J.V., Kampen, J.K. and Tobi, H. ( 2013) ‘ Quantifying the development of agreement among
experts in Delphi studies’, Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 80( 8), 1607–1614.
Rowe, G., Wright, G. and McColl, A. ( 2005) ‘ Judgment change during Delphi-like procedures: The role of
majority influence, expertise, and confidence’, Technological Forecasting and Social Change,
72( 4), 377–399.
Some well-known and critical reviews of the Delphi method are the following:
Sackman, H. ( 1974) Delphi Assessment: Expert Opinion, Forecasting, and Group Process, No. RAND-R-
1283-PR, Santa Monica: Rand Corporation.
Woudenberg, F. ( 1991) ‘ An evaluation of Delphi’, Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 40( 2),
131–150.
The following may be consulted to learn more about how to conduct a
systematic review:
Gough, D., Oliver, S. and Thomas, J., eds ( 2012) An Introduction to Systematic Reviews, London: Sage.
Petticrew, M. and Roberts, H. ( 2006) Systematic Reviews in the Social Sciences: A Practical Guide,
Oxford: Blackwell.
Online training videos and guides on how to conduct a systematic review can
be found here:
The Campbell Collaboration Research Center n.d. The Introductory Methods htt​p://www​.campbellco​-
llaboration.​org/resourc​es/trainin​g/The_Intr​oductory_Me​thods.ph​p
The Georgia State University n.d. Writing Systematic Reviews for the Health and Social Sciences
http:​//resear​ch.libra​ry.gsu.ed​u/syst​emati​creview

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References
Bolger, F. and Wright, G. ( 2011) ‘ Improving the Delphi process: Lessons from social psychological
research’, Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 78( 9), 1500–1513.
Boulkedid, R., Abdoul, H., Loustau, M., Sibony, O. and Alberti, C. ( 2011) ‘ Using and reporting the
Delphi method for selecting healthcare quality indicators: A systematic review’, PLoS ONE, 6(
6), e20476, available: doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0020476.
Dalkey, N. and Helmer, O. ( 1963) ‘ An experimental application of the Delphi method to the use of
experts’, Management Science, 9( 3), 458–467.
Deming, E. and Swaffield, S. ( 2011) Landscape Architectural Research: Inquiry, Strategy, Design,
Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.
Fink, A. ( 2009) Conducting Research Literature Reviews: From the Internet to Paper, 3rd ed., Thousand
Oaks, CA: Sage.
Gobster, P.H. ( 2014) ‘ (Text) Mining the LANDscape: Themes and trends over 40 years of landscape and
urban planning’, Landscape and Urban Planning, 126, 21–30.
Gobster, P.H., Nassauer, J.I. and Nadenicek, D.J. ( 2010) ‘ Landscape Journal and scholarship in landscape
architecture: The next 25 years’, Landscape Journal, 29( 1), 52–70.
Hung, H.L., Altschuld, J.W. and Lee, Y.F. ( 2008) ‘ Methodological and conceptual issues confronting a
cross-country Delphi study of educational program evaluation‘,’ Evaluation and Program
Planning, 31( 2), 191–198.
Keeney, S., Hasson, F. and McKenna, H. ( 2006) ‘ Consulting the oracle: Ten lessons from using the Delphi
technique in nursing research’, Journal of Advanced Nursing, 53( 2), 205–212.
Linstone, H.A. and Turoff, M., eds ( 1975) The Delphi Method: Techniques and Applications, Boston, MA:
Addison-Wesley.
Meijering, J.V., Kampen, J.K. and Tobi, H. ( 2013) ‘ Quantifying the development of agreement among
experts in Delphi studies’, Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 80( 8), 1607–1614.
Meijering, J.V., Tobi, H., van den Brink, A., Morris, F. and Bruns, D. ( 2015) ‘ Exploring research priorities
in landscape architecture: An international Delphi study’, Landscape and Urban Planning, 137,
85–94.
Powell, C. ( 2003) ‘ The Delphi technique: Myths and realities’, Journal of Advanced Nursing, 41( 4), 376–
382.
Powers, M.N. and Walker, J.B. ( 2009) ‘ Twenty-five years of Landscape Journal: An analysis of
authorship and article content’, Landscape Journal, 28( 1), 96–110.
van den Brink, A. and Bruns, D. ( 2014) ‘ Strategies for enhancing landscape architecture research’,
Landscape Research, 39( 1), 7–20.
Weber, G. ( 2015) Auxiliary Specialization Opportunities in Landscape Architecture: Nature of Profession,
Current View, Allied Relationships, Skills & Knowledge, and Future Directions (MSc), Kansas
State University, available: https://krex.k-state.edu/dspace/handle/2097/19044.

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PART III
SELECTED APPROACHES AND
METHODS

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Chapter 7: Case studies

Simon Swaffield

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INTRODUCTION
Case studies are widely used in landscape architectural research. They are
ideally suited to the investigation of complex phenomena such as designed
landscapes, which are the focus of the discipline. However, the way landscape
architecture researchers typically select and undertake case studies is also a
limitation to achieving greater practice, policy and scientific relevance for the
outcomes of our research. The objective of this chapter is to explain the
methodological rationale for case studies and the implications of this for the
selection and treatment of cases in landscape architecture. The central question
that I ask is how can researchers in landscape architecture use case studies in
order to enhance our discipline’s knowledge base? In particular, I focus upon the
use of cases as research tools, rather than educational or professional exemplars.
I aim to demonstrate that a more theoretically informed selection of case studies
could sharpen the way landscape architecture researchers shape and answer their
research questions, strengthen their contribution to the theory of the discipline,
and hence improve the quality of their design and planning practice and
contribution to wider debates over policy. These are all fundamental to ensuring
the future relevance of landscape architecture.
The chapter is based upon several analyses of published research in landscape
architecture. The first was a review of articles from leading landscape
architecture journals undertaken during the preparation of a textbook on research
strategies (Deming and Swaffield 2011); the second was a review of articles
published over the past 40 years of the journal Landscape Research (Vicenzotti
et al. 2016); and the third has been a summary analysis of the use of cases in
articles in the Journal of Landscape Architecture 2006–2014. The chapter has
also drawn upon a number of research projects in which I have been involved,
including student dissertations at PhD level.
This chapter is focused on case study research as applied to landscape
architecture. Other forms of case-based research, such as case series and (nested)
case-control studies, are not discussed in this book because they are mainly used
in medicine and public health studies and uncommon in landscape architecture
research. First, the chapter describes the current status of case study research in
landscape architecture and identifies potential shortfalls in its approach. Second,
it reviews the concept of a case study. Third, it examines in more detail the
theoretical and methodological rationale for case studies, with particular focus
upon case study selection and how that task can be best undertaken to achieve
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research objectives. Finally it identifies directions for improving the way that
case study research practice in landscape architecture can contribute to the
theoretical development of the discipline. Examples are used to illustrate the key
points. The focus of the chapter is the role of case studies in landscape
architectural research, rather than in landscape research more generally. In
drawing upon the various sources noted above I have therefore placed most
attention upon research examples that generate knowledge upon the way
landscape architecture practice transforms landscapes.

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CASE STUDIES IN LANDSCAPE
ARCHITECTURE
Case studies are emerging as a popular mode of investigation in the discipline in
response to a range of commercial, public policy and institutional pressures for
enhanced practice and research performance. In North America for example, the
Landscape Education Foundation has a website and publication series that is
focused upon case studies of exemplary design practice (htt​ps:​//l​afo​und​ati​on.​-
org​/re​sea​rch​/la​nds​cap​e-p​erf​orm​anc​e-s​eri​es/​). In Europe, the European Union
(EU) funded LE:NOTRE programme raised awareness of case study process
through workshops and seminars, and prepared case studies which are now held
by the LE:NOTRE Institute (htt​p:/​/ww​w.l​e-n​otr​e.o​rg/). Case studies also feature
widely in academic landscape architecture publications. For example, over the
period 2011–2014, cases were cited in 78 per cent of published peer reviewed
articles in the journal Landscape Research. This figure contrasts with only 11
per cent of articles in a similar period twenty years ago (1991–1995). The
Journal of Landscape Architecture (JoLA) includes a section in each issue called
‘Under the Sky’ dedicated to case studies, and case studies featured in 32 per
cent of all peer reviewed articles in JoLA from 2006 to 2014. Case studies also
appear prominently in conference presentations by both landscape architecture
professionals and academics. On the face of it therefore case study research is
well established in landscape architecture. The critical question is whether it is
being used to best effect.
For the most part, landscape architecture researchers take a pragmatic
approach to case studies. Francis (1999) established a template for case study
reporting in landscape architecture which provides a guide to the data that could
and should be collected, and how it might be presented. He defined case studies
as ‘a well-documented and systematic examination of the process, decision
making and outcomes of a project that is undertaken for the purpose of
informing future practice, policy, theory and/or education’ (Francis 1999, p.9).
In a subsequent article Francis used an exemplar of integrated and sustainable
community design – the Village Homes development in Davis, California – to
show how a case study method might be applied (Francis 2001). The approach is
primarily descriptive, and this is reflected in the projects that have been recorded
and lodged on the Landscape Architecture Foundation website (htt​p:/​/la​nds​cap​-
epe​rfo​rma​nce​.or​g/c​ase​-st​udy​-br​ief​s). This collection of case studies establishes a

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record of projects undertaken by the profession in North America, which is
useful for both practitioners and students, who also contribute many of the cases.
The availability of a template means there is the basis for some measure of
consistency in reporting, so that basic comparisons can be made.
The crucial decision in using case studies for research rather than professional
education, however, is the rationale for the selection of the cases. Most
professionally reported cases are opportunist – they are those which are to hand
and that appear interesting – and are frequently chosen for their value in
promoting the designer, a practice or the wider profession. The methodological
problem with opportunist studies is that even if a template is followed, it is a
slow process accumulating knowledge that can be generalised, as the cases
reported are hard to compare in any meaningful way (Ostrom 2007). In
particular, case studies that seek to add to the theoretical knowledge of the
discipline need to provide insight into relationships that have relevance beyond
the individual events or situations being investigated. Most research using
multiple cases recognises this need for a framework of comparison. However,
the same logic applies when interpreting the significance of individual case
studies – they need to be able to be compared with other cases in a systematic
way that enables something to be learnt from similarities and differences seen in
different contexts. Cases selected by opportunity alone may offer some
comparative insights, but more often than not the value of the comparison is
limited.
Analysis of articles reporting landscape architecture research that include case
studies reveals that even in a peer reviewed publication the rationale for case
study selection typically receives little or sometimes no explanation (see
Meijering et al. – Chapter 6). In the sample of JoLA case studies noted above,
the rationale for case selection was mentioned or could reasonably be inferred in
79 per cent (26/33) of the articles using cases, but the explanation seldom
warranted more than a sentence. Half of these cases were exemplars chosen to
illustrate a proposition or argument, rather than to investigate a relationship. In
short, case study applications in landscape architecture frequently lack sufficient
rationale for the knowledge claims they make, and hence the validity of their
findings frequently remains undetermined. This is a significant limitation upon
the progress of the discipline both in developing its own systematic knowledge
and in contributing to wider debates in science and policy. In the next section I
therefore consider the nature of case study research from a theoretical and
methodological perspective.

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THE NATURE OF CASE STUDY RESEARCH
A case study may be broadly defined as a study of a specific event, situation or
complex phenomenon investigated in their real world context (Yin 2014).
Frequently, multiple data or information sources are used for analysis, and often
the analysis spans a period of time. In many research projects only one case
study is undertaken, although multiple comparative cases are increasingly
investigated. The focus upon a single or small number of situations or ‘cases’
examined in all their complexity and in their wider context contrasts with some
other types of scientific investigation, such as large-scale surveys, that seek
understanding of the world by narrowing down attention upon a limited number
of relationships between defined variables, and that use statistical techniques to
analyse large numbers of events chosen from a population of cases. When seen
like this, case study research is not in opposition to other types of research.
Rather, it expresses a different research design chosen to best suit the purpose of
the investigation (Flyvbjerg 2006).
Gerring (2004) emphasises that case study research is ‘a particular way of
defining cases, not a way of analyzing cases’ (Gerring 2004, p.341; see also
Gerring 2007). Case study research is thus a general approach to research, and
not a set of specific methods. A key consideration in undertaking case study
research is to understand how the concept of a case study relates to the decisions
on methods of sampling, data collection methods and methods for data analysis
that shape every research project. In the next sections I will focus upon four
main steps – understanding how the findings may be generalised, how to select
appropriate cases, choosing a framework for comparative analysis, and matching
the case(s) to the question being asked. These sections will help you to decide
whether or not you want to adopt a case study approach for answering your
research question. Please note that once you have decided upon a case study
approach, many other decisions on research methods remain to be made, such as
how you sample informants, collect data and analyse data (see also Tobi and van
den Brink – Chapter 2). Obviously, this chapter cannot cover all of these
decisions, but instead focuses on the selection of the case or cases.

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GENERALISATION OF CASE STUDY RESEARCH
All research makes some underlying methodological assumptions about how
knowledge can be formalised, justified and generalised. In deductive scientific
methodology, theory is built by developing hypotheses. These are conjectures
about causal relationships in the world based upon the best current knowledge
which are then tested empirically in some way, usually using statistical analyses.
Case study research on the other hand seldom includes sufficient numbers of
cases to enable any form of cross-case statistical analysis. Researchers therefore
use a different logic to determine the significance of the findings, known as
analytical generalisation (Yin 2014). This uses existing theory as a template
against which to compare the results of a new study. Hence theory develops
inductively, as evidence accumulates.
The comparison of evidence with theory may usefully be guided by a working
proposition – that is, a provisional statement about the relationships being
investigated. However, there is an important choice to make in how the
comparisons are made. Landscape architecture researchers often seek to build
theory through positive proof – providing cases as exemplars of a proposed
theory – usually indicated in the explanation by the phrase ‘I will demonstrate
(my) theory with an example.’ The problem with this approach is that positive
proof is biased to a tendency to confirm the researchers’ preconceived ideas as
we all tend to favour that which is familiar (Kahneman 2011). In contrast, the
philosopher Karl Popper (1959) showed that the most robust logical test of a
theory is falsification – that is, trying to disprove a hypothesis or proposition,
rather than trying to demonstrate its truth. Hence all good research designs,
whether they involve an experiment, a large-scale survey or a case study, contain
a critical challenge to the starting hypothesis or proposition.
It is typically assumed that case-based research is unsuited to falsification.
However, Flyvbjerg (2006) points out that cases can be used to test theory by
falsification if a case is selected that is least likely to be consistent with a
particular proposition. This may be because it is an extreme case, or because it
has been critically chosen for this purpose. If the case still confirms the
proposition under investigation, then the theory has been tested through
falsification and found to be robust – until the next test. Case selection aimed at
falsification rather than positive exemplars has the potential to significantly
strengthen the power of landscape architecture theory in a way that has wider
scientific credibility. However, it does require a reorientation in the way cases
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are selected.

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CHOOSING THE CASE(S)
Cases are normally described as purposive samples, which means they have been
individually selected because their characteristics enable conclusions and hence
generalisations to be drawn based upon their type, rather than upon their
statistical occurrence. Flyvbjerg (2006) identifies several types of purposive
case: paradigmatic, extreme and critical. Paradigmatic cases are exemplars that
have prototypical or metaphorical value. They are selected because the
researcher believes they represent a situation that has general relevance – for
example it may be a new approach to a difficult problem in landscape planning.
Hence when Spicer et al. (2014) investigated how management of non-point
source pollution from animals and fertiliser influences the way an agricultural
landscape changes, they selected a prototypical situation in which a new way of
managing pollution is being trialled. The case investigated was the Lake Taupo
project in New Zealand which is reportedly the first attempt globally to manage
nutrient discharge using a ‘cap and trade’ system for a defined water catchment.
This means that the regulatory authority set a maximum for total discharge of
nitrates in the catchment. Landowners were then each allocated a permit (a right)
to discharge a specified level of nitrates based upon historical patterns of use,
and also given the power to buy or sell these rights to discharge to other
landowners in the basin. The idea was that this would allow land uses to change
to become more efficient while remaining within the overall environmental
capacity of the catchment, and it would also encourage landowners to innovate
to reduce discharge. In addition, a trust was established to purchase discharge
rights from landowners, and hence bring down the overall nutrient loading in the
catchment. Landscape biography (Roymans et al. 2009) provided a way to trace
what has happened since the new regime was introduced. By selecting this
prototypical case the conclusions will be relevant to the design of environmental
management regimes in other landscapes using a cap and trade approach.
Extreme cases on the other hand are selected because they test an idea to its
limits. The rationale is that they are particularly effective in testing hypotheses
or falsifying propositions, as the outcome is likely to be reasonably clear-cut.
Hoversten (2013) investigated decision making in alternative futures planning,
which involves developing scenarios of change and then projecting the possible
landscape outcomes. He identified a series of decision points (or discursive
moments as he called them) which appeared to be particularly important in
shaping the way that the different futures were chosen. However, it was possible
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that the discursive moments vary depending upon how the decision making
responsibilities are allocated. In particular the investigator wanted to better
understand the influence of experts in shaping the decisions. He therefore chose
two contrasting cases – one in which outside experts took a leading and directive
role in shaping the futures, and another which involved a highly collaborative
and bottom up approach. He found that in both extreme cases there were a series
of similar discursive moments. This gave him confidence that the moments he
identified were features that are likely to be found in alternative futures planning
irrespective of the way the process was implemented.
Another example of an extreme case is provided in Yu et al. (2008). Their
research was investigating how rapidly urbanising city regions could draw upon
adaptive strategies from the past to manage flood risk. The research focused
upon the Yellow River Basin in China as ‘probably the most difficult river to
regulate in the world’ due to its high sediment load and flood regime. Lessons
that could be identified in such an extreme case would have relevance for other
extreme situations facing enhanced flood risk due to climate change.
Critical cases are chosen because they have features that are central to the
theoretical purpose of the investigation. Zonneveld (2011) asked the question of
how small towns in New Zealand could manage the tensions between the
globalising influence of tourism and community desires to retain a sense of local
identity. He developed a theoretical model of how these different influences
might be expressed within a ‘tourism circuit’ (Figure 7.1). He then selected case
studies that expressed the different types of global/local interface within his
model – transit towns, gateway towns and destination towns – and used these
cases to examine the way in which small towns are already changing and to
undertake design experiments about how the tensions might be managed. The
use of a typology enabled selection of several contrasting cases that expressed
the critical relationships he was investigating in different contexts, and by
placing them within a broader theoretical model he was able to draw more
generally relevant conclusions.

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Figure 7.1
Theoretical cases – different types of small town on a tourism circuit (source: after Zonneveld 2011)

Another example of a critical case is provided by Bolleter (2009) in an

examination of landscape architecture practice in Dubai. The focus of the
investigation is the emerging typology of designed landscape in this rapidly
developing city state, which is widely regarded as a possible model for urbanism
across significant parts of Asia. The research addresses a question with wider
ramifications, which is what role should a professional charter have in shaping
the actions of practitioners? The particular case is critical because of the
apparent discrepancy between the types of design emerging from contemporary
landscape practice and the ideals of the International Federation of Landscape
Architects, as expressed in their charter. In a theoretically informed discipline,
such critical cases should arguably be the most dominant form of case study.

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COMPARING CASES
These examples of purposive cases all share a common feature, which is that
they each allow a particular type of relationship to be investigated and
compared. Gerring (2004) argues that the best case study design is that which
provides the most powerful understanding of variation – why one situation
differs from or is similar to another. Case study comparisons can be undertaken
at two levels (Figure 7.2). Within-case comparisons are typically used when
there is a single complex case being studied, and may be undertaken in several
ways: by applying multiple analyses to a complex case; by adopting multiple
theoretical perspectives across the case; or by undertaking several smaller case
studies embedded within a larger complex case. Cross-case comparison is
undertaken when the research design seeks to answer its questions by comparing
different cases. I will now examine these in turn.

Figure 7.2
Within-case and cross-case comparisons

Multiple analyses are a well established approach both within and beyond
landscape architecture case studies, and involve using different data collection
methods such as documentary research, participant observation and interviews
all focused upon the ‘same’ case. The advantage of using multiple data
collection methods is that each method is best suited to different types of data,
and so applying multiple methods can generate a greater diversity of information
and insight than use of a single method (Creswell 2014). However, the
combination of different types of data requires care. Researchers who seek to
maximise the objectivity of their work may use multiple methods as a form of
triangulation to achieve greater precision and certainty. Hence identification of a
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relationship between variables in a situation that is revealed with one method
would be regarded as being more reliable if the same relationship is also
revealed through other methods. However, researchers who regard research
findings as dependent in part upon the researcher’s involvement as an active
agent may see multiple analyses as providing a richer but not necessarily a more
precise outcome, as each technique may reveal a different aspect of reality –
depending on the assumptions. Hence the value in multiple methods may not be
in their combination (as in triangulation) but rather in the scope they offer to
raise questions of why there are differences between the findings from different
perspectives. This opens the possibility of multiple perspective analysis.
Multiple perspective comparisons are research approaches which apply more
than one conceptual or theoretical frame to a complex case. The key feature and
advantage of multiple perspective comparisons is that the different conceptual
perspectives or lenses may reveal a different interpretation of what is happening.
Comparison between the interpretations can have significant explanatory power
by allowing the researcher to ask which of these perspectives provides the most
compelling explanation, and how do the different explanations interrelate? A
classic textbook example of using different perspectives was Allison’s political
science investigation of the Cuban Missile Crisis (1969), where he interpreted
the decisions that were taken during the military and political confrontation
between the USA and USSR in the 1960s over the location of nuclear missiles in
Cuba. Allison applied three analytical perspectives in an attempt to understand
the complexities of the situation (Figure 7.3).

Figure 7.3
Multiple perspective analyses of a single complex case – two examples (source: after Allison 1969 and
Abbott 2008)

Multiple perspective analyses of single complex cases are not common in

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landscape architecture. One example is Abbott’s (2008) investigation of ways to
understand wilderness through design. The case he used was Fiordland – an
extensive wilderness area in south-west New Zealand, mostly National Park and
recognised as a United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization
(UNESCO) World Heritage Area. Abbott undertook a series of investigations
using different design based techniques – including mapping, waymarking,
equipment design – all intended to reveal and compare different ways in which
design can construct and deconstruct wilderness (Figure 7.3).
A third and more common approach to multiple analyses in landscape
architecture case study research is to undertake several smaller embedded case
studies within a single overall study, for example to investigate geographically
different parts of a complex landscape. In the prototypical case study of Lake
Taupo described above, the responses by landowners appeared to vary according
to which part of the catchment they were located within. It seemed that the social
legacy and land use history was a significant factor. Spicer therefore undertook
three micro-studies within the overall Lake Taupo case, focused upon different
parts of the catchment, embedded within the overall case, from which she was
able to compare and hence distil a more nuanced understanding of the overall
trends and patterns (Spicer et al. 2014) (Figure 7.4).

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Figure 7.4
Embedded geographical cases (source: Spicer et al. 2014)

Evidence from multiple cases is more compelling than single cases, as it

allows more comprehensive and robust comparisons (George and Bennett 2005;
Gerring 2007; Yin 2014). Multiple cases chosen purposively help us to adopt ‘an
outside view’ (Kahneman 2011). A recently published example of multiple cases
is Lenzholzer (2008), which compared eleven Dutch urban squares. Lenzholzer
was investigating the implications of a dominant design approach in post-World
War II design for urban microclimate, and selected eleven squares frequently
mentioned in the media for their lack of appeal. These cases were all chosen for
their shared characteristics, in a search for regular patterns.
Multiple cases are more often chosen to explore different dimensions. Gerring
(2007) identifies temporal and spatial variation as two fundamental descriptive
dimensions, which are also frequently used in landscape architecture for
selection of multiple cases. Butenschön and Säumel (2011), for example,
selected five parks in Berlin for their study of the relationship between cultural
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and ecological processes in planting choice and patterns. The parks are from two
different time periods (19th century and 20th century) and two different parts of
Berlin (Former East and West Berlin). In another example, Sinha (2010) selected
five types of park in Lucknow, India, to investigate the shifting ideologies and
changing aesthetics of memorial parks. She emphasised variation in time – with
two types that were developed in a colonial period, and three in a post-colonial
period. However, while space and time are useful points of reference, they do
not in themselves provide much information about the functional characteristics
of a situation. Steenbergen (2008) offers an alternative framework for stratified
sampling focused on design investigations, emphasising the importance of
context and the nature of the design object.
George and Bennett (2005) recommend use of typologies – the classification
of phenomena into types – as a way to conceptualise comparisons in a
theoretically informed way, and typology can be useful when designing both
within-case and cross-case comparisons. Petrow (2011), for example,
investigated the way landscape architecture can express the self-conception and
image of a city, and selected three cases of redevelopment in Germany based
upon a common design type – the waterfront. Hence the design type was
constant, and the variation was in the self-conception. In an investigation of
cultural adaption to microclimate in Christchurch, New Zealand, Tavares et al.
(2013) selected four cases according to the type of urban setting, which was
defined as a combination of two characteristics: place dynamics (established and
emerging) and spatial configuration (active social space and passive retreat
space) (Figure 7.5).

Figure 7.5
Cases based on types (source: after Tavares et al. 2013)

In each of the examples above, the selection of cases was the critical factor
that determined the value of the findings.

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MATCHING THE CASE(S) TO THE RESEARCH
QUESTION – AND HOW UNDERSTANDING
CASE STUDIES CAN HELP REFINE YOUR
RESEARCH QUESTION
How can these insights into the nature of case study methodology help in
developing a research proposal? As the preceding discussion illustrates, case
studies express a particular way of shaping an investigation. The choice of case
determines what data is collected, influences how findings can be analysed and
reported, and most significantly from a research perspective, determines how the
findings may be related to other cases and how they can contribute to the wider
theory of the discipline. At the same time, choosing to undertake a case-based
investigation helps to shape and sharpen your research question(s). In this
section I therefore examine the relationship between case study methodology
and the research question being asked.
There are several types of research question in landscape architecture for
which a case study approach is particularly well suited. These include: 1)
questions that relate to particular landscape settings; 2) questions of an
exploratory nature; 3) questions that seek in-depth understanding about
particular types of situation; and 4) questions that test or challenge theoretical
claims.
Landscape practice is (or has been hitherto) almost always focused on specific
landscapes – it deals with design and planning interventions and actions in
particular locations, by particular people, at particular times – both contemporary
and historical. These are by definition unique cases. As Francis (2001) has
shown, following a case study protocol provides a powerful organisational
framework for investigating questions focused upon such individual cases.
Given the nature of our discipline, it could therefore be argued that a case study
approach can be seen as a default methodological position for landscape
architectural research, in the absence of another more compelling approach. This
is, however, a starting point, not a conclusion, as it raises a further question for
the researcher. As Gerring (2007) points out, once a case is defined, it implicitly
raises the question, ‘what is this a case of?’ This in turn provides the potential for
comparison with other similar types of case, and hence the beginnings of
theoretical generalisation.

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 The second type of research question for which case studies are well suited
are questions of an exploratory nature, that seek to discover patterns and
potential relationships in a little understood aspect of the discipline. The reason
that cases are a preferred approach is that they enable the scope, content and
analytical approach to evolve during the investigation, in response to emerging
patterns and insights. Unlike many other research designs, the validity of case
study findings are not compromised by shifts in the methods or types of data
collected during the course of the study, and data collected at any stage can
contribute to the shaping of an overall interpretation of the situation. Hence if
your initial question is open rather than narrowly focused, a case study can
provide a robust design. Zonneveld’s (2011) investigation of small town
responses to global tourism addressed an exploratory question. However, just as
with a question that starts from a particular landscape, an exploratory case will
be more theoretically fruitful if the research question specifies the type of case
being investigated. In Zonneveld’s example, the use of a conceptual model of a
tourism circuit enabled the identification of different types of small town setting,
which could be compared. Hence exploratory research is not a-theoretical. To be
most conceptually useful, the choice of case should be purposive rather than
opportunist.
The third type of relevant question is well recognised in case study literature;
it highlights that case studies are particularly well suited to investigations that
add in-depth understanding to an emerging body of theory. The particular
contribution of the case study approach in this situation is the way it enables
multiple analyses of a situation, or multiple perspective analysis, or multiple
embedded cases, all giving both greater richness to the investigation, and
enabling within-case comparisons. For example, Spicer et al.’s (2014)
investigation of environmental cap and trade at Lake Taupo was able to drill
down into the complexity of the landscape setting and its social and cultural
legacy using multiple embedded case studies. As with exploratory cases,
however, the choice of case is critical in determining the value of an in-depth
investigation. Devoting extensive resources and time to a study that cannot be
compared or generalised is an extravagant use of the limited resources of the
discipline. And as with exploratory cases, the decision to adopt a case-based
design for in-depth analysis reflects attention back to the nature of the initial
research questions, encouraging the researcher to sharpen their focus and clarify
their rationale.
The fourth category of research questions well suited to case study are those
that aim to test or challenge theoretical claims or assumptions about complex
situations which cannot easily be investigated using experimental or quasi-
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experimental designs. Hoversten’s (2013) investigation of discursive moments in
alternative futures was this type of ‘testing’ question, as he was challenging the
assumption that the choices made in alternative futures planning are technical
rather than political. The topic is complex, and there are only limited instances
that can be investigated. His question was framed as a proposition and the
research design involved selection of contrasting expert and community-led
cases to test the proposition in two extreme situations.
In each of these examples, it is evident that selecting a case study design to
match a research question is a reflexive process – that is, while the first step may
be to say, ‘would a case study design be a good way to address my question, and
if so what type of case study?’, there is inevitably a second phase which asks
‘have I framed my question so that a case-based investigation will generate
useful new knowledge?’ Hence the type and choice of case once again comes to
the foreground in developing the research project. A second common feature of
all these types of question is highlighted by Gerring (2007) who makes the point
that case studies are better suited in general to investigation of situations where
the causal relationships are strong rather than weak – in other words, where it is
possible to draw conclusions based upon an holistic ‘whole of case’ view.

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DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION
The chapter objective has been to explain the methodological rationale for case-
based investigation and the implications of this for selection of cases used in
landscape architectural research. My intention has been to demonstrate to
researchers in landscape architecture how they might be more effective in the
way they incorporate case studies into their research strategies. I have briefly
reviewed the concept of a case study and described the current status of case-
based research in landscape architecture. Analysis of published research
indicates that case studies are emerging as a popular mode of research, but that
landscape architecture researchers take a largely pragmatic approach to case
studies, and frequently provide insufficient justification for the knowledge
claims they make. This highlights the need to pay increased attention to the
selection of cases.
The research design is the framework that determines what data to collect,
why and how. In case study research, the choice of case or cases is the critical
part of the design and is the key to creating generalisable knowledge of strategic
design value. Several ways to select cases have been reviewed – paradigmatic
(prototypical), extreme and critical – and these purposive categories each
provide a different theoretical basis for interpreting the findings. However, many
published landscape architecture cases are exemplars, chosen to demonstrate
how a theoretical approach may be applied, rather than to challenge a theoretical
proposition, and as such are biased to a tendency to confirm the researchers’
preconceived ideas. Shifting the emphasis in case study selection away from
attempts to demonstrate the veracity of theoretical statements towards research
designs that use purposive cases to challenge theoretical propositions has
potential to significantly strengthen the way the discipline develops, and to
enhance its credibility in the wider science and policy community.
The best case study design is that which provides the most powerful
understanding of variation, and this requires comparisons. Within-case
comparisons are typically used when there is a single complex case being
studied, and may involve multiple analyses, multiple theoretical perspectives, or
multiple embedded case studies within a larger complex case. Many cross-case
comparisons use geographical or temporal variation. Given the focus of
landscape architecture upon planned and designed landscapes, typology is a
particularly powerful way to frame multiple cases in such a way that theoretical
propositions about how to make effective design choices can be systematically
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tested and challenged.
The identification of the type of case under investigation is also central to
matching a case study design to the research question, and in reviewing four
types of research question well suited to a case study approach I have
highlighted the way that developing an appropriate design reflects questions
back upon how the research question itself is framed. This reminds us that case
study design for research purposes is not a routine matter but an integral part of
the creative and critical process of developing a productive and insightful
research project.
In addition to emphasising the importance of case selection, the review has
identified several opportunities to enhance the use of case study research in
landscape architecture: first, there is unrealised opportunity for systematic
comparative review of the already accumulative case-based knowledge in
landscape architecture: that is, to use established cases to provide evidence for
the long term outcomes of landscape architecture inspired actions. The growing
record of case studies in repositories such as the Landscape Architecture
Foundation, and LE:NOTRE Institute, and the cumulative record of peer
reviewed cases in the main journals of the discipline offer a major resource for
further comparative investigation. These cases offer a way for landscape
architecture researchers to build understanding of what types of design decision
have produced the best outcomes and to identify effective planning and design
strategies. The major limitation in seeking to draw new knowledge from already
completed case studies is their variable assumptions and opportunist coverage
(Ostrom 2007). However, the process may at least identify critical questions for
new case investigations.
A second significant opportunity for the discipline is to undertake new case
studies – with cases chosen purposively – in order to identify the types of design
that have proven to be effective in steering change down sustainable pathways in
different contexts and different policy regimes. Working in an applied discipline
– political science – with useful lessons for landscape architecture, George and
Bennett (2005) suggest paying particular analytical attention to the aspects of a
situation which offer significant choices to decision makers. Choices in a
complex situation and their relationship to outcomes can be identified through a
method of process tracing – tracking the decisions made and their consequences
for the project trajectory.
A major challenge in analysing the process biography of completed projects
through process tracing will be to backfill knowledge on critical decisions that
are not in the public record. This will require interviews with key decision
makers, and careful documentary investigation. Fortunately, historical research
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is one of the strongest areas of scholarship in landscape architecture.
One of the most widely recognised but least acknowledged truths about
expertise is that we learn most from our mistakes – yet researchers seldom
systematically investigate landscape architecture projects that failed, and the
reasons for failure. One notable exception is Kirkwood (1999) who used analysis
of failures in landscape construction as a powerful tool to improve detailed
design. Just as process tracing could help identify effective strategies, so it could
also identify typical mistakes, and thus help focus on new research questions, as
well as informing education and practice.
A particularly strong argument for decision makers is the counterfactual.
What might have happened, or might yet happen, if no decision is taken, or if a
different course of action is taken? Frequently the projection of the ‘do nothing’
option provides the strongest argument for action, by highlighting the wider
public policy goals that might be compromised by inaction. One of the major
strengths of the alternative futures planning approach (Shearer 2005) is the
ability to model and project outcomes depending upon a range of assumptions,
and hence show what difference might be made by different types of design and
planning intervention. If alternative futures projects were framed as cases with
wider theoretical significance they could contribute directly to the knowledge
base of the discipline, as well as informing particular communities.
In a similar way, considering cases as theoretically informed explorations of
possibilities can also inform and be integrated with the growing use of research
through design (Lenzholzer et al. 2013), and there is a need and opportunity for
research being undertaken by and through design to explore situations selected
as purposive cases that contribute directly to answering the critical questions of
our discipline.
A critical approach to case study selection therefore has potential to open up
rich lines of case-based research involving research through design, cases as
possibilities, learning from mistakes, and identifying the most effective design
strategies. There is also scope to undertake systematic analysis of the growing
archive of cases already published in peer reviewed journals or available through
organisations such as the Landscape Education Foundation and LE:NOTRE
Institute. Overall, however, the single most effective improvement that can be
made in the use of case studies in landscape architecture is to shift away from
seeing them as exemplars, by which a preconceived normative position can be
‘demonstrated’, towards theoretically informed selection of cases to build and
test theory about important design and planning relationships.

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SUGGESTED FURTHER READING
Creswell, J.W. ( 2014) Research Design: Qualitative, Quantitative and Mixed Method Applications, 4th ed.,
Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Flyvbjerg, B. ( 2006) ‘ Five misunderstandings about case study research’, Qualitative Inquiry, 12( 2), 219–
245.
Francis, M. ( 2001) ‘ A case study method for landscape architecture’, Landscape Journal, 20( 1), 15–29.
Ragin, C.C. and Becker, H.S., eds ( 1992) What is a Case? Exploring the Foundations of Social Inquiry,
New York: Cambridge University Press.
Swanborn, P. ( 2010) Case Study Research: What, Why and How?, Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Thomas, G. ( 2011) How to Do Your Case Study: A Guide for Students and Researchers, Thousand Oaks,
CA: Sage.
Yin, R.K. ( 2014) Case Study Research: Design and Methods, 5th ed., Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

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REFERENCES
Abbott, M. ( 2008) Designing wilderness as a phenomenological landscape: design-directed research
within the context of the New Zealand conservation estate (PhD), Lincoln University, available:
htt​p:/​/re​sea​rch​arc​hiv​e.l​inc​oln​.ac​.nz​/ha​ndl​e/1​018​2/1​026​?sh​ow=​ful​l (accessed 1 July 2016).
Allison, G.T. ( 1969) ‘ Conceptual models and the Cuban missile crisis’, American Political Science
Review, 63( 3), 689–718.
Bolleter, J. ( 2009) ‘ Para-scape: landscape architecture in Dubai’, Journal of Landscape Architecture, 4( 1),
28–41.
Butenschön, S. and Säumel, I. ( 2011) ‘ Between cultural and ecological processes: Historical plant use in
communal parks in Berlin, Germany’, Journal of Landscape Architecture, 6( 1), 54–67.
Creswell, J.W. ( 2014) Research Design: Qualitative, Quantitative and Mixed Method Applications, 4th ed.,
Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Deming, M.E. and Swaffield, S. ( 2011) Landscape Architectural Research: Inquiry, Strategy, Design,
Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley.
Flyvbjerg, B. ( 2006) ‘ Five misunderstandings about case study research’, Qualitative Inquiry, 12( 2), 219–
245.
Francis, M. ( 1999) A case study method for landscape architecture, final report to the Landscape
Architecture Foundation, Washington, DC, available: htt​ps:​//l​afo​und​ati​on.​org​/my​os/​my-​upl​oad​-
s/2​010​/08​/19​/ca​ses​tud​yme​tho​d.p​df (accessed 15 April 2015).
Francis, M. ( 2001) ‘ A case study method for landscape architecture’, Landscape Journal, 20( 1), 15–29.
Gerring, J. ( 2004) ‘ What is a case study and what is it good for?’, American Political Science Review, 98(
2), 341–354.
George, A.L. and Bennett, A. ( 2005) Case Studies and Theory Development in the Social Sciences,
Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
Gerring, J. ( 2007) Case Study Research: Principles and Practice, New York: Cambridge University Press.
Hoversten, M.E. ( 2013) Decision-making, values, and discursive moments in alternative futures landscape
planning (PhD), Lincoln University, available: htt​ps:​//r​ese​arc​har​chi​ve.​lin​col​n.a​c.n​z/b​its​tre​am/​-
han​dle​/10​182​/56​31/​Hov​ers​ten​_Ph​D.p​df;jsessionid=799AB236614AC271B04D2FFED4106C70?
sequence=3 (accessed 30 September 2015).
Kahneman, D. ( 2011) Thinking: Fast and Slow, London: Penguin.
Kirkwood, N. ( 1999) The Art of Landscape Detail: Fundamentals, Practices, and Case Studies, New York:
John Wiley.
Lenzholzer, S. ( 2008) ‘ A city is not a building: Architectural concepts for public square design in Dutch
urban climate contexts’, Journal of Landscape Architecture, 3( 1), 44–55.
Lenzholzer, S., Duchhart, I. and Koh, J. ( 2013) ‘ “Research through designing” in landscape architecture’,
Landscape and Urban Planning, 113, 120–127.
Ostrom, E. ( 2007) ‘ A diagnostic approach for going beyond panaceas’, Proceedings of the National
Academy of Sciences, 104( 39), 15181–15187.
Petrow, C.A. ( 2011) ‘ Hidden meanings, obvious messages: Landscape architecture as a reflection of a
city’s self-conception and image strategy’, Journal of Landscape Architecture, 6( 1), 6–19.
Popper, K.R. ( 1959) The Logic of Scientific Discovery, London: Hutchinson.
Roymans, N., Gerritsen, F., van der Heijden, C., Bosma, K. and Kolen, J. ( 2009) ‘ Landscape biography as
a research strategy: The case of the South Netherlands Project’, Landscape Research, 34( 3), 337–
359.
Shearer, A.W. ( 2005) ‘ Approaching scenario-based studies: Three perceptions about the future and
considerations for landscape planning’, Environment and Planning B: Planning and Design, 32(
1), 67–87.
Sinha, A. ( 2010) ‘ Colonial and post-colonial memorial parks in Lucknow, India: Shifting ideologies and

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 changing aesthetics’, Journal of Landscape Architecture, 5( 2), 60–71.
Spicer, A., Swaffield, S.R., Fairweather, J.R. and Moore, K. ( 2014) ‘ Environmental regulation, decision
networks and land change: A Taupo, New Zealand case’, in Global Land Project, eds.
Proceedings of the Global Land Project, 2nd Open Science Meeting, Berlin, 19–21 March, 78–
79.
Steenbergen, C. ( 2008) ‘ Composing Landscapes: Analysis, Typology, and Experiments for Design, Basel:
Birkhäuser.
Tavares, S.G., Swaffield, S.R. and Stewart, E. ( 2013) ‘ Sustainability, microclimate and culture in post-
earthquake Christchurch’, Land Environment and People Research Paper no. 19, Lincoln
University, available: htt​ps:​//r​ese​arc​har​chi​ve.​lin​col​n.a​c.n​z/b​its​tre​am/​han​dle​/10​182​/54​22/​LEa​P_r​-
p_1​9.p​df?​seq​uen​ce=​3 (accessed 30 September 2015).
Vicenzotti, V., Jorgensen, A., Qvistrom, M. and Swaffield, S. ( 2016) ‘ Forty years of Landscape Research’,
Landscape Research, htt​p:/​/do​i.o​rg/​10.​108​0/0​142​639​7.2​016​.11​560​70.
Yin, R.K. ( 2014) Case Study Research: Design and Methods, 5th ed., Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Yu, K., Lei, Z. and Dihua, L. ( 2008) ‘ Living with water: Flood adaptive landscapes in the Yellow River
Basin of China’, Journal of Landscape Architecture, 3( 2), 6–17.
Zonneveld, R. ( 2011) Lost in transitions: Staging global tourism in local small towns (PhD), Lincoln
University, available: htt​ps:​//r​ese​arc​har​chi​ve.​lin​col​n.a​c.n​z/h​and​le/​101​82/​454​3?s​how​=fu​ll
(accessed 30 September 2015).

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Chapter 8: Landscape biography

Jan Kolen, Hans Renes and Koos Bosma

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INTRODUCTION
Landscape biography is an approach that is often used both in practice and in
research for the purpose of analysing and exploring the history of a landscape. In
this chapter we present the background, conceptual principles and sources of
landscape biography as a means aimed at informing landscape design and
planning which researchers have developed for understanding landscapes
(Roymans et al. 2009; Bosma and Kolen 2010; Kolen et al. 2015a). Landscape
biography is particularly useful in cases where, for the purpose of considering
future landscape transformations, knowledge is needed about long-term
landscape changes, about regional and local heritage, and about historical
narratives of space and place. This chapter starts by explaining the rationale for
using landscape biography in landscape research. It then provides a conceptual
framework, followed by a description of principles and of methods, including
sources of information, data collection techniques and so on. Examples of
landscape biography application are discussed in more detail, and its potential
for the study of urban landscapes is explored.
Ideas about a ‘biography of landscape’ can be traced back to a variety of
different sources. Some of the first ideas appeared more than three decades ago.
In an inspiring essay, Samuels (1979), a geographer, introduced his ideas on
‘The biography of landscape’. In it he used the term ‘authored landscapes’ to
emphasise that all landscapes bear the imprint of people’s personal and
collective authorship. He argued that landscapes should not be seen as the
anonymous by-products of social and economic development but that landscape
research should treat each landscape as having its own specific biography. Later,
around the middle of the 1990s, and initially without reference to the earlier
ideas discussed in geography, the biography concept arose within the discourses
of cultural anthropology and landscape archaeology (Kopytoff 1986). Starting
around the turn of the twenty-first century, and with several ground-breaking
projects (some of which are presented below), landscape biography developed
into the interdisciplinary approach that it is today. A landmark application of
landscape biography took place in 2001 when it was defined as the basic concept
underpinning a large research programme of the Netherlands Organisation for
Scientific Research (NWO), under the heading ‘Protection and Development of
the Dutch Archaeological-Historical Landscape’. This programme was
interdisciplinary and, at the same time, aimed at a strong integration of landscape
research, heritage management and spatial planning.
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RATIONALE FOR USING LANDSCAPE
BIOGRAPHY IN LANDSCAPE RESEARCH
The last three decades have been an exciting period for landscape and heritage
studies in many ways. First, research has generated a wealth of new insights
about landscape history. Second, the history of landscape has become more
‘democratised’, with popular narratives, place-bound social memories and
academic interpretations of past landscapes being combined and frequently
included in public debates about the values of space and place. Third, awareness
is growing about the histories of landscapes and how these are best
conceptualised in complex ways, expanding beyond the simplistic and
monolithic reconstructions of linear chronologies that used to be common
practice. Instead, landscape researchers such as landscape archaeologists,
historical geographers, landscape ecologists, sociologists, cultural
anthropologists and others, have begun to reflect on landscape change in trans-
disciplinary ways and in terms of non-linear developments where past and
present (and perceptions of the future) mingle (see the chapters covering these
themes in Bell et al. 2011). In addition, landscape researchers need to handle
growing amounts of data generated by the ever wider number of disciplines
becoming involved in studies about landscape history and, at the same time,
employing an ever-growing arsenal of techniques. As landscape research and
design research have become multi-, inter- and trans-disciplinary (van der Valk
2010), landscape biography has developed as an analytical, explorative and
interpretative approach that works like an interface where different disciplines
can meet and combine their efforts and their methods in joint studies of
landscape history.
New developments are also happening at the interface of landscape and
heritage. Landscapes are increasingly valued as heritage while, at the same time,
the concept of heritage has also evolved. Formerly denoting a collection of
objects that had to be kept intact and shielded from the forces of modernisation,
‘heritage’ has now developed into a concept that incorporates a continuously
evolving environment, thereby referring to traces of change, dynamic reservoirs
of memory and place-bound stories. As a result, the old experts’ emphasis on
authenticity of material remains has given way to the inclusion of diverse
opinions and attitudes towards adaptations of landscapes and architecture to
facilitate new functions and to incorporate new memories and historical

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narratives. For landscape designers and urban planners heritage changed from a
precondition that limits or frames the designer’s creativity into a source of
inspiration, from a ‘ready-made’ chronicle of life and dwelling to a constantly
transforming palimpsest that carries the past with it in ever changing ways
(Fairclough 2003; Auclair and Fairclough 2015; see also Janssen et al. 2014a;
2014b).
These new developments are calling for new concepts, and for integrative
approaches and narratives with which the appreciation for old landscapes can be
connected to stakeholder participation, sustainable development and
considerations of social identity and quality of life. The landscape biography
approach seems well-attuned to meet such ambitions, since its aim is to bring
histories and memories of landscape and place to the attention of relevant
societal actors in an appealing way and to make good use of existing landscape
values in spatial plans and landscape designs for future development (Kolen and
Witte 2006).

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CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK
A number of paradigms existed and shifted during the periods of landscape
biography development mentioned above. When the approach was first
mentioned, during the 1970s, landscapes were thought of as absorbing parts of
the life histories of numerous persons and groups that build their livelihood in a
particular area. They were conceived of as living and dynamic documents that
include a biographical dimension for which the term ’authored landscape’ was
coined. According to Samuels (1979), this authorship takes shape in the
interdependence between what he described as ‘landscapes of impression’ and
‘landscapes of expression’. He defined the first as the internalised, imaginary
and utopian landscapes of, for example, personal experience or collective
planning doctrines, the second as the world of physical structures and forms that
are the concrete expression of those ideas and doctrines in the environment.
Physical landscapes of expression, such as the canonical gardens of the past or
the designed landscapes of the avant-garde may in turn be important inducement
and sources of inspiration for landscape experiences and appreciation. In this
way there is a continuing dialectic movement in which the environmental
experience and spatial structures constitute each other continuously. With his
new ’phenomenological’ perspective, emphasising the constructive interaction
between people and their environment, Samuels distanced his thoughts from
those of the former quantitative approaches hitherto dominant in human
geography.
During the 1990s, shortly after landscape archaeologists had conceived their
version of a biographical approach, for example when describing the life
histories of objects, land and landed property and so on, they started to think of
such ‘objects’ as having a long history of social transmission. In due course, the
‘objects’, including monuments and landscapes, not only ’gather’ stories and
information about their (temporary) owners and users, but in this way they also
were thought of as building a life history of their own. In the case of landscapes
such history manifests itself on a long timescale and, if lengthy and/or
impressive, in turn often influences the social and economic values of the
landscapes concerned or of specific parts thereof. We can think, for example, of
the memory value of places and landscapes for individuals, but also of the social
and economic values (and the brand identity) attached to landscapes with a
United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO)
World Heritage status.
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 Focusing on the temporal dimension of material culture, publications by
Appadurai (1988) and Kopytoff (1986) gained almost immediate popularity
among landscape archaeologists. Their studies increasingly concentrated on the
long-term changes in use, layout and perception of striking (pre)historic
monuments. Examples are the biographical reconstructions of archaeological
sites such as Vindolanda, the Roman fort on Hadrian’s Wall (Birley 2012),
Avebury (Pollard and Reynolds 2002), Evora in Portugal (Holtorf 2008), a
deserted medieval settlement in the German Rhineland (Kolen 1995) and the
late-prehistoric urn fields in the southern part of the Netherlands (Roymans
1995). In all these cases, the life histories of the monuments are followed up to
the present and attention is paid to their value and meanings for present-day
science, heritage management and society. These archaeological examples
illustrate how successive communities and generations have appropriated,
empowered and transformed places and monuments through time, and how they
ever and again gave them a functional and meaningful place in their
contemporary living environments, economies and memories.
From 2001, the landscape biography approach has been applied to
interdisciplinary regional studies. Paradigmatic innovations took place, this time
in a number of studies that were part of a large Dutch research programme
(Bloemers et al. 2010). In these studies the landscape biography approach
integrated, for the first time, research methods from different disciplines in a
way such that they were combined, forming a synthesised vision of the historical
development of, on present-day heritage values of, and also on the future life and
use of the landscapes in the regions concerned. In developing the approach these
research studies also exemplify a paradigmatic shift towards an increased
emphasis on human–land relationships and in also interpreting landscape
biography in terms of the impact that these relationships have on ecosystems and
rural land use (for which the term ‘historical ecology’ was coined; see Spek at al.
2015). A fascinating aspect is the intensive use of field names, which were seen
as a clue to the environmental perceptions of the local population in the past and
which also provided a theme for the intensive involvement of the present local
population (Elerie and Spek 2009).

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PRINCIPLES FOR USING LANDSCAPE
BIOGRAPHY AS A RESEARCH APPROACH
During the development of landscape biography as a research approach, five
operational principles have been established. Firstly, landscape biography
essentially is a ‘historicising’ approach, meaning that it aims at improving our
understanding of the making of the present-day landscape. This understanding
may be combined with more ‘constructivist’ research that highlights the multiple
ways in which the landscape is experienced, and also how its dimensions of the
past are constructed, for example by and in discourses within the different
groups that make up present-day societies. Landscapes are always contested to
some extent and historical studies reveal that contestation can be identified in the
present as much as in the past.
Secondly, landscape biography does not necessarily start from a conventional
chronological arrangement of the history of landscapes in discrete phases or
periods of use. Rather, the development of the human-made landscape is
understood as a continuum or succession of transformations, in which the past is
– consciously as well as subconsciously – experienced and processed in ever
changing ways. Processes of remembering and forgetting have constantly been
important formative principles in the design of our living space. To the extent
that landscape archaeologists and historians can reconstruct past processes,
societies have always appeared to be fascinated by places and landmarks in their
environment which they knew, or felt intuitively, had survived for many
generations. In some cases this fascination has even led to the deliberate
development of large-scale memorial landscapes, such as the burial landscapes
(barrow complexes and urn fields) of the Neolithic, Bronze and Iron Ages (such
as Salisbury Plain in England) and the memorial landscapes of the First and
Second World War (Ypres, the Somme Valley, the Normandy beaches, etc.).
The ways in which prehistoric and historic communities have built their
existence in landscapes that were full of reminders of earlier generations, and the
multiple ways in which they (re)used those traces from the past, provide new
insights in the historical layering of landscapes, both past and present (Meinig
1979).
Thirdly, landscape biography employs no discipline-specific or sectoral
method alone, but aims at the combined use of archaeological, geographical,
historical, social, architectural and other methods and sources. Landscape

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biographers also seek collaboration with landscape designers and urban planners.
Fourthly, landscape biography starts from a ‘dwelling perspective’ on the
landscape (Ingold 2000). Therefore, an important field of interest is how local
communities have, through time, expressed something of themselves, their ideas
and their identities in the landscapes they occupied, used and reshaped, and how
they (conversely) derived their identity and existence from the landscape as
‘formative agent’. This shows how the ‘hardware’ and ‘software’ of landscapes
and regions have mutually influenced and shaped each other through time. Not
only does the community with its corporate identity, but also the individual with
his or her idiosyncratic personality take part in this process of landscape making.
An important place within landscape biography is therefore given to the
‘authorship’ of landscapes, elaborating on Samuels’ concept of ‘authored
landscapes’ (see above).
Fifthly, landscape biography aims at making historical research and reflection
relevant and productive for current issues of designing, planning and heritage
management. As landscape biography does not define a sharp boundary between
past and present, contemporary heritage practices are also studied from or
incorporated into landscape biography projects. The interaction of interest
groups with the past in the landscape is an integral part of the spatial conditions
of communities and, hence, of spatial transformations. Heritage is always
human-made and value-laden and processes of cultural transmission in the
landscape are inseparable from the construction of memories and identities.

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SOURCES AND METHODS
As landscape biography puts the focus on an integrative, long-term perspective
of landscape changes, it relies on a large and varied set of historical,
environmental and other sources as data to inform studies about the diverse ways
in which communities have interacted with their natural and cultural
environments through time. Researchers may want to start by looking into
’conventional’ sources, such as data on soils and soil properties, on
geomorphology, and also might include elevation models, data on vegetation and
land use and data on infrastructure (e.g. ancient road and water systems), on
settlement dynamics and on the emergence and development of cities and urban
networks, of industrial and post-industrial transformations, etc. (for more
information on sources and data, see e.g. Kolen et al. 2015a; Spek et al. 2015).
The next step includes linking geographical, ecological and other physical-
material data to region-specific knowledge on land use practices, on forms of
social organisation and cultural values, and other social and cultural knowledge.
For this reason, landscape biography also makes use of less conventional sources
that have been explored only sporadically in the study of landscape change so
far, such as place-bound narratives (oral history), field names (Elerie and Spek
2010; Kolen 2015), local memories (van Veldhoven 2015; Sooväli-Sepping
2015), ego-documents – such as diaries and photo albums (Elings 2015), maps,
landscape paintings and prints (Ronnes 2015), sources that inform about the uses
and perceptions of sound, smell and (artificial) light in past landscapes (see e.g.
Ekirch 2006), and – in the case of twentieth-century landscapes – novels, films
and documentaries (cf. Koren 2015). This information can be found in private
collections, libraries and museum collections, but also in governmental archives
as official institutes have often been involved in knowledge development, policy
research and decision-making on these themes in the past.
By synthesising physical, social and cultural data it becomes possible to try to
reconstruct the often idiosyncratic social and environmental contexts that set the
agenda for human-nature exchanges and for the emergence of characteristic
biotopes, such as human-influenced wetlands, fenlands, forests and meadow
systems, as well as the knowledge and exploitation systems that sustained these
biotopes (Huijbens and Pálsson 2015; Kolen 2015; Purmer 2015). In order to
gain a deeper understanding of these and other aspects of change, landscape
biographers focus on, for example, the impact of religious beliefs and religious
transformations on the built environment and on the ordering, use and perception
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of space and place (Kolen in press; Roymans et al. 2009), the political and social
histories of landed property and the changing cultural appreciation of the
landscape heritage by people through time (Roymans et al. 2009; Papmehl-
Dufay 2015; Gillings and Pollard 2015; Holtorf 2015; van der Laarse 2015).
Methodologically, therefore, landscape biography does not primarily entail the
morphogenetic or retrospective analysis of present-day landscapes, as done in
traditional (and still useful) historical landscape assessments and applied
historical geography projects. Instead, it focuses on the multi-dimensional
(cultural, social and economic) aspects of landscape change within a certain
period or the ‘layerdness’ of landscape at specific moments in time,
understanding ‘layerdness’ as much as the outcome of memory-informed reuse
and experience as physical and patterned overlays (Renes 2015). As in other
approaches to landscape assessment and historical reconstruction, subsequent
generations of maps and other cartographic documents are considered important
sources in order to fulfil this exercise, although maps in landscape biography are
seen as much as representations of ancient world views and spatial perceptions
as they are treated as documents of past physical realities (e.g. Huijbens and
Pálsson 2015). Although landscape biography emphasises the importance of an
integrative approach to landscape, it does not strive, of course, to reach
completeness. As a rule, Landscape Biographies select specific sets of places or
focus on particular ecosystems, buildings, landscape sections or types of
transformation, such the religious or political ordering and use of a specific area
(for examples see Kolen et al. 2015a). More detailed and project-specific
information on methods and sources are discussed in the examples below.

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EXAMPLES OF RESEARCH USING THE
LANDSCAPE BIOGRAPHY APPROACH

The Boerenverstand project in the Vecht region near Utrecht, the

Netherlands

Assignment and research question

In the project Boerenverstand (‘common sense’, the Dutch term could be
translated as ‘farmers’ wit’), landscape designers were commissioned by local
and regional governments to enhance the recognisability of a former rural area
by designing gates and fences that evoke images of the past and a sense of
regional identity. The traditional fences that are found in the rural landscape
along the river Vecht near Utrecht, the Netherlands were studied (Christiaansen
and Montens 2009). Wooden fences and gates, constructed by local carpenters or
the farmers themselves, are characteristic features of the Western Netherlands
fenlands. In recent decades many of these have been replaced by mass-produced
metal versions that last longer and need less maintenance. The aim of the study
was to answer the question of how to reconstruct the partly forgotten practice of
fence making. The reason for this study was that the disappearance of the
wooden fences and gates makes the region appear more monotonous and – as the
commissioners of the project stated – the landscape loses some of its charm.
Information was needed on how to design a present-day version of the wooden
gates, in order to re-invest the landscape with a nostalgic value and in this way to
make the region more recognisable for the many visitors who cross this
countryside on foot or bicycle.

Methods and materials

The landscape biography approach was used by landscape designers Krijn
Christiaansen and Cathelijne Montens to study the practice of fence making
which was once characteristic of a farmer’s daily work in the pastureland.
Starting with field reconnaissance and using a recording system developed for
the task, the researchers first described and photographed surviving old fences.
Then local farmers were interviewed and asked to describe their memories about
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these landscape elements. In addition, timber planks that were stored in sheds
and elsewhere on the farm were described and documented with museum-like
precision, as these apparently were also the ‘relics’ of the old practice of fence
construction – stored to be used some time in the future for maintenance
activities. Interviews were recorded and filmed; information about fences and
planks (photographs, descriptions, memories) was included in a separate
catalogue. Landscape biography was thus used as an exploratory tool to
highlight a practice from the recent past that was typical for both the landscape
and the farmer’s work and to shed light on the memories and stories
‘surrounding’ this practice in relation to the dynamic life histories of the fences
themselves.

Results
The interview contents revealed how a rich corpus of memories and anecdotes
exists, not only about the fences, gates and planks themselves, but also about the
way these were built and repaired. The fences turned out to be much more than
functional pivots in the agrarian landscape and the planks to be much more than
simple building materials. In a nutshell, people told the story of life and work on
farmyard and farmland over the years. Plank ‘KS P1’, for example, was a 250
year old former schoftbalk, a timber cross beam that was used to tie cows to, and
‘KB P19’ a’plank of a sun blind that was later used as banner on a carrier cycle
in a Queen’s Birthday procession, with the text: auxiliary service of the future,
helps earth, air and water’. In some cases, the gates or planks helped farmers to
remember occasions that happened almost half a century earlier in and around
the farm. These memories were, moreover, filled with colourful people that had
lived and worked in this landscape many decades ago:
[this plank was] part of the lower end of a freight car that was bought somewhere during the
1950s or 1960s from people who went door-to-door selling wood. These people later started firms
in second-hand wood and metal, such as Blauwe Bertus on the Horstermeer, Nelis van den Berg
(you recognise his house by the wooden shoe beside the door) in Muiden and Kroon in
Kortenhoef
(plank ‘CD P87’).

These results showed that ‘biographies’ could be written of the fences and
planks, comparable with those presented by the anthropologists Kopytoff and
Appadurai in their seminal book already referred to (Appadurai 1988). The
histories of the gates and fences were apparently connected to the life histories
of the people who made the farmland into what it is today and in this sense were
considered repositories of beloved landscape memories.
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 In addition, the memories collected by the researchers also clearly illustrated
the daily management practices in farmyard and landscape. These practices are
reminiscent of a concept described by Lévi-Strauss (1962) as bricolage. In the
distinction he made between different ways of production, bricolage is far away
from mass production (think of the modern steel gates). The bricoleur
improvises and uses materials that are readily available. In the process,
craftsmanship and inventiveness convert old elements into something new and
functional. Process and materials are as important as the final product. The
wooden fences and gates of the Vecht region mirrored, par excellence, the
farmers’ talent to improvise, even when they, pragmatic as they are, don’t reject
the convenient steel mass-produced gates.

Outcome
The knowledge obtained by applying the landscape biography approach helped
to decide against developing a new concept for imposing wooden fences and
gates on the landscape. Instead, from ‘story-rich’ planks from the storage barns
of the farms, the designers selected materials for a series of new fences and gates
that were made in the old way. The wooden gates were coated with black
polyurethane, which not only conserves the old wood, but also accentuates the
silhouette of the gates in the landscape. Thus, the new gates are the result of a
slightly paradoxical design and production process that we can best describe as
‘imitated bricolage’. As well as the designs, the research resulted in the
revitalisation of this rural practice which was taken up again by enthusiastic
farmers.

‘The Limes nowadays – A biography’ (Central Netherlands)

Assignment and research question

‘The Limes nowadays – A biography’ is a study that focused on the remains of
the former Roman frontier along the river Rhine (Berkers and van Stiphout
2009). Since its construction the long linear border zone (the Limes) has
undergone a process of urbanisation. It runs through the urban networks of the
Randstad and the Arnhem-Nijmegen metropolitan regions, is locally intersected
by busy transport routes and alternates with rivers and fragments of agrarian
landscapes and nature reserves. The research question was: how might it be
possible to reconstruct the numerous transformations of the Limes landscape
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through time and to visualise the layered historical dimension of that landscape
to be appreciated in the present?

Methods and materials

For the aim of assessing the historical change of the Limes landscape, landscape
biography was used to map the historical layeredness of this landscape up to the
present day. Quantification of temporal change and spatial discontinuities
formed part of this, as well as the analysis of historical and archaeological maps
and data.
The quantitative mapping procedure was combined with field investigations.
The whole Dutch stretch of the Limes was divided into sections (or legs)
surveyed in a single day and was covered on foot and partly by boat without
concessions to obstacles in the actual landscape. High fences around industrial
estates, watercourses, houses and private gardens were crossed. In this way, the
contrasts and discontinuities in the modern Limes landscape could be confronted
with the continuity shown on the maps and the (romanticised) reconstructions of
the archaeologists. Contrasts are not only found at a regional level, but also at
the micro level in local textures and stratigraphy. Where the existence of gravel
in the soil still betrays the old course of the Limes road, the surface is now
covered with concrete, shell rubble, stone pavement and traces of ploughing. The
daily legs were covered by teams of changing composition, consisting of
designers, administrators, archaeologists and heritage specialists who, in the
field, searched for dialogues with residents and other users of space. The aim of
the daily legs was always twofold. They served to collect and exchange
knowledge about the Limes landscape, and to search for opportunities for
designing the Limes landscape of today. Returning to some of the spots visited,
in order to check any local impact of the exchange of knowledge and stories,
was also part of the research.

Results
It was impressive to realise that the Dutch part of the Limes road was 152.99 km
long and in Roman times took a normal person six to eight days to travel the
whole length. For the researchers it was not only important to learn how the
Limes appeared in the river landscape of 2000 years ago, but also how it has
been transformed intensively since then. The road, for example, is nowadays
divided into over 5665 fields, 3722 landowners (most of them private) and 39

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villages and towns. It now takes us, on foot, much longer (eighteen days) than
during the Roman period to cover the distance. And, not to forget, 34.18 km of
the Limes road now lies in areas with planned developments.
As a result of conducting the study it could be seen how the Limes had, in
some instances, been ‘woken up’ by the collecting and sharing of knowledge,
stories and memories during the study walks, as they led to more-or-less
spontaneous and apocryphal design actions. The final study publication
mentioned some examples, such as a farmer in the village of Pannerden who
created a footpath over his land exactly on the site of the Limes road and a plan
developed by the owner of a brick factory to make stones with Roman
inscriptions. In this sense, landscape biography generated a (spatial) process by
evoking the past and initiating new and experimental design practices on a local
scale. The main strength of the Limes road, however, according to the designers,
remains its mysterious invisibility (van Stiphout 2009).

Outcome
The designers who conducted the study decided, on the basis of their research
results, not to make concrete design proposals. Rather, based on the landscape
biography study, the suggestion was made to delay developing definitive
designs.

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LANDSCAPE BIOGRAPHY OF URBAN
LANDSCAPES
In his essay cited earlier, Samuels (1979) mainly used examples of urban
landscapes to illustrate his ideas. For Samuels, the principle of ‘authorship’ can
be read perfectly from the urban space of large metropolitan landscapes such as
New York or Shanghai. In explains how the authors of the urban landscape are
not simply planners or architects or the urban elite of entrepreneurs. For the real
authors of the urban space we must look at the social practice of people’s
everyday life in the street. There we meet ‘the ordinary practitioners’ who really
move through the town and thereby embody an elementary spatial experience:
‘Wandersmänner … whose bodies follow the thicks and thins of an urban “text”
they write without being able to read it’ (de Certeau 1984, p.93). Here the town
presents itself not as a space that is planned and carefully designed in advance,
but as a wrinkled world that is ‘remade’ over and over again by the routines and
experiments of residents and visitors.
The core question to be answered by applying the landscape biography
approach to studying urban landscapes is how day-to-day social practices,
interventions in the physical environment, spatial perceptions and official plans
might influence each other and ultimately bestow form and meaning to urban
areas. One example addressing this question is a study investigating successive
transformations of urban landscapes in the south-eastern part of the Dutch
province of Brabant since 1920 (Janssen 2006). Brabant-city (Brabantstad in
Dutch) is the unofficial name for the urban network of which the line of cities in
the region (Breda, Tilburg, Eindhoven, Helmond and Den Bosch) forms the
backbone.
The main research question was: how could this network conurbation develop
so quickly in a region where the population traditionally identifies itself with the
values and ideals typical of the Catholic countryside? According to the study, the
answer lies – paradoxically – in a strongly developed fear of the metropolis and
a forced contact with the advancing urban culture felt by the locals at the time; in
other words, the answer lies in a collectively shaped common mentality. During
the 1920s and 1930s, among regional administrators, a fear arose that the
unplanned growth of towns would lead to an unworkable spatial structure and
one that would become a threat to harmonious Catholic life in all the villages
surrounding the cities. Active planning was therefore seen as a necessity, but the

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evidence-based approach of official town planners collided with what politicians
and administrators had in mind. The urbanists preferred the town over the
countryside, whereas the administrators kept clinging on to the principle of
subsidiarity. The regionalist movement Brabantia Nostra, consisting of
prominent intellectuals and writers of undisputed Roman Catholic background,
that presented the cities as places of doom and as a source of devaluations and
immorality was very influential in spreading this view among the regional
population. The Catholic rural ideal remained dominant after the Second World
War, even when it became clear that the more than 1.2 million inhabitants of
Brabant in 1950 (as against slightly less than 600,000 in 1900) could not
possibly be distributed amongst small villages. A policy of dispersal was chosen.
New urban areas should be the size of a parish of 6000 people and the church
would be the undisputable religious and social focal point. The result of this
policy, together with other measures such as the well-reasoned spreading of
industry over the region, was exactly the opposite of what the administrators
originally aimed at: a rapid and large-scale urbanisation of the entire Brabant
countryside.
This example illustrates what it takes for the landscape biography approach to
be successful, when applied to help understanding of the history of urban
landscapes, because ‘authorship’ in urban landscapes is historically complex.
Urban transformations tend to take shape in complex interactions between
personal motivations and shared cultural values, and between existing physical
structures and the practices and dynamics of daily life, in which each actor could
be considered a true author of urban space. How these interactions actually
evolved in particular cases is an important issue for urban planners and
landscape designers operating in these urban settings today, and landscape
biography has proven to be a suitable exploratory method for research into those
cases.

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LANDSCAPE BIOGRAPHY: THE NEXT
DEVELOPMENTS
The landscape biography approach will, with every application, continue to help
researchers integrate methods from a variety of fields. What is more, landscape
biography has been and will continue to be part of the way heritage and historic
landscapes are managed.
Digital facilities and geospatial technologies have developed recently that are
well suited to support researchers wishing to apply the landscape biography
approach and to use landscape biography for synthesising findings obtained by
employing methods from different fields. Where diverse quantitative and
qualitative data sets are used, as part of a landscape biography these might best
be organised by means of so-called spatial data infrastructures (SDI). An SDI is
an infrastructural facility for combining, exploring and exchanging large
amounts of digital data and multidisciplinary information about the history and
heritage of landscapes and for making new connections and comparisons by
cross-cutting existing boundaries between different disciplines, time periods and
geographical areas. SDIs function as coherent systems of digital data and
information, agreements, standards, technology (hardware, software and
electronic communication) and knowledge, providing the different users with the
combinations of information they need within their specific research and design
frameworks. At the core of an SDI lies the technical infrastructure of services,
varying from data viewing to download and more complex processing services.
On top of these services applications can be built with which users, with
different research questions, objectives and ‘geo-information literacy’ levels can
perform their research tasks. SDIs have been used in landscape biography
projects within the framework of the European Union (EU) FP7 HERCULES
project, more particularly for the Dutch river landscape, the Uppland area in
Sweden and Vooremaa in Estonia (Kolen et al. 2015b). SDIs that have been
constructed in landscape biography projects can be used as a sound empirical
and interpretative basis for geographic information system (GIS)-based dynamic
models (DMs) and agent-based models (ABMs). These models reconstruct and
visualise the dynamic landscape changes in the past in a specific area, taking into
account both region-specific changes and more general trends in land use, and
both economic and social/cultural transformations.
It has been proposed that SDIs and models for landscape biography be used

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more intensively in digitised versions of geodesign (Steinitz 2012). Following a
series of steps, the first step entails a description of the selected area in the form
of representation models which contain the geographical and landscape data
upon which the regional study relies. This is followed by an analysis of the
processes that currently operate in the area (urbanisation, erosion, increasing
tourism, etc.), and, subsequently, by evaluation models, change models, impact
models and decision models. The landscape biography approach, highlighting
the historical background and long-term character of landscape change, as well
as the often prolonged impact of decisions taken in the distant past, has an
obvious place in the geodesign framework. The same holds for detailed
information on heritage values and how these (may) influence current social
values, spatial developments and land use. Therefore, landscape biography and
geodesign would, if applied in concert, mutually reinforce each other.
An important step in this direction is the recent development of digital cultural
biography or DCB. This is a digital tool that acts as a foundation for the
application of knowledge exchange tools in landscape biography projects, such
as SDI, as well as for assessing the value of such tools in specific design
contexts. Exchange tools are used to improve the exchange of multidisciplinary
information and to stimulate dialogue between different stakeholders in
landscape biography projects, including future-oriented urban planners and
landscape designers, past-oriented archaeologists and historians, as well as local
citizens and private enterprises. Empowering the dialogue between these various
stakeholders allows for better-informed decisions leading to more sustainable
landscape plans. The value of DCB as a digital exchange and decision making
tool has been explored in a couple of studies, for example by a multidisciplinary
team of archaeologists, architects and urban planners in the historical
neighbourhood of Testaccio in Rome, Italy, and, by experimenting with digital
landscape biographies in a study investigating the eastern part of Brabant in the
Netherlands. In the latter case, after testing the usefulness and workability of the
resulting Biografie van de Zandstad website it became apparent that designers
generally prefer digital biographies that allow ample possibilities for making
creative associations, all the while cross-cutting periods, areas and disciplines.
At the same time historians and heritage students generally seem to prefer well-
structured databases with predefined chronologies, geographical locations and
source-classifications. New versions of the DCB, such as the recent Testaccio
version, may help to bridge this divide.
Landscape biography has contributed a lot to help heritage management in
changing to adopt a culture of profit (van der Laarse 2005; Frijhoff 2007; Eerden
et al. 2009; van der Zande and During 2009; Janssen et al. 2014b). During the
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nineteenth and twentieth centuries, a whole corpus of laws, treaties and formal
institutions was established, designed for the protection and survival of
antiquities, historic buildings and landscapes. The care for this collection (a term
that sometimes can be taken literally, see Thurley 2013) of ‘monuments of art
and history, nature and culture’ was seen as a necessary counterweight for
modernisation and industrialisation. In this context the heritage sector cultivated
a ‘culture of loss’. The primary driving force was the fear of losing valuable
buildings, historic landscapes and archaeological sites. Heritage management
meant a constant fight against damage and deterioration which, during the post-
war period, was particularly caused by urbanisation of the countryside,
modernisation of the city centres and the large-scale reconstruction of rural
landscape for modern mechanised agriculture.
All this changed during the 1990s. Although legal protection and preservation
are still primary aims of heritage management, society has new demands from
the past that require more dynamic solutions. Heritage plays a constructive role
in the creative industry (for example the redevelopment of industrial heritage),
the rise of tourism and recreation (leisure landscapes) and the reshaping of urban
regions. In this context, ‘heritage’ no longer refers to isolated historic buildings
and archaeological sites, but includes complete landscapes and urban structures.
The heritage sector is increasingly characterised by a ‘culture of profit’, one that
leaves behind (perhaps even too much) the old feelings of threats and losses, as
can be seen, for example, in the Kassel Bergpark Wilhelmshöhe, particularly
after its designation as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. In a number of
European countries plans were already developed before 1990 to integrate
historic buildings and old industrial landscapes into new spatial transformations
and regional plans. A benchmark project was the Internationale Bauaustellung
(International Building Exhibition) Emscher Park in the German Ruhr Area. The
area now attracts more than half a million visitors annually. Other examples
include derelict mining and industrial areas such as Nord-Pas-de-Calais in
France, the Walloon region in Belgium and the South Wales mining region, all
of which also chose their heritage as the core of a new regional identity. Further
examples come from England, Denmark and Italy and other European countries.
Everywhere in Europe, lieux de mémoire, industrial monuments, ancient
buildings and historic landscapes were deployed for the revitalisation of rural
and urban landscapes over the past twenty years (Nota Belvedere 1999; Saris et
al. 2008; Kolen 2008).
All these examples show that modern heritage management is mainly about
managing change, in which aspects of economic importance, cultural value
production and social vitality are inseparable. That of course also demands
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responses from the scientific disciplines that claim landscape and heritage as
their fields of research. While (traditional) morphological approaches succeeded
in generating a large corpus of information and data on regional landscapes, it is
the landscape biography approach that helps researchers to understand better the
larger spatial, historic and social contexts. What landscape designers are looking
for is inspiration such as can be derived from stories about the role of people in
their environment, about long-term processes, about the mechanisms behind
stability and change and so on. In landscape biography the landscape is not
simply considered as the backdrop to human action or a pre-given environment
for the people living in it, but as the historically grown and meaningfully
constituted habitat of people. In this habitat, the landscape is ‘a chronicle of life
and dwelling’, as Ingold (2000) put it. According to him the landscape ‘unfolds
the lives and times of predecessors who, over the generations, have moved
around in it and played their part in its formation. To perceive the landscape is
therefore to carry out an act of remembrance’ (p.189).
In this chapter we have seen that the chronicle of life and dwelling has always
been and still is very dynamic, being constantly rewritten, not least by landscape
designers and urban planners. For them to do their task in a better prepared way,
landscape biography is designed as a research approach for exploring the
memories of place as well as for localising unexpected and deep histories that
may contribute to the understanding of the ways in which human space and
place has come about. By following this route, opportunities are created to
present an area, such as a region or a city quarter, by means of varied and
inspirational images of the past. These images are more informative than simply
taking account of the historical icons and canons that appear (too) often as
advertised in place promotion and regional marketing and that used to be the
sole content of research on landscape history in the past.

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
An earlier version of this chapter was published in Kolen et al. (2010). Recently,
the ideas were extended in Kolen et al. (2015a).

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SUGGESTED FURTHER READING
The term ‘landscape biography’ was introduced by the American geographer
Marwyn Samuels to express the fact that the landscape cannot be understood
properly in isolation from the life histories of all those people who – over the
centuries – have shaped and reshaped it as a meaningful and dynamic
palimpsest: Samuels, M.S. (1979) ‘The biography of landscape: Cause and
culpability’, in Meinig, D.W., ed. The Interpretation of Ordinary Landscapes,
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 51–88.
In the early 1990s the concept was rediscovered, partly autonomously, by
archaeologists who applied the anthropological concept of the ‘biography of
things’ to the history of place, land and landscape:
Holtorf, C. (1998) ‘The life-history of megaliths in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern (Germany)’, World
Archaeology, 30, 23–38.
Kolen, J. (1995) ‘Recreating (in) nature, visiting history: Second thoughts on landscape reserves and their
role in the preservation and experience of the historic environment’, Archaeological Dialogues,
2(2), 127–159.
Kopytoff, I. (1986) ‘The cultural biography of things: Commoditization as process’, in Appadurai, A., ed.
The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective, Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 64–91.
Roymans, N. (1995) ‘The cultural biography of urnfields and the long-term history of a mythical
landscape’, Archaeological Dialogues, 2(1), 2–24.
After several critical reformulations of the concept and through a large number
of regional case studies, landscape biography has now developed into a broadly
applied tool for landscape research, connecting landscape history with current
issues of interpretation, experience and design, both in Europe and in other parts
of the world, see: Kolen, J., Renes, J. and Hermans, R., eds. (2015) Landscape
Biographies: Geographical, Historical and Archaeological Perspectives on the
Production and Transmission of Landscapes, Amsterdam: Amsterdam
University Press.

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REFERENCES
Appadurai, A., ed. (1986) The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective, Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Auclair, E. and Fairclough, G., eds. (2015) Theory and Practice in Heritage and Sustainability: Between
Past and Future, Abingdon: Routledge.
Bell, S., Sarlöv Herlin, I. and Stiles, R., eds. (2011) Exploring the Boundaries of Landscape Architecture,
London: Routledge.
Berkers, M. and van Stiphout, M., eds. (2009) Limesweg, Amsterdam: Architectura & Natura.
Birley, R. (2012) Vindolanda: A Roman Frontier Fort on Hadrian’s Wall, Stroud: Amberley Publishing.
Bloemers, T., Alders, G., Van Heeringen, R., Kok, M., van Londen, H., Theunissen, L., Vos, P. and
Pálsson, G. (2010) ‘From Oer-IJ estuary to metropolitan coastal landscape: Assessing and
preserving archaeological-historical resources from 4000 years of living between land and water’,
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Heritage Paradox: Protection and Development of the Dutch Archaeological-Historical
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erfgoed, Nijmegen: Uitgeverij Vantilt.
Christiaansen, K. and Montens, C. (2009) Boerenverstand, Utrecht: VBK Uitgevers.
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Praktijkboek cultuurhistorie en ruimtelijke ordening, Utrecht: Matrijs.
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Nationaal landschap Drentsche Aa, Utrecht: Matrijs.
Elerie, H. and Spek, T. (2010) ‘The cultural biography of landscape as a tool for action research in the
Drentsche Aa National Landscape (Northern Netherlands)’, in Bloemers, T., Kars, H., van der
Valk, A. and Wijnen, M., eds. The Cultural Landscape & Heritage Paradox: Protection and
Development of the Dutch Archaeological-Historical Landscape and Its European Dimension,
Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 83–114.
Elings, A. (2015) ‘De Loowaard: Een uiterwaard als ideaalbeeld van het verleden’, in Kolen, J., Ronnes, H.
and Hermans, R., eds. Door de lens van de landschapsbiografie: Een nieuwe kijk op de
geschiedenis en het erfgoed van landschappen, Leiden: Sidestone Press, 221–246.
Fairclough, G. (2003) ‘Cultural landscape, sustainability and living with change?’, in Teutonico, J.M. and
Matero, F., eds. Managing Change: Sustainable Approaches to the Conservation of the Built
Environment, Proceedings of the 4th annual US/ICOMOS International Symposium,
Philadelphia, April 2001, Los Angeles, CA: Getty Publications, 23–46, available:
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Frijhoff, W. (2007) Dynamisch erfgoed: Heeft de cultuurgeschiedenis toekomst?, Amsterdam: SUN.
Gillings, M. and Pollard, J. (2015) ‘Authenticity, artifice, and the druidical temple of Avebury’, in Kolen,
J., Renes, J. and Hermans, R., eds. Landscape Biographies: Geographical, Historical and
Archaeological Perspectives on the Production and Transmission of Landscapes, Amsterdam:
Amsterdam University Press, 117–142.
Holtorf, C. (2008) ‘The life-history approach to monuments: An obituary?’, in Goldhahn, J., ed. Gropar &
monument: En vänbok till Dag Widholm, Kalmar: University of Kalmar, 411–427.
Holtorf, C. (2015) ‘What future for the life-history approach to prehistoric monuments in the landscape?’,
in Kolen, J., Renes, J. and Hermans, R., eds. Landscape Biographies: Geographical, Historical
and Archaeological Perspectives on the Production and Transmission of Landscapes,
Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 167–181.

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Huijbens, E.H. and Pálsson, G. (2015) ‘The marsh of modernity: The bog in our brains and bowels’, in
Kolen, J., Renes, J. and Hermans, R., eds. Landscape Biographies: Geographical, Historical and
Archaeological Perspectives on the Production and Transmission of Landscapes, Amsterdam:
Amsterdam University Press, 49–70.
Ingold, T. (2000) The Perception of the Environment: Essays on Livelihood, Dwelling and Skill, London:
Routledge.
Janssen, J. (2006) Vooruit denken en verwijlen: De (re)constructie van het plattelandschap in Zuidoost-
Brabant, 1920–2000, Tilburg: Stichting Zuidelijk Historisch Contact Tilburg.
Janssen, J., Luiten, E., Renes, H. and Rouwendal, J. (2014a) ‘Heritage planning and spatial development in
the Netherlands: Changing policies and perspectives’, International Journal of Heritage Studies,
20(1), 1–21.
Janssen, J., Luiten, E., Renes, H., Rouwendal, J., Faber, O., Pen C.-J. and Stegmeijer, E. (2014b) Character
Sketches: National Heritage and Spatial Development Research Agenda: Part 1 – Research
Agenda, Netwerk Erfgoed & Ruimte, Amersfoort: Netwerk Erfgoed & Ruimte, onderzoek &
onderwijs, available:
http://dspace.library.uu.nl/bitstream/handle/1874/306449/Charactersketsches_060214.pdf
(accessed 18-8-2015).
Kolen, J. (1995) ‘Recreating (in) nature, visiting history: Second thoughts on landscape reserves and their
role in the preservation and experience of the historic environment’, Archaeological Dialogues,
2(2), 127–159.
Kolen, J. (2008) ‘Een functionele geschiedenis’, in Eerden, M., Luiten, E., van der Zande, A., Kolen, J. and
During, R., eds. Op historische gronden: Erfgoed in een context van ruimtelijk ontwerp, planning
en democratie, Utrecht: Belvedere, 83–102.
Kolen, J. (2015) ‘Biographies of biotopes’, in Kolen, J., Renes, J. and Hermans, R., eds. Landscape
Biographies: Geographical, Historical and Archaeological Perspectives on the Production and
Transmission of Landscapes, Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 71–98.
Kolen, J. (in press) ‘The religious transformation of a landscape: Drenthe (the Netherlands)’, in Ó
Carragáin, T. and Turner, S., Making Christian Landscapes in Atlantic Europe: Conversion and
Consolidation in the Early Middle Ages, Cork: Cork University Press.
Kolen, J. and Witte, M. (2006) ‘A biographical approach to regions, and its value for spatial planning’, in
van der Knaap, W. and van der Valk, A., eds. Multiple Landscape: Merging Past and Present,
selected papers from the Fifth International Workshop on Sustainable Land Use Planning, 7–9
June 2004, Wageningen: Wageningen University, 125–145.
Kolen, J., Bosma, K. and Renes, H. (2010) ‘De landschapsbiografie: Instrument voor onderzoek, planning
en ontwerp’, in Bosma, K. and Kolen, J., eds. Geschiedenis en ontwerp: Handboek voor de
omgang met cultureel erfgoed, Nijmegen: Uitgeverij Vantilt, 212–237.
Kolen, J., Renes, J. and Hermans, R., eds. (2015a) Landscape Biographies. Geographical, Historical and
Archaeological Perspectives on the Production and Transmission of Landscapes, Amsterdam:
Amsterdam University Press.
Kolen, J., Crumley, C., Burgers, G.-J., von Hackwitz, K., Howard, P., Karro, K., de Kleijn, M., Löwenborg,
D., van Manen, N., Palang, H., Plieninger, T., Printsmann, A., Renes, H., Scholten, H., Sinclair,
P., Veldi, M. and Verhagen, P. (2015b) ‘HERCULES: Studying long-term changes in Europe’s
landscapes’, Analecta Praehistorica Leidensia, 45, 209–219.
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The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective, Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 64–91.
Koren, D. (2015) ‘Shanghai: The biography of a city’, in Kolen, J., Renes, J. and Hermans, R., eds.
Landscape Biographies: Geographical, Historical and Archaeological Perspectives on the
Production and Transmission of Landscapes, Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 253–282.
Lévi-Strauss, C. (1962) La Pensée sauvage, Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.
Meinig, D.W. (1979) ‘The beholding eye: Ten versions of the same scene’, in Meinig D.W., ed. The
Interpretation of Ordinary Landscapes: Geographical Essays, Oxford: Oxford University Press,

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 33–47.
Nota Belvedere (1999) Nota Belvedere: Beleidsnota over de Relatie Cultuurhistorie en Ruimtelijke
Inrichting, Den Haag: VNG Uitgeverij.
Papmehl-Dufay, L. (2015) ‘Places that matter’, in Kolen, J., Renes, J. and Hermans, R., eds. Landscape
Biographies: Geographical, Historical and Archaeological Perspectives on the Production and
Transmission of Landscapes, Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 143–166.
Pollard, J. and Reynolds, A. (2002) Avebury: The Biography of a Landscape, London: Duckworth.
Purmer, M. (2015) ‘Authorship and the agrarian landscape of Eerde’, in Kolen, J., Renes, J. and Hermans,
R., eds. Landscape Biographies: Geographical, Historical and Archaeological Perspectives on
the Production and Transmission of Landscapes, Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 183–
204.
Renes, J. (2015) ‘Layered landscapes’, in Kolen, J., Renes, J. and Hermans, R., eds. Landscape
Biographies: Geographical, Historical and Archaeological Perspectives on the Production and
Transmission of Landscapes, Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 403–422.
Ronnes, H. (2015) ‘The quiet authors of an early modern Palatial Landscape’, in Kolen, J., Renes, J. and
Hermans, R., eds. Landscape Biographies: Geographical, Historical and Archaeological
Perspectives on the Production and Transmission of Landscapes, Amsterdam: Amsterdam
University Press, 205–234.
Roymans, N. (1995) ‘The cultural biography of urnfields and the long-term history of a mythical
landscape’, Archaeological Dialogues, 2(1), 2–24.
Roymans, N., Gerritsen, F., van der Heijden, C., Bosma, K. and Kolen, J. (2009) ‘Landscape biography as
research strategy: The case of the South Netherlands Project’, Landscape Research, 34( 3), 337–
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Samuels, M.S. (1979) ‘The biography of landscape: Cause and culpability’, in Meinig, D.W., ed. The
Interpretation of Ordinary Landscapes, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 51–88.
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Economie en Stedelijke Herontwikkeling, Rotterdam: NAi Publishers.
Sooväli-Sepping, H. (2015) ‘Biographies of landscape: Rebala Heritage Reserve, Estonia’, in Kolen, J.,
Renes, J. and Hermans, R., eds. Landscape Biographies: Geographical, Historical and
Archaeological Perspectives on the Production and Transmission of Landscapes, Amsterdam:
Amsterdam University Press, 423–435.
Spek, T., Elerie, H., Bakker, J.P. and Noordhoff, I., eds. (2015) Landschapsbiografie van de Drentsche Aa,
Assen: Koninklijke Van Gorcum.
Steinitz, C. (2012) A Framework for Geodesign: Changing Geography by Design, Redlands, CA: Esri
Press.
Thurley, S. (2013) Men from the Ministry: How Britain Saved Its Heritage, New Haven, CT: Yale
University Press.
van der Laarse, R., ed. (2005) Bezeten van vroeger: Erfgoed, identiteit en musealisering, Amsterdam: Het
Spinhuis.
van der Laarse, R. (2015) ‘Fatal attraction’, in Kolen, J., Renes, J. and Hermans, R., eds. Landscape
Biographies: Geographical, Historical and Archaeological Perspectives on the Production and
Transmission of Landscapes, Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 345–376.
van der Valk, A. (2010) ‘Planning the past: Lessons to be learned from “Protecting and Developing the
Dutch Archaeological-Historical Landscape” (PDL/BBO)’, in Bloemers, T., Kars, H., van der
Valk, A. and Wijnen, M., eds. The Cultural Landscape & Heritage Paradox: Protection and
Development of the Dutch Archaeological-Historical Landscape and its European Dimension,
Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 21–53.
van der Zande, A. and During, R., eds. (2009) Erfgoed en ruimtelijke planning, Den Haag: Sdu uitgevers.
van Stiphout, M. (2009) ‘Ontwerp van een proces’, in Berkers, M. and van Stiphout, M., eds. Limesweg,
Amsterdam: Architectura & Natura, 16–21.
van Veldhoven, F. (2015) ‘Post-industrial coal-mining landscapes and the evolution on mining memory’, in
Kolen, J., Renes, J. and Hermans, R., eds. Landscape Biographies: Geographical, Historical and

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 Archaeological Perspectives on the Production and Transmission of Landscapes, Amsterdam:
Amsterdam University Press, 327–344.

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Chapter 9: Social media

Ron van Lammeren, Simone Theile, Boris Stemmer and

Diedrich Bruns

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INTRODUCTION
Social media have serious impact on societal processes. Successful start-ups like
Airbnb (https://www.ai rbnb.com) to rent lodging facilities and Uber
(https://www.u ber.com) to arrange taxi transport heavily rely on social
networking services. These start-ups show the power of contacting by internet
and set processes in motion, known as ‘disruptive innovation’, where high
technology successfully replaced low technology. The objective of this chapter
is to examine how internet-based social media might be used to insert some
‘disruptive innovations’ into landscape architecture research. To explore
innovative ways of enhancing the field’s knowledge base researchers might, for
example, be experimenting with ‘crowdsourcing’ and geo-social media. Social
media might be useful as a source of data for project research (such as
discovering what happens around a design or planning area) and as a data
collection tool for academic research (for example, setting up a platform and
inviting members of the public to make entries which become qualitative data
sets). Findings from the recent Delphi study summarised in Chapter 6 and in
Meijering et al. (2015) point to ‘human dimensions of planning and design’ as
one of landscape architecture’s most important and useful research challenges.
Our starting claim is that research into this domain could benefit from the use of
social media as a new resource. This chapter discusses social media as vehicles
for knowledge acquisition through collaborative processes and it also presents
methods to analyse data shared on social media sites.

Social media
Most of the current definitions of social media combine aspects of use and
technology. Kaplan and Haenlein (2010, p.61), for example, define social media
as ‘a group of Internet-based applications that build on the ideological and
technological foundations of Web 2.0, and that allow the creation and exchange
of User Generated Content’. In line with this definition, other authors emphasise
the fact that social media usually depend on mobile and web-based technologies
to create highly interactive platforms through which individuals form
communities to interact and create, share, discuss and modify user-generated
content, such as information and ideas (e.g. Kietzmann et al. 2011). Social media
are applications and take advantage of social networking services. They are
platforms upon which to build virtual social networks among people, including
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but not limited to those who share similar interests, lifestyles and so on. In
general, network services support the creation of a user profile (representation of
the user), a contact persons list (representation of the social network), a sharing
profile (interaction type with contact persons), and tools for information (text,
graphics, photo, audio, video formats) and communication (view, edit, read,
evaluate, modify, send, share, delete). By and large, social networking services
are individual-centred services which can be used to create group-centred
services in favour of virtual communities.
Classifications of social media abound and not all of them are consistent. For
example, Kaplan and Haenlein (2010) created a classification scheme that
includes different types of social media:

• Social networking sites (Facebook, LinkedIn)

• Blogs and microblogs (Twitter, Tumblr)
• Social news networking sites (Digg and Leakernet)
• Content communities (YouTube, DailyMotion, Panoramio, Flickr)
• Collaborative projects (Wikipedia, Open Street Map)
• Virtual social worlds (Second Life) and virtual game-worlds (World of
Warcraft)

These classifications illustrate the great variety of social media which may
range from those for general use and with an extremely high number of users,
like Facebook, to small, dedicated virtual communities with a specific purpose,
like Wiki groups (also see Web 2.0 applications, Haklay et al. 2008).
With the growing number of location-aware mobile devices such as the
current generation of smartphones, many social media types also tag uploaded
information with location coordinates (Stefanidis et al. 2013). Geo-social
information differs from Volunteered Geographic Information as defined by
Goodchild (2007) because people posting geo-social information are not
geotagging deliberately and for a purpose. For that reason the term ‘ambient
geo-information’ has been coined (Stefanidis et al. 2013). The geographic
component of the social media data is a by-product of the content and included
coordinates, address or other locational reference. These tags offer data sets with
great potential for various kinds of landscape research since they combine
aspects of image (photos taken of specific places to represent some aspect),
action (what people may be doing in a specific place) and structure (the
characteristics of the geo-referenced location).

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Big data and crowdsourcing
Social media users generate content that can be understood as the output of
social processes supported by internet facilities. Such content can be defined as
data or, owing to the amount and diversity of data produced and flowing, as big
data. Researchers using materials generated by social media have to deal with
large volumes and varieties of data that needs to be accessed while it is flowing
and which has uncertain quality and value. The challenge of using big data
effectively is dealing with volume, velocity and variety, and also validity and
veracity (de Mauro et al. 2015). Volume refers to the amount of data. Velocity
refers to how fast data is processed and, in research, to watching and collecting
data flows that never stop (‘streams’). Variety refers to the various types of data
and to variation in forms of data, including content and format. Validity and
veracity refer to uncertainties about the quality and usability of data. With the
objective of gaining insights about data-related processes and systems, data
science aims to discover and extract actionable knowledge from such data,
including knowledge that can be used to make decisions and predictions reliably,
not just to explain what is going on.
Computational neurobiology, the science concerned with study of brain
function in terms of its information processing properties, relates functions of
human senses to the different sensors used in robots. Expanding on this analogy,
users of social media can be understood as ‘human sensors’ that are responsive
to their environment. Data is collected by human sensors, and these data
collections are supplemented by the use of mobile sensors (such as laser
scanners, car mounted sensors, etc.) and static sensors (such as the Internet of
Things, weather stations, fixed surveillance cameras, etc.). Some devices are
also able to measure impacts of our own behaviour on ourselves and our
immediate environment (such as Global Positioning System (GPS) trackers,
heart-rate monitors, etc.). Together, all of these sensors, human and device
based, create increasingly large masses of heterogeneous and unstructured data
sets including numerical data, text, images, audio and video. In this seemingly
nebulous mass, these data sets might conceal relationships that are potentially
interesting for systematic study (Dhar 2013; Dhar et al. 2014). For example, geo-
social media such as Geo-Spatial Web, public participatory geographic
information systems (PPGIS), Urban Geo-Wiki, geo-tracking and other tools
based on geo-positioning applications (e.g. of smartphones) may be applied to
support research, including research involving volunteers who, together,
generate large amounts of data. Big data and crowdsourcing are related insofar
as one specific data set might be generated via crowdsourcing. However, not all
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sets called big data are equal to crowdsourcing and not all crowdsourcing lead to
big data.
Crowdsourcing in general terms means web participation. Public participation
in research and co-production of knowledge is also called citizen science.
Citizen science may be understood as an approach where the conduct of research
involves a ‘crowd’ of non-scientists and their ‘wisdom’ (Surowiecki 2005).
Before enthusiastically deciding on a citizen science and crowdsourcing
approach researchers should, for ethical reasons and scholarly soundness,
seriously reflect on expected knowledge gains (Wechsler 2014). In addition,
researchers will need to consider providing and managing proper quality control
and allow for the rigorous evaluation necessary for making any sort of
generalisation from expected study findings. Of course, the use of this approach
and these data sets must also be relevant to answering a research question and
not selected out of enthusiasm before a problem has been identified and framed
(see Tobi and van den Brink – Chapter 2).

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CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK TO STUDY THE
ROLE OF SOCIAL MEDIA
Marking the rising importance of communication in planning, mainly during the
1980s, some pertinent theoretical foundations were laid during the 1990s
(Fischer and Forester 1993). Planning for and designing of space and landscape
is highly dependent on information exchange and discourse, both of which are
occurring ‘offline’ and, increasingly, also ‘online’. Research on the role and
impact of social media in landscape planning and design must therefore try to
understand the communication (and negotiation) that is going on online, in the
internet in general, and in social media in particular. The conceptual framework
offered in this chapter has two components: one is a transdisciplinary analytical
framework with communication at the centre and the other includes a number of
theoretical approaches that help to conceptualise social media, social discourse
and the construction of reality. The two components are meant to help
understand social media as a ‘place’ where different ‘actors’ are engaging in
communication, such as in discourse about and through landscape knowledge,
and where reality is ‘constructed’ and ‘mediated’ in ways that are particular to
social media.

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Figure 9.1
Transdisciplinary framework with social media interface (source: based on Enengel et al. 2012)

To position the role of social media in research we build upon the concept of
transdisciplinary knowledge generation as elaborated by Enengel et al. (2012)
(see Figure 9.1). This model is extended as illustrated in Figure 9.2. We include
a typology of the actors involved and their knowledge dimensions, forms of
actor interaction, study phases and other elements (Louwsma et al. in prep). The
precision and order of this typology in each phase and the duration of these
phases depend on the purpose of the phase. Relationships between study phases
and actors can be mapped, as well the type and frequency of interactions
between actors during study phases. Interaction between the different actors may
vary in terms of intensity, duration and so on. Building on the international
literature, de Waal et al. (2013) identified five intensity levels, namely:
informing, consulting, advising, co-creating and co-deciding as the main forms
of interaction supporting the generation of knowledge. In general, informing
refers to one-way communication in which no feedback is involved, while
consulting implies two-way communication in which feedback is given. More
interactive levels and formats may be related to individual study phases.

Social media as ‘place’ and interface of communication

In order to include social media into the analytical framework, an interaction
interface must be created. In the model used here, this social media interface is
the virtual space where communication and interactions take ‘place’ (Figure
9.2). The social network that researchers decide to include in their study greatly
affects the look-and-feel of this ‘place’, that is the functionality, the data use and
the presentation of the interface. Specific tools are offered to users of social
media that help to customise the look and feel and also, for example, to improve
the media user presence in the network. The interface may have an impact on the
role of the different actors in processes in which communication and interaction
occur.

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Figure 9.2
Extended transdisciplinary framework with interaction typology (source: based on Louwsma et al. in prep.)

The interface is not simply the technology that supports interactions between
actors within, say, a research process. The interface is also where all the data
generated are collected and stored. In other words, the social media is the ‘place’
that acts as big data supplier. These data can be used for many research
purposes. It has been found that by employing so-called harvesting techniques,
for example via application programming interfaces (APIs), researchers are able
to collect user-generated data for the purposes of their study. Media
communication is moulded by whatever media are used. The term ‘mediation’
has been adopted to describe media-based communication. Mediation refers to
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impacts of the ‘logic and form of any medium involved in the communication
process’ (Altheide and Snow 1988, p.195). While personal communication is
transferred, at least partly, to using media based services, processes of
communication are changing people’s construction of reality.

Social media, social discourse and the ‘construction of reality’

To conceptualise how media users perceive and understand a ‘place’ that is
positioned on, or ‘mediated’ by, a social media site, we can refer to social
constructionist theory (Berger and Luckmann 1966; Gailing and Leibenath
2015). Before we discuss how space (and landscape) are ‘constructed’ we need
to try to conceptualise how people communicate and interact in the ‘place’ that
is a social media site. We can refer to discourse theory here (Richardson and
Jenson 2003). Discourses are conceived of in at least two different ways. First, in
social and cultural studies, a discourse is understood to be people using signs,
words and other utterances that they relate to objects and practices in a
contingent manner (Androutsopoulos 2013). A specific discourse may be
referred to, in social and communication studies when meanings are socially,
thematically and semantically contextualised. Examples of social contexts are
‘real’ communities such a city council but also ‘virtual’ communities such any
social media network. The advance of information and communication
technology is constantly adding new forms of utterance and, possibly, also new
meaning.
According to social constructionists (Berger and Luckmann 1966; Gailing and
Leibenath 2015), all human experience is socially constructed. Place, space and
landscape in particular (but also nature, heritage, wellbeing, etc.) are understood
as ‘social constructions of reality’. As persons and groups interact in social
systems, they create, over time, concepts or mental representations of their
environment and of each other’s actions. These concepts eventually become, by
the way of reciprocal interactions, ‘institutionalized’ (Berger and Luckmann
1966). ‘Institutionalism’ is a research approach that operates on the assumption
that the analysis of social rules and regulations is vital for the understanding of
social agency. Differences are made between formal and informal institutions.
Formal institutions include sets of rules and regulations (e.g. laws or statutes).
Informal institutions include traditions, customs, shared values, interrelated
practices and routines (Gailing and Leibenath 2015) such as those found to occur
in internet-based social, and thereby open, ‘collectives of dispersed individuals’
(Faraj et al. 2011, p.1224). Geo-social media can be understood as augmenting
reality whereby perceptions of our surroundings are supplemented by computer-
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generated sensory input (such as Global Positioning System (GPS) data and
visual graphics). Geo-social media thus comprise computer-aided constructions
of space and landscape (Shelton et al. 2015). Social networks, social media and
geo-social media in particular have advanced in ways that allow people to share
ideas and images in ‘unparalleled scale and scope’ (Faraj et al. 2011, p.1224).
Little is known, however, about what exactly the influence of using geo-social
media and of social networking might be on the ‘social construction of reality’ in
general, and of place, space and landscape in particular.
Social and spatial sciences merge to develop a dialectical perspective in which
the spatiality of social life is conceived of as simultaneously being a field of
action and a basis for action (Lefebvre 1991). Treating society and space as a
duality, rather than as a dualism (Giddens 1986), acknowledges that space is
produced through human action (including, for example, using maps or GPS),
and through social discourse (driving, for example, is a different experience
whether navigating by paper maps or by GPS): ‘social life is both space-forming
and space-contingent’ (Soja 1985, p.98). Findings from research investigating
how relevant construction processes might be conceptualised and analysed
suggest that ‘space’ is constructed in both non-institutionalised and
institutionalised contexts (Richardson and Jensen 2003). Shared understandings
and usages of such concepts are components of what Giddens (1986) has termed
‘practical consciousness’. Online technology is said to be pervasive among
certain user groups (Evans-Cowley 2010), and internet-based knowledge-sharing
appears to follow particular rules (Faraj et al. 2011).

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RESEARCH METHODS: THREE EXAMPLES OF
APPLICATION

Ostwürttemberg, Germany: landscape assessment using WebGIS

technologies
Assessing the definition of landscape quality by using social media was the
objective of this study. The two questions ‘Do geo-social media help elucidating
local knowledge that informs decisions on landscape quality at regional scale
and if yes, how?’ and ‘Is data from geo-social media reliable for the definition of
landscape quality?’ addressed this objective. The hypothesis was made that a
database can be created which provides the basis for establishing which areas
people perceive as landscape (local scale) and what they give value to in their
surroundings (Bruns and Stemmer in prep.).

Study design
With the purpose of including members of the public, a case of real-world
landscape policy making was identified. The statutory landscape planning
process for the Ostwürttemberg region in south-western Germany was selected
mainly because the competent planning authorities were interested in and
prepared to generate the resources needed for taking part in a study on
employing geo-social media. A WebGIS platform was established that fulfilled
all the technical needs of the study, including a minimum level of interactivity.
This platform was hosted and made publically available through the website of
the regional planning authority with the aim to reach out to as many people as
possible. The study was partly funded by federal and state agencies.

Data collection and sampling

This ran from 21 July to 20 August 2014 while the website was online. Publicity
was generated through a press conference and press releases, postcards, email
and other kinds of announcements. A public event was held at the State Garden
Exhibition from 17 September to 28 September 2014. Exhibition visitors were
invited to make website entries using computers available on the exhibition

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grounds. When making an entry, people would draw one or more objects (a
polygon, a line, a point or a vista) and they would add written comments such as
‘this is where I go walking the dog after work’. Using a categorised system,
people could choose one or more locations and enter a site or an area into the
website, and describe them in a narrative way. Geographic information includes,
for example, bathing spot, hiking trail and so on. People could also choose from
categories such as ‘favourite places / areas’, ‘historic / heritage sites, areas’,
‘leisure and sport sites / areas’, ‘sightseeing locations’ and several others. The
descriptions that people made with each entry included personal perceptions and
values, as well as activities, things that people usually do when visiting a
specific site or area (Figure 9.3). A total of 280 entries were registered in which
people had posted data and information about places that they feel give value to
their surroundings. In particular, they had identified and marked their most
favourite places. While entries had been made from local perspectives, they were
collected for the entire Ostwürttemberg region.

Figure 9.3
Detail of a map of public input to landscape assessment with descriptive texts

Data analysis
People gave a short description in written form and a name identifying the drawn
object. Both were stored in the GIS together with the geometry of geographic
locations (point, line or area). For data analysis purposes, geometric data were
first grouped and clustered according to location. In the next step, by following

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the geographic distribution of clustered entries, regionally relevant hotspots of
public interest were identified. Third, people’s explanations (narratives) were
subjected to systematic and qualitative content analysis. Analysis of location-
specific comments provided information about the reasons why participants
chose one or other spot or area as being interesting (‘a spectacular view from up
there!’), and also some understanding and explanation of how and why
preference and value judgments were made (‘all of the village meets here after
work’, ‘this is the spot for our Easter Fire’). The areas identified as special
places and as highly valued landscapes were not equally distributed across the
region.
The kind of evidence needed to respond to the two research questions above
were successfully obtained. Pieces of local knowledge were provided in
sufficiently large numbers to paste together a mosaic in which regional hotspots
became visible. In addition, it is important to note how information was
generated, also for the first time at regional scale, about intangible landscape
preferences. Narratives included descriptions and names, reasons for choosing a
particular place as important and so on. Together, all the website entries pointed
at areas that were particularly cherished, making them relevant beyond local
interest, something that would have been impossible without the use of the
online platform. Similarly, as any object or entry could be sorted according to
one of the predefined categories mentioned above, and, by clustering entries
made by individuals without having had personal contact with others,
researchers could learn which activities many people commonly engage in and
whether or not people share common interests and values.
By referring to the analytical framework above, we note that the website
called mitmachen-ostwürttemberg.de (mitmachen means to participate) served as
an ‘interface’ between ‘actors’ from public agencies, research institutions and
local communities. We discovered that, for any engaging of non-experts in a
landscape study to be successful, it is critical that attractive, interesting and user-
friendly invitations are extended. For ethical reasons it was important to assure
participants that website entries would be kept anonymous. People knowing that
they would not personally be exposed through the entries they made on a public
website somewhat limited the extent by which entries could be analysed.
Comparing entry data with social data might have revealed more valuable
information.
Another factor limiting analytical ambitions were predefined categories, such
as landscape types and catalogues of landscape features, that a participant could
choose from while making entries. These categories, selected in order to be able
eventually to make public assessment results compatible with official planning
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documents, include ‘site for swimming’, ‘hiking trail’, ‘cultural heritage site’
and so on. Having to choose from a set of fixed categories may narrow down
options for describing landscapes. Participants complied in making selections
from the predefined categories. However, in their descriptions of sites and areas
people mixed content that pertained to different categories. For producing maps
the use of categories was very helpful but for conducting content analysis they
were only partly helpful.
Constructivist landscape theory (Gailing and Leibenath 2015) provided the
conceptual framework for analysing content that members of the public posted
on the website and, by using evidence collected via social media, this theory
helped in understanding shared landscape values. For example, one entry
explains how ‘Keuerstadt is very important for me; it is a very special landscape.
I like its remoteness. I like to walk along the creek and see rare plants and old
trees. I also know how the chapel is important for the history of our region.’
From a constructivist perspective this narration includes content pertaining to the
following categories: (a) physical (material) features, such as natural (water,
plants) and cultural (building) landscape elements; (b) activities (walking,
watching) that people engage in, taken as expressions of how people take
ownership of specific sites and areas; (c) emotional linkage (‘very special’,
‘important’), taken as expressions for symbolic landscapes, and of identity and
place making. Maps and information that result from public involvement using
geo-social media in a way explained above are considered, in this chapter, as
expressions of which locations and areas are mentally constructed, by local
people, as attractive and valuable landscape. The results obtained from the
Ostwürttemberg study also provide evidence about how sites and areas are
perceived, for example whether natural or anthropogenic (man-made). At the
beginning of the study it was hypothesised that not only preferences for certain
places but also landscape perceptions and values would be shared among several
study participants, while some site-specific preferences would remain highly
individual. Geo-social media helped our understanding of how and to what
extent these hypothesis are true..

Zuid-Holland, the Netherlands: zonal scheme development using

social media as text interface
With the aim to create zoning scheme sketches (ruimtelijke structuurvisies in
Dutch) two municipalities in the province of Zuid-Holland in the south-west of
the Netherlands took a participatory approach. From November 2010 until April

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2011 they ran pilot projects, called ‘Qwiek’ and ‘City of Tomorrow’
respectively, using the ‘text options’ of social media. The social media-generated
results of both projects led to some interesting research questions, including
‘What geo-information is present in texts exchanged by social media during a
participatory planning process?’ and ‘Does this geo-information show successive
stages of planning, even co-creation’? These questions were addressed by
Eikelenboom (2012). The two projects used existing social media platforms,
such as Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. Residents were invited to share their
opinions and ideas on the future of their municipalities through one or more
channels: participation evenings, workshops, a dedicated website and the social
media. In April and May 2012 the results were discussed by the municipal
council. During this meeting, the public could take part, also by using social
media. During the full process the organisers of the social media channel
enabled the process by posing statements.

Study design
It was hypothesised that the shared messages of LinkedIn, Twitter and
Facebook, which consist of all tweets, comments and posts, supported the
participatory planning process and were able to ‘harvest’ and store the messages
in databases for further analysis. The messages expressed the ‘knowledge’ of the
participants in a restricted text format, for example by a maximum of 140
characters in a Tweet. These expressions showed abbreviations, letter–number
combinations and emoticons which complicated the understanding and
interpretation of the content. In addition, messages conveyed many different
semantics such as trusts, beliefs and preferences, forwarding facts, reasons,
opinions, emotions and decisions. For that reason rules were developed to
classify and to geocode the messages. It was expected that the classified and
geocoded messages would be related to a timeline and to related stages of the
planning process. This was expected to provide analysis of the development of
location-based semantic meanings during the planning process. It was also
expected that this approach might give an insight into how the knowledge was
constructed. Given these assumptions, the study aimed to find three key
performance indicators of the planning process: the number and frequency of
distinctive toponyms and their spatial scale, the shared geo-located semantics
and the characteristics and number of social media participants. Toponym in this
study is loosely defined as place name or a word coined in association with the
name of a place.

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Methods and data analysis
In total 4588 messages from Twitter archives, relevant LinkedIn and Facebook
discussion lists were harvested, stored, semantically classified and geocoded by
toponyms. The count of toponyms was done in monthly intervals due to the
frequency of messages contributed by the participants. This count showed the
relative importance of locations. Time graphs of seven and twelve intervals gave
an indication of location-based semantics development. In addition,
developments in importance as a result of the evolution of the discussion were
analysed by usage count per interval. The semantics of the messages were
extracted using six categories: fact, question, opinion, idea, event or report.
These categories were partly based on Pang and Lee (2008) who made a
distinction between objective information, providing verifiable facts about a
spatial plan, and more subjective information, giving opinions or sentiments.
Subjective information regarding spatial plans can also include proposals for
alternative developments. Events and reports were related to the planning
logistics and the other categories related to the spatial planning phases. Post-hoc
interviews with the organisers of the social media intended to validate the found
results.

Results
The study showed that 26 per cent of all messages included a toponym. Detected
toponyms in the messages of the Twitter archives of the two projects varied
between 16 per cent and 26 per cent. In the LinkedIn data it varied between 67
per cent and 71 per cent. The Twitter archives presented 30 per cent (89) and 26
per cent (180) unique toponyms respectively and LinkedIn 96 per cent (56) and
132 per cent (94). The names of the municipalities and their populated places
were the most used toponyms. However, per project differences were detected.
In the Qwiek project messages named the main cities nearby and the main
infrastructure that connects the municipality with these cities. In the City of
Tomorrow project more detailed locations in the area were mentioned, including
the intended section of a new by-pass road. In general, populated places,
infrastructures and major areas showed toponyms at a regional scale. In both
Twitter databases one or more buildings were often named. These were actually
the venues of the face-to-face participatory planning meetings and not the
subjects of zoning discussions. Messages mostly discussed relatively large
geographic areas, which could be explained by the character of the planning
objective being to sketch zoning schemes for the total area of the municipalities.
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The semantic analysis of the messages (Table 9.1) showed that 53 per cent
supported the planning process. The other 47 per cent of referred to events (38
per cent) and reports (9 per cent) which were only beneficial to the logistics of
the process.
The number and characteristics of information sharers showed that only a
small number of people joined in the process. The top ten users shared between
47 per cent (City of Tomorrow tweets) and 91 per cent (Qwiek posts) of the
messages. A much larger share of users contributed only once. The top ten users
consisted mainly of the actors involved in the organisation of the project. The
number of stakeholders including the general public was limited. The ones who
did contribute were seriously committed to making this approach a success. In
the Qwiek project participants mainly shared facts and opinions about the
current situation of their surroundings. In the City of Tomorrow project a
number of people launched ideas about the allocation of future land use options
which seemed more on the level of co-production.
Table 9.1
Semantic analysis of the messages

Discussion and conclusion

Deriving toponyms from messages and especially geotagging them posed
challenges because of the ambiguous nature of place names. Abbreviations and
the use of the same toponym for different locations showed to be an important
source of error. This can be both coincidental, for example a place named after a
common landscape feature or an important person, and intentional because, for
example, during colonisation places get named after each other. Automated
procedures to derive toponyms by using dedicated software and databases such
as GeoNames were available. In this study, and for the sake of evaluating
toponyms, they were derived manually. The geographic scale was explored by
matching the dominating toponyms to the simple geographic ontology of

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GeoNames (http://www.geon ames.org/). Alternative occurrences of locational
descriptions were found by hashtags (#), telephone codes and uncommon
abbreviations. Timeline graphs in this study showed that almost all messages
were found close to, before and during organised events. For that reason
toponym development seemed strongly influenced by the face-to-face meetings
and turned out to be of very limited value. New toponyms that gave evidence for
co-creation were rare, which is of course an issue when using automated
procedures. Participants seemed to prefer the traditional written and/or colloquial
toponyms rather than abbreviations and informal alternatives such as telephone
codes.
However, due to the informal nature of social media, and in Twitter’s case its
limited text space, it was expected that more people would use shorter text
expressions. According to the post-hoc interviews, the lack of public
involvement could be explained by the short time span for preparing the social
media role and the way it had been announced. The study showed that messages
conveyed geo-located semantics in a participatory planning process. Analysing
such messages as stored in social media archives gave insight in the ongoing
planning process including the development of the intended design. Activities
and geo-located semantics of each participant at a certain phase of the planning
process could be tracked and studied by the timeline graph. The semantic
analysis of geo-located messages into facts, questions, opinions and ideas linked
to a phase of the timeline helped to give an impression of the level of
participation and the roles of participants. In this respect more recent studies
have showed the power of social media data as a result of the significant increase
in smartphone use and the extension of semantics, for example by analysing
emotions (e.g. Dunkel 2015).

Research challenges
It seems that it is a considerable challenge to create strategies that increase
awareness and interest to the level at which people really like to participate in
planning endeavours. Participants need to be made aware of how much their
input will be a serious part of the discussion, for example during the analysis and
presentations of time graphs and web maps which show toponyms and
semantics. Similar ideas are mentioned by, for example, Sakaki et al. (2010) and
Dunkel (2015) who also refer to the experiences of people’s immediate
surroundings. Web maps may stimulate participation (Dunkel 2015; Kahila-Tani
et al. 2016). Participants must agree upon the way in which social media are
harvested and used. Related to that agreement is the mode by which the data are
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exchanged and shared during the planning process that can also be used for
analysis. The following questions are still of interest. How can public
involvement be increased, such as in the number of entries? How can the link
between location and semantic load be improved in order to support co-creation
through the use of messages? What semantic classes may benefit from a better
text understanding? How can a toponym or semantic cloud map be combined
(Ahern et al. 2007; Hahmann and Burghardt 2011) with a timeline graph to give
a more real-time and better understanding of the participatory planning progress?

Amsterdam, the Netherlands: analysing tourist behaviour by social

media posted photos
Cities struggle with the number of visitors, which may cause overcrowding, high
noise levels, litter and dangerous traffic situations. To tackle these problems a
study analysing tourists’ whereabouts was carried out (van der Drift 2015).
Inspired by studies on geospatial webs (Haklay et al. 2008) and on location-
based social networks (Roick and Heuser 2013) new ways of exploring tourism
dynamics in a city were developed. This study started with the question of which
parts of the city are the most visited and whether uploaded photos on social
media could reveal these tourist preferences. It was assumed that the metadata
(tags) of photos in the cloud are important sources for analysis which may help
to find spatio-temporal patterns. This metadata presents among other things
camera settings, the date and time when the photo was taken and geotags. The
number of photos on or near a road is an indicator of the popularity of a route
(Sun et al. 2015). Knowing that a route can be constructed out of a chronological
sequence of locations, such geotagged data would make it possible to create
routes and to analyse route densities in order to locate the most crowded streets
and squares of a city. This way of analysing densities favours the notion that
tourist routes in a city are not the shortest routes. Due to their daily behaviour,
given different interests like dwelling, shopping and visiting cultural places, the
distance and location of routes is based on the daily combination of such
interests.

Study design
The method selected was the harvesting and subsequent analysis of geotagged
photos and metadata of tourists visiting Amsterdam, obtained from the social
media platform Flickr. Harvested photos were classified by unique user accounts
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in two classes, respectively photos taken by tourists and those taken by residents.
To validate the outcomes of this classification method a confusion matrix on
location tags of fifty tourists and fifty residents randomly picked from the set
with classified users was used. Afterwards the two classes of photos were
compared by location and time. Validation of classified photos was done by
finding photos that gave evidence for the correctness of time and location tags.
To detect major tourist hotspots in time and place the photos were clustered by
using the density-based clustering algorithm DBSCAN (Scikit-learn 2015).
Routes were created by network construction based on photo geotags per user
(unique Flickr account) in order to detect the individual tourist’s movement. All
routes were linked to the public spaces with the highest densities of routes.
Hotspots and route densities gave an overview of tourist pressure on the urban
fabric. The seventeen top tourist locations of Amsterdam ranked by Lonely
Planet were used to validate the identified hotspots and an expert validation was
performed to validate the calculated routes.

Data collection and analysis

During five weeks in 2015, the metadata of 2,849,261 geotagged photos was
harvested from Flickr and stored in a spatial database. From this data set 393,828
photos were located in Amsterdam. Photo locations in Flickr are either
automatically captured by the camera or manually specified by placing the
image on a map. Flickr automatically adds an accuracy value for all photos with
a geographical location. The platform bases this value on the zoom level of the
map when the image is geotagged. Values range between world (1), country (3),
region (6), city (11) and street level (16). Many users marked the photos with
various other forms of information including a title, description and a wide
variety of textual tags. Visual analytics (Andrienko et al. 2010) were applied by
analysing the tagged photos in space (spatial hotspots) and time (temporal
hotspots). The analysis included distribution and clustering techniques. The
temporal distribution of photographers (tourist and locals) was analysed for three
granularities: the days of the week, months of the year and days of the year. For
the detection of hotspots and landmarks spatial clustering methods were applied.
The most probable routes of tourists between subsequent photo locations were
calculated by an enhanced network construction approach which included a
Euclidean distance calculation. Out of the labelled segments of the networks a
route density map was derived. Finally, a qualitative approach was used to
validate the study outcomes by interviewing eight tourism experts.

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Results
The classification showed an average of 24.6 photos per user, unique Flickr
account, for the harvested photos (Table 9.2).
A manual check of the Flickr profile pages which contain albums, a photo
stream, textual expressions and other indicators gave evidence of the 98 per cent
correct classification of tourists. The clustering techniques identified thirteen
hotspots. The identified hotspots and tourist route densities are illustrated in
Figure 9.4.

Table 9.2
Distribution of the harvested photos

Number of users Number of photos Photos/user

Locals (17.6%) 2,821 15,599 54.8
Tourists (39.1%) 6,257 107,016 17.1
Unclassified users 6,914 132,213 19.1
(43.2%)
Total 15,992 393,828 24.6

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Figure 9.4
Identified hotspots (above) and tourist route densities (below) (source: van der Drift 2015)

Table 9.3
Overview of invalid Flickr photos

Cause Number of records Percentage of total

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The accuracy is not 16 (street level) 777,008 27.2%
The temporal precison is not 0 (YYY:MM:DD 13,812 0.5%
HH:mm:ss)
The media is not photo but video 5,474 0.2%
The photo does not have additional metadata 1,657 0.1%
available

Discussion
Not all photos were selected because of certain criteria (see Table 9.3). The
spatial accuracy of street level (so-called level 16) is an especially interesting
issue. In this research only data from Flickr users who shared their photographs
with the whole Flickr community were used. Most of these were tourists from
North America. It seems advisable, for future studies, to enlarge the photo data
set with photos from social media which include users from a wider area in order
to gain a better representation of all tourists. The timestamps of photos in
relation to time zone settings are critical, especially in case of temporal studies.
The use of different time intervals (year, month, day, hour) in the analysis
supported different spatial interests, for example to find seasonal differences in
behaviours.
Spatial precision given by the tags could have a serious impact on the
understanding of the spatial distribution and density of locations. Figure 9.5
shows the effect of spatial granularity on the level of detail.
The calculated routes were validated by experts. These experts, working in the
tourism department of the city of Amsterdam, agreed upon these routes. They
suggested that including the number of tourists that use routes in a certain
direction would support further interpretation of spatial density.

Conclusions
The approach presented here might help to gain a better understanding of the
daily use of the urban landscape based on large data sets of in-situ photographs.
In this study the example of tourist photos was chosen. The semi-automatic
classification method classified 39.1 per cent of the users as tourists to a very
high precision (98 per cent). During the research the thirteen hotspots identified
were compared with the seventeen top tourist locations ranked by Lonely Planet.
Four hotspots, mainly nodes for travelling and food, were not mentioned by
Lonely Planet. The validation by the tourism experts showed a high agreement
of the detected spatial clusters and route density map with expert knowledge.
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 Despite several imperfections in the geo-social data, meaningful insights into
the spatial and temporal patterns of tourists (spatial densities of main locations
and routes) could be derived from the geo-social media metadata. Such insights
may offer a valuable addition to planning and design research tools for
understanding better the dynamics of human behaviour on a local urban scale.
The approach of the example ‘what photo – what route’ might support
understanding the communication format of the photo as used in social media
platforms. It also shows the potential power of geo-social media metadata for
studying spatial patterns. Although it is very attractive to link human preferences
to densities of photo locations, the data as such do not offer such possibilities
yet. From this study we can see that photos on social media may have potential
for spatial and temporal pattern analysis of certain target groups by studying the
metadata of geotagged photos. Most of the analytical tools to do this already
exist. Validation of the time stamps of photos needs further attention.

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Figure 9.5
Effect of spatial granularity on level of detai (source: van der Drift 2015)

Research challenges
Harvested data tends to be demographically skewed and many records will have
spatial and temporal inaccuracies. At the moment, validation strategies are
needed to address this issue. In the long run larger amounts of data may solve
this problem. The metadata of the geotagged photos from the main data source
alone will not give evidence as to why the photos were taken. One question
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remaining is: if a photo shows a location of personal preference is this proof of a
place being a touristic highlight as advertised by the tourist office and travel
books? If so, has the highlight actually been visited, or has the entry been made
into a pictorial diary during a holiday trip? In general an additional survey is
needed to find the normative load of this geo-social data. In contrast to social
media as the environment of a participatory planning process, these types of
social media gained a lot of data especially in relation to locations of great
touristic interest. However, harvesting a sufficient amount of geotagged photos
of locations that present issues like ‘unpleasant place’ are harder to come by
using social media. To gather context-dedicated photos is a challenge on its own.

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METHODS FOR STUDYING SOCIAL MEDIA
IMPACTS
This section gives an overview of analytical approaches and methods that
researchers might use better to understand and explain online activities,
including impacts that social media have on planning and design and on relevant
decision making. Referring to the examples above, types of analysis and
underlying concepts are addressed first and the workflow of data tracking,
monitoring and so on is then explained.
As forms of data analysis social media analysis, social network analysis
(SNA), semantic network analysis and spatial-temporal pattern analysis are
important in various ways. Social media analytics (SMA) helps ‘collecting,
monitoring, analysing, summarizing and visualizing information from Social
Media’ (Stieglitz and Dang-Xuan 2012, p.1282), including a large amount of
data from within social media (see ‘Big data’ above). Who (people,
organisations, institutions) are linked via social media and who are opinion
leaders? To find answers to this question it would be appropriate to analyse
media and network structures and to identify key users using SNA that would
help to identify how central some users are to specific communication processes,
and the extent to which individual users reach out into communities (Stieglitz
and Dang-Xuan 2012). Text analysis and trend analysis may be linked to SMA.
One important part of text analysis is called ‘sentiment analyses’, or ‘opinion
mining’. Running a SNA would be useful, for example, to identify opinion
leaders and relevant user communities (Stieglitz et al. 2014).
Conceptually, the computer sciences have borrowed heavily from a number of
different disciplines. For example, graph theory (applied in network analysis)
and network theory have been adapted to help to understand content and
activities occurring in social media (Stieglitz and Dang-Xuan 2012). Data
analysis may include clustering correlations and regressions for data on different
scales; such tools help to make use of data mined from social media. As
illustrated in the examples above, the researcher first decides which ‘object’ to
study, for example Twitter, Facebook, (public) weblog and so on, or a
combination of these. Social media sites and platforms offer a range of tracking
sources that might be used. With Twitter these sources include public tweets;
with Facebook the content of the ‘wall’ may be mined, including commentaries.
Access rights are different with every media and these rights must be observed.

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In order to track data the researcher usually needs to access interfaces, and not
all services offer such access. Most blogs do not offer interfaces but their RSS
feeds might be tracked instead. Twitter and Facebook offer APIs but, due to
special configurations, researchers might be challenged by restrictions and
constant changes. One may encounter temporal restrictions and the amount of
downloadable data might be limited. If one wanted, for example, to identify the
moment of the highest tide in public outcry about a bridge proposed to be built
in a designated heritage landscape, it might be necessary to jump on the train
while it is running, so to speak. If searching for data at a later date the researcher
might find that social media services are not run like libraries where sources are
reliably stored. If, for example, services like Twitter and Facebook were to be
accessed, it would be advisable to download data regularly, as was done in the
Amsterdam tourism study.
Data tracking and data collecting takes place either by monitoring, when
researchers are in control of the social media application, or by harvesting, if
researchers are tracking data of interest (web search). Systematic sampling
depends on the research question. When using APIs and RSS feeds, predefined
search words or key words pertaining to specific themes, organisations, projects
and so on related to the research question would be necessary. Stored data may
then be analysed according to structure, to thematic or action related interest,
according to opinion and sentiment and so on (Stieglitz and Dang-Xuan 2012).
In those cases where large amounts of data are available, automated quantitative
methods of content analysis or text mining would be most suitable. Advanced
forms of learning programs are also being developed which are based on
‘machine learning’ and include tools used for semantic network analysis.
Based on ‘pre-processed’ data, further processing may include text analysis,
content analysis, sentiment analysis and so on. A number of text analysis and
SNA tools are commercially available that non-experts with little or no
programming experience may use. Stieglitz and Dang-Xuan (2012) have
compiled a list of text mining and automated content analysis tools including, for
example, WordStat (add-on for QDA Miner) and Linguistic Inquiry and Word
Count (LIWC). Tools for text mining and manual content analysis include
Atlas.ti and QDA Miner. By applying certain algorithms, automated tools might
be used to identify specific opinions and sentiments that are being uttered in
social media about individual projects and topics. For sentiment analysis and
opinion mining, sentiment attributes are linked to words that people are using.
For mining purposes words are identified and subjected to automated analysis.
Sentiment attributes are dictionary-based classifications of sentiment orientation
including polarity (positive, negative, neutral) and strength.
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 Online communications still offer challenges including the use of emoticons
and acronyms. Sarcasm and irony cannot be easily understood by machines.
Currently, manual analysis is recommended, as illustrated in the Amsterdam
example, as is the inclusion of background information for interpreting
sentiment from social media data. The volume and velocity of data will define
the limits as to which manual analysis is still possible. Examples for opinion
mining and sentiment analysis include tools like SentiStrength and
SentiWordNet. Finally, for SNA, tools such as Gephi, NodeXL (Excel plug-in),
UCINET, Pajek, Netvizz and others are available. By using these methods and
tools it would be possible to understand online specifics, for example while a
stakeholder analysis is being conducted in preparation for a participatory
process. An open-access tool such as NodeXL or Gephi might be used to study
how some of the main stakeholder groups are behaving, mainly online, regarding
individual projects..

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DISCUSSION
Expectations, efforts, gains and satisfaction are all related to trust, and trust is
important for researchers to assess and learn how their study will yield reliable
and solid results. Unlike controlled experiments, studies employing social media
may yield inconsistent and unreliable results. In addition, there are challenges
from the large amount of data that social media help to collect in different
formats. Data originate from individuals who intend to exchange and share this
data. The semantics of these data range from beliefs to facts and are mainly
based on perception. In a study using social media one needs to be able to check
how reliably one finds the same outcome every time one uses specific sites. We
might find particular social media to be reliable, meaning that they give a good
performance for extracting data time after time, while others may turn out to be
less reliable. What can be regarded as accurately describing the virtual or the real
world can also be regarded as valid. Validity defines the strength of the study
results. The challenge is how to extract knowledge from sampling and analysing
data and, by trying to explain what is being observed on social media, to use
such findings to start understanding what is going on in any ‘data storm’ that
might be brewing.
Before discussing the validity and value of social media data we must first
consider the challenges of the other big ‘v’s of big data: volume, velocity and
variety. Volume refers to the challenge of dealing with large sizes. When
purposefully employing social media we expect to generate more data and thus
extract more information compared with doing research without social media.
Regarding social media as data source, the amount of shared information
expressed on social media grows. Almost all the data represents private
perceptions which are time and space tagged. Thus geo-social media providing
data in very large amounts offer new dimensions for doing research. Handling
such large volumes may be demanding and calls for more efficient tools for
collecting, storing and retrieving data, updating it when required as well as
sampling and analysing it.
Velocity refers to the challenge of watching and analysing data flows
(sometimes in near real time). Researchers need to deal with the pace at which
data flows and be able to make use of voluminous data streams which never
stop. Looking again at process first, it can be seen how involvement and
participation via social media is closely related to specific events (see the
Ostwürttemberg, Zuid-Holland and Amsterdam examples). Events appear to
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trigger a social media activity momentum with, most of the time, a short lifespan
of exchange and sharing, given the number of active participants. To be able to
explain process peculiarities, turning to the social sciences and the humanities
might be helpful, because analysing different process stages might yield
important results: who is engaging in interactions, what opinion development
may be observed and, with a view to practice, what planning and design
development (e.g. in the example of Zuid-Holland) might find the greatest
support?
In order to understand what has been termed ‘knowledge collaboration’ in
online communities (OCs) we must remember that OC-based communication
‘takes place despite the absence of existing social relationships’ and ‘without the
structural mechanism traditionally associated with knowledge collaboration in
organizational teams: stable membership, convergence after divergence,
repeated people-to-people interactions, goal sharing, and feelings of
interdependence among group members. There can even be total absence of
existing social relationships’ (Faraj et al. 2011, p.1225). Due to the velocity and
ongoing activities on social media platforms, data might be obtained over
periods of time that would otherwise require considerable resources to be
generated in order to conduct longitudinal studies, as can be seen from the
examples above. Crucial for this is the speed at which flows can be accessed,
particularly since streams may offer nearly real time information. Technically
this is not easy to do.
Variety refers to the challenge of dealing with many sources and types of data,
both structured and unstructured. There is great variation in data content and
format. It is necessary to be able to discern amongst many different
configurations of technology and to assess the value. These potentially include
millions of wearable wireless health monitors, billions of hours of videos,
unimaginable numbers of different pieces of content generated by billions of
users of social media network providers and so forth. During any research the
variety of data can be purposely predefined according to a certain format (such
as text, video, etc.). By tapping into social networks one could find how the
communication formats of social media and micro-blogging styles differ from
one another. The development of planning content may be limited to a certain
level (see the Ostwürttemberg and Zuid-Holland examples), and different phases
of the process may deliver different formats and differences in content. Knowing
that data formats may vary greatly, finding associations between different data
ensembles is one of the greatest challenges of big data exploration (see the
Amsterdam example). There are social media data (based on experiences and
perception) and measured data (collected by sensors and other calibrated
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measurement technologies). Combinations of both might enable researchers to
relate data types to each other and to identify social–temporal patterns.
Returning now to validity and veracity we should consider the criteria applied
to ascertain the quality of research. All researchers need to be able to check data
for quality and for their usability to generate plausible results. The question is,
how much of the data collected and sampled is correct, accurate and trustworthy
for the intended use? During the process, participants’ responses may be
monitored and a ‘lineage’ of arguments found as well as a certain consistency in
content development through SNA. The main actors and relations between them
can also be analysed. The ability to ‘read, see, or listen’ (Evans-Cowley and
Griffin 2011) to what, say, citizens are contributing about their community,
offers an opportunity to engage the public into a research project.
Another point worth considering regarding validity is bias. In the
Ostwürttemberg and Zuid-Holland examples ongoing land-use changes and
projects might have influenced people’s landscape awareness, and attention may,
at least with some entries made on websites and social media platforms, be
directed more towards some areas and less to others. When observing social
network activities one may need to watch for demographic or other social bias.
Friendship networks and other user groups tend to be demographically highly
segmented (Evans-Cowley 2010) as people link with others of similar
demographic format, status and class, belief and value system and so on. This
principle, described as ‘homophily in social networks’, has as much an
implication for the information people receive and the interactions they
experience (McPherson et al. 2001) as the so called ‘filter bubble’ (Pariser
2011), the ‘echo chamber’ effect (Pfeffer and Zorbach 2015) and ‘power-law
distribution’ (Barabasi et al. 2000), that is people will link with those who are
well known, and those who are not or less well known receive, even when trying
hard, few or no links in return. Considering how friends mainly communicate
with friends, and how people seldom break out of their groups, one question is,
what it would it take to engage with groups of people with whom they have
never interacted before? Trying to find answers to such questions means
exploring new territory and developing innovative study designs.
Validation of data is possible by comparing social media-derived data with
measured data (for example by sensors and other calibrated measurement
technologies). In the Zuid-Holland examples the words and codes used to
describe locations could be controlled by an online gazetteer. However, the
gazetteer will not check the geocoding. Validating metadata (including geo- and
time-tags) is supported by finding the origin of the social media data, which may
help to ascertain accuracy. In the Amsterdam example the time-tags have been
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validated by making use of time references (e.g. regional time settings). It is well
known that the geotag is often inaccurate or even missing due to the information
creator’s habits such as alternating being on or offline, related data uploading
strategies in relation to the exact location of the device (Agichtein et al. 2008)
and the expertise of the creator (Elwood 2008).
In studies where local people provide knowledge about intangible landscape
values, such as their place attachment, memory and identity, how and to what
extent citizen science-produced data sets are subject to error is still poorly
understood (Dickinson et al. 2010). One issue that needs careful consideration is
how the use of ‘collective intelligence’ and the ‘wisdom of crowds’ (Surowiecki
2005) might reliably and consistently lead to generalisable results.
Another issue is how data and information might be checked for being
reliable, that is accurate, true and honestly provided. The spread of rumours and
false information, whether this is done on purpose or not, can also be an issue
(Mendoza et al. 2010). When certain tasks are assigned to a large volume of
people, as happens in citizen science projects, it is important to consider how the
inclusion of non-scholars in academic research might be explored for their
knowledge-building potential and also assessed for their scientific reliability,
consistency and validity (Ulrich 2000). At the same time, validation might,
again, be organised and enriched by crowdsourcing processes (Wechsler 2014).
Finally, we discuss the last of the big ‘v’s, which is value. We also return to
the disruptive character of social media for landscape research. Regarding social
media and big data, having many small and distinct parts, granularity in time and
space becomes a serious subject to consider in pattern analysis. Granularity may
strongly influence the discussion about scaling and scale levels and it may also
lend a new dimension to the idea of incrementalism used to model planning
processes. In addition, the impact of large numbers may show, in the long run, a
normal distribution of data, which means that statistical confidence will improve.
Thirdly, locations of expression become a commodity. The precision and
accuracy of such locational expression still requires more quality control.

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CONCLUSIONS AND OUTLOOK
Expectations are high regarding the knowledge that may be gained through
research using social media. Researchers hope, for example, to generate and
collect valuable data by purposefully establishing online platforms. We also
hope to find information and knowledge by mining the internet. It is advisable to
look for the many pitfalls hidden below the seemingly shiny surface of social
media studies, some of which we have pointed out in this chapter. Mainly, we
encourage researchers to use social media in their studies. Advantages include
running internet-based surveys that allow researchers to collect landscape data,
to undertake locality-based studies of human experiences and everyday
behaviour or to investigate web participation in planning and design processes
(Eräranta et al. 2015). Much would also be gained if we understood how public
opinion develops in social media: how are tides of emotions rising and ebbing?
Studying the content of social media sites and the interfaces between different
actors adds new dimensions to understanding how opinion changes occur.
Since special fields of study are developing around social media and around
the approaches and methods we have been discussing here, we conclude by
making some observations and presenting an outlook into how we see these
fields developing. Traditionally, landscape architecture research often focuses on
the case study. As more and more cases are being studied and the demand for
evidence is growing, temporal and human dimensions are making inroads into
landscape architecture research. We have arrived at a situation where we are
studying, in concert, the who, the what, the where and the when. At this point the
role of social media may be seen as disruptive for data collection, analysis and
visualisation. A large proportion of our communication and transactions are
internet and social media based. All relevant data is stored at this ‘interface’.
New research domains like data sciences are developing frameworks and
technologies to interrelate and associate these data in great varieties of formats.
By linked-data strategies it becomes possible to explore data patterns, and to
enhance information about spatial–temporal behaviour, preferences and beliefs.
Developing such frameworks cannot be done without expertise from different
scientific domains coming together, including landscape architecture. The
availability and accessibility of these frameworks will become subject to
political debates, including those on open access versus proprietary nexus, and
those regarding knowledge representation through certain data and tools. For any
field and discipline concerned with a common good, such as landscape, these are
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important debates.
There are many questions that need addressing. While employing social media
as a means of data collection does not guarantee better results, it may enable
researchers to derive new insights by delving deeply into unexpected areas
where valuable data are to be found. Like it once happened through advances in
cartography, for example, current social media developments will lead towards
new insights and discourses including those on citizen science, expanded notions
of trans-disciplinarity and the question of how democracy gains are observed
through using social media in research.

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SUGGESTED FURTHER READING
de Waal, R., Kempenaar, A., van Lammeren, R. and Stremke, S. ( 2013) ‘Application of social media in a
regional design competition: A case study in the Netherlands’, Proceedings Digital Landscape
Architecture 2013, 186–199.
Dunkel, A. ( 2015) ‘Visualizing the perceived environment using crowdsourced photo geodata’, Landscape
and Urban Planning, 142, 173–186.
Kahila-Tani, M., Broberg, A., Kyttä, M. and Tyger, T. ( 2016) ‘Let the Citizens Map—Public Participation
GIS as a Planning Support System in the Helsinki Master Plan Process’, Planning Practice &
Research, 31( 2), 195–214.
Roick, O. and Heuser, S. ( 2013) ‘Location based social networks – Definition, current state of the art and
research agenda’, Transactions in GIS, 17( 5), 763–784.
Stefanidis, A., Crooks, A. and Radzikowski, J. ( 2013) ‘Harvesting ambient geospatial information from
social media feeds’, GeoJournal, 78( 2), 319–338.

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REFERENCES
Agichtein, E., Castillo, C., Donato, D., Gionis, A. and Mishne, G. ( 2008) ‘Finding high-quality content in
social media’, Proceedings of the International Conference on Web Search and Web Data Mining
(WSDM’08), 183–194.
Ahern, S., Naaman, M., Nair, R. and Hui-I Yang, J. ( 2007) ‘World Explorer: Visualizing aggregate data
from unstructured text in geo-referenced collections’, Proceedings of the 7th ACM/IEEE-CS Joint
Conference on Digital Libraries, 1–10..
Altheide, D. and Snow, R.P. ( 1988) ‘Toward a theory of mediatization’, in Anderson, J.A., ed.
Communication Yearbook (Vol. 11), New York: Sage, 194–223.
Andrienko, G., Andrienko, A., Demsar, U., Dransch, D., Dykes, J., Fabrikant, S., Jern, M., Kraak, M.,
Schumannh, H. and Tominski, C. ( 2010) ‘Space, time and visual analytics’, International
Journal of Geographical Information Science, 24( 10), 1577–1600.
Androutsopoulos, J. ( 2013) ‘Participatory culture and metalinguistic discourse: Performing and negotiating
German dialects on YouTube’, in Tannen, D. and Trester, A.M., eds. Discourse 2.0: Language
and New Media, Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 47–71..
Barabasi, A.-L., Albert, R. and Jeong, H. ( 2000) ‘Scale-free characteristics of random networks: The
topology of the world-wide web’, Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, 281( 1–
4), 69–77..
Berger, P.L. and Luckmann, T. ( 1966) The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of
Knowledge, Garden City, NY: Anchor Books.
Bruns, D. and Stemmer, B. (in prep.) ‘Landscape assessment in Germany’, in Fairclough, G., Sarlöv-Herlin,
I. and Swanwick, C., eds. Routledge Handbook of Landscape Character Assessment, Abingdon:
Routledge.
de Mauro, A., Greco, M. and Grimaldi, M. ( 2015) ‘What is big data? A consensual definition and a review
of key research topics’, AIP Conference Proceedings, 1644, 97–104.
de Waal, R., Kempenaar, A., van Lammeren, R. and Stremke, S. ( 2013) ‘Application of social media in a
regional design competition: A case study in the Netherlands’, Proceedings Digital Landscape
Architecture 2013, 186–199.
Dhar, V. ( 2013) ‘Data science and prediction’, Communications of the ACM, 56( 12), 64–73..
Dhar, V., Jarke, M. and Laartz, J. ( 2014) ‘Big data’, Business & Information Systems Engineering, 6( 5),
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Dickinson, J.L., Zuckerberg, B. and Bonter, D.N. ( 2010) ‘Citizen science as an ecological research tool:
Challenges and benefits’, Annual Review of Ecology, Evolution, and Systematics, 41, 149–172.
Dunkel, A. ( 2015) ‘Visualizing the perceived environment using crowdsourced photo geodata’, Landscape
and Urban Planning, 142, 173–186.
Eikelenboom, J. ( 2012) Sharing Views on Spatial Plans: Scales of Geographical Information and Public
Participation in Social Media (MSc), Wageningen University, Centre for Geo-Information, the
Netherlands.
Elwood, S. ( 2008) ‘Volunteered geographic information: Future research directions motivated by critical,
participatory, and feminist GIS’, GeoJournal, 72( 3), 173–183.
Enengel, B., Muhar, A., Penker, M., Freyer, B., Drlik, S. and Ritter, F. ( 2012) ‘Co-production of
knowledge in transdisciplinary doctoral theses on landscape development – An analysis of actor
roles and knowledge types in different research phases’, Landscape and Urban Planning, 105( 1–
2), 106–117.
Eräranta, S., Kahili-Tani, M. and Nummi-Sund, P. ( 2015) ‘Web-based public participation in urban
planning competitions’, International Journal of E-Planning Research, 4( 1), 1–18.
Evans-Cowley, J.S. ( 2010) ‘Planning in the age of Facebook: The role of social networking in planning
processes’, GeoJournal, 75( 5), 407–420.

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Evans-Cowley, J.S. and Griffin, G. ( 2011) Micro-Participation: The Role of Microblogging in Planning,
available: http://ss rn.com/abstract=176 0522 (accessed 13 April 2016)..
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Gailing, L. and Leibenath, M. ( 2015) ‘The social construction of landscapes: Two theoretical lenses and
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545.
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Hahmann, S. and Burghardt, D. ( 2011) ‘Maple – A Web Map Service for verbal visualisation using tag
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GIScience, Vol 1, Selection from ICC 2011, Paris. Heidelberg: Springer, 3–12..
Haklay, M., Singleton, A. and Parker, C. ( 2008) ‘Web mapping 2.0: The neogeography of the GeoWeb’,
Geography Compass, 2( 6), 2011–2039.
Kahila-Tani, M., Broberg, A., Kyttä, M. and Tyger, T. ( 2016) ‘Let the Citizens Map—Public Participation
GIS as a Planning Support System in the Helsinki Master Plan Process’, Planning Practice &
Research, 31( 2), 195–214.
Kaplan, A.M. and Haenlein, M. ( 2010) ‘Users of the world, unite! The challenges and opportunities of
social media’, Business Horizons, 53( 1), 59–68..
Kietzmann, J.H., Hermkens, K., McCarthy, I.P. and Silvestre, B.S. ( 2011) ‘Social media? Get serious!
Understanding the functional building blocks of social media’, Business Horizons, 54( 3), 241–
251.
Lefebvre, H. ( 1991) The Production of Space, Oxford: Blackwell.
Louwsma, M., Bregt, A., Edelenbos, J. and van Lammeren, R., Ed. (in prep.) Analysing citizens’ adoption
of e-government from the situational context of spatial planning..
McPherson, M., Smith-Lovin, L. and Cook, J.M. ( 2001) ‘Birds of a feather: Homophily in social
networks’, Annual Review of Sociology, 27, 415–444.
Meijering, J.V., Tobi, H., van den Brink, A., Morris, F. and Bruns, D. ( 2015) ‘Exploring research priorities
in landscape architecture: An international Delphi study’, Landscape and Urban Planning, 137,
85–94..
Mendoza, M., Poblete, B. and Castillo, C. ( 2010) ‘Twitter under crisis: Can we trust what we RT?’,
Proceedings of 1st Workshop on Social Media Analytics (SOMA 2010), New York: ACM, 71–
79..
Pang, B. and Lee, L. ( 2008) ‘Opinion mining and sentiment analysis’, Foundations and Trends in
Information Retrieval, 2( 1–2), 1–135..
Pariser, E. ( 2011) The Filter Bubble: What the Internet is Hiding from You, London: Viking, Penguin
Books.
Pfeffer, J. and Zorbach, T. ( 2015) ‘Shitstorms: Social Media und die Veränderungen der digitalen
Diskussionskultur’, in Stiegler, C., Breitenbach, P. and Zorbach, T., eds. New Media Culture:
Mediale Phänomene der Netzkultur, Bielefeld: transcript, 125–141.
Richardson, T. and Jenson, O.B. ( 2003) ‘Linking discourse and space: Towards a cultural sociology of
space in analysing spatial policy discourses’, Urban Studies, 40( 1), 7–22.
Roick, O. and Heuser, S. ( 2013) ‘Location based social networks – Definition, current state of the art and
research agenda’, Transactions in GIS, 17( 5), 763–784.
Sakaki, T., Okazaki, M. and Matsuo, Y. ( 2010) ‘Earthquake shakes Twitter users: Real-time event
detection by social sensors’, Proceedings of the 19th International Conference on World Wide
Web, April 16–30, Raleigh, NC, 851–860.
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l earn.org/stable/modules/cl ustering.html (accessed 18 April 2016)..

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Shelton, T., Poorthuis, A. and Zook, M. ( 2015) ‘Social media and the city: Rethinking urban socio-spatial
inequality using user-generated geographic information’, Landscape and Urban Planning, 142,
198–211.
Smith, L. (2006) Uses of Heritage, Abingdon: Routledge.
Soja, E. ( 1985) ‘The spatiality of social life: Towards a transformative retheorisation’, in Gregory, D. and
Urry, J., eds. Social Relations and Spatial Structures, London: Macmillan, 90–127.
Stefanidis, A., Crooks, A. and Radzikowski, J. ( 2013) ‘Harvesting ambient geospatial information from
social media feeds’, GeoJournal, 78( 2), 319–338.
Stieglitz, S. and Dang-Xuan, L. ( 2012) ‘Social media and political communication: A social media
analytics framework’, Social Network Analysis and Mining, 3, 1277–1291.
Stieglitz, S., Dang-Xuan, L., Bruns, A. and Neuberger, C. ( 2014) ‘Social media analytics: An
interdisciplinary approach and its implication for information systems’, Business & Information
Systems Engineering, 6( 2), 89–96..
Sun, Y., Fan, H., Bakillah, M. and Zipf, A. ( 2015) ‘Road-based travel recommendation using geo-tagged
images’, Computers, Environment and Urban Systems, 53( special issue), 110–122.
Surowiecki, J. ( 2005) The Wisdom of Crowds, New York: Anchor Books.
Ulrich, W. ( 2000) ‘Reflective practice in the civil society: The contribution of critically systemic thinking’,
Reflective Practice, 1( 2), 247–268.
van der Drift, S. ( 2015) Revealing Spatial and Temporal Patterns from Flickr Photography: A Case Study
with Tourists in Amsterdam (MSc), Wageningen University, Centre for Geo-Information, the
Netherlands.
Wechsler, D. ( 2014) ‘Crowdsourcing as a method of transdisciplinary research – Tapping the full potential
of participants’, Futures, 60, 14–22..

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Chapter 10: Virtual environments

Sigrid Hehl-Lange and Eckart Lange

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INTRODUCTION
Virtual environment technology has great promise to be used for purposes of
basic and applied research in the wider field of the planning and design
disciplines in general and in landscape planning and landscape architecture in
particular. Virtual environments can be broadly characterised as computer-
generated, three-dimensional environments providing interactivity and
immersion (cf. Gaggioli 2001). Virtual environments are used for static or
dynamic landscape representations; they are in essence descriptive and synthetic
models of real environments, and they typically focus on external representation
(Ervin 2001; Deming and Swaffield 2011, p.89). In order to represent possible
future landscape developments, as required in all forms of landscape planning
and design, virtual environments need to be linked to a simulation model, or they
might follow a normative scenario approach with a particular target concerning,
for example, environmental, social, economic and cultural factors (cf. Börjeson
et al. 2006). In experimental settings, such as presented in this chapter, virtual
environments are modelled to give participants the experience of computer-
synthesised landscapes.
In landscape planning and design static scenes are commonly used (e.g.
Downes and Lange 2015). In addition, animated walks or sequences are
increasingly utilised in order to enhance communication with stakeholders. In
the first experiment presented here, people are invited to go on a virtual walk
that follows a path leading through an agricultural landscape; alternative
scenarios of future landscape development are presented and rated using
preference scores. In the second experiment a mix of quantitative and qualitative
approaches is pursued to investigate how real-time virtual landscape models
might be used in a participatory setting, such as a stakeholder workshop (see also
Stokols 2011; Schroth et al. 2011).
Sophisticated visualisation has become increasingly important in the context
of participatory planning and designing of landscapes. At policy level the
foundations for democratic and bottom-up decision making include the Rio
Declaration on Environment and Development (1992), the Aarhus Convention
on Access to Information, Public Participation in Decision-Making and Access
to Justice on Environmental Matters (1998) and, most prominently for the field
of landscape, the European Landscape Convention (2000). Much is still waiting
for public involvement to have greater impact on planning and design practice
(Lane 2005, p.283). Resulting from increasing demands for experts to
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transparently communicate with members of the public, we need to have more
research in three dimensional (3D) landscape visualisation to support planning
and design processes.
In the remainder of this chapter, a short history of visualisation techniques in
landscape architecture is given, concluding with the current status of research in
landscape architecture that employs virtual environment technology. Then, a
conceptual framework is provided upon which virtual environment research
might be based. Two detailed examples of research using virtual environment
technology in an experimental setup are presented and discussed. Finally, the
chapter identifies directions for improving the way that virtual environment
supported research in landscape architecture can contribute to knowledge
building of the discipline.

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HISTORY OF VIRTUAL ENVIRONMENTS IN
LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE
Research in landscape visualisation and related fields has advanced considerably
in the previous decades. The turning point in terms of methods and approaches
came during the late 1980s and early 1990s. It was then when the shift from
analogue to digital techniques started to take effect. Before that time, landscape
architects and planners communicated their ideas mainly by using hand-drawn
sketches and perspectives or physical models (e.g. Markelin and Fahle 1979).
During the early ages of digital 3D landscape imagery several major issues
had to be tackled. First, hardware that could deal with complex graphics was
very expensive (Danahy and Wright 1988) and such graphics still were far from
real time. Second, software specifically dedicated to landscape visualisation
purposes was largely missing (as e.g. in Orland et al. 2001). Third, the relatively
small number of trained experts in this domain was a limiting factor (see Lange
2002, p.14). As a result, digitally rendered visualisation was, at best, used as a
tool for a crude visual representation of landscape and landscape change (e.g.
Nickerson 1979), or purely for visualising the results of a planning process. At
the same time, digital 3D visualisation was not yet appreciated as a
methodological opportunity that could potentially enhance landscape planning
and designing together.
However, landscape architecture soon made great progress in 3D modelling
and visualisation. Within a relatively short period of time the field has come a
long way: starting with the laborious production of static images, either through
digital photomontages (Vining and Orland 1989) or, more sophisticated, through
digital modelling of 3D environments (Hehl-Lange and Lange 1993)
visualisation has, particularly with the advancement of real-time visualisation
software, become more and more interactive (Danahy 2001). As a result, new
opportunities arose for landscape architects to be better prepared to engage with
the public in planning and design. Currently, research in virtual environments
includes investigating multiple use of virtual reality models for on-site display
on mobile devices (Gill and Lange 2015), novel approaches in augmenting the
real world with digital 3D data (Haynes and Lange 2016) and studying the
effects of multi-sensory environments on user perception (e.g. Lindquist et al.
2016).

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CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK
Landscape architects are challenged by both the need to involve different
stakeholders in planning and design, as well as wishing to establish linkages
between participatory methods with 3D landscape visualisation. Provided that
stakeholders have been properly identified (through systematic stakeholder
analysis) and invited, the main research question that needs answering in this
context is: ‘How should visualisations be prepared and presented for stakeholder
involvement?’ (see e.g. Scottish Natural Heritage 2014).
The particular research gaps we are addressing in this chapter relate to the
experience of dynamic movement through virtual environments. While static
visualisations have a predetermined viewpoint, virtual environments offer
opportunities for users to move around and explore their virtual surroundings.
Gibson (1979), in his ‘Ecological Approach to Visual Perception’, underlines
how important it is for people to be looking around and moving about. He argues
that we normally perceive the world dynamically and that human perception is
not confined to a particular frame of view (see e.g. Nassauer 1995). Any person
exploring real environments is used to being able to move freely in and through
the space and to view whatever attracts their attention. When it comes to virtual
environments, there is a need to learn how ‘real’ people experience and explore
them. We must, through research, also try to better understand how such
experience can affect decision making, particularly from a planning and design
perspective.
Humans experience their daily environment while in motion (see e.g.
Burckhardt 2006; Thwaites and Simkins 2007). Heft and Nasar (2000) point out
three important aspects of our visual perception while in motion. The optical
flow causes a streaming of features from a centre of expansion in the field of
view accompanying forward movement. Motion parallax stands for the rates of
‘movement’ of static objects as a function of their relative distances from the
perceiver. This means near objects seem to move faster than far objects. Through
occlusion objects are gradually covered and uncovered while in motion.
Considering an experience of space while in motion is typically not explicitly
taken into account in planning and design. However, there are a number of
famous Chinese examples, for example the Garden of the Master of Nets in
Suzhou (see Henderson 2012) and Japanese parks including, for example,
Katsura Imperial Villa and Shugaku-in Imperial villa in Kyoto, that are designed
especially to be experienced in a sequential way (see Johnson 2003). Similarly,
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in the English landscape style there are purposefully designed vistas, which open
up to visitors, in sequence, when driving or walking through a park. A more
recent example where the notion of movement, in this case in architectural space
(Samuel 2010), is taken explicitly into account is Le Corbusier’s concept of the
‘promenade architecturale’.
In previous research studies Appleyard et al. (1966) analysed the perception of
car drivers along a highway by using a set of photographs or perspective
sketches combined with written descriptions of this sequential experience. In the
Berkeley Environmental Simulation Laboratory (Appleyard and Craik 1978) a
miniature endoscopic camera was used that was hung from overhead gantries.
This setup gave users freedom of movement through the physical model of
central San Francisco at eye level.
Building on such research involving analogue technology in the planning and
design disciplines the research described in the next section looks into the effects
of static versus dynamic representation in virtual environments.

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COMPARISON OF DYNAMIC MOVEMENT AND
STATIC REPRESENTATION IN AN
EXPERIMENTAL SETTING

Research question and hypothesis

The aim of the study is to better understand which effect different visualisation
modes (i.e. static or dynamic) have on landscape evaluation and on people’s
assessment of scenarios of future landscapes. The main research question in this
experiment is: ‘Does the way of exposure to a landscape have an effect on how
landscape is rated?’ The underlying hypothesis is that scores will differ when
people are experiencing static images in comparison to dynamic sequences.

A virtual walk through different landscape scenarios: the Zürich

case study
For the purpose of this experiment we aimed at exposing participants to a virtual
walk allowing navigation in real time. The virtual walk takes participants along a
path leading through a rural landscape at the urban fringe near the university
campus of ETH Zürich-Hönggerberg, Switzerland.
The status quo is a farmed open space with a few fruit trees scattered about
the fields and meadows. In addition to the status quo, three scenarios of possible
future landscape change were developed: ‘agriculture’, ‘recreation’ and ‘nature
conservation’ (see Lange et al. 2008). In the scenario ‘agriculture’ all of the fruit
trees within the fields and meadows are removed, and instead fruit trees are
newly planted at the edges of the plots and along the paths crossing the
farmland. In the scenario ‘recreation’ additional single trees and new hedges of
variable height and length have been added, compared to the status quo. The
main feature of the scenario ‘nature conservation’ is a large new forest that could
function as a wildlife corridor between the currently disconnected forests located
east and west of the campus. Additionally, for the ‘nature conservation’ scenario,
a new wetland with a buffer of shrubs is also created.

The visual stimuli

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The virtual model was constructed using Polytrim visualisation software from
the Centre for Landscape Research at the University of Toronto (e.g. Danahy
and Hoinkes 1995). The model consists of a digital terrain model with a draped
orthophoto at a resolution of 0.5 metres (m). 3D objects such as ETH Zürich-
Hönggerberg buildings and vegetation were visualised with geo-specific
textures.

Static images
The status quo and each of the three scenarios were represented with five still
images (identical to the respective frames in the animations) spread evenly along
a public path (Figures 10.1 and 10.2) including the start and endpoints. Thus, in
total, the participants saw 20 images.

Dynamic walkthroughs
For the status quo and each of the three scenarios, participants were presented
with an animated sequence (Figure 10.3) of 60 seconds duration consisting of
856 single frames, leading viewers along an identical path of 131 m in length.
This frame rate still provides fluid motion. The speed of the animation is equal
to 7.8 kilometres/hour (km/h) which corresponds to the speed of a jogger or a
slow cyclist (cf. Teknomo 2002).

Study participants
The participants in the experiment (n=62) were recruited from the Department of
Landscape at the University of Sheffield. The sample included staff as well as
graduate and doctoral students. The participants were deliberately chosen for
their unfamiliarity with the landscape they were going to be exposed to during
the experiment, thus avoiding potential effects related to local knowledge.

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Figure 10.1
The path in the virtual model. The numbers indicate the locations of the five viewpoints of the still images

Figure 10.2
Still images of the status quo and the three scenarios and five viewpoints

Figure 10.3
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Filmstrip representing the animaated walkthrough

Study design and protocol

Before the experiment started all participants received a participant information
sheet and a short questionnaire (four questions) to record their scores. The
participants were briefly introduced to the task of rating a set of images or
walkthroughs showing a virtual representation of an agricultural landscape at the
urban–rural fringe of the City of Zürich, Switzerland. The actual purpose of the
study, the comparison of static versus dynamic mode of representation, was not
revealed. Neither was it mentioned to the participants that they would be looking
at different scenarios for the same landscape.
The participants were split up randomly into five separate groups (12–13
persons per group). One group saw the static images only. Each of the four other
groups saw one of the walkthroughs only, that is one of the three scenarios or the
status quo. No group saw more than one set of stimuli.
As a warm-up for the group looking at the static scenes, four images from
within the virtual model were shown. These four images were not considered for
the results of the experiment. As a warm-up for the four groups looking at the
sequences, an animation along a public footpath within the same landscape
model was shown. This animation was not rated in the experiment. All images
were shown with a data projector on a projection wall (approx. 3 m x 2 m). Each
of the static images was shown for 30 seconds. During this time the participants
ticked the boxes with their respective scores. To avoid an ordering effect the
images were shown in random order.
The walkthroughs were presented in real time using a laptop and a data
projector. After seeing the walkthrough once, participants responded to all four
questions. Participants were using a verbally anchored five-point rating scale,
ranging from very little (1) to very much (5). For each of the 20 images the same
questions (addressing preference) were asked:

• How much do you like this landscape?

• Would you enjoy walking in this landscape?

After all participants rated all of the images, two further questions (addressing
orientation) referring to the entire set of images were asked:

• To what degree do the images help you to envisage the landscape?

• To what degree do the images help you to understand where you are in the
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 landscape?

As the participants were not familiar with the site, assigning scores for
orientation when just looking at single images is impossible. Thus, for the last
two questions the whole set of images was scored. For each of the four
animations the same four questions (as above) were asked, that is questions
referring to walkthroughs instead of images.

Results
The results are looked at in terms of representation type (walkthrough vs static)
and in terms of the ratings of the status quo and the three scenarios.
For the questions ‘How much do you like this landscape?’ and ‘Would you
enjoy walking in this landscape?’ (Figure 10.4), the scores obtained for the
walkthroughs are consistently higher than those given for the images. The
difference in the scoring ranges from 0.14 (status quo, 2.46 vs 2.32) to a
maximum of 0.62 (scenario ‘recreation’, 3.42 vs 2.8).
As mentioned earlier, the questions ‘To what degree do the images /
walkthroughs help you to envisage the landscape?’ and ‘To what degree do the
images / walkthroughs help you to understand where you are in the landscape?’
(Figure 10.4) were asked after one group of participants saw all images. This is
why the values for the images across the scenarios are the same. For the question
‘To what degree do the images / walkthroughs help you to envisage the
landscape?’, with the exception of the status quo, the walkthroughs scored lower
in the other three scenarios than the images. For the question ‘To what degree do
the images / walkthroughs help you to understand where you are in the
landscape?’, the walkthroughs scored consistently higher than the images.

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Figure 10.4
Participant’s ratings of four different landscape scenarios, dynamic walkthroughs versus static images

The scores for the individual scenarios regarding the questions addressing
preference, ‘How much do you like this landscape?’ and ‘Would you enjoy
walking in this landscape?’, show highest ratings for the scenario ‘nature
conservation’, followed by the scenario ‘agriculture’ and then the scenario
‘recreation’, with the status quo scoring the lowest. Animations of individual
scenarios consistently receive higher scores than static images. Regarding the
two questions addressing orientation there is no clear pattern of scores for
animations versus static images.

Discussion
The way visualisations are presented, that is static images or dynamic
walkthroughs, has an effect on ratings for landscape preference and on people’s
assessment of scenarios of future landscapes. Given the setup, the experiment
could be conducted in a timeframe of approximately 15 minutes. Such a
relatively short duration keeps the attention levels of the participants high and
prevents fatigue, which is known to potentially have an effect on the results
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(Rathod and La Bruna 2005; Galesic and Bosnjak 2009).
As the images were shown in random order and not identified as part of a
particular scenario, it was not recognisable for the participants that the images
were part of different scenarios. Also, because the static images were shown
randomly and the sequences only once to one set of participants, it was possible
to exclude an ordering effect. The disadvantage is that one needs a relatively
large number of participants for the overall number of responses generated, that
is there are rather low participant numbers (12–13 per test set), but this was
accounted for by the rather homogenous composition of the participants. In
terms of ranking the status quo and the three scenarios, the scoring pattern for
the two landscape preference questions is fairly consistent (i.e. either as
walkthroughs or as static images) with the scenario ‘nature conservation’
receiving the highest scores.
Regarding the two questions addressing orientation in the model, there is a
slight tendency that walkthroughs score higher, but the results do not support a
conclusion that either of the two modi is better than the other. The reason for this
could be a slight ambiguity in the phrasing of the question: that is ‘To what
degree do the images / walkthroughs help you to envisage the landscape?’ is
perhaps rather similar to ‘understand where you are’. On the other hand it may
well be the case that a static image is better for focussing on particular features
in order to envisage the landscape. Animations resemble walking. This might
explain the comparatively large differences between high scores for
walkthroughs and lower scores for images when asked ‘would you enjoy
walking in this landscape?’
There are some important factors with a likely influence on the results that
merit further research investigation. It would be interesting, for example, to
repeat the same experiment with people from different backgrounds (e.g.
laypeople only) and with larger numbers. There is a potential effect of
comparing a predetermined path (as in this example) with a freely navigable
environment. The predetermined movement itself, without free navigation, does
not seem to be sufficient to support the assumptions used in the theory of
ecological perception (Gibson 1979). Also, the length of the path or the duration
of the experience could play a role. Another important factor could be connected
to the complexity of the landscape that is studied, especially when it comes to
the questions that relate to navigation and orientation.
Further research is also needed in comparing an image to a walkthrough in a
truly immersive environment in 3D that is freely navigable. There have been a
number of examples in which immersive and dynamic visualisation with a
public participation approach is applied to real-world case studies (e.g. Orland
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and Uusitalo 2000; Stock and Bishop 2002; Danahy 2005). But, to date, there is
still a considerable gap in empirical research in investigating whether people
respond in a ‘natural’ way when moving or driving through a virtual model,
considering sequential and/or immersive experiences in the landscape.

Participatory stakeholder workshop with freely navigable virtual

environments: the Alport Valley case study
In this study the Alport Valley forest landscape management project in the Peak
District National Park (UK) is used as a real-world case in order to look into the
potential use of immersive and freely navigable virtual environments, as
opposed to predetermined animation paths, when engaging with stakeholders. A
time series of future landscapes was developed from a forest management plan
and translated into 3D visualisation models. These were explored and assessed in
two stakeholder workshops in an immersive environment facility supporting 3D
vision.
The Alport Valley is a steep sided valley carved into the upland gritstone
plateau of the Dark Peak area of the Peak District National Park, which was
established in 1951 as the first national park in the UK. While the surrounding
upland plateau is very exposed and without any trees, in contrast, the Alport
Valley is a sheltered and forested landscape. It is one of the largest and
essentially ‘traffic-free’ valleys in the Peak District and has therefore an
important function of tranquil enjoyment for walkers and hikers.
As a result of policies to provide the UK with a strategic timber reserve (see
e.g. Essex 1990), mostly in the first half of the twentieth century dense
coniferous forests dominated by non-native species including Sitka Spruce
(Picea sitchensis (Bong.) Carrière), with smaller stands of Japanese Larch (Larix
kaempferi(Lamb.) Carrière), Lodgepole Pine (Pinus contortaDougl. Ex Loud.)
as well as native Scots Pine (Pinus sylvestris L.) were planted for fast growth.
Not only are large areas dominated by non-native trees in conflict with the
notion of a national park in general, nowadays forest policies also take into
account the social and landscape benefits as well as benefits for plant
communities and wildlife.
Because of the overall unique landscape character, initial proposals for large
scale timber extraction, including the construction of suitable access roads for
heavy timber trucks, caused major opposition. Subsequently, a joint planning
approach integrating the key stakeholders and landowners as well as the views of
the public was pursued. As a result of the collaboration among the stakeholders

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the Alport Valley management plan (Figure 10.5) was developed. This includes
unconventional measures such as trees felled to rot on site as well as ring-
barking of trees (see Lange and Hehl-Lange 2010a). Both measures had been
introduced because of the predicted impact on the tranquil valley associated with
the removal of the logged trees and construction of new access roads.
In line with forests requiring adaptation to climate change, the overall aim is
to establish native woodlands mostly by natural regeneration through the
preservation of individual native seed trees and partly if necessary through active
plantings and seeding with material of local provenance. This process will take
place in a period spanning several decades.

Figure 10.5
Long-term forest management plan indicating the year when felling takes place

The visual stimuli

Some decades ago Dame Sylvia Crowe used hand-drawn sketches to illustrate
forest management options (Crowe 1978). In the Alport Valley example, a
virtual landscape model of the valley is constructed that consists of a digital
terrain model (DTM), an orthophoto and a range of object types such as trees,
dry stonewalls, buildings, paths and the sky as a backdrop. The DTM is based on
an original map scale of 1:10,000 and has a resolution of 10 m. The resolution of
the orthophoto is 1 m. This orthophoto is draped over the DTM using the
visualisation software Simmetry3d. The terrain along the path was edited
manually to provide a smooth animation. The geometry of the buildings is
constructed in Sketchup. In order to achieve a realistic representation of the built
objects they were photographed in the field and their textures applied to the
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building geometry. Similarly, for the vegetation, a library of geo-specific
textures that were acquired on site is used. In addition to the billboards, in
prominent locations along the main access to the valley, trees with texture-
mapped 3D-geometry (see Paar 2003) were also included. The visualisation of
several thousand trees while still being able to move around in real time was a
major challenge that required fine-tuning with several iterations of model
improvement. The landscape is shown in several stages over time (Lange and
Hehl-Lange 2010b): ‘2005’ before forest management activities began, ‘2020’
after harvesting most of the existing woodlands, ‘2030’ when new woodlands
have started to be established and ‘2090’ the proposed ‘final state’ with oak–
birch woodland.

Study participants
A key issue for a success in conducting stakeholder workshops as in the example
of the Alport Valley is to identify and involve the relevant stakeholders. Also,
this ensures that management planning takes into consideration local experience.
If the key decision-making parties are involved early there is strong potential for
the discussions in stakeholders’ workshops to lead to concrete action on the
ground. The relevant stakeholders are the National Trust (the main landowner),
the Forestry Commission, the Peak District National Park Authority (PDNPA),
the British Mountaineering Council, the Campaign to Protect Rural England
(CPRE), Friends of the Peak District and The Kinder and High Peak Advisory
Committee.

Study design and protocol

The workshops were held in the virtual reality studio of the University of
Sheffield. To provide unobstructed views for the participants, chairs were placed
at the back of the room approximately 3–4 m away from the screen (3 m x 2.5
m) in a semi-circular arrangement. Prior to the actual stakeholder workshops a
test run was conducted in order to eradicate any potential issues and provide a
smooth operation. An essential requirement is a skilled operator of the system
and a moderator guiding and structuring the process (Figure 10.6). In order to
keep a record of the workshops, they were recorded with photographs and video.
Also, a researcher took written notes during the workshops.
A practical hurdle was finding a time slot in which everyone would be
available for a workshop. In order to arrange the date a preparatory meeting was

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held with the main stakeholders, that is the National Trust and the Forestry
Commission. Because of the limited availability of the stakeholders it turned out
to be impossible to find a joint single slot, and therefore the workshop was
conducted twice. In total 11 persons representing different stakeholder groups
participated in the workshops.
The workshops gave the stakeholders the opportunity to see, for the first time,
and in three dimensions, the management plan and the landscape as it would
develop over time. Workshop participants were presented with 4 x 5 static
images (Figure 10.7). Each of the four landscape models were represented
through five images, with five seconds showing time per image and animations
at 20 frames/s leading participants along a stretch of approximately 200 m of the
sole access route in the Alport Valley. The speed of 8 km/h corresponds to the
pace of a jogger. In addition, participants had the opportunity to explore the
virtual environment on their own by using devices such as a joystick as used in
computer games and stereo glasses for 3D immersion.

Figure 10.6
Setup of the participatory workshop using 3D visualisation

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Figure 10.7
Static images of the four landscape models represented through five images along the path

After they had seen and explored the virtual environments on their own,
participants were asked to fill in a short questionnaire and to answer four
questions for which the answers could be given using a five-point rating scale
with tick boxes (ranging from ‘not at all’ equalling 1 to ‘very much’ equalling
5). The four questions were: ‘To what degree do the following types of
visualisations help you to envisage the landscape?’, ‘To what degree do the
following types of visualisations help you to understand where you are in the
landscape?’, ‘To what degree do the following types of visualisations help you
to understand the visual transformation of the landscape in the future?’ and
‘How helpful are the different visualisations for you to participate in the forest
management plan for the Alport valley?’

Results
In the second experiment particular focus was put on gathering qualitative
feedback (e.g. Lewis and Sheppard 2006; Schroth et al. 2011). When the
stakeholders saw the images and the walkthroughs along the pre-recorded
animation path they were sitting quietly, focussing and concentrating on the
screen. Only a few comments were whispered. The stakeholders were then
encouraged to get up from their seats and move towards the screen to try
exploring the virtual environment at their own pace and along their own routes.
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They got a short introduction of how to use the joystick for navigation. In
particular, when they moved away from the path and explored the whole valley
they engaged much more and spontaneously commented on the visualisations,
for example ‘It’s fantastic, this is brilliant’, ‘The river there! That’s actually the
view!’, ‘Look, the ridge there!’, that is they were immediately interacting more
with the landscape and relating their own experiences and geographic knowledge
to what they saw on the screen, or even deliberately going to particular locations
that they wanted to explore.
In comparison to the still images (‘the still images added very little, whereas
the real time navigation was amazing and added real value’) the stakeholders
made it clear that the navigation brought the landscape to life (‘captures the
visual sensation of being in the valley from different vantage points’), because it
gave them a sense of place and scale, expressing a feeling like being in that
landscape, as well as a sense of ownership and control as they could explore the
landscape freely (‘being able to navigate through the valley was a useful
experience’). The visualisations were seen as providing a good representation of
how the landscape might look in years to come.
Some study participants wanted to see more foreground details including
shrubs or bracken as well as boundaries such as fences (‘good to show some
more boundaries’) to give more reality to the visualisation. For the majority of
the stakeholders a high level of foreground detail was not considered to be
important. For them the overall impression of the landscape as a whole is the key
factor (‘at the scale of grand landscape the model is at its best’) as well as the
ability to show how to manage large landscapes (‘overall it has given me great
benefit and understanding on the impacts that the proposed felling and plantation
will have’; ‘the visualisation will help to consider whether the landscapes we are
working towards will meet our original objectives’; ‘it is an excellent tool to “get
over” to people how you intend to manage large landscapes’).
For a detailed quantitative analysis the sample with 11 stakeholders is rather
small. However, the analysis of the responses shows clear patterns in terms of
how the different representation media are rated by the individual stakeholders
(Figure 10.8). Also, the results show that the scores overall tend to be between 3
and 5, that is clustering around 4. In general, there is a clear trend for all four
questions that the real-time navigation scored higher than the animations,
whereas the animations scored either equal or in most cases slightly higher than
the images. Depending on the questions, in some cases the stakeholders treat the
three representation methods as equal.

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Discussion
The results provide quantitative and also qualitative information of people’s
perception regarding the use of static imagery, animations and interactive
computer visualisations as a basis for making decisions about future landscapes.
All stakeholders participating in the study were directly involved in the Alport
Valley management plan. They know this landscape well. Because of their high
level of local knowledge and their familiarity with the site they were able to
target specific locations they wanted to explore in order to view the landscape
from different perspectives. For them, the question about orientation in the
landscape, whether it is related to imagery, animations or self-navigation, in
statistical terms did not have a distinct discriminatory effect. For the question
referring to the role of visualisations for participation in the management plan,
for the majority of the stakeholders (6 out of 11) both visualisation approaches
resulted in high scores averaging clearly above 4, whereas 5 out of 11 clearly
favoured the real-time navigation over images and animations. In particular the
open comments that were gathered beyond the rigidly structured questionnaires,
especially when the stakeholders themselves took over and experienced the
virtual landscape on their own, gave further insights that would not have been
received by only relying on a typical questionnaire format.

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Figure 10.8
Stakeholders’ ratings of different representation media

In terms of scheduling participatory events, a key effort is needed for

organising them. This should not be underestimated, and thorough preparation
and scripting needs to be done by the hosts. In addition, workshops and surveys
need to be approved by the respective ethics committees. All this can take a
considerable amount of time and needs flexibility in planning ahead and also in
addressing alternatives in terms of timings.
When digital landscape visualisations are used as an integral component of the
process (e.g. Gill and Lange 2013) this complicates the setup even more. In such
a case, because of the interactive nature of the involvement of the public this is
very challenging and needs skilled operators and moderators. Detailed
choreography is absolutely essential but can only account to a certain degree for
the unpredictability of the focus of the aspects investigated when involving the
public. While the level of complexity is relatively low when only static
landscape visualisations are used, the challenge when using interactive landscape
visualisations increases considerably. Also, as a virtual landscape model can be
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freely explored, it needs a relatively high level of detail throughout (rather than
providing detail only along certain routes) which increases rendering time.
Compared to a workshop setting that does not rely on interactive 3D
landscape models, this needs a skilled operator and a moderator who recognises
the role of the visualisation. It also needs participants willing to engage. For
digital natives the interactive nature of computer games is something they are
used to and probably expect. For novices the moderator will have to be patient
and encouraging in order for the workshop participants not to shy away.
In the process of the preparation of the management plan, as part of the
ongoing stakeholder involvement, the tree felling method was changed to ring-
barking. As a result the dead tree trunks will be standing for some years in order
to prevent erosion. As a consequence, the virtual model ‘2020’ (after harvesting
most of the existing plantations) had to be adapted. Instead of visualising areas
where harvested trees were lying on the ground to rot, these areas were
populated with trunks of dead trees still standing. In this example dead tree
trunks as seen from a distance are displayed as thin lines and when their
positions change slightly from each pre-recorded image to the next image
flickering appeared in parts of the animations. This was noticed by some of the
stakeholders and is a common problem in computer graphics. It does not occur
in still images.
In forest management long-term planning decisions are made today but they
will impact future generations. 3D visualisation gives us the opportunity to
decide on the effects of forest management decisions today and to experience
what future generations will potentially experience.

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GENERAL DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS
The setup of both of the experimental studies reported on above was exploratory
in nature, and with the experience gained from them we were able to transfer the
approaches as role models to other research settings (see e.g. Hehl-Lange et al.
2012; Gill et al. 2013; Hehl-Lange et al. 2015). Decisions to be made in planning
and design processes are often complex. This requires sophisticated decision
support techniques and favours the use of visual communication techniques that
can potentially simplify and explain complex settings and spatial information in
order to improve design and decision making.
Landscape visualisation not only has the potential to visually communicate
spatial characteristics of possible future landscapes to stakeholders, it can also be
used to explore conflicting interests by involving the relevant stakeholders early
on, for example by adapting models for public involvement such as focus
groups, public hearings, round tables, workshops, design charrettes and so on or,
further, it could be the basis to integrate adaptive, analytical and systematic
approaches (see Milburn and Brown 2003) in research into a design context.
Regarding the presentation mode perceived by the user/stakeholder, it seems
not so much a question of static (an image) versus dynamic representation (an
animation along a predetermined route). The real benefit lies in the possibility to
explore virtual environments freely. More than any other form of virtual reality
exposure, the self-determined exploration most resembles the behaviour of a real
person in a real landscape. Moreover, it may even go beyond real world
exposure, as in virtual representations of real environments, a user can easily
navigate to, perhaps, otherwise inaccessible locations.
The visualisation approaches in the research presented rely on representing the
real world through a virtual surrogate. In the future, other approaches are likely
to play an important role as well (e.g. Gill and Lange 2013, 2015). In particular,
this includes developments for augmenting the real world with textual or
graphical data. In combination with increasingly ubiquitous mobile devices such
as tablets and smartphones, augmented reality for planning and designing our
environments is likely to develop into a new field of research in the near future.

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SUGGESTED FURTHER READING
Appleyard, D. ( 1977) ‘ Understanding professional media: Issues, theory and a research agenda’, Reprint
No. 150 from Human Behavior and Environment 2, Berkeley, CA: Institute of Urban and
Regional Development, University of California.
Bishop, I. and Lange, E., eds ( 2005) Visualization in Landscape and Environmental Planning: Technology
and Applications, London, New York: Taylor & Francis.
Buhmann, E., Paar, P., Bishop, I. and Lange, E., eds ( 2005) Trends in Real-Time Landscape Visualization
and Participation, Heidelberg: Wichmann.
Conan, M., ed.( 2003) Landscape Design and the Experience of Motion, Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks
Trustees for Harvard University.
Lange, E. ( 2011) ‘ 99 volumes later: We can visualise. Now what?’, Landscape and Urban Planning, 100,
403–406.
Sheppard, S.R.J. ( 1989) Visual Simulation: A User’s Guide for Architects, Engineers, and Planners, New
York: Van Nostrand Reinhold.

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REFERENCES
Appleyard, D. and Craik, K.H. ( 1978) ‘ The Berkeley environmental simulation laboratory and its research
program’, Applied Psychology: An International Review, 27, 53–55.
Appleyard, D., Lynch, K. and Myer, J.R. ( 1966) The View from the Road, Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
Börjeson, L., Höjer, M., Dreborg, K.-H., Ekvall, T. and Finnveden, G. ( 2006) ‘ Scenario types and
techniques: Towards a user’s guide’, Futures, 38( 7), 723–739.
Burckhardt, L. ( 2006 [ 1979]) Warum ist Landschaft schön? Die Spaziergangswissenschaft, Berlin: Martin
Schmitz Verlag.
Crowe, S. ( 1978) ‘ The landscape of forests and woods’, Forestry Commission Booklet44, London: HMSO.
Danahy, J. ( 2001) ‘ Technology for dynamic viewing and peripheral vision in landscape visualization’,
Landscape and Urban Planning, 54, 125–137.
Danahy, J.W. ( 2005) ‘ Negotiating public view protection and high density in urban design’, in Bishop,
I.D. and Lange, E., eds. Visualization in Landscape and Environmental Planning: Technology
and Applications, London, New York: Taylor & Francis, 195–202.
Danahy, J.W. and Wright, R. ( 1988) ‘ Exploring design through 3-dimensional simulations’, Landscape
Architecture, 78( 4), 64–71.
Danahy, J.W. and Hoinkes, R. ( 1995) ‘ Polytrim: Collaborative setting for environmental design’, in Tan,
M. and Teh, R., eds. The Global Design Studio. Proceedings CAAD Futures ‘95. CASA, National
University of Singapore, 647–658.
Deming, M.E. and Swaffield, S. ( 2011) Landscape Architectural Research: Inquiry, Strategy, Design,
Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons.
Downes, M. and Lange, E. ( 2015) ‘ What you see is not always what you get: A qualitative, comparative
analysis of ex ante visualizations with ex post photography of landscape and architectural
projects‘,’ Landscape and Urban Planning, 142, 136–146.
Ervin, S.M. ( 2001) ‘ Digital landscape modeling and visualization: A research agenda’, Landscape and
Urban Planning, 54, 49–62.
Essex, S.J. ( 1990) ‘ Woodland planning in the Peak District National Park, UK: Formulation and
implementation of a land use policy’, Land Use Policy, 7( 3), 243–256.
Gaggioli, A. ( 2001) ‘ Using virtual reality in experimental psychology’, in Riva, G. and Galimberti, C.,
eds. Towards Cyberpsychology: Mind, Cognition and Society in the Internet Age, Amsterdam:
IOS Press, 157–174.
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Gibson, J.J. ( 1979) The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception, Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin.
Gill, L. and Lange, E. ( 2013) ‘ Visualizing landscapes’, in Howard, P., Thompson, I. and Waterton, E., eds.
The Routledge Companion to Landscape Studies, London, New York: Routledge, 417–426.
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visualisation media within a collaborative planning workshop environment’, Environment &
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3D User Interfaces, 19–23 March 2016, Greenville, SC, 241–242.
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Hehl-Lange, S. and Lange, E. ( 1993) ‘ 2D3D4D’, Anthos, 2, 12–16.
Hehl-Lange, S., Gill, L., Henneberry, J., Keskin, B., Lange, E., Mell, I.C. and Morgan, E. ( 2012) ‘ Using
3D virtual geodesigns for exploring the economic value of alternative green infrastructure

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 options’, in Buhmann, E., Ervin, S. and Pietsch, M., eds. Digital Landscape Architecture 2012,
Berlin-Offenbach: Wichmann, 273–280.
Hehl-Lange, S., Lange, E. and Bilge, G. ( 2015) ‘ Plan and design together – Just a vision?‘,’ Proceedings
REAL CORP 2015, Ghent, 483–487.
Henderson, R. ( 2012) The Gardens of Suzhou, Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Johnson, N.B. ( 2003) ‘ Mountain, temple, and the design of movement: Thirteenth-century Japanese Zen
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3), 283–299.
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 Environmental Modelling and Software Society 1, 30–35.
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Data Collection and Simulation Model, published PhD thesis, Tohoku University, Japan.
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Chapter 11: Walking

Henrik Schultz and Rudi van Etteger

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INTRODUCTION
Walking is one of the most common and revealing ways to explore a landscape.
There are volumes of writing in which researchers report on the landscape
knowledge gained by walking, from fields ranging as wide apart as
geomorphology (Lukas and Bradwell 2010) and psycho-geography (Coverly
2010). Walking, in our view, holds great promise for obtaining knowledge to
inform the design of complex landscapes, and walking can be profitably used in
the context of research through designing. Walking is especially suitable for
answering research questions dealing with complex and unfamiliar tasks that
require engagement with the object of research in order to understand and frame
the problem properly. For example, a research project on strategies to integrate
new infrastructures for energy production would benefit from engaging through
walking. The nature of walking itself can be viewed as experimental (Fischer
2011, p.289). In this context ‘experimental’ means a test, trial or tentative
procedure; an act or operation for the purpose of discovering something
unknown, in this case the characteristics and potentials of the terrain crossed by
the walk. Using walking as a research method implies being aware of its
experimental character. Conducting walking as experiment in landscape research
means to intervene and change the object of research. In walking experiments
researchers provide a framework for fostering creative engagement and for
combining planned and unplanned elements (von Seggern 2000, p.316). The
character of a walking experiment can best be described by quoting Bruno
Latour: ‘A good experiment is not one that offers some definite knowledge, but
one that has allowed the researcher to trace the critical path along which it will
be necessary to pass so that the following iteration will not be carried out in
vain’ (Latour 2004, p.196).
The chapter begins with a short history of walking used as a method in
research and we briefly describe research in landscape architecture that employs
walking. Secondly, we provide a conceptual framework upon which research
using walking might be based. Thirdly, we present and discuss two examples of
research using walking. Finally, we identify directions for continuing to improve
the way that walking-supported research can contribute to knowledge building in
the field of landscape architecture research.

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CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK
Rebecca Solnit (2000; 2005) provides both a historical perspective on walking
and an insight into why one should walk. Geoff Nicholson (2008) speaks – in the
title of his book on the subject – about The Lost Art of Walking. Referring to, for
example, Jean-Jacques Rousseau who claimed to be unable to work, or even
think, when not walking, Frédéric Gros (2014, p.5) describes why going for a
walk is the ‘best way to free your mind’. With his famous ‘strollology’
experiments Lucius Burckhardt influenced designers, including landscape
architects, and pointed at the ‘invisible’ aspects of landscape (Fezer and Schmitz
2012). In urban design, Appleyard (1982), Jacks (2007) and Gehl (2010) have
emphasised the importance of walking for the liveability of the urban
environment, and Speck (2013) advertises the walkable city. Costa et al. (2015)
have looked into the experiences of walkers in urban parks. Wunderlich (2008)
has sketched walking in an urban context, while Wylie (2005) has described the
experience of a walk along the coast. Outside academia, authors have also
touched upon the experience of walking in relation to landscape, for example, in
the stories by Ian Sinclair on the urban fringe in his book London Orbital (2003),
and by Robert Macfarlane about the English landscape in The Wild Places
(2007) and The Old Ways (2012). Bill Bryson (1998), in his book A Walk in the
Woods, describes both intensive landscape perception and insight on
fundamental questions as side effects on his walk on the Appalachian Trail.
In this chapter we consider landscape from a constructivist point of view
(Berger and Luckmann 1966, p.210; Creswell 2009, p.8; Crotty 1998, p.43).
Landscape is constructed through the active interplay between observer and the
observed. Landscape is considered as coming into being through a complex,
non-linear process of transformation. The European Landscape Convention
builds on this concept of landscape: according to article 1 A, ‘landscape’ means
an area, as perceived by people, whose character is the result of the action and
interaction of natural and/or human factors. People play a constitutive part by
perceiving, using and changing landscape both physically and in their minds.
According to Hille von Seggern´s (2008) definition of landscape as
Raumgeschehen, all space that surrounds us can be understood only by actively
becoming part of and perceiving its ongoing process of transformation. Thus,
landscape is not simply a physical entity that can be analysed by measuring and
observing; studying landscapes needs to take the observer into account. This
brings us to phenomenological theory. The founding father of phenomenology,
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Edmund Husserl (1970 [1936]), had serious concerns about the course of
scientific thinking of his time, and also about the role that science plays in
society. Though science had made great advances throughout the nineteenth
century, the abstraction and mathematisation of science brought, to Husserl’s
mind, science further away from people’s everyday life-world. For example, the
measurable fact that wood and metal consist mainly of empty space that exists
between nuclear cores and electron clouds does not stop anyone from sitting on a
chair built of such material. The central theme for phenomenology was ‘back to
the things themselves’.
Phenomenology advocates studying the phenomena and the experiences of
people and their actions in their life-world. Studying should not focus on an
abstract world of atoms, but on a contingent specific place that surrounds people.
With this life-world people bodily interact, as theorised by phenomenologist
Merleau-Ponty (1968), not as subjects between objects, but by being a part of it.
Phenomenological studies may best be described as accounts of ‘subjective
experience’, rather than subjective accounts of experience (Gallagher and Zahavi
2008). The phenomenological thinking and approach has been further developed
in recent decades by Moustakas (1994), Smith et al. (2009) and by Ihde (2012).
From the original transcendental aspirations of Husserl an approach has been
developed that is grounded in an existential position. The earlier theoretical
understandings of phenomenology by Husserl in the 1930s and Merleau-Ponty in
the 1960s on the situatedness of knowledge have been corroborated by findings
from experimental research (McLeod and Dienes 1996) and neuroscientific
research which show how interconnections exist between the body, the senses
and the world we live in (e.g. Noë 2004). Knowledge about the world is actively
constructed by engaging with the world. According to Barbaras (2006, p.90) it is
only attention for what is already there in perception, so the landscape does not
appear as a view – it is already there in the flow of experience and then singled
out. McLeod and Dienes (1996) describe how baseball players do not know
where the ball will go, but can move towards that spot. Similarly, scholarly
knowledge is not just waiting to be found by scientists, but is actively
constructed by scientists engaging with situations. Experiences of the landscape
are not there in the landscape, but come into existence when an observer moves
into a specific place. Design researchers need to get involved but also need to
reflect on their role as active forces in the processes by which life-world
phenomena become transformed and when developing ideas which help shape
the environment and which anticipate certain experiences to be had there.
This brings us to our underlying concept of research aimed at obtaining
knowledge within the field of landscape architecture. As landscape is a complex,
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ever changing object, there is a choice either to simplify and isolate aspects of
landscape which are then universally true or to accept the socially constructed
nature of landscape and follow Martin Prominski´s classification of landscape
research as part of ‘mode 2’ research (Prominski 2004). The term mode 2
research was established by Helga Nowotny who distinguished between ‘reliable
knowledge’ of ‘mode 1’ research and ‘socially robust knowledge’ of mode 2
research (e.g. Nowotny et al. 2001, p.166). Nowotny describes mode 2
knowledge generated in contemporary research processes as ‘working
knowledges’. Working knowledges ‘include the knowledge that works and
knowledge with which one works. … Working knowledge therefore means
working upon an object, which is created by knowledge’ (Nowotny 2008, p.13).
According to Nowotny, understanding life means to change it (Nowotny and
Testa 2009, p.15). This mode 2 knowledge is not developed to be universally
applicable, but exists in and relies on a particular social setting. This is also in
keeping with the Rittel’s description of planning and design problems as wicked
problems: every formulation of the wicked problem corresponds to a statement
of the solution and vice versa (Protzen and Harris 2010, p.156).
Walking is a way of contributing to and of playing with processes of
transformation in landscapes. The working knowledges one generates while
walking relates to tangible elements of a landscape. For example, to get a sense
of the comfort or discomfort of a set of stairs one has to walk up them. To get a
feeling for the appropriate width of a path, one has to walk it and feel the
comfort or discomfort of passing a stranger. To understand such things the
designer has to become part of the landscape, its movement, its performance.
Equally important is the fact that walking fosters a process of understanding.
Von Seggern (2008, p.233) says that ‘as a transformative process, understanding
is directly linked to design’. Walking is such a transformative process of
understanding and creativity. While walking and bodily perceiving a landscape
researchers become part of the landscape and, thus, no longer distinguish
between themselves (subject) and the landscape (object). Walkers explore what
is already there, immediately creating and thus changing this ‘reality’ by walking
through it and by connecting elements in their minds and with their bodies and
by reflecting on the insights gained. These insights reach beyond knowledge that
primarily serves design activities such as making plans for an open space. In
fact, it is a way to engage with the object of research – one precondition of
understanding.

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ENGAGING WITH THE LANDSCAPE
William Whyte (1980), Jane Jacobs (1961) and Jan Gehl (2010) are famous
explorers of public life. Their insights were gained by sitting at one place and
observing people’s behaviour, thus focussing on relatively small urban areas. For
researchers to study the qualities and complexities of larger areas (von Haaren et
al. 2014), moving through space would be more suitable than sitting at one spot.
Apart from considering scale, three aspects are crucial for using walking as part
of a research approach: ‘generating implicit knowledge’, ‘identifying problems,
research questions and ideas’ and ‘reflection in action’.
First, walking helps generate implicit knowledge through involvement with
the object of research. Walking is a certain way of understanding landscapes that
differs from the desk study of maps and other landscape data. What, at first
glance, may seem like empty space on a map, might actually be filled with
invisible walks (Careri 2005, p.42) and contain vast amounts of information
relevant for both design and research. Walking can reveal such information,
including, to begin with, the logic of logistics of the landscape. Certain shapes
that seem clear on the map might appear much more eclectic when viewed from
the route of a walk. Tim Ingold (2011, p.46) says that ‘cognition should not be
set off from locomotion, along the lines of a division between head and heels,
since walking is itself a form of circumambulatory knowing’. The knowledge
Ingold refers to unfolds while experiencing and being part of a landscape in
motion: animals, other people, the wind, moving clouds, sun, shade and seasons
change landscapes constantly. The walking researcher understands dynamics,
experience and atmospheres. The rhythm that characterises the act of walking
enables a complex interplay of body and mind. Walking rhythmically merges the
changing landscape, the motion of our bodies and our lines of thought. This
process allows the walking researcher to feel particularities and ephemeral
aspects that might play an important role in a research project. When doing
research on site specifics in landscape architecture, for example, these dynamic
elements have to be grasped (Diedrich 2013).
Second, walking helps to identify problems, research questions and ideas.
When dealing with complex objects of research, formulating relevant research
questions is a creative act that benefits from ‘walking around the problem’ rather
than sitting at a desk, reading books and extrapolating. As Jonas (2007, p.1365)
puts it: ‘No information is available, if there is no idea of a solution, because the
questions arising depend on a kind of solution, which one has in mind. One
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cannot fully understand and formulate the problem, before it is solved. Thus, in
the end, the solution is the problem.’ The process of walking helps to get an idea
of the solution. Ideas cannot be produced only by referring to rational strategies.
Intuitional and bodily strategies are needed as well. Walking is a bodily activity
and the creative processes described by so many different people are based on
intuition (Schultz 2014b, p.129).
Third, walking fosters reflection in action. The knowledge generated during a
walk may be implicit but it can be shared among other researchers and members
of the general public. Such sharing, when done right away and on site – for
example when walking with other researchers or with people living in the area –
can help make knowledge explicit. One may even develop a new concept for a
research project. In other words, while walking, researchers can practise
reflection in action (Schön 1984, pp.76ff). Researchers benefit from engaging in
transdisciplinary dialogue. Through the mutual sharing of conceptions that
people have of landscapes they gain insights into their dynamic and ever
changing object of research. The fact that almost everybody is capable of
walking makes the method a low-threshold activity. This is a crucial quality
because it fosters the generation of ‘socially robust knowledge’ of mode 2
research (Nowotny et al. 2001, p.166). The methods presented below illustrate
how walking used as a research method can support researchers in meeting their
tasks of knowledge production within processes of complex landscape
transformation.

The wandering-method
The first example presents a method of walking research where, through
participatory activity, we include two types of research roles, those who
participate as full-time researcher, and those who participate as competent
contributors. The latter participants follow certain guidelines provided by the
researcher, engage with the landscape and make their findings explicit after the
walk (Schultz 2014b). All participants should be considered as playing a role in
doing research (Wechsler 2014, p.18). Through the participatory arrangement
the classical distinctions are overcome that used to be made between ‘the
researcher’ and others who were assumed to have no active role to play in the
execution of a study. There is the researcher and the members of a participating
group, together doing research. The participant-researchers are free to choose a
path; deciding which path to take is an intuitive act leading them to relevant
sites. In the first example one researcher and seven research participants took
part (Schultz 2014b). Participants engaged in walking through the urban
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landscape of metropolitan Hamburg, Germany. The assumption made, in
advance of conducting the experiment, was that walking fosters two things: first,
the generation of implicit knowledge through engaging with the object of
research and, second, the identification of relevant research questions and ideas.
The study was designed in a way that would exemplify the benefits researchers
would get from using the wandering-method.
The study design included recruiting competent contributors as participants,
framing and setting guidelines for conducting the experiment, instructing
participants, carrying out the walking experiment, collecting information based
on participants’ experiences, and analysing and synthesising their experiences
(Schultz 2014b). In preparation for the experiment seven competent contributors
were recruited as participants. These were people involved in planning and
designing and who were based in the metropolitan region of Hamburg. The
sample included practitioners from the disciplines of landscape architecture,
urbanism and geography. This sample was made deliberately because it included
people who were regularly working on large-scale landscape assignments.
The guidelines for this walking experiment were designed based on previous
experience from walking in different research and design contexts. The setting
and the guidelines were subjected to a pre-test with students of the Leibniz
University of Hannover who did the same walk. From previous experiences we
learned that there must be enough time for participants to engage and discover
the landscape and that it is beneficial for the walks to be strenuous because this
intensifies bodily perception. Apart from that, the pre-test showed that it is
important to express the first ideas and findings right after the walk and before
engaging in group discussion. This ‘saves’ the implicit knowledge in words and
images that otherwise vanishes quickly.
The guidelines prepared in advance were there to inspire and enhance three
modes of experiencing landscapes through walking: (1) the ‘discovery mode’,
(2) the ‘flow mode’ and (3) the ‘reflective mode’ (Schultz 2014a; see Figure
11.1). In the ‘discovery mode’, participants focus their attention on the traversed
space. They constantly orientate themselves, searching curiously without a
specific objective. While moving and connecting views, feelings and places,
they get new perspectives, see things from different angles or in a different light.
The scenery becomes a spectacle in which the continuously moving walkers play
an active role. When walkers enter the ‘flow mode’, the space becomes diffuse
scenery and walkers let their thoughts stray, following their intuition. Walking
and awareness merge. Flow is a state where body and mind are aligned, says
physiologist Csikszentmihalyi (1996). Elsewhere he explains how walkers are
fully involved and open for holistic experiences (Csikszentmihalyi 1985, p.58).
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The ‘reflective mode’ re-establishes the distance, which means that walkers
distinguish between themselves and the object of research. This is an analytical
mode allowing them to understand what they experienced. They can reflect on
and sharpen their findings, and transfer implicit and embodied knowledge into
words and images.

Figure 11.1
Interplay of three walking modes (source: Schultz 2014a)

The three modes feed on each other and can appear in long or very short
periods of time. During the strenuous climb of a hill, for example, walkers will
focus on their breathing and might be able to switch off thinking. It is likely that
they will experience flow. Once they arrive at a viewpoint on top of the hill their
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mind is open for new thoughts and ideas. And if they enter the discovery mode
again, because something triggers their attention, there can be a creative
moment. The experiences they had before their climb will influence the ideas
and the knowledge they generate during the climb.
The ‘reflective mode’ can be reached alone or in discussions. Walks taken
together with people from different backgrounds and professions are
opportunities to exchange views, perspectives and interpretations of the
perceived landscapes right away, while still on site. Certainly, the perceptions
and ideas will differ but still it is much easier to discuss, for example, the effects
of a cluster of windmills while walking the landscape around them instead of
sitting in a conference room with everybody having their set arguments ready.
Walking together can help to find common points of reference. To acquaint
participants with their task before conducting the experiment they received a
short briefing by phone where the procedures and the way the experiment was
embedded in the research project were explained to them. Participants were told
that their task would be to walk for a whole day and that this walk was likely to
be strenuous. Participants would not have to prepare for the experiment. Some
days before the actual walk all participants received an email providing further
information: they were asked to bring suitable shoes, a backpack, rain gear, a
bottle of water, some provisions and a compass. They were reminded to be ready
to use and document their imagination while engaging with and perceiving the
space they would walk through.
The experiment was conducted on 21 April 2012. The task was to walk for the
day and to find ideas and research questions regarding the future development of
the greater region around the city of Hamburg. In the morning, before
commencing the walk, all participants met and were reminded how the
experiment should be understood as a scientific adventure.
After this briefing the participants were given three sheets of A4 paper: a
walking map of the area, guidelines and a blank sheet. The walking map
provided an overview but deliberately showed no detail, so that, for example,
street names were not readable. Participants were encouraged not to use the map
during their walk but rather simply as a rough orientation before starting out. On
the blank paper participants were asked to draw a single sketch and to write a
short description expressing how they imagined the landscape they were going
to walk through. These exercises were not just for a warm-up before the walk
but formed important documentation that would be compared with the
impressions that participants would put down on paper after the walk.
Each participant walked individually and covered around 20 kilometres in
some seven hours. They were asked to explore particularities of the landscape
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and reflect on possible transformations. In particular they were asked: What are
suitable research questions for transforming the landscape? On their search for
these questions they applied a set of rules provided. One important rule was to
avoid looking at their maps; instead they were to try navigating the landscape by
following intuition and using their compass. Participants were encouraged to try
talking to people they met on the way and to learn about the landscape through
conversations with them. Another rule was that participants could freely take a
maximum of ten photographs of situations that attracted their attention. They
were also asked to find their own individual rhythm of walking. They had to try
immersing themselves into the landscape, enjoying the walk.
After seven hours of walking, all the participants reconvened at a previously
determined location. They expressed what they had experienced on the way and
immediately started documenting images and questions on two sheets of paper,
relying on their professional competence as a standard for relevance. Then the
participants exchanged experiences with each other. They were encouraged to
engage in conversations by triggering a process of making implicit knowledge
explicit. All discussions were recorded and – together with the sketches drawn
on the sheets – analysed during the days following the walk.

Results
What did the participants experience? They were able to perceive intensively the
space they traversed while enjoying being part of the landscape, which included
animals, other walkers, the changing weather and more. Their sketches and
reports reflect how they created new mental ensembles out of spatial elements,
which they connected by walking. Ownership structures, municipal borders and
patterns of land use dominated the sketches drawn before the walk. After the
walk, paths, fringes, passages, contrasts and landmarks became more important.
Participants found new and even poetic words for the different parts of the
landscape, such as ‘black sand forest’, and drew images of the whole area. These
images are working knowledge that could inform both design research and
practice. Through highlighting the particularities of a landscape, it provides
starting points for designs. Through introducing research questions it also
unveils themes that can only be found when engaging with space and its
ephemeral qualities. One participant used newspaper clippings to connect
different parts of the traversed space in order to create a walkable landscape. His
collage expressed this idea and also represented his way of reading the space and
of creating a new landscape. The collage was also an implicit way of expressing
the research question that this participant had identified during the walk: ‘What
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roles do pathways in metropolitan peripheries play for landscape perception and
transformation?’ The research question was a finding of the walk and the
subsequent analysis and discussion. It could be used to deepen knowledge about
the traversed landscape. That question is also relevant in other landscapes and
can thus be decisive for landscape research beyond this particular site.

Discussion
Results obtained by applying the wandering-method include working knowledge
gained about the object of research. In addition, research questions were
identified and their relevance confirmed by dialogue between experiment
participants. It is crucial to make explicit the implicit knowledge gathered on a
walk and to do so without losing its inventiveness and productive fuzziness.
Walking researchers can describe the total experience of a landscape, which
means that they are able to understand it intuitively in all its complexity. It is
crucial to express such understanding immediately after the walk and to use
images, such as producing a collage, to tell stories, or to give the perceived
landscape a name. Only then, after expressing the totality of the experience, may
factual knowledge be added, enhanced and refined.

Continuous/stop-motion walking
The method in the second example aims specifically to allow for aesthetic
evaluations of the landscape and evaluation of selected aspects of landscape
experiences to be made, for instance the ‘naturalness’ of the experienced
landscape. Evaluations are facilitated by one researcher doing two walks, both
following a pre-set route, making findings explicit after the first continuous walk
and the second stop-motion walk (van Etteger 2013). Sensory perceptions are
expressed by using words written after the first walk and during the second walk
and by drawings and photographs produced during the second walk. The process
of data collection structures the walk. In this second example the research
question is: ‘What is the phenomenology of a designed landscape, or in other
words how does a designed landscape present itself to my experience?’ (van
Etteger 2013). Walking is used for research by applying what can be called the
continuous/stop-motion (CSM) method. The researcher is the walker. A route is
walked twice. First the walk is done by continuous walking and describing the
experience from memory afterwards. This allows the researcher to follow the
flow of the walk. Then, the walk is done again, the second time in stop-motion,

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stopping at regular time or space intervals, each time to record findings and to
put a representation of the sensory perceptions into words, drawings and
photographs. The data are descriptive, made by putting aside (‘bracketing’ in
phenomenological jargon) existing ideas about the object of exploration. This is
done to suspend the superficial ordinary way of looking at landscape (the natural
attitude) and thus to reach a state of openness towards the experiences of the
world (the epoché in phenomenological jargon). Following Ihde (2012) the
walker is asked to stay close to sensory experiences and to stay away from
referring to knowledge, past memories and so on. After completing both of the
two walks a phase follows where the singular character of the walking
experiences is reflected and findings are analysed. The elements of the CSM
method are described in Figure 11.2.
The CSM method was employed as part of research into the aesthetic
evaluation of designed landscapes (van Etteger 2013). The phenomenological
part of this research investigated the landscape of the Dutch island of Walcheren
in the Province of Zeeland. This landscape was designed in 1945 by landscape
architects Jan Bijhouwer, Roel Benthem and Nico de Jonge (Steenhuis and
Hooimeijer 2009). The two walks by the researcher were done, as described
above, to experience the designed characteristics of the landscape first-hand and
in an open-minded fashion, whilst suspending preconceived thoughts about this
landscape in an attempt to be as unbiased as possible. The phenomenological
approach in general does not require that the sample chosen to reflect upon is
representative: it just needs to be able to offer insights for reflection (Casey
2000, p.23). In this particular case, studying a large landscape through walking,
special care was taken that the two routes cut through the different parts of the
area in order to be able to reflect on most of the studied landscape. The two
routes run along the edges of the island and also through open areas in the
interior of the island. Walking the two routes in stop-motion took twice as long
as the first continuous walk. The first walk took 2.5 hours for route 1 and 3 hours
for route 2; the second walk took 5 hours for route 1 and 6 hours for route 2.

Results
There was a significant difference in the data collected between the first and
second manner of walking. The uninterrupted walking of both of the two routes
and writing down findings afterwards provided about 3,000 words of description
of experiences. The second time, after walking both routes in stop-motion, in
this case stopping every 500 metres, delivered about 3,000 words of description
of experiences and, in addition, ten hand-drawn sketches and about 1,000
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photographs. In the first description, the one of the continuous walk, attention
was paid to changes in direction. In this walk visual attention is forward-
orientated. For example, walking away from a road the sound of cars rushing by
is experienced progressively less intensively as walking towards a road. Also, by
stopping and photographing, one steps out of the continuity of the walk. The
descriptions show how things are seen in the second walk that lie behind the
observer in the first walk. These things were not noticed during the first walk
facing forward and moving in continuous motion. When stopping next to a field,
for example, horses get curious and come up to the observer, making noises and
smells, which are not registered while walkers are moving at a steady pace along
the field. Stopping also puts an end to the sounds of being in motion and allows
other sounds, even those of insects, to be heard. The experiences of the
continuous walk are a closer emulation of a walker in progress, whilst the second
stop-motion walk provides a wider range of possible experiences to be obtained
from the landscape.

Figure 11.2
The schematic model of the CSM method (source: van Etteger 2013)

Discussion
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In keeping with phenomenological methods, the findings of the particular walks
were subjected to imaginative variation afterwards. The walker reflected on the
dependence between the experiences of this observer compared with those of
another observer of a different gender, age or level of physical health. The mode
of transport was reflected upon and the influence of seasonal variety on the
experiences during the walk was considered. Reflecting on the variations,
observer-identity was not considered to be of significant influence on the
experience, but the mode of transport would have made a difference. Between
walking and cycling things change gradually, but walking or driving in a car
makes a large difference in terms of experiential data.

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REFLECTION AND CONCLUSION
According to Husserl walking is our normal way of experiencing the world, a
kind of experiencing that is done in a natural attitude in which we assume all
kinds of things about experience, rather than explore our experience in itself.
When walking to the supermarket we rarely reflect on the nature of that walk.
The walk is instrumental in getting us somewhere. However, in the examples
presented above, walking is conceived as a research method and thus
instrumental for gaining knowledge. Given a relevant research question, the two
methods described are accessible and may be applied by all who are working on
landscape design and research. While intensely engaging with and experiencing
the landscape, walkers may call up visual memories, add new experiences to
their implicit memory and create new images (Bauer 2004, p.71). In addition,
when walking for research, researchers themselves may identify relevant
research questions. However, walking as an academic research method needs to
be practised like any other academic method. Practising the methods used in
both examples is most certainly a process of learning to make conscious use of
intuitional and bodily strategies, to link them with rational ones and to express
implicit knowledge.
The findings from the two methods presented above do not qualify as mode 1
knowledge that remains true independent of the location and the social context in
which they were formed. It is knowledge about the subjective experience of
landscape made by the walkers. The accounts of these experiences are open to
intersubjective scrutiny. The knowledge developed is not of an exclusive and
idiosyncratic nature. It is mode 2 knowledge, on landscape as a social construct.
It is working knowledge that can help to guide the transformation of the
explored landscapes. It is knowledge that can be used to support finding the
answers to the wicked questions that are asked in planning and design contexts
(Protzen and Harris 2010). What can be taken from the walks to other situations
is the kind of questions that are asked. These questions can be asked at new
locations in new social contexts without, however, the guarantee that they are
always the right questions to ask.
The two methods have much in common. Both deliver grounded, implicit,
embodied knowledge that cannot always be explained in words. This is why
visual means of communication are included, such as mappings, collages and
drawings. One of the challenges of both methods is to represent the multitude of
experiences of the complex interaction between body and landscape. Walks do
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not readily deliver objective ‘facts’ about a landscape, but help to generate
‘working knowledges’ (Nowotny 2008) for tackling the wicked problems of
planning and designing landscapes for people. The wandering-method, as
applied in the periphery of Hamburg, exemplifies the power of walking as a
research method for understanding large-scale landscapes. Although the
participants did walk and experienced only a section of the periphery, all were
able to gain knowledge about and to find relevant questions for the whole area.
For the study design researchers need to decide who is walking with whom
and also how long the walk should be. A requirement of the wandering-method
is that the walk should be at least of a length that allows for the flow mode to
develop. When applying the continuous/stop-motion walking method the length
needs to be linked to the topic of exploration and the amount of variation in the
landscape that can be expected.
In terms of data collection the two methods are very different. The wandering-
method allows participants to engage freely with the physical surroundings and
to meet with people they encounter along the way. Ideas can be picked up
through discovery or can develop in the interplay of the three modes explained
above. The CSM method is much more particular in what is to be collected.
Mainly sensory impressions are collected first, ordered through the continuous
walk, and then more detailed information is gathered during the stop-motion
walk. Special attention can be paid to particular aspects such as the degree of
public access or the experience of naturalness.
Both methods also differ in terms of data sampling. The participants in
Hamburg were left to improvise, within certain prescribed boundaries. The
beginning and end were set, but not the alignment of the route. The CSM method
is much more structured. The route was planned in advance, to allow researchers
to visit all of the different parts of the landscape in question. The stop-motion
walk was set to distance or time intervals that appeared to be relevant for the
specific landscape studied, and also to the researched aspect of that landscape.
In terms of data generation the wandering-method again is quite open. A map
and a blank sheet for a representation of experiences before and after the walk is
all that researchers provide to participants. Data analysis occurs during the
discussions between participants. The data analysis plan for the CSM method,
however, is set by the traditional rules of the phenomenological approach. The
descriptive data generated from the fieldwork has to be processed through
imaginative variation in order to get closer to the core of the experience. The
data also has to be analysed for its content. Graphs can be drawn plotting, for
instance, the degree to which space is perceived as open to the public or
experienced as natural along the route. Such data can also be translated into
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maps.
The fact that walking allows different groups of people to contribute to
research in a trans-disciplinary setting enables significant contributions to be
made, through walking, to what has been called ‘transformative science’. As
Schneidewind and Singer-Brodowski (2013) observe, transformative scientists
are actively involved in ongoing transformation processes in order to learn about
them. Creswell (2009, p.208), for example, uses this term in the context of an
advocacy/participatory approach in research for planning and design. These
observations are fully applicable to walking research. Both walking methods
described in this chapter offer opportunities to involve people in the creative
process of exploring the object of research and of finding relevant research
questions. First, the methods allow the researcher-designer to come into contact
with people who are in the process of engaging with the object of research and
thus open and informed about its characteristics. The walking researcher can
hold discussions with users and co-producers of landscapes and use them as
sources of information. Second, people can be invited to rediscover their own
territory and walk together in groups with landscape design research experts.
These organised walks can be part of the research design allowing stakeholders,
landowners, decision makers and the interested public to contribute to generating
working knowledge. Armed with the personal experience of a walk, people can
contribute to an engaged dialogue about the characteristics of a landscape, its
challenges and questions. They can generate working knowledges that are shared
and discussed right away on site. Third, walks can be conducted as interventions.
This can be a way to test first assumptions, specify questions and allow
everybody to participate in experiencing processes of landscape transformation.
Trespassing, for example, can open the discussion on accessibility of spaces.
Walking silently as a group already turns a walk into a performance that changes
the whole setting. When people make a walk they leave traces. These traces can
be highlighted by specific signs that together form a kind of path, inscribing the
walk into the landscape and thus initiate a debate on path-making as creative
practice.
When describing processes of design research, Christopher Frayling (1993),
Henk Borgdorff (2006) and Wolfgang Jonas (2007) used slightly different terms,
but they all emphasised the importance of embodied knowledge generated in the
creative process of changing the object of research. As Jonas (2007, p.1368) puts
it: ‘The active improvement of an unsatisfactory, problematic situation is the
primary motivation for thinking, designing, and, finally – in a more refined,
purified, quantitative manner – for scientific knowledge production.’ Walking as
a method can foster research through designing, as defined by Jonas.
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Researchers are part of the object of research, in this case the landscape, and, at
the same time, involved in a process of building up a network between elements
of the landscape. The perceptions, stories and images found during the walk are
a special form of working knowledges. The knowledge is generated while
creating something and while changing the object of research. However, as
noted before, problems change character during the course of finding solutions
and are only fully understood and formulated in relation to a solution. This
understanding of the problem is based on the engagement with the object of
research while walking and on the complex interplay of rational, intuitive and
bodily strategies that characterise the process of designing. In Jonas’ (2007,
p.1369) words: ‘There are forms of knowledge special to the awareness and
ability of a designer, independent of the different professional domains of design
practise.’

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SUGGESTED FURTHER READING
Walking in general:
Careri, F. (2005) Walkspaces: El Andar como Practica Estetica – Walking as an Aesthetic Practice,
Barcelona: Editorial Gustavo Gili.
Jacks, B. (2007) ‘Walking and reading in landscape’, Landscape Journal, 26(2), 270–286.
Solnit, R. (2000) Wanderlust: A History of Walking, New York: Viking.

On the epistemological context of knowledge and walking:

Ingold, T. (2011) Being Alive: Essays on Movement, Knowledge and Description, New York: Routledge.
Nowotny, H., Scott, P. and Gibbons, M. (2001) Re-Thinking Science: Knowledge and the Public in an Age
of Uncertainty, Cambridge: Polity Press.
Schön, D.A. (1984) The Reflective Practitioner: How Professionals Think in Action, New York: Ashgate
Publishing.

The landscape architectural perspective:

Schultz, H. (2014) ‘Designing large-scale landscapes through walking’, Journal of Landscape Architecture,
9(2), 6–15.
van Etteger, R. (2013) ‘Wish you were here walking with me: Walking as a tool for the aesthetic evaluation
of designed landscapes’, in Yeung, H.H. and Collier, M., eds. Selected Essays from the On
Walking Conference, 28–29 June, The University of Sunderland, Sunderland: Art Editions North,
322–332, available: http://issuu.com/stereographic/docs/walkonconference.

Walking in specific landscape types:

Sinclair, I. (2003) London Orbital, London: Penguin.
Macfarlane, R. (2012) The Old Ways: A Journey on Foot, London: Penguin Books.

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REFERENCES
Appleyard, D. (1982) Liveable Streets, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Barbaras, R. (2006) Desire and Distance: Introduction to a Phenomenology of Perception, Stanford, CA:
Stanford University Press.
Bauer, J. (2004) Das Gedächtnis des Körpers: Wie Beziehungen und Lebensstile unsere Gene steuern,
München: Piper.
Berger, P.L. and Luckmann, T. (1966) The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of
Knowledge, New York: Anchor Books.
Borgdorff, H. (2006) The Debate on Research in the Arts (Sensuous Knowledge 02), Bergen: Bergen
National Academy of the Arts.
Bryson, B. (1998) A Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail, London: Black
Swan.
Careri, F. (2005) Walkspaces: El Andar como Practica Estetica: Walking as an Aesthetic Practice,
Barcelona: Editorial Gustavo Gili.
Casey, E.S. (2000) Imagining: A Phenomenological Study, 2nd ed., Indianapolis, IN: Indiana University
Press.
Costa, S., Coles, R. and Boultwood, A. (2015) ‘Landscape experience and the speed of walking’, in Niin, G.
and Mishra, H.S., eds. Landscapes in Flux: Peer-reviewed Proceedings ECLAS 2015 Conference,
Tartu: Estonian University of Life Sciences, 123–127.
Coverly, M. (2010) Psychogeography, Harpenden: Pocket Essentials.
Creswell, J.W. (2009) Research Design: Qualitative, Quantitative and Mixed Methods Approaches, 3rd ed.,
London: Sage.
Crotty, M. (1998) The Foundations of Social Research: Meaning and Perspective in the Research Process,
London: Sage.
Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1985) Das Flow-Erlebnis, Jenseits von Angst und Langeweile im Tun aufgehen,
Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta.
Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1996) Creativity, Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention, New York:
HarperCollins Publishers.
Diedrich, L. (2013) ‘Translations – Radicant design for transforming harbour sites’, Portusplus, issue 2012,
available: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/294090226_Translations-
Radicant_Design_for_Transforming_Harbour_Sites.
Fezer, J. and Schmitz, M., eds (2012) Lucius Burckhardt Writings, Rethinking Manmade Environments:
Politics, Landscapes & Design, New York: Springer Verlag.
Fischer, R. (2011) Walking Artists: Über die Entdeckung des Gehens in den performativen Künsten,
Bielefeld: Transcript.
Frayling, C. (1993) ‘Research in art and design’, Royal College of Art Research Papers, 1(1), 1–5.
Gallagher, S. and Zahavi, D. (2008) The Phenomenological Mind: An Introduction to Philosophy of Mind
and Cognitive Science, Abingdon: Routledge.
Gehl, J. (2010) Cities for People, Washington, DC: Island Press.
Gros, F. (2014) A Philosophy of Walking, London: Verso.
Husserl, E. (1970 [ 1936]) The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology: An
Introduction to Phenomenological Philosophy, Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press.
Ihde, D. (2012) Experimental Phenomenology: Multistabilities, 2nd ed., Albany, NY: SUNY Press.
Ingold, T. (2011) Being Alive: Essays on Movement, Knowledge and Description, New York: Routledge.
Jacks, B. (2007) ‘Walking and reading in landscape’, Landscape Journal, 26(2), 270–286.
Jacobs, J. (1961) The Death and Life of Great American Cities, New York: Random House.
Jonas, W. (2007) ‘Research through DESIGN through research: A cybernetic model of designing design
foundation’, Kybernetes, 36(9/10), 1362–1380.

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Latour, B. (2004) Politics of Nature: How to Bring the Sciences into Democracy, Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press.
Lukas, S. and Bradwell, T., eds (2010) The Quaternary of Western Sutherland and Adjacent Areas: Field
Guide, London: Quaternary Research Association.
Macfarlane, R. (2007) The Wild Places, London: Granta Books.
Macfarlane, R. (2012) The Old Ways: A Journey on Foot, London: Penguin Books.
McLeod, P. and Dienes, Z. (1996) ‘Do fielders know where to go to catch the ball or only know how to get
there?’, Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 22(3), 531–
543.
Merleau-Ponty, M. (1968) The Visible and the Invisible, Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press.
Moustakas, C. (1994) Phenomenological Research Methods, Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.
Nicholson, G. (2008) The Lost Art of Walking: The History, Science, Philosophy, and Literature of
Pedestrianism, New York: Riverhead Books.
Noë, A. (2004) Action in Perception, Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
Nowotny, H. (2008) ‘Designing as working knowledge’, in von Seggern, H., Werner, J. and Grosse-Bächle,
L., eds. Creating Knowledge: Innovationsstrategien im Entwerfen urbaner Landschaften –
innovation strategies for designing urban landscapes, Berlin: Jovis, 12–15.
Nowotny, H. and Testa, G. (2009) Die gläsernen Gene: Die Erfindung des Individuums im molekularen
Zeitalter, Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp.
Nowotny, H., Scott, P. and Gibbons, M. (2001) Re-Thinking Science: Knowledge and the Public in an Age
of Uncertainty, Cambridge: Polity Press.
Prominski, M. (2004) Landschaft entwerfen: Zur Theorie aktueller Landschaftsarchitektur, Berlin: Reimer.
Protzen, J.-P. and Harris, D.J. (2010) The Universe of Design: Horst Rittel’s Theories of Design and
Planning, Abingdon: Routledge.
Schneidewind, U. and Singer-Brodowski, M. (2013) Transformative Wissenschaft: Klimawandel im
deutschen Wissenschafts- und Hochschulsystem, Marburg: Metropolis.
Schön, D.A. (1984) The Reflective Practitioner: How Professionals Think in Action, New York: Ashgate.
Schultz, H. (2014a) ‘Designing large-scale landscapes through walking’, Journal of Landscape
Architecture, 9(2), 6–15.
Schultz, H. (2014b) Landschaften auf den Grund gehen: Wandern als Erkenntnismethode beim
Großräumigen Landschaftsentwerfen, Berlin: Jovis.
Sinclair, I. (2003) London Orbital, London: Penguin.
Smith, J.A., Flowers, P. and Larkin, M. (2009) Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis: Theory, Method
and Research, London: Sage publications.
Solnit, R. (2000) Wanderlust: A History of Walking, New York: Viking.
Solnit, R. (2005) A Field Guide to Getting Lost, London: Penguin.
Speck, J. (2013) Walkable City: How Downtown Can Save America, One Step at a Time, New York: North
Point Press.
Steenhuis, M. and Hooimeijer, F., eds (2009) Maakbaar Landschap, Nederlandse Landschapsarchitectuur
1945–1970, Rotterdam: NAI Uitgevers.
van Etteger, R. (2013) ‘Wish you were here walking with me: Walking as a tool for the aesthetic evaluation
of designed landscapes’, in Yeung, H.H. and Collier, M., eds. Selected Essays from the On
Walking Conference, 28–29 June, University of Sunderland, Sunderland: Art Editions North,
322–332, available: http://issuu.com/stereographic/docs/walkonconference.
von Haaren, C., Warren-Kretzschmarb, B., Milosc, C. and Werthmann, C. (2014) ‘Opportunities for design
approaches in landscape planning’, Landscape and Urban Planning, 130, 159–170.
von Seggern, H. (2000) ‘“Alles Kunst” – Soziale Differenzierung, Polarisierung und öffentlicher Raum –
Ein Plädoyer für komplexe Experimente’, in Harth, A., Scheller, G. and Tessin, W., eds. Stadt
und Soziale Ungleichheit, Opladen: Leske+Budrich, 310–321.
von Seggern, H. (2008) ‘Entwerfen als integrierender Entwurfsprozess’, in Von Seggern, H., Werner, J. and
Grosse-Bächle, L., eds. Creating Knowledge: Innovationsstrategien im Entwerfen urbaner
Landschaften – innovation strategies for designing urban landscapes, Berlin: Jovis, 212–237.

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Wechsler, D. (2014) ‘Crowdsourcing as a method of transdisciplinary research: tapping the full potential of
participants’, Futures, 60, 14–22.
Whyte, W. (1980) The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces, New York: Project for Public Spaces.
Wunderlich, F.M. (2008) ‘Walking and rhythmicity: Sensing urban space’, Journal of Urban Design, 13(
1), 125–139.
Wylie J. (2005) ‘A single day’s walking: Narrating self and landscape on the South West Coast Path’,
Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 30(2), 234–247.

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Chapter 12: Design guidelines

Martin Prominski

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INTRODUCTION
When landscape architects commence a new design project they usually start by
seeking relevant and up to date knowledge in order to meet the brief, because
relying solely on their experience is rarely sufficient, especially when projects
are complex. For example, if the project involves designing a new urban
riverfront, designers might search for technical information such as the
robustness of certain materials to withstand hydrological processes, for the best
and most appropriate plants for the local ecological conditions, or for good
examples of spatial design to achieve contact by people with the water.
Designers will probably also be looking for similar completed projects as
precedents and inspiration. However, due to the limited resources available to a
typical office in terms of time to carry out a comprehensive search for applicable
data, the results of search processes necessarily remain somewhat arbitrary –
sometimes the results are good and appropriate knowledge can be assembled,
sometimes the results are inadequate and affect the quality of the final design.
Since the aim of design is to produce high quality projects (functionally,
spatially, aesthetically and ecologically etc.) this search process should be made
more efficient and effective. One way of achieving this is by the use of design
guidelines.
One of the challenges facing researchers is how to ensure that the result of
their work – often hidden away in academic papers in journals to which most
practitioners have little access, or presented in ways that make the interpretation
of the results difficult – make a difference on the ground. Evidence-based design
is now a key watchword in many fields such as architecture and engineering and
it should also be the case in landscape architecture. One key means of achieving
a stronger link between research and design is by translating the research
findings into design guidelines. These might be suitable for general application,
for example in relation to recommendations for improving access to parks by
older people (see Ward Thompson – Chapter 14), while others may apply in a
more restricted way or to a limited set of conditions. In this chapter the concept
of design guidelines is introduced on the assumption that these would provide
the knowledge basis needed for systematic design-related search processes and,
by doing so, would make the design process itself more efficient and produce
better results. In addition, the specific category of design research as a method is
explored and critically evaluated.
According to the Oxford English Dictionary (1996), a guideline is ‘a principle
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or criterion guiding or directing action’. Transferred to design this definition
suggests that a design guideline gives guidance for design action, meaning that it
suggests a specific direction by excluding many other possible, and by
implication, less suitable ones. A guideline also offers transferable knowledge
because a principle is an abstraction (from a set of data or experiences) which
works beyond a specific case to a more generalisable set of situations. The fact
that design, by definition, deals with concrete and specific situations leads to the
main question of this chapter: ‘How to develop abstracted, transferable
guidelines that inform (and improve) landscape design?’
To answer this question, this chapter starts by developing a theoretical
framework that establishes the position of guidelines in the design process. Then
three research projects on design guidelines are presented and the differences
between the projects and the strengths and weaknesses of the approaches used
are addressed. Then the position of this type of research is discussed within the
wider field of design research. This chapter ends with some concluding remarks
about aspects of research for developing evidence-based design guidelines.

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THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK
The hypothesis presented above is that design guidelines provide knowledge
which help to improve the design process. To verify this hypothesis, it is
necessary, first, to address the question about the position design guidelines
could or should occupy in the context of the design process. One key argument
can be found in Donald Schön’s theory of the design process as a reflective
practice. In the 1980s Donald Schön, Professor of Urban Studies and Education
at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), recognised that design is an
irreplaceable method for finding solutions to complex problems in the real world
and he examined design by looking at the work of many designers (Schön 1983).
He describes two intertwining elements of the design process: first, the
establishment of an idea or concept derived from the subjective ‘appreciative
context’ of the designer; second, the objective evaluation of the established
concept in terms of the extent to which it fulfils the requirements of ‘normative
design domains’ such as function, local conditions, spatial organisation,
technology or cost (Schön 1983, p.96). A complex network of logical ‘if …
then’ chains emerges from these two intertwined elements of the design process
and the decisions made at various nodes in this network determine the course of
the design process.
To illustrate this Schön uses the example of a design for a school and its yard
(Schön 1983, pp.79–93). If the idea is proposed to build L-shaped classrooms
into the hillside, then retaining walls must be built. If retaining walls are built
then it is only possible to enter the rooms from one side. If entrance is only
feasible from one point then the costs will increase and so on. The course of the
design process changes according to decisions made at various nodes in this
network. In the end, the designer’s concept and the objective evaluation criteria
ought to be as coherent as possible. The – wonderful – challenge of this design
process lies in the fact that the number of possible ideas or concepts from the
subjective ‘appreciative context’ of the designer is as unlimited as the number of
normative design domains, and reaching a coherent result is a demanding task.
To deal with this complex challenge, designers often search for precedents or
best cases, because such examples have shown a successful conclusion to
reflective practice. However, precedents or best cases are, in principle, specific
to their location and objectives and it is difficult to apply them to a new design
task which has its own unique circumstances. Here, the potential of design
guidelines comes into play because, according to the definition mentioned
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above, they provide principles or strategies rather than one specific solution.
Abstracted design principles express a strategic corridor of possible directions
which guides designers in their search for solutions that fit a specific situation.
Thus, design guidelines are neither totally specific nor completely universal and
represent structured knowledge bundles at an intermediate level.
These characteristics indicate two advantages of design guidelines within the
design process. First, they advance and speed up reflective practice through
preselected, recommended suggestions and avoiding culs-de-sac in the design
process: they are comparable to ‘enzymes’ which act as catalysers to accelerate
processes. Second, they allow designers to apply the principle to any specific
design case where individual creativity is mandatory. This openness is
important, because the alternative of closed, prescribed solutions would render
design unnecessary and lead away from site-specific, unique results. In
summary, taking research results and using further research to develop design
guidelines creates applicable knowledge for design practitioners. The guidelines
themselves are not designs; they only serve as an ‘enzyme’ which designers may
use in the design process for the purpose of gaining efficiency and higher
quality. They act as an intermediate step between the mass of research evidence
and its application in a complex situation.
Having addressed the position of design guidelines within the context of the
design process, the research question about the development of abstracted,
transferable guidelines remains to be addressed. From the meaning of the word
‘abstraction’ it is clear that first there must be something concrete which then
undergoes the process of abstraction. To obtain successfully abstracted design
guidelines, I have experimented with two concrete starting points: best-practice
examples and test designs. Research projects on design guidelines that start from
two points first have to define the research questions and the theoretical context
of the research topic (obtained from, for example, a literature review of research
evidence and theoretical models). This foundation leads to criteria for selecting
best-practice examples or for doing test designs. Once the criteria are set, the
abstraction process can start. This approach has surprising similarities to Donald
Schön´s reflective practice: abstracted design principles, strategies or measures
are proposed as ideas and continuously reflected against the theoretical
framework and best-practice examples or the test designs. In the end, the aim is
to obtain an ordered structure of coherent design guidelines which
comprehensively cover the range of possible design questions regarding a
specific topic. In the following section I describe three examples of such
research projects.

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RIVER. SPACE. DESIGN. PROCESS-
ORIENTATED DESIGN OF URBAN RIVER
SPACES
The research project, ‘Process-Orientated Design of Urban River Spaces’
(project leaders: Martin Prominski and Antje Stokman; funded by the German
Research Foundation (DFG) from 2008 to 2011), originated in the context of the
European Water Framework Directive (2000) and the European Flood Directive
(2006) which demand an integrative management plan for water systems as well
as flood risk management plans from all European Union (EU) member states.
Our assumption was that concentrating exclusively on flood protection and
ecology – a pragmatic approach that many communities were likely to follow –
meant that the open space quality of urban river spaces would be increasingly
neglected. There are already many examples where dikes or other protection
devices have been made higher, blocking or obscuring visual and physical
contact between the urban fabric and the river and we wanted to avoid this if
possible.
From this perspective, we were interested in a multifunctional approach and
asked the following research question: ‘What process-orientated design
strategies are suited to meet the demands of flood protection, ecology and
attractive open spaces together?’ We decided to use best-practice projects as the
basis for addressing this question. The most crucial issue is a careful definition
of selection criteria for best-practice projects – the more comprehensive the
choice of projects, the more convincing the resulting design guidelines would be.
To qualify as a best-practice project in our research, an urban river project had to
address three principal aims: flood protection, ecological enhancement and
amenity. After this main filter was applied, we took care that the set of projects
covered a broad spectrum of scales – from small-scale interventions such as
steps down to the water through to large projects such as the revitalisation of
streams which had been culverted into pipes for several kilometres or the
creation of several hectares of retention space to buffer cities against flood
surges. As many different design approaches as possible should be presented,
which meant that not only particularly spectacular projects should be included. If
one project illustrated, for instance, an aspect that appeared in no other example,
then this finding was reason enough to include it in the selection. In the end 45
extremely diverse projects were selected, which were all visited and most of
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them were also discussed on site with planners, ecologists and representatives of
the responsible public authorities.
After this phase, the most difficult part of the research began: how to organise
and abstract the different aspects of the designs so that design guidelines as
transferable knowledge could be developed from them? Since water processes
played such a crucial role, we started by clarifying what processes actually occur
in river spaces. We proposed a fundamental division into two processes:
morpho-dynamic processes which actually change the river space by
sedimentation and erosion, and non-morpho-dynamic processes which only
involve a change in water level without changing the river space itself. In each
urban river space, these two processes were more-or-less controlled by setting
limits for floodwater and channel development. The two process types along
with these two limits gave us a specific point of view from which to analyse the
selected 45 urban river spaces. This analysis resulted in a typology of what we
called ‘Process Spaces’ consisting of five different urban river space types, or
strategies to deal with water processes (Figure 12.1).
In Process Space A, ‘Embankment Walls and Promenades’, the banks are very
steep and there is hardly any flood area available. For this reason fluctuations in
watercourse conditions are mainly vertical and morpho-dynamic processes are
consequently excluded. In Process Space B, ‘Dikes and Flood Walls’, large
vertical elements limit the flood area at some distance from the normal
watercourse. Both horizontal and vertical fluctuations can occur in the
watercourse, since the borders of this Process Space only permit very small-scale
morpho-dynamic processes. Process Space C, ‘Flood Areas’, comprise spaces
near the watercourse that are regularly submerged under its horizontal expansion
and present processes within which spatial design has to work.
In these three Process Spaces A–C no alterations to the water space itself is
intended; water flow fluctuations alone bring about their constantly changing
appearance. In Process Spaces D and E, by contrast, morpho-dynamic processes
dominate, such as the shifting of sediment or changes to the course of the river;
the fluvial dynamics can be read not only in the changing water level but also in
changes to the river itself. In Process Space D, ‘Riverbeds and Currents’, when
the river is not sealed in place reversible aggradation and erosion processes can
happen along the riverbed, with consequences for the form of the riverbed as
well as the banks. Process Space E, ‘Dynamic River Landscapes’, is shaped by
processes that are to be found in natural watercourses. By including the flood
areas in the erosion and aggradation processes, the river can shift its entire
course.
This abstraction from 45 urban river spaces to five process spaces
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systematised the broad range of specific solutions, and was the most crucial
phase in the research project. It took many months, with several failed attempts,
to arrive at this typology – it was like design, where you envisage different
solutions until you finally arrive at a coherent proposal that fulfils the
programme in an elegant way. For each of the five Process Spaces, we proposed
different design strategies, again by analysing and abstracting from the 45
selected design projects. Each design strategy has its specific design tools and
design measures illustrated in a conceptual way, giving future designers freedom
to transfer these approaches to their specific cases (Figure 12.2).

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Figure 12.1
‘River. Space. Design.’ Design guidelines are organised in five groups of design strategies; each group
collects strategies suitable for the respective process space. The five process spaces have been developed in
the theoretical part (‘Fundamentals’). Within each strategy, there are between two and nine design tools
which are drawn in an abstracted way to allow for a creative transfer to the specific design case of the user.
(Source: Prominski et al. 2012, pp.44–45)

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Figure 12.2
‘River. Space. Design.’ Three design tools from the design strategy ‘A1-Linear spatial expansion’ as one
example from ‘Process Space A, Embankment Walls and Promenades’. For the strategy, combinations with
other strategies are offered, and for the tools, reference projects from the best-practice catalogue in Part B of
the book are given. (Source: Prominski et al. 2012, pp.52–53. Note: in the book, additional explanations are
given as text, which are left out here.)

In summary, the selection and analysis of existing projects aimed to answer an

original research question and included a systematic reflection on the basic
design strategies used. The result is an abstraction of process spaces with
specific design guidelines that can be transferred to future design cases of urban
river spaces (Prominski et al. 2012). In the end the extracted abstracted design
guidelines should facilitate multifunctional solutions for the many new urban
river spaces which will have to be designed in the near future in Europe and
beyond.

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DESIGN GUIDELINES FOR SHRINKING CITIES
The starting point of the applied research project, ‘Design Strategies for Using
Common Local Vegetation to Revitalise Unused Space in Shrinking Cities’
(project leaders: Norbert Kühn and Martin Prominski; funded by Deutsche
Bundesstiftung Umwelt (DBU) from 2006 to 2008), was the abundant vacant
space within settled areas, particularly in the east of Germany where two million
residential units were marked for demolition. Usually, shrinking cities have
neither a use nor money for maintaining such areas. Furthermore, the cleared
spaces must, in many cases, remain zoned for building development in order to
avoid existence-threatening asset value loss for the owners. Establishing
permanent vegetation such as tree-planting or converting them to parks is not
possible. These circumstances led to this research question: ‘How can unused
space in shrinking cities be improved in terms of open space use and ecological
value in the face of difficult economic and legal conditions?’ The objective of
the research was to develop a toolbox with transferable design guidelines that
would help many shrinking cities in East Germany and beyond which face the
same challenges.
The funding institution DBU requires cooperation with practice partners and
the East German cities of Wolfen, Dessau and Chemnitz were willing to provide
‘test sites’. These sites belonged either to public housing associations or to the
city and the municipal administrations had a strong interest in developing
innovative concepts for their vacant areas. The research started with an extensive
literature review of existing approaches dealing with vacant areas in shrinking
cities. To organise these literature reviews thematically, we used the working
metaphor of ‘high-bay storage’. We identified five key issues relevant to our
research question: area availability; cost reduction; vegetation types; nature
protection strategies; establishment and maintenance. Each of them served as a
‘high-bay rack’, and within these racks thematic shelves were organised; for
example, within the rack of ‘cost reduction’ there are the four shelves:
‘innovative planting methods’, ‘cultivation for returns’, ‘maintenance-extensive
models’ and ‘procurement of external funding’. Each shelf contained concrete
design tools: for example, within the shelf ‘cultivation for returns’ there are the
five design tools, ‘urban agriculture’, ‘urban forestry’, ‘renewable energies’,
‘water treatment’ and ‘gardening’, which all have a short description and
recommendations for their application. In addition, for each design tool we
offered links to best-practice examples from our literature review and useful
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design tools within other parts of the high-bay racks (Figure 12.3).
The research work was characterised by a continuous back and forth flow
between the development of site-independent, transferable guidelines and their
testing in the site-specific design scenarios. With a first version of this ‘design
knowledge storage’, we carried out one-day design workshops with each of our
three partners, where we developed three alternative designs for each site. With
this ‘designing phase’ we were able to check the applicability of our guideline
system and to develop it further by improving existing or adding new tools.
Because the resulting high-bay racking was characterised by many links within
each design tool, referring to other thematically close tools or to best-practice
projects, we decided to present the research report as a PDF file with hyperlinks,
making it accessible to all owners of vacant lots who might have similar
problems and who might have commissioned landscape architects with specific
design projects (Kühn et al. 2008; Prominski et al. 2008).

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DESIGN GUIDELINES TO HELP COMBINE
NATURE PROTECTION AND OPEN SPACE USE
In Germany, nature compensation measures resulting from environmental
impact assessments may lead to open spaces devoted solely to nature protection
and excluding human uses. This leads to conflicts, especially in the urban realm,
due to the limited availability of space, and sometimes even that (the aim of)
nature protection encounters societal opposition. Thus, the research project,
‘Design Guide for Nature Compensation Measures in Urban Areas’, asked the
following research question: ‘What design guidelines could facilitate the
combination of nature protection and open space use in multifunctional urban
spaces?’
The project was funded by DBU from 2012 to 2013. We had two project
partners: the cities of Bremen (in German, Freie Hansestadt Bremen, Senator für
Umwelt, Bau und Verkehr) and Hamburg (in German, Freie und Hansestadt
Hamburg, Behörde für Stadtentwicklung und Umwelt). Each partner had
specific areas and spaces where they wanted to apply the preliminary results of
the project. In Bremen this was the area called ‘Waller Fleet’, a huge allotment
garden located to the north of a working-class city district. This area is separated
from the city by railway tracks and a motorway, and due to such barriers and
other disadvantages an increasing number of lots are falling vacant. The city was
following a strategy to pool its compensation measures in the ‘Waller Fleet’ and
wanted to create an area where leisure and nature protection form a productive
symbiosis. The task in Hamburg was completely different: it related to
difficulties establishing habitat connectivity. According to Sections 20 and 21 of
the German Nature Protection Law, networks of flora and fauna habitats are
required to be developed all over the country. Because of high urban density,
Hamburg cannot rely solely on nature protection areas to achieve such a
network; it also must try to integrate existing green open spaces. Thus, the task
here included the identification of areas where compensation measures could
enhance habitat networks without decreasing the amenity values of existing open
spaces.

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Figure 12.3
The design guideline system of high-bay racking in the project on shrinking cities: top, there are the five
thematic high-bay racks. Bottom left illustrates the content of the high-bay rack ‘Cost reduction’. It has four
areas, for example ‘Cultivation for Returns’; in each area there are shelves (e.g. ‘Urban Agriculture’) which
contain the single design tools. Bottom right displays the content of the design component ‘Use of urban
meadows’, which contains a description, notes for application and links to best-practice examples in the
annex or useful design tools within other parts of the high-bay racks. (Source: Prominski et al. 2008)

The project started, in a similar way to the urban river research, by identifying
and analysing best-practice examples. To be evaluated as best practice, projects
in the urban realm had to demonstrate a multifunctional approach by fulfilling
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clearly defined nature conservation goals and allowing open space use at least in
part of the project. The design strategies and tools we derived from these
examples were provisionally systematised and abstracted into design guidelines
to serve as a basis for the designs in Bremen and Hamburg. In designing these
two projects, we began by initially testing a broad spectrum of design strategies.
Our approach was to improve and expand on provisional design guidelines as
well as to invent completely new ones. Since the two design tasks in Bremen and
Hamburg were broad and complex, they could play a significant role in
developing transferable design guidelines.
After this ‘research through designing’ phase we took the key step of
systematising and abstracting the multifunctional design strategies and tools
derived from both existing and proposed designs. Similar to the two previously
described research projects, the most difficult step was to develop a coherent
order which is able to integrate the design guidelines developed from the diverse
design-practice examples. This order should be easy to understand and to apply
by future users who want to integrate nature protection and open space use. First,
we tried to relate all design strategies and tools to two main categories – nature
protection and open space use – and to develop hybrid clusters from them. This
did not work, so in the second attempt we developed categories from nature
protection theory such as continuity, dynamics, resources or network but again
this did not work.
The reason for failure was always the fact that the design strategies and tools
found in the examples could not be logically integrated into the proposed order.
Either the strategies and tools did not fit or a category was not clear enough and
many different strategies would fit into one category, which causes confusion.
After running through many unsuccessful propositions we came up with nine
design strategies (in German Entwurfsfelder) as top categories, and each
included three to four design tools (in German Entwurfswege) as subcategories
(Figure 12.4; Prominski et al. 2014).

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DISCUSSION

Comparison of the three projects

The three research projects presented above all started with a research question,
which led to a selection of best-practice examples according to criteria and the
reflection of the theoretical context of the research topic. In research terms these
examples formed a data set, a selective sample the analysis of which against
criteria from literature and so on was used to develop or abstract sets of design
guidelines. The design guidelines with design strategies and tools were thus
abstracted from the best-practice examples and put into a coherent system in a
way which we think is applicable to the application process used by
practitioners. In the two examples ‘Shrinking Cities’ and ‘Nature Protection and
Open Space Use’ the development of design guidelines was supported by ‘test
designs’ which served as a valuable feedback loop to improve the system.
However, the successful result of the example ‘River. Space. Design.’ indicates
that test designs are not mandatory.

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Figure 12.4
Diagram of the research method or process to develop design guidelines. The research question and the
reflection of the theoretical context are the foundation for the later phases, which consist of research into
design (Analysing best-practice examples) or research through design (Test designs). A combination of
both is also possible, and the relation of research into and through design depends on the research subject.
(Source: Prominski et al. 2014)

In terms of making the research findings public, we decided for all three
projects to present not only the abstracted guidelines, but also the best-practice
examples used to inform them. The reason for this was that in our experience it
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is useful to see how a single design guideline, for example ‘Combining habitat
networks and open space system’, is integrated with other aspects in a concrete
design project. Thus, users of our research output would be able to switch
between the guidelines and best-practice projects. From the project ‘Shrinking
Cities’ we learned that the selection of a metaphor for the system of design
guidelines has to be done carefully – our choice of ‘high-bay racking’ led to
misunderstandings because some people first understood it literally and thought
we would propose a physical high-bay rack in their shrinking city!

Strengths and weaknesses of the approach

Reflecting on our research into design guidelines, and starting from the three
research projects presented above, there are a number of strengths and
weaknesses from the perspective of the user, that is practicing landscape
architects (or other designers). The strengths of design guidelines are, first and
foremost, the improvement and acceleration of future design processes, although
this claim requires further research to support it. By selecting best-practice
examples, reflecting on the existing theoretical context and, finally, offering an
applicable system of design guidelines, the research gives a solid foundation for
reflective practice in the design of specific cases. It also saves practitioners much
time, because scanning the literature and the internet for sound theory and best-
practice examples needs time which practitioners might put to better use.
Without guidelines, it is more an issue of chance if practitioners find the right
theoretical sources and best-practice projects. A second strength is the abstract
character of the guidelines. This was the most demanding part of the research,
but it was also extremely important because only then might the necessary
openness for the application to specific design cases be guaranteed.
A weakness of the method is the fact that it is fixed in time. By necessity,
there has to be a selection only of current best-practice projects as well as the
reflection on the current status of knowledge and theory. However, the design
world moves on, new research emerges and creativity continues, while theory
also continues to develop. Thus, guidelines need regular updates in terms of
projects and theory, a task for which funding could be difficult to acquire
because, as a ‘second edition’, it would not be sufficiently new and innovative.
However, this weakness does not justify discarding the development of design
guidelines as a valuable tool. The online publication of guidelines such as those
for the ‘Shrinking Cities’ project makes it easier to add novel practices and to
update guidelines. After all, ideally, design guidelines inspire practitioners to
designs which are more innovative than the best-practice projects used in the
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research and thus the guidelines’ success may contribute to their becoming
outdated. Future research might use systems such as crowdsourcing to help in
keeping design guidelines abreast of current developments. More research is also
needed to understand better whether and how design guidelines contribute to the
improvement, acceleration and creativity of designing in practice, and the
concordance between a designer’s concepts and the objective evaluation criteria.

Design guidelines and the larger research landscape

Where does research for purposes of developing design guidelines sit within the
wider research landscape? Does it fulfil the standard research criteria which
funding institutions set for all sciences, or is it a special kind of research which
needs ‘softer’ criteria? For example, the DFG, the most prestigious German
research funding institution, places the following demands on all proposals,
including those coming from the sciences, the humanities, engineering and
others (DFG 2014, p.4). First, to be original – every proposal needs to pose a
new research question. Then, this question has to be relevant inasmuch that
responding to it will result in an advancement of knowledge. This knowledge has
to be of scientific significance, thus the proposal has to reflect the scientific
context in a critical way and set itself in relation to it. Finally, a broader impact
(i.e. on society at large) has to be demonstrated by showing how the knowledge
can be communicated and generally transferred.
When we reflect on the three projects, all of them posed a research question
which was original. The scientific context was reflected in a critical way, which
contributed to scientific significance, for example the concept of nature in
relation to nature protection was developed further in ‘Nature Protection and
Open Space Use’. In the project, ‘Process-Orientated Design of Urban River
Spaces’, an observation of river types and processes led to a new categorisation
of urban river spaces. The design guidelines themselves express an advancement
of knowledge, because their systematic abstraction had never been undertaken
before for the respective subjects. Finally, the results have the potential for a
broader impact because design guidelines are abstracted in a way that is
transferable to a wide field of future design tasks within the respective topic and
they are published in a format which is easily accessible by the target audience.
This assessment indicates that research used to develop design guidelines is able
to fulfil the same tough criteria set for other scientific research. If broken down
to the basic aspects, design research does not seem to differ from other science.

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Design guidelines and the design research landscape
In the context of design research, the division of research about, for and through
design (Frayling 1993; Jonas 2012) is still the most influential and productive
categorisation. According to Jonas (2012, p.23), research about design reflects
design work from a distance without changing it, for example design history,
theory or criticism. Research for design also operates from a distance and
researchers are suppliers of knowledge. In terms of landscape architecture, these
two categories of research are often and usually performed by members of the
history and theory departments and also by the construction, planning-related
sociology, and by ecology or vegetation departments. The third category,
research through design, is the type of research in which the act of designing is
the essential component of the research. This is the most specific and interesting
type of design research, but also the most difficult. The writings of design
research theorists like Frayling (1993), Borgdorff (2007) and Jonas et al. (2013)
include a few realised examples with rather vague descriptions. An important
contribution has been made by Lenzholzer et al. (2013), who redefine the
category as ‘research through designing’. By using the active verb, they stress
the design process itself as the decisive quality of this type of research. They
also give some good completed examples of research through designing which
clarify the link between landscape architecture’s core action and research (see
also Lenzholzer et al. – Chapter 4).
Where is the position of design guidelines research in these three design
research categories? It is definitely research about design, because the three
research projects described above all reflected the theoretical context of the
general research subject as well as several best-practice examples. Two of the
research projects, ‘Shrinking Cities’ and ‘Nature Protection and Open Space
Use’, also worked with elements of research through designing. In ‘Nature
Protection and Open Space Use’, test designs for sites of the two practice
partners in Hamburg and Bremen influenced the resulting design guidelines in
the same way as did intensive designing work for the three cities of Wolfen,
Dessau and Chemnitz in the ‘Shrinking Cities’ project. Design guidelines are a
supplier of knowledge and thus also to be included in research for design. This
might sound a bit stretched, but in the end it is difficult to falsify. In fact, all
design research is, in the end, research for design. Thus a more precise wording
of the description of the research-for-design category within the design research
discourse could be considered.
This reflection on the three design research categories indicates that it is
impossible to relate research for developing design guidelines exclusively to one
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of the three categories. The categories interact, and it can be concluded that for
the case of design guidelines, it is hard to imagine research through designing
being done without elements of research about design. This does not mean that
the three-category model of design research should be abandoned, but it does
suggest that a strict separation of the categories does not make sense. Instead, a
mix of the categories seems productive.

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CONCLUSION
I would like to conclude this chapter on research for developing design
guidelines by proposing five components:

• Research question. As shown in the three research projects presented above,

a strong research question is fundamental, because it serves as the focal point
for the whole research process. The research question guides not only the
choice of best-practice examples or design sites, but especially it guides the
development of the structure for the design guidelines. If a decision is to be
made on the coherence of a proposed order of guidelines or tools, the
research question is an important reference point.
• ‘The truth is on the pitch’ (in German Die Wahrheit ist auf dem Platz), a
famous saying by Sepp Herberger who coached Germany’s world cup
winning football team in 1954. When we talk about evidence-based design
guidelines, the truth is also on the pitch, that is in the projects. Design
guidelines cannot be developed out of thin air, but have to relate to actual
existing design work. They could be developed from best-practice projects
and/or from test designs as demonstrated in this chapter.
• Theoretical context. Although the truth is on the pitch, a neglect of theory
would be misleading. An understanding of the contemporary theoretical
context, for example for ecology, floodwater management or nature
protection, allows a better selection of innovative projects as well as a future-
orientated framing of the categories for the design guidelines.
• Criteria for choosing best-practice examples or test-design sites. The choice
of best-practice examples or design sites is crucial for the future applicability
of the design guidelines. Research will be most successful if the guidelines
are helpful for all conceivable design cases which relate to the research
question. Thus, a certain diversity in terms of scale, geographic situation,
approaches and so on has to be covered by the examples in order to develop
widely applicable design guidelines. Another criterion may be their
innovative character. It is important to mention that it is impossible to
provide a list of criteria which is valid for all design guideline research
projects, because each research question demands a different set and range of
criteria.
• Abstraction with an open character. The way design guidelines are
developed and communicated graphically or verbally should make clear that
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 they are not a recipe which guarantees success independent of where you
cook. A design is always specific and guidelines can only support it. In
practice, they have to be adapted to the specific situation of the site. Thus,
design guidelines never automatically produce good designs and they cannot
serve non-designers as a recipe book – it needs skilled landscape architects to
apply design guidelines. To make this clear, the presentation of design
guidelines needs a degree of abstraction which, while giving guidance, still
leaves it open to adapt them to the specifics of a design situation. The
pictograms in ‘River. Space. Design.’ are a good example of this openness
by abstraction.

In summary, a core for research for the development of design guidelines has
become visible from the description and discussion of the three research projects
described above and enables meeting the same application funding criteria as for
other sciences. Some variations within this core are possible – when few existing
projects are available, more research through designing by means of test designs
will be necessary. The resulting design guidelines serve practitioners – they are
like variously applicable ‘design enzymes’ which expand the knowledge base of
individual design disciplines and their trans-disciplinary intersections, thus
becoming a worthwhile goal of future paths in design research.

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REFERENCES
Borgdorff, H. ( 2007) ‘ The debate on research in the arts’, Sensuous knowledge: Focus on Artistic
Research and Development, 2, Bergen: Bergen National Academy of the Arts.
DFG ( 2014) Guidelines for the Written Review, Bonn: DFG form 10.02, available: htt​p:/​/ww​w.d​fg.​de/​for​-
mul​are​/10​_20​/10​_20​_en​.pd​f (accessed: 06.11.2015).
Frayling, C. ( 1993) ‘ Research in art and design’, Royal College of Art Research Paper, 1( 1), 1–5.
Jonas, W. ( 2012) ‘ Exploring the swampy ground’, in Grand, S. and Jonas, W., eds. Mapping Design
Research, Basel: Birkhäuser, 11–41.
Jonas, W., Chow, R. and Grand, S. ( 2013) ‘ Alternative design doctorates as drivers for new forms of
research’, in Engels-Schwarzpaul. A.-Chr. and Peters, M.A., eds. Of Other Thoughts: Non-
Traditional Ways to the Doctorate: A Guidebook for Candidates and Supervisors, Rotterdam:
Sense Publishers, 183–202.
Kühn, N., Prominski, M., von Birgelen, A. and Langner, S. ( 2008) Hochregallager: Entwurfsbausteine,
Berlin and Hannover, available: htt​p:/​/ww​w.f​rei​rau​m.u​ni-​han​nov​er.​de/​fil​ead​min​/fr​eir​aum​/Fo​rsc​-
hun​g/0​808​19_​HRL​.pd​f (accessed: 06.07.2016).
Lenzholzer, S., Duchart, I. and Koh, J. ( 2013) ‘ “Research through designing” in landscape architecture’,
Landscape and Urban Planning, 113, 120–127.
Oxford English Dictionary ( 1996) 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Prominski, M., Langner, S., Kühn, N., von Birgelen, A. ( 2008) Aufwertung ungenutzter Freiflächen im
Stadtumbau. Handbuch zur Verwendung des “Hochregallagers“als entwurfsorientiertem
Wissensspeicher. Hannover and Berlin, available: htt​p:/​/ww​w.f​rei​rau​m.u​ni-​han​nov​er.​de/​fil​ead​-
min​/fr​eir​aum​/Fo​rsc​hun​g/0​809​24b​_Ha​ndb​uch​.pd​f (accessed: 06.07.2016).
Prominski, M., Stokman, A., Zeller, S., Stimberg, D. and Voermanek, H. ( 2012) River. Space. Design.:
Planning Strategies, Methods and Projects for Urban Rivers, Basel: Birkhäuser.
Prominski, M., Maaß, M. and Funke, L. ( 2014) Urbane Natur gestalten: Entwurfsperspektiven zur
Verbindung von Naturschutz und Freiraumnutzung, Basel: Birkhäuser.
Schön, D.A. ( 1983) The Reflective Practitioner: How Professionals Think in Action, New York: Basic
Books.

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PART IV
ADDRESSING SOME OF THE GRAND
CHALLENGES

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Chapter 13: Cultural landscape
meanings and values

Ken Taylor

Any landscape is a condition of the spirit.

(Henri Frédéric Amiel)

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INTRODUCTION
This chapter explores the contemporary challenge of recognising, protecting and
managing intangible values of cultural heritage with specific reference to
cultural landscapes. This is not to deny that cultural landscapes have physical,
tangible shape. More importantly for this chapter they demonstrate associative
intangible values related to the meaning of a landscape for the landscape makers,
owners and visitors/users, that is, for the community in its widest sense and their
engagement with an active use of the heritage. Such an approach to cultural
heritage generally, and cultural landscapes in particular, marks a divergence
from the elite connoisseurship approach to cultural heritage – the Authorized
Heritage Discourse (AHD) (Smith 2006) – focusing on famous archaeological
remains and buildings that held singular sway until the mid-1980s. Appreciation
of associative values – like a breath of fresh air – presents an opportunity for
landscape architecture research to make a distinctive contribution to the field of
study and practice of understanding intangible aspects of landscape and to the
process of how human meanings and values accumulate.
The emergence of the idea of values and meanings is now inextricably linked
to the concept of cultural heritage and prompts the question: ‘What is meant by
the conjunction of the two words “cultural heritage”?’ The word ‘cultural’
derives from ‘culture’ in the way that Horne (1986) nicely phrased as: ‘the
repertoire of collective habits of thinking and acting that give particular
meanings to existence’. In this sense it can be legitimately claimed that all
heritage is intangible (Smith 2011). Byrne succinctly encapsulates this:
Those of us who have pushed for recognition of ‘the intangible’ in heritage work are also those
who tend to stress the ‘cultural’ in cultural heritage. We try to resist the tendency of heritage
discourse to reduce culture to things, we try to counter its privileging of physical fabric over
social life.
(Byrne 2009, p.229)

The chapter enlarges on the points raised by Byrne to present an overview of

cultural landscape meanings and values and associated research approaches that
address intangible aspects and community values. The chapter then examines the
way in which research knowledge informs methods used in practice to unravel
landscape meaning particularly from the point of view that landscape is not
simply a product of human endeavour, ‘not as object to be seen or a text to be
read, but as a process by which identities are formed’ (Mitchell 1994, p.1).
Landscape is not simply what is seen as an assembly of physical components
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and natural elements, but rather, as Cosgrove proposes, it is a
way of seeing that has its own history, but a history that can be understood only as part of a wider
history of economy and society; that has its own assumptions and consequences, but assumptions
and consequences whose origins and implications extend well beyond the use and perception of
land; that has its own techniques of expression, but techniques which it shares with other areas of
cultural practice.
(Cosgrove 1984, p.1)

Pivotal to critical research inquiry into these lines of thinking prompts the
question: ‘Whose values are we addressing and whose heritage is it?’ (Taylor
2014, p.1939). It is this research question that informs the inquiry set out in this
chapter. A subsidiary question is: ‘What does this mean for landscape architects
who may find themselves undertaking research in the field of historic cultural
landscapes?’

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CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK

What is cultural landscape?

Fundamental to an examination of values, meanings and cultural heritage
processes is the word ‘landscape’ itself and then its conjunction with the word
‘cultural’ to give us ‘cultural landscapes’. Why is this? It is because:
Inextricably linked to a cultural concept of landscape is the understanding that one of our deepest
needs is for a sense of identity and belonging and that a common denominator in this is human
attachment to landscape and how we find identity in landscape and place. Cultural landscape
study has also been coincidental with a widening interest in the public history movement and
everyday landscapes. It underpins the notion that landscapes reflecting everyday ways of life, the
ideologies that compel people to create places, and the sequence or rhythm of life over time tell
the story of people, events and places through time, offering a sense of continuity: a sense of the
stream of time. They also offer the context for broader concepts and understandings of cultural
heritage than monuments and sites … The cultural landscape concept is therefore intended to
increase awareness that heritage places are not isolated islands and that there is interdependence
between people, their social structures and ecosystems, and landscape conservation.
(Taylor 2015b, p.1)

If, as the above quote suggests, there is an immutable link between cultural
landscapes and modern thinking on cultural heritage, it is useful to look at a
definition of cultural landscape. Here I refer readers to ‘Cultural Landscape:
Dreadful Phrase, Great Concept’ in which Fowler (2001) includes a number of
definitions. The definition I quote below, and why it is quoted, is because it is
succinct. Like Fowler I find it theoretically and professionally workable: the last
sentence expressing the very essence of what we mean by ‘cultural landscapes’
with ‘a brevity beguiling its profundity’:
Cultural landscapes reflect the interactions between people and their natural environment over
space and time. Nature, in this context, is the counterpart to human society; both are dynamic
forces, shaping the landscapes … A cultural landscape is a complex phenomenon with a tangible
and intangible identity. The intangible component arises from ideas and interactions which have
an impact on the perceptions and shaping of a landscape, such as sacred beliefs closely linked to
the landscape and the way it has been perceived over time. Cultural landscapes mirror the cultures
which created them.
(Plachter and Rössler 1995, p.15)

The definition evolved from discussions at a United Nations Educational,

Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) international experts’ meeting
held at Templin in Germany in 1993 following UNESCO’s 1992 initiative of
recognising three categories of cultural landscapes for World Heritage listing
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purposes. The three categories below evolved out of increasing interest in the
cultural landscape concept during the 1980s and early 1990s so that, as it
gathered momentum, it permeated cultural heritage management and planning
theory and practice:

• Clearly defined landscapes designed and intentionally created by man;

• Organically evolved landscapes in two categories:
◦ A relict or fossil landscape in which an evolutionary process has come to
an end but where its distinguishing features are still visible;
◦ Continuing landscape which retains an active social role in contemporary
society associated with a traditional way of life and in which the
evolutionary process is still in progress and where it exhibits significant
material evidence of its evolution over time;
• Associative cultural landscapes: the inclusion of such landscapes is
justifiable by virtue of the powerful religious, artistic, or cultural associations
of the natural element rather than the material cultural evidence (UNESCO
2008, Annex 3).

Critical to the 1990s movement were the 1960s and 1970s scholarly writings
of cultural geographers like David Lowenthal, Peirce Lewis, Donald Meining,
J.B. Jackson with his inimitable essays on the everyday American scene, Dennis
Cosgrove in Britain or Dennis Jeans in Australia. They built on the late
nineteenth century German tradition of Otto Schlüter’s Kulturlandschaft with
landscape morphology seen as a cultural outcome, and Franz Boas who
championed the idea that different cultures adjusted to similar environments and
taught the historicist mode of conceptualising environment. Boas argued that it
was important to understand cultural traits of societies – their behaviours,
beliefs, and symbols – and the necessity of examining them in their local
context. He also understood that as people migrate from one place to another,
and as the cultural context changes over time, the elements of a culture, and their
meanings, will change, which led him to emphasise the importance of local
histories for an analysis of cultures (Livingstone 1992; see also htt​p:/​/en​.wi​kip​-
edi​a.o​rg/​wik​i/F​ran​z_B​oas​). His teachings and ideas in social anthropology and
geography remain central to present-day interest in the cultural landscape idea
where landscape is a clue to culture.
At this point in the chapter it is germane to acknowledge that a fundamental
question or dilemma facing any critical discussion on cultural landscape is
whether the term ‘cultural’ is in reality redundant. Why use it if discourse on
‘landscape’ is inextricably linked to aspects of culture, nature, diversity and
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human identity leading to the idea that all landscape is culturally defined? Is
cultural landscape a problematic term? The Chinese scholar and landscape
architect, Feng Han (Han 2006) believes so. She argues for example that in
China the term is problematic. She posits that people are part of the landscape
experience and that landscape in the context of nature has its specific meanings
which, she argues, contrast with Western notions, including inter alia that it is
humanistic rather than religious; it is aesthetic rather than scientific; travelling in
nature aims to be enjoyable, instead of solitude oriented; artistic rebuilt nature is
more beautiful than the original (Taylor 2009). As Greffe (2010, p.1) clearly
articulates ‘we may wonder if there are really any landscapes that are not
cultural’.
Similarly regarding the term ‘natural landscape’, one may pose the question of
whether such a thing exists. Most landscapes, rural and urban, include natural
elements that physically shape the land that humans occupy. This is land which
we settle, modify, and imbue with meanings and values so that through time we
can recognise layers of human occupation and change. It is the process of human
change that creates the thing we call landscape and how landscapes vary not just
through time but according to different cultural values and ideologies. The more
one experiences other people’s landscapes the more one appreciates the
remarkable cultural diversity that is represented in the world’s landscapes and
how biodiversity is a fundamental aspect of many cultural landscapes. Such is
the case with the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s (IUCN’s)
Category V Protected Landscapes as outlined for example by Dudley and
Stolton (2012) in Protected Landscapes and Wild Biodiversity.

Brief history of the term ‘landscape’

Landscape is a ubiquitous word in English and other European languages with
origins in Anglo-German language dating back to c.500 ad in Europe. The words
– landskipe or landscaef – and the notions implied were taken to Britain by
Anglo-Saxon settlers (Jackson 1984). The meaning was a clearing in the forest
with animals, huts, fields, fences. It was essentially a peasant landscape carved
out of the original forest or weald, that is out of the wilderness with
interconnections to patterns of occupation and associated customs and ways of
doing things. Landscape from its beginnings, therefore, has meant a man-made
artefact with associated cultural process values. Here is a holistic view of
landscape as a way of seeing – its morphology resulting from the interplay
between cultural values, customs and land-use practices – critically explored by
Wylie (2007) in his book Landscape; Olwig (2007) nicely summarises what we
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mean by landscape as ‘an active scene of practice’.
Jackson (1984) further indicates there is an equivalent meaning in Latin-based
languages derived from the Latin pagus, meaning a defined rural district. He
notes that this gives the French words pays and paysage, but that there are other
French words for landscape including campagne deriving from champagne
meaning a countryside of fields; the English equivalent once being ‘champion’.
But what is ‘landscape’ and what are its connections with human memory? On
the first question it is instructive to go back to two mid-twentieth century
pioneering teachers of landscape study, J.B. Jackson and W.G. Hoskins. Jackson
(1984, p.8) in his reflections on what landscape is quotes what he calls ‘the old
fashioned but surprisingly persistent definition of landscape: “A portion of the
earth’s surface that can be comprehended at a glance”’. He saw landscape as “A
rich and beautiful book [that] is always open before us. We have but to learn to
read it” (Jackson 1951, p.5). Hoskins (1955, p.14) asserted the significance of
landscape with the proposal that ‘The... landscape itself, to those who know how
to read it aright is the richest historical record we possess.’
What Hoskins and Jackson were contending forms the modern foundation for
landscape study. This is where landscape is not looked on as simply a pretty
picture or as a static text: rather it is the expression of landscape as cultural
process. The connections, therefore, between landscape and identity and hence
memory, thought and comprehension are fundamental to understanding of
landscape and human sense of place.
People see and make landscapes as a result of our shared system of beliefs and
ideologies (Biger 2006). In this way landscape is a cultural construct, a mirror of
our memories and myths encoded with meanings which can be read and
interpreted. Over thirty years ago Meinig (1979, pp.1–3) proposed that
‘Landscape is an attractive, important, and ambiguous term [Meinig’s
emphasis] [that] encompasses an ensemble of ordinary features which constitute
an extraordinarily rich exhibit of the course and character of any society’ and
that ‘Landscape is defined by our vision and interpreted by our minds’. In other
words, to understand ourselves we need to look searchingly at ‘landscapes as a
clue to culture’ (Lewis 1979, p.15), and our ordinary everyday landscapes at
that, not just the national icons. It is what geographers refer to as reading the
landscape.
Notably there have been, and remain, tensions in various schools of thought
on how we see landscape and study it. Wylie (2007, pp.1–2) posits that the
tension is ‘between proximity and distance, body and mind, sensuous immersion
and detached observation. Is landscape the world we are living in, or a scene we
are looking at, from afar... a set of visual strategies and devices for distancing
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and observing?’ Here is the tension between our lived-in world concept and
landscape as an artistic and historical genre, and both have relevance to the
human experience of landscape.
The European Landscape Convention is instructive in thinking on landscape
as a construct. It presents a simple but decisive definition: ‘Landscape means an
area, as perceived by people, whose character is the result of the action and
interaction of natural and/or human factors’, that is a cultural landscape. In the
modern idiom landscape is viewed as humanistic where culture/nature are not
divided. This culture–nature link is also a fundamental principle in the World
Heritage cultural landscape categories. The old Germanic/English landscaef
connotation has in effect been revitalised. What is also significant about the
Convention is that it ‘recognises the potential value of all landscapes to
communities’ (Taylor et al. 2015, p.4) including the ordinary, everyday or
vernacular landscape. In the convention it can be seen that:
In particular, the ordinary landscapes where most people live are seen as having potential value to
someone, even though the quality may be low in terms of many of the commonly identified
indicators, such as scenic beauty, biodiversity rating, range of use and accessibility. The emphasis
here is very much on the value to ‘someone’ (communities, cultures and individuals).
(Roe and Taylor 2014, p.8)

Values
‘Conservation of cultural heritage in all its forms and historical periods is rooted
in the values attributed to the heritage’ (ICOMOS 1994, p.46). Related to the
concept of values is that of meaning of heritage places, including landscapes. It
is important to note in relation to meaning that it will change over time as
cultural traditions and values change. The elucidation of meanings and values is,
therefore, fundamental to the cultural heritage process, and indeed, a values-
based approach to research and practice is international in scope.
There are internationally available typologies of heritage values. ‘By use of
such a typology – a framework that breaks down significance into constituent
kinds of heritage value – the views of experts, citizens, communities,
governments, and other stakeholders can be voiced and compared more
effectively’ (Mason 2002, p.9). What is critical to the process is that ‘the respect
due to all cultures requires that heritage properties must be considered and
judged within the cultural contexts to which they belong’ (ICOMOS 1994, p.47).
ICOMOS (International Council on Monuments and Sites) is a major
international agency in the field of cultural heritage conservation. Established in
1965 ICOMOS is a non-governmental organisation with headquarters in Paris
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dedicated to the conservation of the world’s historic monuments and sites. It
provides a forum for professional dialogue and a vehicle for the collection,
evaluation and dissemination of information on conservation principles,
techniques and policies. It also advises UNESCO on World Heritage cultural
matters. There are 108 national committees of ICOMOS established in countries
around the world that are members of UNESCO.
A sample of values is shown in Table 13.1 (see also Mason 2002). The values-
based approach to heritage conservation including addressing intangible heritage
is, for example, central to Australian theory and practice through the Burra
Charter (Australia ICOMOS 2013). Practice Note 1 in the Charter refers to
aesthetic, historic, scientific, social and spiritual values and how these inform the
notion of significance expressed in a statement of significance:
Cultural significance is the sum of the qualities or values that a place has, including the five
values—aesthetic, historic, scientific, social and spiritual—that are listed in Article 1.2 of the
Burra Charter. Through the processes of investigating the place and assessing each of these
values, we can clearly describe why a place is important. This is the first step towards ensuring
that our decisions and actions do not diminish its significance.
(Diefenthaller 2014, p.8)

Table 13.1
Examples of heritage value typologies

Australia ICOMOS * Aesthetic

Burra Charter 1977/2013 Historic
Scientific
Social
Spiritual
China ICOMOS Artistic
Principles 2000 Historical
Scientific
English Heritage 1997 Aesthetic
Cultural
Educational & Academic
Economic
Resource
Recreational
World Heritage Convention Criteria i-vi for Outstanding Universal
Operational Guidelines 2013 Value (OUV) for cultural properties

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* International Council on Monuments and Sites

In practice values are normally assessed and analysed so that a statement of

significance can be prepared for the heritage resource under study and its
management. For World Heritage properties significance is set out in the
statement of Outstanding Universal Value (OUV). It is therefore critical that the
process of research and also that of documentation used in practice, aiming to
unravel values and significance of landscapes, follows a framework:

• That is apparent and understandable by other researchers, clients, community

and other stakeholders;
• Includes methods that are replicable so that their application may be tested
elsewhere and modified where appropriate; archival and on-site research will
be vital components (see next section on ‘Reading the landscape’) in the
context of informing rigorous practice;
• Allows evaluation of proposed decisions or recommendations and be
appropriate to the country and culture in which you are working.

Aesthetics
At this point I propose to venture into the realm of aesthetics and aesthetic value,
not least because aesthetics is a term regularly used in landscape architecture.
Hence what is meant by aesthetics, is it high art or context?
Aesthetics has assumed a high profile since the eighteenth century in the way
humans see the world. Places and objects are referred to as aesthetically pleasing
or valuable to convey a particular idea and ideal. But it may not always be clear
what the idea or ideal exactly are. In heritage practice, as in everyday use, it can
be a misused term, too often applied superficially to a predetermined idea of
what is assumed to be an ideal. In this vein the Burra Charter value that I find
difficult is that of aesthetic value. The Charter refers to criteria to do with
sensory perception: form, scale, colour, texture and material of the fabric which
appear woolly to me and too preoccupied with how something looks. Equally the
reference to beauty and aesthetic ideals is challenging: what does it mean? The
process becomes confused with the Western history of aesthetics and particularly
the eighteenth century notion of aesthetic being equated with beauty and good
taste. For me aesthetic concerns are equally those dealing with experience and
this can and does cover the ordinary everyday places that we may not usually
refer to as beautiful. But why not? They are the places imbued for many through

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experience with a sense of belonging and sense of place where knowledge of
ways of doing things is critical.
I contend that the China Principles document (China ICOMOS 2002) with its
description of artistic value is more comprehensive and embracing than the
Burra Charter, particularly in the way it addresses intangible cultural context
aspects of artistic values. Nevertheless aesthetic value can be significant where it
is expressed in architectural or landscape design terms as an achievement of a
recognised high order of cultural excellence. Examples would include Versailles
Gardens in France, the Taj Mahal complex in India or the imperial gardens in
China (Souzhou) and Japan. I think it is necessary to think of aesthetics as a style
of perception as suggested by Bullock and Stallybrass in a definition of the term:
The philosophical study of art and also of nature to the extent that we take the same attitude to it
as we do to art. The notion of an aesthetic attitude is thus of central importance. It is commonly
held to be a style of PERCEPTION [original emphasis] concerned neither with factual
information to be gained from the things perceived, nor with their practical uses, but rather with
the immediate qualities of the contemplative experience itself.
(Bullock and Stallybrass 1978, p.10)

Eagleton (1995, p.13), in his critique of the modern discourse on aesthetic

thought, proposes that ‘Aesthetics is born as a discourse of the body’ and that
‘the term refers not in the first place to art, but to the whole region of human
perception and sensation in contrast to the more rarefied domain of conceptual
thought’. Eagleton suggests further that aesthetics is to do with affections and
aversions, the whole of our sensate life, which post-Cartesian philosophy has
managed to overlook. In this sense aesthetics concerns sensory perception as in
the Burra Charter, but in all of the ways in which we refer to the world around us
through experience and association of ideas. Eagleton (1995, p.16) sees this as
‘simply the name given to that hybrid form of cognition which can clarify the
raw stuff of perception and historical practice disclosing the inner structure of
the concrete’.
The aesthetic encompasses the idea of the beautiful ‘where objects stand out
in a sort of perfection dimly akin to reason’ (Eagleton 1995, p.17). Unfortunately
‘aesthetic’ became a substitute for ‘beautiful’ in early nineteenth century
English, denoting good taste (and hence bad taste as the opposite, or even
tastelessness, where we do not expect a place to exhibit aesthetic value). For
example, one commonly expressed aesthetic value of landscape has become
entangled with purely visual images related to ideas of picturesque
scenes/scenery corresponding with Eagleton’s comment on objects standing out
in a sort of perfection. This is not an argument against the appeal of the
picturesque, far from it. What has happened is that it is an extension of the
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eighteenth century concept of beauty and the picturesque, but often ignores the
fact that beauty and utility were inseparable in the concept and that landscape
and place are a cultural construct, a way of seeing, with attendant affections and
aversions. Whereas, there has been a tendency, by some practitioners in the
design professions (including landscape architecture), to abrogate the meaning of
aesthetic value to be limited to formal abstract qualities.
The relevance for landscape architecture and research possibilities regarding
aesthetics is summarised by Berleant (2010a) in an online essay where he
observes:
Expanding the scope of aesthetics raises challenging questions about the experience of
appreciation. Traditional accounts of aesthetic appreciation are inadequate to identify and
illuminate the perceptual satisfactions that these new applications evoke. But not only does an
enlarged range of aesthetic appreciation recognize beauties beyond the arts. It also must account
for the range of aesthetic perception into the oneiric, the bizarre, and the terrible, while the social
and political significance of aesthetic values has led to the recognition of a wide range of such
values, not all of them positive.
(Berleant 2010a, Introduction, para. 2; see also Berleant 2010b)

Matters of aesthetic response to, and social value of, places or objects involve
critical engagement, that is participatory transaction or interest between people
and place/object. In an urban setting engagement concerns what Hayden (1995)
refers to as: ‘the power of place, the power... to nurture citizens’ public memory,
to encompass shared time in the form of shared territory’. Aesthetic and social
values are abundant in social and cultural meaning and sense of identity. Of note
in Hayden’s discourse is the reference to people who shape places, particularly
understanding the role of people who experience, live, work, recreate in urban
places. This notion is commensurate with the idea of layers through time
inherent in cultural landscapes and reflecting values of people who inhabit them.
Hence such places are repositories of social history and community values.
Coincidental to scholarly interest in urban place making is the current
emergence of challenges to the long held orthodoxy of the focus of urban
conservation that has historically been on architectural fabric and planning
ensembles with an emphasis all too often on famous buildings or monuments.
This is the point of departure for the new Historic Urban Landscape (HUL)
concept which views urban areas as cultural landscapes (Taylor 2015a) where
conservation of historic urban landscapes needs to be seen within the paradigm
of understanding cities as communities of people changing through time, not
merely architectural fabric to be selectively conserved (Bandarin and van Oers
2012). Here there are connections with the concept of landscape urbanism.
Bandarin (2015, p.2) points to the way ‘urban heritage can no longer be

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conceived of as a separate reality, a walled precinct protected from external
forces of change by plans and regulations’. He critically reviews how the
‘domains of Ecological Urbanism and Landscape Urbanism open up a new
dimension for urban conservation’. Thompson (2012) in a pithy interpretation of
landscape urbanism probes, amongst other topics, landscape urbanism’s attack
on the urban–rural binary – what he calls the opposition between city and
landscape – and whether landscape urbanism offers any contribution to the
challenges of worldwide urbanisation. Both authors notably make a link with the
seminal work of Ian McHarg in his 1969 book Design with Nature which
injected the idea of landscape as critical to the urban management process.

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READING THE LANDSCAPE: IDENTIFICATION,
DOCUMENTATION, ASSESSMENT, ANALYSIS
AND EVALUATION
The process and policy model for undertaking a cultural heritage landscape
study is set out in Figure 13.1. Very often this process is linked to that of
preparing a Conservation Management Plan (CMP), whether it be a designed
landscape such as a park or garden (public or private), an everyday living rural
landscape or a historic urban landscape.
In order to prepare conservation management and sustainable development
plans, a systematic approach to reading and understanding the landscape is
recommended in order to address the steps in Figure 13.1 of involving key
interest groups, documenting history, and significance assessment. Methods used
must give adequate consideration to intangible values of landscape as well as
physical fabric so that the primary focus for future planning is grounded firmly
in aspects of cultural sustainability and cultural diversity as well as
environmental sustainability and biodiversity. In undertaking a study of a
cultural landscape I find it helpful to address the following specific research
questions:

• What has occurred,

• When did it occur,
• Where,
• Who has been involved in shaping the landscape over time,
• Why did they do what they did to shape the landscape and continue to do so?

The first three items address tangible data, whilst the latter two address
aspects of intangible values involving deciphering the ideologies and cultural
traditions that have been critical to the process of landscape making. Figure 13.1
and the five questions propose a set of principles to guide conservation action –
policy – within which specific archival and on-site research related to each
landscape being studied is critical and individual to each study (Documentation
step, Figure 13.1). It is the outcome of specific research informing us why the
landscape takes the shape it does which distinguishes cultural landscape studies
from a visual assessment that tells us what the landscape looks like, but not why.
Such research will of necessity be multidisciplinary, involving, dependent on the
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parameters of each study, various specialists such as a landscape historian,
archaeologist, architectural historian, anthropologist, landscape architect. In
effect what is taking place is improvement of methods used in practice through
research, rather than applying a set recipe. Uzzell (2009, p.333) validates the
multidisciplinary approach: ‘one of the reasons why we undertake [it] is to
communicate and engage with others in order to develop and employ
methodologies in an informed way to understand the heritage’. The process of
landscape architects being involved in a rigorous landscape research process
offers potential to develop and add to the discipline’s body of knowledge that
can inform and enrich the profession. It does, of course, require time, patience
and dedication to the task of finding out about a landscape: why does it, the
landscape, take a particular form rather than merely describing the form without
understanding its context?

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Figure 13.1
Planning model for heritage conservation management policy

During the documentation stage (Figure 13.1), through archival and on-site
research outcomes, framed within the parameters of the five questions, it
becomes possible to decipher the story of events, people and places through time
represented in the current landscape to convey its meanings, bearing in mind
that: ‘The meaning of heritage will vary over time and for different groups of
people. It serves social, cultural and political functions. But the heritage during
this process does not remain static and unchanged … We use the heritage in the
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creation of our own individual, group and national identities’ (Uzzell 2009,
pp.326–327).
Addressing the questions will also provide interpretative information that will
not simply or primarily consist of instruction, but provocation, that is it will
provoke people – locals, planners, visitors – to think and make connections with
the landscape. Provocation, not instruction, as the chief aim of interpretation is
one of Tilden’s six principles of interpretation (Tilden 1977, p.9):

1 Any interpretation that does not somehow relate what is being displayed or
described to something within the personality or experience of the visitor
will be sterile;
2 Information, as such, is not interpretation. Interpretation is revelation based
upon information. But they are entirely different things. However all
interpretation includes information;
3 Interpretation is an art, which combines many arts, whether the materials
presented are scientific, historical or architectural. Any art is in some degree
teachable;
4 The chief aim of interpretation is not instruction, but provocation;
5 Interpretation should aim to present a whole rather than a part, and must
address itself to the whole man rather than any phase;
6 Interpretation addressed to children (say, up to the age of twelve) should not
be a dilution of the presentation to adults, but should follow a fundamentally
different approach. To be at its best it will require a separate program.

I recommend these be addressed by landscape architects when considering,

for example, how to present their designs to the public or clients. Indeed one
may pose the question, ‘Can modern designed landscapes innately convey
meaning and have significance from their inception in the way in which we
understand examples from history?’ (Taylor 1997, p.18). I suggest that designers
ought to think seriously about how they ‘may see themselves as enticing users to
share the designer’s artifice and discover meaning’ (Taylor 1997, p.3). A case
that comes to mind is High Line in New York where visitors are made aware of
the context, meaning and significance of the design: an exercise that heightens
their experience.
Addressing the above five essential questions will involve the following steps:
Identification and documentation of cultural landscape resources, Assessment of
landscape characteristics, and Analysis/evaluation. These steps align with the
process set out in Figure 13.1.

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Step 1: identification and documentation of cultural landscape
resources
1 Identify the type of cultural landscape and its setting;
2 Document landscape history.

This step covers the description of site/landscape history based on research of

archival primary and secondary sources, historical information and on-site
examination and assessment of the landscape character. Primary sources include,
inter alia, journals, diaries, private and public records, family archives,
photographs, newspapers, historic plans and maps. Secondary sources include,
inter alia, books, reports and academic material such as theses. Information
gleaned then helps orientate site observation work to start to suggest the how and
the why of the landscape and will, to an expert, experienced observer in the
field, prompt questions and focus attention on seeing what is there rather than
merely looking at the landscape. The all-important early research work identifies
and helps develop an understanding of the historic context of the landscape (see
also Step 3b evaluating cultural significance).

Step 2: assessment of landscape characteristics

Once the background identification and documentation stage has been completed
it is possible to address the task of assessment of the particular characteristics of
a landscape. A comprehensive system for organising presentation of information
on landscape characteristics, values and significance is advisable given that
cultural landscapes are a montage, or series of layers through time. These layers
are created by the forces of human intervention over time and the natural forces
(processes) that have shaped the physical landscape in a continuum where
human forces – including cultural values and ideologies – modify, change and
adapt the physical landscape for human occupation, thereby creating the cultural
landscape consisting of:

Within the cultural landscape under investigation there will be particular tangible
and intangible landscape characteristics that create landscape character. Table
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13.2 is a typical example list of characteristics for a rural landscape based on the
work of Page et al. (1998) for the US National Park Service, which has lasting
application. There is a range of scholarly work available grounded in research
into relevant aspects of landscape characterisation assessment covering
landscapes from local to national scales and based on specific research models
(see for example Kikuchi et al. 2014; Warnock and Griffiths 2015; Kapfer et al.
2015; Heritage Council of Victoria 2015). The one with which I am familiar,
Kikuchi et al. 2014, is based on a research project conducted with local people in
the Hungduan district of the Philippine Cordilleras World Heritage Rice
Terraces. Following the research being conducted, the project team involved
published a report outlining research methods and outcomes (Okahashi et al.
2012) giving a detailed and instructive insight into how a local group of
indigenous people value their landscape, which accords with the research
question for this chapter of whose values need to be addressed.

Table 13.2
Example landscape characteristics for rural landscapes (source: Page et al. 1998)

Processes involved in landscape making

i Land-uses and activities ii Patterns of spatial organisation
iii Natural systems and human response iv Cultural traditions
Components
v Circulation networks vi Cluster arrangements
vii Buildings and structures viii Vegetation
ix Boundaries x Small scale elements
xi Views and vistas xii Archaeological sites

Table 13.3
Example landscape characteristics for urban landscapes

Processes
Street form and spatial proportions; relationship between landscape space and built form;
architectural styles; historic periods of building development related to meanings and symbolism in
spatial patterns inc communities through time and their values and ideologies; morphology of built
form(s); cultural traditions leading to forms and patterns and architectural styles; natural elements;
relationship to topography.
Components
Style of buildings and structures; materials; colours; textures; building traditions; vegetation;
paving materials.

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 For an urban cultural landscape the criteria in Table 13.3 will be applicable.
An important and useful tool for handling large areas is the subdivision of a
study area into landscape character units (LCUs). The scale of the units will vary
according to landscape use and activity. LCUs should not be regarded as land
units based on physical criteria or visual catchment zones, although these factors
will be taken into account (see also e.g. Swanwick 2002; Fairclough et al. 2016,
in prep.). Rather they are defined by landscape patterns informed by historical
settlement data essential to an understanding of landscape making.

Step 3: analysis / evaluation

This is the stage of fully understanding a cultural landscape through its inherent
cultural values and establishing its significance as a guide to conservation and
future sustainable use. Historical documentation, field survey, and assessment of
the forces that have created the landscape form the basis for understanding its
cultural values. The following factors applied to each LCU need to be addressed:

1 Analyse inherent values;

2 Evaluate cultural significance.

Analysis of values such as aesthetic, historic, scientific, social and spiritual or

others are set out in Table 13.1.
Evaluation of cultural significance involves synthesising information gleaned
from research and analysis of values to develop a clear statement of how and
why the landscape is valued. This leads to development of a statement of
significance for each LCU and an overall statement for the complete study area.
The statement should set out (Heritage Council Victoria 2015, p.27):

• The cultural heritage values represented in the landscape

• Who holds these values, and;
• How important they are to the groups involved.

Critical to this stage of the process will be an articulation of the historic

context of a landscape through academic work based on scholarly research
which has been undertaken in the documentation stage (Figure 13.1). Historic
context underpins inquiry into how the landscape under study is significant: it is
the framework which informs the meaning of the landscape in relation to its
setting, cultural traditions and values through time. Co-ordinating research
information and site observation to understand the landscape is a particularly
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satisfying task. It involves researching information for its own sake as a means
of advancing the body of knowledge on the concept and meaning of landscape as
well as aiding in improving methods used in practice. Related to the latter point
is that future management options will be based on the statement. Many
countries and associated heritage agencies use the device of a statement of
significance to summarise heritage significance whereby: ‘A Statement of
Significance (SOS) is a declaration of value that briefly explains what a historic
place is and why it is important. The SOS identifies key aspects of the place that
must be protected in order for the historic place to continue to be important’
(Canadian Register of Historic Places in Kalman 2014, p.212).
A statement of significance is based on analysis of each aspect of significance
in respect to a set of values (Table 13.1) or criteria recognised by a particular
agency having jurisdiction to list heritage places. Many countries worldwide
have a set of national criteria as do many local governments; similarly for World
Heritage purposes there are set criteria (Table 13.1). Hence it is possible to
recognise significance at local, national and international levels and some
heritage places may meet more than one set of criteria, so that, for example, in
Australia a heritage place must be entered on the National Heritage List before it
may be nominated for World Heritage listing.

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HISTORIC LANDSCAPE ASSESSMENT:
WINGECARRIBEE SHIRE, NEW SOUTH WALES,
AUSTRALIA
This is an example where the approach and methods presented above were used.
It is a process applied to a practical case in which research inquiry involved
archival and on-site investigations. The research inquiry resulted in valuable
outcomes relating to understanding landscape meanings – important in their own
right – and their application to guide the conduct of the study and
recommendations for future action.

Context
Wingecarribee Shire, 2702 square kilometres (sq. km) in extent, is part of the
Tablelands region in New South Wales (NSW) located mid-way between
Sydney and Canberra (Figure 13.2). The Shire has a large number of items and
places of heritage value which are significant locally, regionally and nationally,
including its rural landscapes and historic country towns. As a result the area is a
main tourist destination. The present population is around 44,000. Development
pressures have been experienced due to spill-over growth from the Sydney
metropolitan area. Concern at the likely changes over time and loss of rural
character prompted mounting community representations on the need for
planning controls in the latter half of the 1980s.

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Figure 13.2
Location of Wingecarribee Shire

In response to mounting concern at growth pressures and anxious to ensure

that the historic character of the Shire is not eroded, the Shire sought and gained
funding for a heritage study in co-operation with the State Heritage Branch. This
is a study done to inform practice and real-world decisions. Methods used are
recommended as applicable in the context of landscape architecture research.
The co-operative nature of the study recognised the local and state significance
of the heritage resources of Wingecarribee. The main aims of the study included
those of identifying and analysing the environmental heritage of the Shire and
providing practical recommendations, statutory and non-statutory, for the
conservation and management of its heritage resources. A major component of
the overall study was a historic cultural landscape assessment.

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 Historically the area played a significant role in early European exploration
and then rural settlement of the colony of NSW. The history of European
exploration and subsequent settlement and land-use developments from the early
1800s onwards have left a distinctive landscape pattern with a series of layers
representing various periods through history telling the story of human
occupation of the land and attitudes to it.
The central part of the Shire, the focus of the study, is a rural landscape
supporting extensive grazing with some crop growing in the eastern portion. It is
about 40 km x 20 km in extent occupying an undulating hill and valley
topography with an altitude range of about 650–850 metres above sea level
bisected by the Wingecarribee River. The undulating topography is punctuated
by a number of landmark hills and historically significant towns and villages.
The area is also famous for its historic gardens. This central rural area setting is
surrounded by eucalypt-clad forested hills underlain by sandstone. The
encircling forested landscape consists of extensive national park land, state
forest and Sydney metropolitan water catchment land.

Study method
The sequence of steps followed in the study method is outlined in Figure 13.3.
The assessment approach used the characteristics set out in Table 13.2 above,
but because it is a broad scale study it amalgamated these characteristics into
four categories:

1 Overall landscape patterns;

2 Building clusters, structures, special features;
3 Circulation routes;
4 Historical associations.

It is stressed that the study method is not a visual assessment of what is seen
in the landscape. Rather it is a reading and interpretation of the landscape with
emphasis on historic values and social values inherent in the landscape informed
by historical research. At no stage were there any comments made in the
assessment of any vague visual scenic values, aesthetic scenic values or
preference tests leading to vacuous scenic value ratings.
Following an initial review of historical data and site visits it was possible to
distinguish patterns in the landscape – what the landscape looks like – related to
settlement themes to provide historic context for the study area. Settlement
themes were:
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Figure 13.3
Wingecarribee Study Model

• Early exploration and settlement, 1800–1840s;

• Consolidation of major pastoral holdings, 1840s–1860;
• Post-1860 rural extensions;
• Community development post-1860 (development of small country towns);
• Tourism and recreation, 1868 to present.

Landscape patterns are a cogent way of understanding historic trends and

significant cultural landscape elements. Much of the structural framework of
today’s landscape patterns was established in the nineteenth century, including
roads, tracks, boundaries, clearing of trees, sites of townships and villages,
pastoral holdings and buildings. Significant for the landscape patterns of the
study area are the important imprints from the early to mid-1800s. This pattern
overlies the earlier Aboriginal cultural landscape pattern resulting in a rich
mosaic of layers.
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 From the patterns a series of settlement themes based on settlement phases
through time post-1800 can be distinguished. These provide a framework for
understanding the present landscape, its making, its meaning and its cultural
values. The themes inevitably overlap and are not a simple chronology of events,
rather they encompass the phases of the history of the process of landscape
making and highlight significant landscape reminders from the past. The themes
were applied in the assessment and analysis stages to each cultural landscape
unit as part of reading and interpreting the cultural landscape.

Documentation, assessment, analysis

Primary (e.g. journals, diaries, historic photographs/paintings/drawings,
newspapers, maps) and secondary (e.g. reports, books, guides, biographies,
theses, journal papers) research sources were central to understanding settlement
patterns and documenting the history of landscape making for the study team
consisting of landscape historian (author), landscape architect and an
archaeologist supported by a historian who sought out archival maps and plans.
Particularly helpful were Portion Plans from the early to mid-nineteenth century.
Following colonial government instructions in 1825 a general survey of the
colony of NSW and its division into counties and parishes was undertaken.
These formed a basis for ongoing mapping in what are called Portion Plans
depicting portions of the landscape. Portion Plans show original grantees or
lessees of land in parishes and can include place names, notes, boundaries,
roads/tracks and later improvements to create grazing areas. Often surveyors
made notes of the landscape character such as ‘well grassed open forest’
referring to the picturesque open park-like landscape created by millennia of
Aboriginal burning which appealed to the new settlers because of its grazing
potential. Later mapping might refer to grassy paddock (field) where some tree
clearing had taken place to create more open grazing after about 1860 when
fencing was introduced. Other historical information came from diaries, local
history books, and records such as those of the governor of NSW, Lachlan
Macquarie, travelling through the area in 1820:
We met a numerous herd of about 400 head of cattle belonging to Mr Throsby feeding in a fine
rich meadow … The grounds adjoining Mr Throsby’s hut are extremely pretty, gentle hills and
dales with an extensive rich valley in his front, the whole having a very park-like appearance,
being very thinly wooded.
(Macquarie 1836, 18 October)

In 1836 colonial artist Conrad Martens painted the view described by

Macquarie leaving a remarkable pictorial image of this nineteenth century
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cultural landscape (Figure 13.4). The view shows an open grassy area
surrounded by open forest merging into thicker forest on the surrounding hills. It
is possible therefore to track the changes in the view to the present day (Figure
13.5) and map the various layers in the landscape.

Figure 13.4
Throsby Park, a painting by Conrad Martens

Piecing together primary and secondary source archival information with on-
site observation the study team was able to locate specific areas of historic
significance. For example, in the early nineteenth century the area was renowned
for its wheat paddocks with wheat sent to Sydney to support the new colonial
centre of NSW. Additionally it is recorded that ploughing competitions took
place. The team located these from descriptions of them being on a hill slope
located at one of the early nineteenth century land grants. Knowing that
ploughing was done by bullock teams with single blade ploughs and that this
method created ridge and furrow plough marks, these were located after a day in
the field during a late winter afternoon where the low sun angle highlighted the
marks running uphill (Figure 13.6).

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Figure 13.5
Present day view of Throsby Park

Figure 13.6
Paddock showing nineteenth century ridge and furrow plough marks

A series of ten cultural landscape units was delineated from field survey
assessment of landscape patterns and historical settlement data overlaying
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natural landscape elements. Subdividing the landscape into units is informed by
the fact that the cultural landscape is a montage or composite picture created by
the inter-relationships between various cultural and natural elements in the
landscape. Cultural elements are representations of various historic periods of
landscape making which result in layers and patterns of development. They also
mark change over time. The units, therefore, are indicative of various periods of
landscape making and act as windows onto the past and are a montage of the
forces which define cultural landscape form:

• Natural features including landform, vegetation and water forms and how
these have been used in the creation of particular cultural patterns;
• Land-use patterns created through time;
• Particular cultural elements and components.

The units delineated resulted from field assessment including land-use

patterns and vegetation and particular components such as building types,
paddock boundaries overlain by historic settlement data and the way in which
natural elements have been treated so that each unit is distinctive. It is stressed
that the units are neither land units based on physical criteria nor visual
catchment units based on visual boundaries, rather they are defined by cultural
landscape patterns informed by historical/archival settlement data essential to the
understanding of landscape making.
Establishing cultural significance from the identification/documentation,
assessment and analysis/evaluation process is the basis for the formulation of
conservation policy and management recommendations. It was decided in this
study not to rank significance, but to attempt to delineate those culturally
significant landscape units where the interpretative and associative values and
landscape integrity are critical to the history and heritage of Wingecarribee.
These are the units where subdivision by such uses as hobby farms or rural
residential would lead to an irretrievable loss to the historic authenticity of the
landscape and a loss to the Shire’s sense of place and cultural significance.
Therefore a decision was taken to establish and to recommend key historic units.
As a result of the assessment and analysis inputs, four key historic cultural
landscape units were identified. These are cultural landscapes particularly able to
inform interpretation of the history of Wingecarribee, promote a sense of place,
and relate this to the people involved in the landscape making. The key units
display a high level of intactness and authenticity where past historic landscape
patterns are still visible within later layers of settlement. One of the units
included the ridge and furrow plough marks (Figure 13.6). In addition four key
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historic villages/towns were identified. The key units include examples of
landscape types from the early major holdings and from the post-1860 dairying
era overlain with twentieth century layers.
In response to community comment, a supplementary landscape study was
undertaken. As a result, an additional key historic cultural landscape unit was
added to the recommended list, making a total of five units occupying about 50
per cent of the study area.
The key historic units contain significant historic elements from past
landscape making which remain comprehendible in existing landscape patterns.
The historic elements promote a particular sense of continuity in the landscape
and cogent links with the past, serve to enhance present-day landscape values by
a knowledge and understanding of the actions of past inhabitants, and provoke a
sense of human participation in landscape making and sense of place.
Wingecarribee Shire Council created a Draft Local Environment Plan through
the Environmental Planning and Assessment Act. This outlined a Landscape
Protection Zone covering the key historic units. The action recognised the
cultural significance of these landscapes to the present generation and future
generations and restricted land use to rural activities in keeping with the existing
character and scale.

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DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION
In practice not all landscape architects are frequently involved in dealing with
heritage landscape conservation management aspects and values, or want to be
involved. Where they are involved in such a task and briefed to address aspects
of landscape assessment – as for example in the Wingecarribee study or review
of an existing piece of urban open space and its history – it is critical that the
study method used reaches beyond being merely a visual appraisal. Thorough
research through interdisciplinary teamwork will be instrumental in guiding the
choice of the method to address the research question posed at the beginning of
this chapter and the pivotal idea of defining cultural and historic contexts.
I would also point out that addressing these principles is not the end of the
project as there is always the need to continue to consult with stakeholders in
order to evaluate whether the process has worked and/or if it needs fine-tuning.
A corollary to this line of thought raises the question of future research and what
direction(s) this might take for landscape architects. One direction that occurs to
me as a fruitful one connects with the idea of the relationship between people
and place expressed through the special characteristics of the concept of
landscape where ‘one of our deepest needs is for a sense of identity and
belonging … and how we find identity in landscape and place’ (Taylor 2015b).
Related to this line of thought is the ever growing global urbanisation of
societies. I therefore suggest that here is a distinctive opportunity for landscape
architects to focus on designed urban spaces and parks to connect with
communities of people through the intellectual concept of landscape and
meaning, a field of research that has focused on the landscape and meaning
narrative since the endeavours of Franz Boas and subsequent generations of
geographers and anthropologists. Its application to urban studies could be
particularly fruitful and engaging. Linked to this seemingly rich area of
landscape architecture research for me is that of designed urban spaces under
two categories: historic ones and new designs. Inspiration could be taken from
the 2015 UNESCO World Heritage Centre listing for Roberto Burle Marx’s
work, ‘the Walter Burle Marx Site’ (UNESCO 2015), General Conference
Recommendation on Historic Urban Landscape [HUL] (UNESCO 2012) and
Nishimura’s work on urban conservation planning (Nishimura 2004). Critical
inquiry could engage such questions as: what is their intellectual foundation,
what makes them work, whose values do they represent?

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SUGGESTED FURTHER READING
Gillman, G. ( 2010) The Idea of Cultural Heritage, 2nd ed., New York: Cambridge University Press.
Howard, P., Thompson, I. and Waterton, E., eds ( 2013) Routledge Companion to Landscape Studies,
Abingdon and New York: Routledge.
Smith, L. ( 2006) The Uses of Heritage, Abingdon and New York: Routledge.
UNESCO ( 2013) New Life for Historic Cities: The Historic Urban Landscape Approach Explained, Paris:
UNESCO, available: htt​p:/​/wh​c.u​nes​co.​org​/en​/ac​tiv​iti​es/​727​/.
Verschuuren, B., Subramaniam, S. and Hiemstra, W., eds ( 2014) Community Well-Being in Biocultural
Landscapes: Are We Living Well?, Rugby: Practical Action Publishing Ltd.
Waterton, E. and Watson, S., eds ( 2010) Culture, Heritage and Representation: Perspectives on Visuality
and the Past, Farnham: Ashgate Publishing Limited.

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REFERENCES
Australia ICOMOS ( 2013) The Burra Charter: The Australia ICOMOS Charter for Places of Cultural
Significance, available: htt​p:/​/au​str​ali​a.i​com​os.​org​/wp​-co​nte​nt/​upl​oad​s/T​he-​Bur​ra-​Cha​rte​r-2​013​-
Ad​opt​ed-​31.​10.​201​3.p​df.
Bandarin, F. ( 2015) ‘ Urban conservation and the end of planning’, in Bandarin, F. and van Oers, R., eds.
Reconnecting the City: The Historic Urban Landscape Approach and the Future of Urban
Heritage, Chichester: John Wiley.
Bandarin, F. and van Oers, R. ( 2012) The Historic Urban Landscape: Managing Heritage in an Urban
Century, Chichester: John Wiley.
Berleant, A. ( 2010a) Aesthetic Sensibility, available: htt​p:/​/ww​w.a​uto​gra​ff.​com​/be​rle​ant​/pa​ges​/Ae​sth​eti​-
c%2​0Se​nsi​bil​ity​.dr​aft​%20​8.h​tm.
Berleant, A. ( 2010b) Sensibility and Sense: The Aesthetic Transformation of the Human World, Exeter:
Imprint Academic.
Biger, G. ( 2006) ‘ Introduction: On ideology and landscape’, in Baker, A.R.H. and Biger, G., eds. Ideology
and Landscape in Historical Perspective: Essays on the Meanings of Some Places in the Past,
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Bullock, A. and Stallybrass, O., eds ( 1978) The Fontana Dictionary of Modern Thought, London:
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Byrne, D. ( 2009) ‘ A critique of unfeeling heritage’, in Smith, L. and Akagawa, N., eds. Intangible
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China ICOMOS ( 2002) Principles for the Conservation of Heritage Sites in China, translation edited by
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Eagleton, T. ( 1995) The Ideology of the Aesthetic, 2nd ed., Oxford: Blackwell.
Fairclough, G., Sarlöv-Herlin, I. and Swanwick, C., eds ( 2016) Routledge Handbook of Landscape
Character Assessment: Current Approaches to Characterisation and Assessment, Abingdon:
Routledge.
Fowler, P. ( 2001) Cultural Landscape: Dreadful Phrase, Great Concept, London: UK ICOMOS, available:
htt​p:/​/ar​cha​eol​ogy​dat​ase​rvi​ce.​ac.​uk/​arc​hiv​eDS​/ar​chi​veD​own​loa​d?t​=ar​ch-302-
1/dissemination/pdf/fwp88/fwp88.pdf.
Greffe, X. ( 2010) ‘ Urban cultural landscapes: An economic approach’, Working Paper 1/2010, Turin:
Department of Economics, University of Turin.
Han, F. ( 2006) The Chinese View of Nature: Tourism in China’s Scenic and Historic Interest Areas, (PhD),
School of Design, Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane.
Hayden, D. ( 1995) The Power of Place: Urban Landscapes as Public History, Cambridge, MA: The MIT
Press.
Heritage Council of Victoria ( 2015) Landscapes of Cultural Heritage Significance: Assessment Guidelines,
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ape​s-o​f-c​ult​ura​l-h​eri​tag​e-s​ign​ifi​can​ce-​ass​ess​men​t-g​uid​eli​nes​/.
Horne, D. ( 1986) The Public Culture: The Triumph of Industrialism, London: Pluto Press.
Hoskins, W.G. ( 1955) The Making of the English Landscape, London: Hodder and Stoughton.
ICOMOS ( 1994) ‘ The Nara Document on Authenticity’, in Lemaire, R. and Stove, H., eds. Proceedings of

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 the Nara Conference on Authenticity in Relation to the World Heritage Convention, Nara, Japan,
1–6 November, 46–48, available: htt​p:/​/ww​w.i​com​os.​org​/ch​art​ers​/na​ra-​e.p​df.
Jackson, J.B. ( 1951) Landscape, 1 ( Spring 1951), 5.
Jackson, J.B. ( 1984) Discovering the Vernacular Landscape, New Haven, CT and London: Yale University
Press.
Kalman, H. ( 2014) Heritage Planning: Principles and Process, Abingdon: Routledge.
Kapfer, M., Zieselb, S. and Kantelhardta, J. ( 2015) ‘ Modelling individual farm behaviour and landscape
appearance’, Landscape Research, 40( 5), 530–554.
Kikuchi, Y., Sasaki, Y., Yoshino, H., Okahashi, J., Yoshida, M. and Inaba, N. ( 2014) ‘ Local visions of the
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Taylor, K. ( 2015b) ‘ Ken Taylor on the human side of heritage conservation’, Routledge, available: htt​-
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Sørensen, M.L.S. and Carman, J., eds. Heritage Studies: Methods and Approaches, Abingdon and
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Chapter 14: Landscape and health

Catharine Ward Thompson

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INTRODUCTION
Environmental design is of interest to planners and policy-makers because of its
potential contribution to addressing the current health crises in the western
world. There are alarmingly rapid rises in levels of obesity, Type 2 diabetes,
cardiovascular disease, cancer and mental illness, and they have practical
consequences not only for individual wellbeing but also for the cost of
healthcare and the productivity of the workforce. Many such illnesses are not the
result of exposure to pollutants or organic disease vectors but are partly the
consequence of availability and choice in what food people eat, how and where
they spend their leisure time and, in addition, the increasingly sedentary nature
of most jobs and work contexts in the developed world. We now know that
sedentary behaviour is an independent risk factor for health, above and beyond
the effect of poor diet and low levels of physical activity (Sugiyama et al. 2009).
All of this indicates that individual preference and decision making, as well as
the nature of the socio-ecological context in which they occur (Evans and
Stoddart 1990; Sallis and Owen 2002; Shortt et al. 2014), have a large part to
play in improving public health.
Under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 six-year research programme,
launched in 2014, there has been a focus on six grand challenges faced globally
and in need of urgent action (European Commission 2014). One of these is
‘health, demographic change and wellbeing’. While there are many aspects of
individual and community life, and its societal context, which impact on this
grand challenge, environmental design has recently been highlighted as an area
of opportunity for research. This is partly because it has the potential to address
problems ‘upstream’, in a preventative way, rather than simply focusing on
dealing with the ‘downstream’ consequences of ill health in an ageing society
(Morris et al. 2006). Aspects of other grand challenges are also of relevance to
landscape architecture: inclusive societies; green transport (including active
travel); and climate action to address the impacts of climate change. In all of
this, a major interest lies in understanding how we can design ‘salutogenic’
landscapes (salutogenic as defined by Antonovsky 1996) – landscapes that
support health in mind and body, that support active lifestyles and mental
wellbeing, while maintaining equitable and inclusive access to these benefits in
creating attractive and healthy places for people’s day-to-day lives.
Of course, the idea is not new that environmental design and good quality
landscapes such as public parks are essential for good health (Ward Thompson
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2011). Environmental interventions to enhance public health were central to
nineteenth-century improvements in urban areas but had become marginalised in
the pharmaceutically focused and high-technology world of post-war twentieth-
century medicine (Morris and Robertson 2003). The renewed interest in physical
environment is now focused on identifying and understanding environments that
support healthy behaviours and responses, recognising that such environments
may have more permanent and population-wide effects than other forms of
public health interventions targeted at individuals (Saelens et al. 2003; Owen et
al. 2004). Landscape architecture alone cannot address global health problems
and prevent illness in today’s society, but it is possible that a salutogenic
environment, one that supports health, is a necessary condition for other, perhaps
more individually targeted, interventions to succeed. A supportive environment
may also be necessary as a first step towards any behaviour change in the
direction of healthier lifestyles and it is certainly likely to make any such change
more sustainable (Sugiyama et al. 2013).
What, then, are the research methods that might be appropriate for landscape
architecture in this context? There will be aspects of interest to landscape
architects across the spectrum of scales, from national and regional landscape
planning to the details of urban, park and garden design and to specification at
the finest grain. The scale at which my research has focused, by and large, is one
which offers perhaps the greatest potential to see links between landscape and
health – the neighbourhood or local community scale. It is work at the
community scale, therefore, that research methods described here are designed to
address, seeking to understand how different landscape characteristics, and
people’s varying access to them, may be associated with different kinds of health
behaviours and/or outcomes.
In the context of research into health and environment, it is important to be
explicit about the robustness of the method. If we are to have influence beyond
our own discipline and, vitally, to be taken seriously by public health researchers
and policy-makers, we need to use methods that are demonstrably up to the task,
that provide a satisfactory level of evidence. This doesn’t mean we always have
to produce the equivalent of what is considered the ‘gold standard’ of evidence
in clinical medicine – randomised, controlled trials. Indeed, the level of proof
possible to demonstrate a causal relationship between people’s health and their
local environment may only be weak at best, given the complex and dynamic
relationship between health, environment and individual (Morris et al. 2006).
Equally, a carefully considered change to recreational land use policy or park
design principles, for example, is unlikely to be life-threatening, or directly
responsible for major harms to human health. Nonetheless, we need to pay
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attention to the kinds of theoretical bases that have credibility with public health
experts, and to the measures indicative of health, wellbeing and quality of life
that are recognised by health professionals, if we are to make claims about links
between landscape and health that will be taken seriously in policy-making and
development of legislation, guidance and practice.
In this spirit, the examples of methods that are described here include a brief
description of the theories and potential causal pathways that underlie the
research approach and indicate the particular health measures used. They
illustrate the strength of mixed methods approaches that draw on a range of
techniques to respond to a research question. The findings from this kind of
research are often targeted at national and local authority planning policy, as
well as public health policy-making, with the aim of informing planning and
design decisions at the community or neighbourhood scale and providing the
evidence needed to make the case for landscape interventions. This kind of
research may not tell experienced landscape architects how to design differently
(that is not the aim), but may offer valuable support to such professionals in
arguing the case for their contribution within the wider policy context.
What follows is a series of studies that exemplify the use of different methods
to research links between landscape design and health and wellbeing. They take
different contexts and different sub-groups in the population as their focus,
recognising that different people, and at different stages in their life course, will
have varying needs and will experience the landscape in different ways. These
studies illustrate the research methods’ strengths, weaknesses and challenges and
identify the detailed issues that need to be taken into account in considering the
use of each.

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CROSS-SECTIONAL RESEARCH ON
ENVIRONMENTS THAT SUPPORT OUTDOOR
ACCESS IN AN AGEING SOCIETY
The research methods illustrated first have been part of a multidisciplinary and
collaborative project undertaken over many years (2003–2011), through the
consortium entitled I’DGO: Inclusive Design for Getting Outdoors. More details
of the theoretical background, methods and results can be accessed via the
I’DGO website (http://www.idgo.ac.uk). Presented here are examples of
research contributions from my own research centre, OPENspace.

Theoretical foundations
The theoretical basis for the research initially drew on projective approaches to
understanding relationships between individuals and their environment. It
assumes that there is a transactional relationship between people and place: how
we perceive and experience the environment is influenced by what we want to
do in it, and how well it serves our needs of the moment, in the context of
memories and past experience (Little 2000). Lawton and Nahemow (1973)
developed an ecological model of ageing that introduced the concept of
environmental press – the differential effect of the environment on behaviour
that relates to the capabilities and characteristics of the individual. Building on
this and transactional theory, models of environmental fit (Lawton 1980; Kahana
et al. 2003) have been developed to describe how the environment can become a
limiting factor on people’s mobility as their functional capabilities change in old
age (Iwarsson 2005). We follow Oliver’s social model of disability in our work,
which considers the individual as an active being, capable of coping successfully
with daily living and major life changes if personal and environmental contexts
are appropriate and enabling (Oliver and Sapey 2006). Related to this, the
concept of environmental support draws on the work of Kelly (1955) and Little
(1983; 2010) to focus on environmental quality in relation to the activities older
people want to undertake; in other words, how well the environment makes it
easy and enjoyable to do things, or frustrates and hinders action (Sugiyama and
Ward Thompson 2007a). As a concept, it links environmental attributes with
people’s perceptions of them in relation to their own, idiosyncratic desired and
necessary activities.
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Research questions
These theoretical perspectives informed a series of research questions and
methods to address them that took as their underlying premise the following
notion: that older people’s physical, mental and social health, indeed their
quality of life, will be better if they live in a neighbourhood whose outdoor
environment makes their activities easy and pleasant to undertake, compared
with those whose local environment makes it hard to undertake their activities.
We were interested therefore in outcomes that measured aspects of activity,
wellbeing and quality of life and related these to outdoor environmental
attributes. The measures we used are discussed in more detail below but inform
the research questions we developed, as follows:

a. Do older adults’ perceptions of the qualities of their physical neighbourhood

environment predict their quality of life?
b. What qualities of a local park or open space are associated with older
people’s varying levels of outdoor activity and quality of life?

Research ethics
It is important to note that most research, and particularly any research involving
human participants, requires attention to ethical standards and procedures;
universities and major funders will normally require ethics approval before a
study is allowed to proceed. For our research, focused on older people who
might have physical, cognitive or sensory impairments and lower levels of
stamina than younger adults, it was important that every stage of our research
was carefully reviewed, as some of our participants might be considered
vulnerable. Any interviews or engagement with participants required each
person to be told about the purpose for collecting the data and reassured about
the confidentiality with which data would be held and its secure storage (in line
with UK and European personal data legislation). They were also asked to
indicate that they understood what would be involved (i.e. they had the capacity
to give informed consent) and to sign a form agreeing to participate, while
acknowledging their right to decline to continue participating at any stage
without penalty or the need to give a reason. In addition, an information sheet
was given to each participant to keep, giving researchers’ contact details and
allowing the opportunity to ask questions about the study at any subsequent
stage. Such procedures are standard good practice now.

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Research design
Our research was a mixed methods approach and involved several phases,
starting with focus groups and then a wider survey based on a questionnaire.

Focus groups
Initially, in order to explore what the important elements and dimensions of the
outdoor environment were for older people, we ran eight focus group discussions
with older people in a range of urban, suburban and rural contexts in England
and Scotland. These groups, which included both frail and comparatively fit
older people, were recruited from older people’s interest groups such as
Edinburgh’s ‘City for All Ages’ group. We followed accepted good practice for
focus groups (Krueger and Casey 2000; Barbour 2007; Brookfield et al. 2013).
The topics included what aspects of local outdoor environments people liked or
disliked, what they found attractive or made things difficult when going out,
what experiences were associated with going to different outdoor environments,
what they would change about the environment if they could, and what made a
difference to their quality of life.
Such focus groups need to be carefully managed to allow each participant a
voice, to keep to time and to cover the necessary themes without constraining the
discussion too much. The strengths are that themes may be developed and
expanded upon that elucidate the reasons behind certain attitudes or behaviours,
and the free-response format ensures that what matters to people is articulated
rather than being constrained by researchers’ preconceptions. Weaknesses
include the possibility of one or two people dominating conversations (hence the
need for skilled facilitation) and the discursive nature of the outcomes, which
may take some time to analyse as a result.
With participants’ permission, we audio recorded the focus groups and
analysed them by repeatedly reviewing the discourse to draw out themes and
sub-themes in common. Eventually, we arrived at a list of aspects of quality of
life mentioned by participants (such as ‘opportunities to get fresh air’,
‘interacting with others in the neighbourhood’) and the attributes of the
environment (physical, social or psychological) that were important, whether
positive or negative, for quality of life and access outdoors (such as ‘good
pavements’, ‘somewhere to sit’, ‘feeling unsafe’). We were confident that we
had elicited most key aspects of interest or concern when we found our list of
themes reached saturation point (i.e. no new ones were emerging) and confirmed
this by comparing our findings with those of collaborators also working on
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I’DGO and with previous literature as a way of triangulation. In moving to the
next phase of research, that is to develop fixed-response questionnaires, this
gave us confidence that we would not omit anything important to the study.

Developing the questionnaire

As with most questionnaires, our I’DGO study involved a potentially vast array
of issues and themes that we wanted to explore. One of the challenges is to limit
the length and complexity of any such survey so that potential participants are
not discouraged or over-burdened. At the same time, it is important to include
anything likely to be critical in subsequent analysis. If possible, it is always
helpful to be focused on a very limited number of key outcomes to be served by
the questionnaire data, and this assists in refining the questionnaire content. It is
also helpful to postulate some of the likely pathways between the aspects of
interest under study (in our case aspects of the physical, outdoor environment)
and the outcomes (in our case, quality of life), and to consider what might
influence these pathways (potential mediators or confounders, for example). A
diagram or logic model to illustrate what is being considered helps to clarify at
this stage, such as that shown in Figure 14.1, the first diagrammatic
representation developed for our early I’DGO work.

Figure 14.1
Quality of Life (QOL) predicted by a) Environmental Support (ES), b) Outdoor Activity (OA) and
Environmental Support (ES), and c) Outdoor Activity (OA), Environmental Support (ES) and Personal
Factors (PF) (source: first published in Sugiyama and Ward Thompson 2007a)

As Figure 14.1a shows, we were initially focused on quality of life as the key
outcome, with outdoor environmental support leading directly to a better quality
of life (Sugiyama and Ward Thompson 2007a). However, we postulated that
such support would make most difference when it benefits outdoor activity
(Figure 14.1b), offering an additional but indirect link between environmental
support and quality of life, where outdoor activity (e.g. the frequency, nature or
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length of outdoor activities) is the mediator. Further, considerable evidence
shows that personal characteristics, from personal relationships and income level
to mobility, health status or individual attitudes and experience, influence quality
of life. Figure 14.1c therefore shows the model revised to take into account
personal factors such as these, which might influence what activities people
undertake, and even how supportive the environment is considered to be, as well
as directly influencing quality of life. Our questionnaire was initially developed
based on this model.
We thus needed to include sections or modules within the questionnaire that
captured the following:

a. A range of potentially relevant personal factors;

b. People’s perceptions of their local neighbourhood environment;
c. The nature and typical frequency of activities that took people outdoors, as
well as the amount of time spent outdoors;
d. People’s quality of life.

Most research which breaks new ground involves devising aspects of the
research tools that are new and different but it is, nonetheless, always advisable
to use existing, well-tried tools wherever possible, for a number of reasons.
Firstly, existing questionnaire modules that have successfully been used by
other, respected researchers will have been tested in different circumstances and
so many potential problems that arise with new questions (such as participants
not understanding the question, or finding it too difficult to answer) should have
been addressed. Secondly, if data are collected that match those from wider
surveys, for example national surveys or census data, it is possible to compare
the study sample with this wider population, giving a useful context for
interpretation of results. Thirdly, and especially important in researching links
between landscape and health, it is essential that outcome measures such as
those relating to health and wellbeing are recognised as valid by relevant
professionals and policy-makers, as was mentioned earlier. Where scales or
questionnaire modules developed by others are used, it is essential to
acknowledge this, and also to use the same wording and fixed response
categories as the original, or any refinement of the original. Authors are usually
helpful in confirming the latest version of their module, or public agency
websites such as the UK’s Medical Research Council (MRC n.d.) will offer
updated recommendations.
General advice on questionnaire design is covered by many publications in the
social sciences (e.g. Allan and Skinner 1991; Gideon 2012); the text here focuses
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on aspects that are particularly relevant to environment and health research. In
the case of I’DGO, our questionnaire was refined and amended in subsequent
stages of the multi-phased research but the components identified above
remained the essential core. Details of the questionnaire elements as developed
and refined at various stages in the I’DGO project, along with their analyses, can
be reviewed in Sugiyama and Ward Thompson (2006; 2007b; 2007c; 2008),
Sugiyama et al. (2009), Ward Thompson et al. (2014) and Curl et al. (2015;
2016). Aforementioned components are:

a. Questions on personal characteristics followed standard national census or

international survey formats in almost all cases and covered such items as
age, ethnicity, living arrangement, level of educational attainment and so on.
Other items that seemed particularly relevant to outdoor activities were
included or subsequently added, such as access to a private car, dog
ownership and so on. In addition, we asked about people’s ability to
undertake everyday activities, such as being able to walk a certain distance,
climb stairs, see to read and so on, based on an instrumental activities of
daily living scale (Jette et al. 1986), since this seemed likely to influence
people’s ability to undertake outdoor activities and their response to the
environment.
b. We developed our own set of neighbourhood open space (NOS) attributes
for the questionnaire as we were not aware of a set that had been developed
specifically with older people in mind, and with a UK/northern European
focus. We drew on our focus group analyses as well as prior studies (e.g.
Saelens et al. 2003; Humpel et al. 2004) to identify as succinct a list as
possible that included all the key elements relating to perception of the local
outdoor environment. Initially there were 26 items but some were found to
be unreliable and others were subsequently added to give us a later version
of 38 items grouped under ‘outdoor places in and around your home’, ‘your
local street or streets’, ‘your local open space’ and ‘your local
neighbourhood’. These were presented as statements (such as: ‘There is a
pleasant place to sit outside the home where I live’; ‘The local open space is
safe to walk in after dark’; ‘steep hills and steps in my neighbourhood make
it difficult to get around’) to which participants agreed or disagreed using a
five-point Likert scale (from strongly disagree to strongly agree).
c. Visits outdoors were measured by asking participants how often they went
outdoors for different activities, whether functional or recreational, in a
typical summer and a typical winter month, categorised as walking to get to
places; walking for recreation; gardening; or other outdoor activities. We
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 also asked how much time was typically spent when undertaking each of
these activities.
d. Health and quality of life were initially measured using two simple but
validated methods. As a measure of general health, we asked participants to
state on how many days in the previous month they were unhealthy, defined
as being too unwell to look after themselves or leave the house. To measure
quality of life, we used a five-item Satisfaction With Life Scale (SWLS)
developed by Diener et al. (1985). We subsequently reconsidered the
measures most appropriate for health and quality of life, the latter a term
which has been much debated in recent years and which is considered to
have many domains. In later I’DGO work, in addition to the single-item
‘unhealthy days’ question, we used EUROQOL (EQ-5D) (EUROQOL
Group 1990), a self-rated health scale, assessing five aspects of health:
mobility; self-care; usual activities; pain/discomfort; and anxiety/depression.
We also used the Environmental Quality (EQ) Visual Analogue Scale
(VAS), which allows participants to rate their health state on a 100-point
scale from worst imaginable (0) to best imaginable (100). For quality of life,
we used CASP-19 (Hyde et al. 2003), a measure of quality of life in older
age based on a model of needs satisfaction and comprising four domains:
comparison, autonomy, pleasure and self-realisation.
e. An additional, innovative section was added to the front of the questionnaire
to allow participants to identify their personal needs and desires in relation to
going outdoors, which might vary considerably between individuals. This
was based on the work of Little (1983; 2010) on personal projects, and
allowed us to ask what the key personal tasks or projects were for
participants that took them outside the home, how important each was to
them, and how easy or difficult the environment made it for them to do. It
allowed us to assess environmental support for each individual on a basis
that accommodated differences and made no assumptions about ‘normal’
activities.

Administering the questionnaire

The common challenges in administering a questionnaire relate to obtaining a
sample appropriate to the research questions being asked, both in terms of
sample number and demographic profile. For many questions relating to the
environment in which people live, it is advisable to survey a sample that
represents as closely as possible the demographics of the population or sub-
population(s) of interest living there, and this is no easy task.
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 Our initial I’DGO surveys were undertaken by post, mailing out to a sample
of over-65-year-olds’ addresses provided by a market survey company, and
targeted at a range of different urban, suburban and rural locations across
Britain, in an attempt to get a variety of responses from those in different
physical and socio-economic environmental contexts. A key element in postal
surveys is making the introductory information attractive, inviting interest, and
the survey itself clear and easy to complete. For our I’DGO participants this
meant ensuring the text was of adequate font size for people with some visual
impairment, while offering to provide larger text versions if people requested
them. Despite all such efforts, our response rate was below 20 per cent, which is
not uncommon for postal surveys, but underlines the challenges of getting a
good sample this way. We also found we had poor representation from minority
ethnic groups and so added to the sample via two community-based sessions
targeted at different ethnic groups, where participants were invited via a regular
social event and help with translation was available. Learning from this, our
second phase of the I’DGO project (described later) involved personal
interviews in a more limited set of locations, where we estimate we achieved
approximately 50 per cent participation – a response rate that gives greater
confidence in its representativeness.

Analyses
Analyses of the I’DGO data in the early stages of the project followed standard
procedures for cross-sectional data, that is data derived from a single survey at
one time point, where analysis is looking for differences between people that
might reflect differences in their environment. We used the Statistical Package
for the Social Sciences (SPSS); details of tests and their appropriate use are not
described here but are well covered in many publications such as Field (2013).
Initial analyses confirmed an acceptable level for the internal consistency of
the new NOS scale we had developed, and calculated a measure of
supportiveness of the neighbourhood environment (SNE) based on each
individual’s personal projects identified, their importance and how easy the
environment made them to undertake. We looked at bivariate correlations among
variables and between the items measuring personal factors and perceptions of
environment (NOS or SNE) and outcome measures relating to outdoor activities
and quality of life. Subsequent analyses reduced the number of environmental
variables being considered by using principal component analysis on the NOS
scale, and then using these components as variables to explore correlations with
outcome variables. Where relationships were found, logistic regression analysis
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was then used to identify any environmental predictors for the quality of life
outcomes, and for activity types and levels that might then predict quality of life
outcomes, taking into account personal factors that might confound the findings.
Such analyses are important as there is much evidence to show that personal
factors such as age, functional capability and socio-economic status are
independent predictors of quality of life, so the regressions indicate what
environmental factors might be associated with differences in quality of life
above and beyond these personal attributes.
Analyses in the second phase of the I’DGO project were more complex as this
was based on a longitudinal design (described below) and involved newer
approaches to regression (also described below) that are considered more robust
for analyses with small sample sizes and large numbers of variables.

Results
The detailed results of the various analyses undertaken for the I’DGO project are
not presented here as they are well described in the individual publications cited
in the previous pages. A brief overview from the first phase shows findings that
support our initial model, shown in Figure 14.1, that is those who live in a
supportive environment tended to walk more, and high-level walkers were more
likely to be in good health, but there was also an association between
supportiveness of the neighbourhood environment and health independent of
activity. Additional findings include that the pleasantness and safety of open
spaces, and their proximity, were associated with participants’ life satisfaction,
whereas the quality of paths to open spaces was associated directly with walking
behaviour. The pleasantness of a local open space and lack of nuisance in it were
associated with walking for recreation, while good paths to reach the open space
and good facilities within it were conducive to more walking for transport.
Findings from the second phase of I’DGO are discussed under the following
section, on longitudinal surveys.

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LONGITUDINAL STUDIES TO EXPLORE
ENVIRONMENTAL DESIGN INTERVENTIONS:
RESIDENTIAL STREETS
While cross-sectional surveys such as described above have been used in many
contexts of social science and environmental research, and can provide useful
indications of important associations between aspects of people’s characteristics
and behaviour in relation to aspects of their environment, they have an
unavoidable shortcoming. It is never possible to be completely confident about
the direction of any association between one variable and another. To put it
simply: does an environment with better quality landscape attributes, such as
good footpaths and attractive green space, encourage people living there to feel
better about their lives, and perhaps be more active outdoors, or is it the case that
people who are already active outdoor enthusiasts with a good quality of life
tend to choose to live in places where there is good quality landscape? While we
can control for personal differences in education or income or age, for example,
in our analyses, we cannot be sure that, other things being equal, we are seeing
the influence of environment on people’s activities and quality of life, or the
influence of people with certain dispositions on where they choose to live or
visit.
One way of addressing this is to see whether the same kinds of relationships
are found repeatedly in different specific contexts, including those where people
may have less opportunity to exercise choice over where they live. Recent
epidemiological studies, often led by health geographers, have undertaken these
kinds of analyses, where the sample sizes are sufficiently large (with respondent
numbers in the thousands, tens of thousands or more) to allow very sophisticated
analyses (e.g. Mitchell and Popham 2007; 2008; Maas et al. 2009; Stigsdotter et
al. 2010; White et al. 2013). Such studies have repeatedly shown some kind of
relationship between access to green space and people’s longevity, health or
wellbeing, and that this relationship is usually stronger where people live in
contexts of poverty or multiple deprivations. Such findings add confidence (but
not certainty) to interpretations suggesting that better access to green space may
be a cause of better health or quality of life, particularly as those living in
poverty or deprivation are less likely to have control over their local outdoor
environment or what neighbourhood they live in. Such large-scale analyses
allow the potential influence of access to green or natural environments
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(including coasts, for example) to be estimated with confidence but are less good
at analysing the influence of specific landscape details on people’s activities and
health. It is here that longitudinal studies, where an intervention to change the
environment is assessed in terms of any influence on the local population, can
provide the strongest evidence of causality. What follows is a description of the
theoretical basis and research design for a longitudinal study of this sort
undertaken by OPENspace as part of the second phase of the I’DGO project:
I’DGO TOO.

Research question
Phase 2 of our I’DGO project sought to determine the effect of changes to the
design of the residential street on which people lived, in order to make them
more pedestrian-friendly and reduce the dominance of motorised traffic. We
drew on the same theoretical framework as described earlier, and on emphasis
within public health literature on the need to consider social ecological models
of behaviour as a way to understand the role of the physical environment in
relation to activity (Scottish Government 2008; Bull et al. 2010). Such models
recognise that individual characteristics and preferences are active within the
context of socio-economic, political, cultural and environmental factors that
operate at different scales, from household and community to wider geographic
levels (Barton and Grant 2006).
Our main research question was: ‘Do environmental changes to the local
residential street, to enhance the pedestrian experience, make a difference to
older people’s quality of life?’ We wanted therefore to investigate whether
interventions to enhance residential streets for local people would result in better
quality of life for older people living on those streets, whether they would go out
more often or spend more time outside in the local environment, and whether
they would have better social networks as a result. Although updated for phase
two, we essentially used the same questionnaire modules as for phase one,
described above. We added a few additional questions to enquire about how
lonely our participants felt (considered a sign of social isolation, especially for
older people) and whether, post-intervention, they felt more active or better
connected with their neighbours.

The street design intervention

One of the challenges of longitudinal research of this sort, aimed at assessing the

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effects of an intervention to the physical environment, is to identify sites where
appropriate changes will, with certainty, take place within a specified time
period such that residents can be surveyed before and after the environmental
changes, and all within the time frame of a single research project (the strengths,
weaknesses and challenges of this method are discussed further in the
concluding section). The design intervention chosen was a programme that
followed on from a three-year Department for Transport (DfT) funded pilot of
‘Home Zone’ style street improvements (based on Dutch woonerven principles,
Clayden et al. 2006). These were aimed at reducing the dominance of motorised
vehicular traffic on residential streets. The pilot Home Zone interventions were
well funded and claims have been made for their success in enhancing local
residents’ quality of life (Department for Transport 2005). For the phase two
I’DGO project, DfT funding was no longer available and, although the principles
of Home Zone type improvements continued to be promoted by government,
funding support for such projects was more limited. We identified a programme
run by a sustainable transport charity, Sustrans, as fitting the time frame of our
study (2007–2011) where pilot ‘DIY Streets’ (Do-It-Yourself) interventions
were planned in collaboration with a number of local communities, many of
which were in very deprived urban communities in England, Wales and Scotland
(Sustrans n.d.). We initially identified nine locations where a particular street
was part of such an intervention (one in Scotland that was not part of the
Sustrans scheme), and based our longitudinal study on these; in the event, only
seven sites had an intervention completed in time for the second wave of survey,
post-intervention, in 2010 or 2011.
The type of changes that were eventually made within different DIY sites
were not radical or comprehensive redesigns of the street environment, unlike
the earlier Home Zone work supported by DfT, and were constrained by a more
limited budget and more cautious community engagement process. As
researchers, we were not involved in either the community participation work or
in the design of the interventions; on the one hand, this meant we were able to be
truly independent in our evaluation of the results, on the other, it meant we were
unable to suggest designs that might have offered greater support for older
people’s outdoor activity.

Research design
The ideal research design for a longitudinal intervention study is to follow a
cohort of participants from pre- to post-intervention, interviewing the same
people before and afterwards to see what changes. Such a study requires control
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or comparison sites, matched as closely as possible in terms of environmental
and participant characteristics, where no intervention takes place, so that wider
societal influences and changes can be taken into account. Our I’DGO study
design aimed to follow this principle, with each DIY Street intervention site
matched as closely as possible with a comparison street in the same urban area,
with similar built environment and socio-economic characteristics, but where
there was no intervention. We undertook a baseline survey, before any changes
to the environment, and a second wave, between three and six months after
completion of the intervention. Such a study is often termed a natural
experiment, or a quasi-experiment, with pre–post test design. All data were
collected between May and September, the summer months in Britain, to
minimise effects of variation in season. Ward Thompson et al. (2014) describes
the study design and initial analyses in more detail.

Recruitment of participants
We aimed to contact all people aged 65 or older on the relevant intervention and
comparison streets, using a variety of recruitment techniques, to interview both
before and after the intervention. Because there were only a limited number of
sites, we administered our updated questionnaire by interview, face to face, but
we still faced challenges in recruiting. We used prior leafleting of the streets,
community meetings, newsletters and other contacts via community facilitators,
to invite participants, whom we interviewed either in their homes or at a local
community centre. The benefits of this are the greater likelihood of a good
response rate, and interviewers are able to ensure the questionnaire is properly
completed, but it is a much more time-consuming process than a postal
questionnaire and needs to be undertaken by a group of trained field-workers.
We estimate we obtained a 50 per cent or so response rate for people aged 65 or
older living in the targeted streets.
For a number of reasons, principally the reduced number of sites where
interventions had been completed by 2011, we had more participants in the
baseline (pre-intervention) survey (n=96) than after (n=61). Furthermore,
although we were aiming to maintain a cohort of the same individuals pre- and
post-survey, in practice we only achieved a total cohort sample of 36, of which
20 were in the intervention sites and 16 in comparison sites. This cohort was
nested within the two waves of cross-sectional survey. The low retention of
participants reflects the difficulties of recruiting and retaining cohorts over
several years of study, especially in an older population and one of high
deprivation in some sites – often associated with higher turnover of housing.
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Additional measures used
In addition to the questionnaire survey, the second phase of I’DGO involved a
number of other measures. Participants were asked to wear accelerometers for
seven consecutive days, and to keep activity diaries which recorded the timing,
location and purpose of any activity that took them out of the house on each day
that they wore the accelerometer. As is typical in such surveys, not all those who
completed the questionnaire also agreed to wear an accelerometer and keep a
diary, and adherence to the protocol for these was variable, with some people
failing to comply after the first few days, so that we had a maximum (but
varying) sample of 47 pre-intervention and 22 post-survey for these measures.
Figure 14.2 shows the participant numbers in each part of our study.

Figure 14.2
Number of participants in each part of the study (source: first published in Ward Thompson et al. 2014)

In addition, the research team undertook street audits before and after the
interventions, to ensure we recorded the physical environment consistently and
noted any changes to these environments. This used a version of the Scottish
Walkability Assessment Tool (SWAT) developed by OPENspace for another
project assessing the walkability of people’s local streets (Millington et al. 2009;
Robertson et al. 2012). It was amended to include the kinds of items likely to be
introduced in ‘DIY Streets’ interventions.
Behaviour observations of use of the streets before and after interventions
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were also undertaken, recording activities for set morning and afternoon periods
of 30 minutes, on different days of the week. This was designed to capture
typical activities being undertaken, including walking and cycling, and whether
or not these involved social interactions with companions or others encountered,
as well as the estimated age of those observed. While time did not allow for a
fully comprehensive set of observations, the methods used were broadly in line
with those described in Goličnik and Ward Thompson (2010) and recorded onto
a geographic information system (GIS) base map.

Questionnaire analysis
The initial analysis using SPSS, for both the wider, cross-sectional data and for
the cohort, pre- and post-intervention, focused on what changes, if any were
associated with the intervention sites but not the comparison sites. Initially,
simple, paired t-tests were used to explore difference over time. The difference
in the degree of change over time between intervention and comparison groups
was also examined for each variable. Because of the complexity of the data, the
items in the NOS scale (38 in this survey) were initially reduced using factor
analysis (maximum likelihood method), producing nine factors to assist in
exploratory analysis. Although the sample size was smaller than usually
recommended for such factor analysis, the Kaiser Meyer Olkin measure of
sampling adequacy was satisfactory and the factor structure gave us the
opportunity to undertake initial exploration of the data more readily.
Subsequently, a more innovative analysis, better suited to a high number of
variables and a low sample size, was carried out on the entire set of variables for
the cohort via Correlated Component Regression, using the CORExpress
statistical package (Magidson 2013; Curl et al. 2015).

Questionnaire results
Our cohort study found that participants in the intervention group perceived their
street as more walkable, and that they were more active, post-intervention, yet
their self-report levels of activity did not increase over time. We did not find
positive changes in other health, wellbeing or social connectedness measures,
some of which declined over time in both intervention and comparison sites. The
key result was that participants in the intervention sites perceived it was easier to
walk on the street near home, post-intervention, and this was not found in the
comparison sites. Many of the findings from the two waves of cross-sectional

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survey over time reinforced those of our earlier phase of I’DGO research. They
underline the importance of footways that are attractive and easy to use to access
local open space as factors in remaining active into old age and influencing
overall quality of life.

Other data analyses and results

The analysis and results from the other methods of data collection continue to be
explored. The use of accelerometers produced a considerable volume of data
which requires expert advice to analyse and interpret correctly, and the small
sample size means that we have had to be cautious in any conclusions that might
be drawn, recognising the results may be useful as illustrations of activity
patterns for particular individuals of a certain age and living in certain urban
conditions, rather than generalisable beyond our sample. The diary data are
potentially valuable in helping to interpret results but, again, produced a large
volume of data which requires careful processing and classification to be
amenable to quantitative analysis. It is worth noting that the improved
availability of Global Positioning System (GPS) recorders now, in terms of cost
and wearability, compared to what was available at the research design stage of
our I’DGO phase 2 study in 2006/7, means that this might be considered an
alternative or addition to the activity diaries in any future such study. However,
the challenges of interpreting the data and preparing them for meaningful
analysis would remain.
Our behaviour observations across all street users at different times of day
(n=3859) indicated little change in patterns pre- and post-intervention, perhaps
to be expected given the limited nature of the interventions. Some aspects of this
are being explored further but, in terms of physical activity, the majority of
people observed were passing through the street fairly rapidly, with most
walking but 10 per cent cycling and 3 per cent running. Only 1 per cent were
observed sitting, reflecting the lack of seating provision even post-intervention,
and activity values were similar for the morning and afternoon observations.
However, the frequency of social contact was higher during the afternoon (37
per cent of those observed), compared to only 19 per cent in the morning
sessions. The street audits indicated changes that had occurred as expected but
there appeared to be little association between the particular design details and
new or altered behaviour by street users.
In general, it is worth noting that the benefits of mixed method approaches,
where different types of data may be used to check the robustness of findings, is
often accompanied by greater complexity in analysis and thus it may take
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considerable time and/or effort to fully explore the findings from the data. The
challenges in collecting and analysing longitudinal data based on questionnaires
alone are considerable, despite their value in pointing to causal relationships
between environment and health. Non-self-report measures such as
accelerometers and behaviour observations may offer opportunities to better
characterise or explain any behaviour change that has taken place but each
additional method requires its own expertise to undertake and interpret. In our
I’DGO phase 2 study, it has taken considerable time after the data were collected
to analyse them adequately and the results suggest only very limited effects from
the interventions. Nonetheless, our research design was strong and well placed to
identify potential causal relationships between environmental interventions and
changes in activity, sociability or quality of life, and remains sound despite the
somewhat limited results reported to date.
A more recent study is also using a longitudinal approach to investigate the
wellbeing benefits of woodlands improvements near deprived urban
communities. The logic model developed for this (see Figure 14.3) illustrates the
approach to the study design, which has met the requirements of a health
research funding agency, described in Silveirinha de Oliveira et al. (2013).
Such longitudinal research offers opportunities for better evidencing links
between landscape and health. A different kind of innovative approach being
used by OPENspace, and described below, can also help planners and designers
prioritise different kinds of environmental interventions.

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CONJOINT ANALYSIS: AN APPROACH TO
LEARNING ABOUT THE COMPARATIVE
IMPORTANCE OF DIFFERENT
ENVIRONMENTAL ELEMENTS
The final research method illustrated here, conjoint analysis, is a ‘stated
preference’ technique that is useful for learning about the relative importance of
different attributes under study, for a particular population. This is a relevant
issue where environmental design is concerned: clients often need to know
which of several alternative intervention strategies might yield the best results.
The method arises out of market research, and has only recently been applied to
studies on the comparative importance of different elements in the environment
(e.g. Aspinall 2007; Bullock 2008).

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Figure 14.3
Logic model of a longitudinal approach to study design (source: first published in Silveirinha de Oliveira et
al. 2013)

Conjoint analysis has been used across a number of OPENspace projects. It

has value in health-related research in that it offers the opportunity to understand
where changes might have greatest effect in relation to a desired health or
wellbeing outcome. It is a form of discrete choice methodology recommended
by the UK National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) as a means
of determining the best allocation and use of resources as well as to inform
policy (Ryan 2004).
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 Conjoint analysis involves choice tasks that are seen as realistic and
comparable to the way people make choices in real world situations.
Respondents to a conjoint task are presented with profile characteristics of
objects or situations which consist of several attributes, and varying values for
each attribute. Their task is simply to choose which is preferred within a given
set. From a number of comparison tasks, conjoint analysis generates ‘utilities’,
which are values placed on the different attributes of the situation being
examined. Since choice is made by comparing different values in multiple
attributes, the utilities generated in conjoint analysis are based on relative
considerations of all attributes. The utilities thus tend to reflect the way people
weigh up pros and cons in real life, and offer a more reliable way of judging
comparative importance, or predicting people’s response to different
opportunities, than conventional questionnaires that ask about each attribute
separately.
As with other methods described in this book, space does not allow more than
an overview, but it is helpful to briefly illustrate how the initial conjoint
questionnaire was developed and to demonstrate the kinds of results and
scenario-modelling that subsequent analysis offers. The example is based on a
separate survey that formed part of the I’DGO project, and is based on choice-
based conjoint analysis, a form of the method that allows preparation of a set of
questionnaires that can then be administered by post (as in the case of our study).
Details are described in Alves et al. (2008) and Aspinall et al. (2010).

Developing the conjoint questionnaire

Since any conjoint survey presents a series of options for choice, involving a
predetermined set of attributes, in order to determine the relative importance of
each, it is vital to ensure that the attributes cover all the aspects under study that
participants might consider important. For this reason, it is usual to base a
conjoint survey on prior research that is likely to have elicited the key aspects of
relevance from the same population under study. Qualitative work such as with
focus groups is valuable as well as more conventional questionnaires, and our
I’DGO study drew on focus groups and accompanied walks with older
participants, as well as the first phase questionnaire described earlier, in order to
devise the conjoint questionnaire.
The challenge then is to devise a survey using as limited a set of issues (called
‘attributes’) as possible (to ease the burden on participants), but still covering all
the attributes, and different options or ‘levels’ for each, that might be most
important to someone in making a choice between alternative scenarios. In our
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study, recognising that good access to open space was a predictor of older
people’s activity levels and quality of life, we wanted to know which local park
or open space would be preferred as a place to visit for our older participants. A
total of 15 attributes relevant to neighbourhood parks and open space were
chosen, including eight items relating to the route to a local park, such as
distance to the park, pavement quality, presence of trees or seats along footpaths,
and levels of traffic. Seven attributes related to the environment within a local
park, such as trees and plants, facilities provided, seating available, level of park
maintenance and aspects of nuisance, with levels defined according to, for
example, the density of trees and plants or the availability of facilities such as
car parks, cafés and toilets. Each attribute had between two and four levels.
The CBC questionnaire was constructed using Sawtooth Software (2008).
CBC stands for Choice-Based Conjoint (CBC) studies. Rather than showing
choices that compared variations across all 15 attributes at a time, which would
create extremely difficult decision-making tasks, we used a partial-profile
design, where the number of attributes shown in each comparison task was
limited to four, to make the task easier. The software allowed for this by
producing different versions of the questionnaire and calculating the number of
different versions required in order to achieve effective coverage over all the
options. Thus, we ended up with 15 different versions of the questionnaire, each
of which offered 11 paired option tasks, but each respondent would receive only
one such version of the questionnaire. An example of two of the option tasks
offered is shown in Figure 14.4.

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Figure 14.4
An example of two of the option tasks in the questionnaire

The results and scenario modelling options

The most important attributes overall, for our 237 participants, were nuisances
(such as signs of vandalism or dog fouling), facilities (such as toilets or a café)
and trees and plants (density of vegetation), followed by levels of traffic en
route, things to watch (such as views, wildlife) and levels of maintenance.
There were two individual characteristics that made a significant difference to
how participants prioritised attributes: whether people had mobility impairments
that made it difficult to get around and whether people lived alone or with
someone else. For example, those who lived with someone else placed relatively
greater importance on the provision of facilities and a car park, while those who
lived alone placed relatively greater importance on distance to the local park.
The major benefit of the conjoint analysis for planners and decision makers is
that the analysis produces a dynamic tool that can be used to model different
scenarios, both for the sample as a whole and for sub-samples, as indicated
above. This allows exploration of trade-offs, such as ‘what if we make this rather
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than that change?’ For example, if medium traffic levels en route to the park are
reduced to light levels, does that increase preference more than adding a toilet to
a park without one at present? In our study, the answer to this was ‘no’.
Alternatively, adding ‘some trees and plants’ to a park with no existing trees was
more than twice as valued as adding a café to a park with existing toilet
provision. Although the results of conjoint analysis are always constrained by
the options offered, and the population sampled, such scenario modelling would
allow a planner to have confidence in how best to invest with limited resources.
For example, the results could inform how to intervene at a certain point in time
to maximise park preference or use by the local population, or sub-populations,
providing the model was based on an appropriate survey and sample.
This example is just one illustration of the conjoint analysis approach which
has been used by OPENspace researchers and PhD students at the University of
Edinburgh in a range of contexts. Other examples include research using
different forms of conjoint analysis (such as adaptive conjoint) to explore
people’s preferences for moving to different neighbourhoods in the peri-urban
landscape in a range of European contexts (Nilsson et al. 2013). PhD studies
have used conjoint analysis to investigate how local communities judge the scale
effects of different wind farm proposals and how residents of cities in southern
Europe consider which urban environments are most desirable to live in.
One aspect of interest in developing conjoint analysis questionnaires is
whether or not to use images as part of the presentation of alternative options for
participants’ choice. Laing et al. (2005), for example, have studied residents’
streetscape preferences using three dimensional (3D) computer-generated
visualisations and Priestley (2005) used photomontages of different green spaces
to explore adult preference for different facilities or features. The strength of
such approaches lies in the ease with which respondents can assess and respond
to visually presented alternatives. However, they suffer from difficulties in
producing images that accurately reflect the particular combinations of attributes
assigned to each option, and in determining whether such attributes have been
noticed by respondents in coming to a decision. In addition, a respondent’s
decisions may be overly influenced by lighting, composition or people featured
in the presented image that may have comparatively low priority in real-life
decision making (Laing et al. 2009). The outdoor natural environment also
presents many more challenges to realistic representation than indoor or built
spaces, given the variability of season, weather, atmosphere and vegetation state
(Laing et al. 2005). For this reason, OPENspace work has usually avoided such
difficulties by using written descriptions rather than images, which give clarity
about what aspects of the environment are to be considered and allow
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participants to envisage environments that are familiar to them. However, recent
PhD work at Edinburgh (ongoing at the time of writing) has also successfully
used a combination of monochrome line drawings of landscape options (which
allow for only the relevant features to be marked) and written descriptions in
conjoint analysis. Such an approach makes use of landscape architecture skills in
innovative ways for research (Stanton 2015).

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DISCUSSION OF RESEARCH METHODS THAT
MIGHT BE USED TO CONSIDER OPEN SPACE
DESIGN FOR SALUTOGENIC LANDSCAPES

Alternative research methods

The methods described above are by no means an exhaustive illustration of what
might be used to explore links between landscape design and people’s health and
wellbeing. There are, in particular, more in-depth approaches such as interviews
and accompanied walks or ‘go-along’ methods that can provide very detailed
insights on how people respond to the landscape and what benefits they
experience, especially if conducted over a period of time. The work of Patrik
Grahn, Ulrika Stigsdotter and colleagues, based at the Alnarp Rehabilitation
Garden, draws on such methods to provide a rich and detailed analysis of the
qualities of garden space needed for different stages of recovery from stress-
related illness (Grahn and Stigsdotter 2010; Grahn et al. 2010). Their research
has resulted in a ‘quality evaluation tool’ to be used in the process of designing
outdoor environments in healthcare settings (Bengtsson and Grahn 2014), which
offers valuable insights for design of therapeutic gardens.
While quantitative analysis such as conjoint, described earlier, and in-depth,
qualitative research of the sort undertaken by the Alnarp team can both yield
relevant guidance on detailed design for landscape architects, there are other
relevant approaches to consider. These include behaviour observation, which can
offer opportunities for both qualitative and quantitative analysis and reveal
valuable findings for landscape planners and designers. Robin Moore, Nilda
Cosco and colleagues have used these methods, based on theories of affordance,
to undertake research on ways in which playgrounds encourage different kinds
of activities in children (e.g. Moore 1974; Cosco 2007; Moore and Cosco 2007;
2010), while Goličnik and Ward Thompson (2010) illustrate the use of
behaviour observation in the wider context of public parks and open space in the
city.
Space does not allow the opportunity to expand here on the full range of
methods that have been effective in researching the relationship between
landscape architecture and health, in its widest interpretation, but Ward
Thompson et al. (2010) and Ward Thompson (2013) outline in more detail some

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of the approaches that have been used, particularly by designers, to investigate
links between activity and design of the physical environment. The strengths,
weaknesses and challenges in such methods are briefly discussed below, in
concluding this chapter.

Objectivity, subjectivity and the use of self-report measures

A fundamental challenge in researching people’s engagement with, and response
to, their environment is understanding how much value to place on empirical
measures of environment that might be considered independent of personal bias,
such as mapping of vegetation based on remote sensing or photography, and
how much to place on people’s reports and perceptions of environments. In the
latter, it may be harder to discern the difference between objective (i.e. reliable
and unbiased) measures and those that are clearly subjective. An affordance
theory viewpoint would claim that there is a false dichotomy in thinking about
‘objective’ versus ‘subjective’ measures, since every assessment is partly
dependent on the perception of the assessor and the activity and purpose they
have in mind.
Nonetheless, for landscape architects and environmental designers, there is
undoubtedly some value in using professional assessment in measuring quality
and availability of landscape elements such as parks, streets or urban squares in
research, as such professionals use these kinds of judgements in their work all
the time. Audit tools such as the woodland audit tool developed by OPENspace
(Silveirinha de Oliveira et al. in prep.) offer this kind of measure and can provide
a level of landscape insight into research studies that is rigorous and reliable,
adding confidence in the comparative objectivity of results. To do so, it is
important to demonstrate that a trained auditor would give the same results if
they were to audit the same, unchanging environment on two different occasions
and, equally, that two different trained auditors would give the same results for
that environment. For this reason, it is advisable to assess new audit tools to
ensure that test–retest and inter-rater reliability are within acceptable limits.
Millington et al. (2009) illustrate how this has been done for our Scottish
Walkability Assessment Tool.
It is important to recognise, however, that it is the local community’s own
perceptions of their environment that will influence how they experience and
respond to it, regardless of how expert auditors assess it. This is particularly true
of aspects such as how safe an environment feels, but also whether the nearest
green space is perceived as easy to access, or whether there are ‘enough’
benches en route. Someone’s perception of a local park being too far away, or
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not safe to use, for example, may deter them from ever visiting it, regardless of
other measures such as the mapped distance or incidence of crime in the place.
Such subjective perceptions are likely to vary among community members
according to gender, age and a number of other factors. For this reason, if we
want to understand what it is about any environment that is salutogenic, we
usually need to understand users’ perceptions. These can be assessed by group
methods, such as focus groups and community audits, or individual interviews
and questionnaires, all of which have been described in the examples above. The
most valuable research for planners and designers usually involves one of these
methods as well as any non-self-report or objective assessment of environment,
recognising the value of both but also accepting that the resulting assessments
may differ.
In a similar way, non-self-report measures of other aspects of people’s lives,
and in particular their activity and health, may be valuable but give different
answers to those that people report themselves. Behaviour observation is a long-
established technique that offers valuable insights into how people use particular
places in different ways; it remains one of the simplest but most valuable tools
for landscape architects to understand response to environment. However, while
it offers insights into what people do, it is unable to explain why they do it.
Hence it is always useful to engage with people directly and ask them questions
as well.
In the arena of physical activity and health research, it is well known that
certain self-report measures give different answers from other measures of
(apparently) the same thing. For example, people generally tend to overestimate
how active they are. Thus, while the International Physical Activity
Questionnaire (IPAQ 2002) may have been developed to provide a reasonably
accurate and reliable measure of people’s level of activity, including moderate
and vigorous activity, in the previous week or month, it is accepted that IPAQ
results may well not tally with activity levels found if participants are asked to
wear an accelerometer for a week. Both may be good at measuring comparative
levels of activity between people but both have their weaknesses, for example
the time it takes to ask the questions in IPAQ, and possibly inaccurate recall of
respondents, or the challenge when different participants wear an accelerometer
for different lengths of time throughout the day, or forget to wear it one day. As
with assessments of the environment, therefore, it is often best to combine non-
self-report and self-report measures of activity, health and wellbeing if possible.
Equally, sometimes a simple but valid and reliable question (such as one on
perceived general health) can be useful and prove a good predictor of more
elaborate measures of health, especially where time and resources are
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constrained. For researchers working in Europe, EQ-5D is increasingly seen as
important and useful because it is a very brief (five-item) self-report measure of
overall health but also one that can be used as a basis for health economics and
measures of ‘Quality Life Years’ (QALYs) – the unit by which health benefits
are often assessed.
As has been suggested above, one challenge of non-self-report measures, such
as by accelerometry or GPS-derived geospatial data, is the volume of data
generated. If participants are asked to wear a GPS monitor combined with an
accelerometer, to provide details of where they’ve been, and how active, minute
by minute, over days or even weeks, there will be an enormous volume of data
generated that needs to be checked, cleaned and then analysed. This usually
involves categorising the data into meaningful classes that can then be subjected
to quantitative analysis. It thus requires input from researchers with expertise in
the data gathering tools and the manipulation and interpretation of results. There
are new means for gathering data remotely and digitally that are developed every
year, for example using mobile phones or mobile neuroheadsets (OPENspace
has been involved in the latter, see Aspinall et al. 2013), all of which are exciting
and offer new opportunities but bring new challenges with them. Some of
OPENspace’s most innovative work in recent years has involved testing salivary
cortisol several times during the course of the day to measure diurnal cortisol
patterns as indicators of stress. While this has proved a useful non-self-report
measure of stress that can be undertaken in more ecologically valid contexts (i.e.
people going about their everyday lives) than the usual laboratory or field
experiments involving biomarkers, it was only possible because of collaboration
with an expert in measuring and interpreting cortisol as well as experts in health
geography and psychology. Our findings have been widely reported and add to
understandings of links between green space and health (see Ward Thompson et
al. 2012 and Roe et al. 2013) but point to the necessity for interdisciplinary
collaboration.

Questionnaires and area-level versus individual data

Many other research methods publications offer details of the challenges,
strengths and weaknesses of using questionnaires, and the different ways of
administering them. For landscape architects, a current challenge in landscape
and health research is to find meaningful but consistent measures of different
aspects of the landscape that are of interest, and that can be used in different
contexts and (ideally) different countries as well. There are increasing numbers
of questions relating to perceptions and use of local green space, for example in
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UK national surveys undertaken by different public authorities, and
contributions to testing and refining these can be of value, as can the
development of more specific and detailed questions relating to particular
aspects of the landscape that may relate to health and wellbeing.
Where new surveys are undertaken by questionnaire, the age-old challenges of
sample size, response rate and representativeness remain but we are expected to
meet the rigorous standards of public health research if our findings are to be
taken seriously in that context. An alternative is to take the data being analysed
from secondary sources. The growing enthusiasm of research councils and
policy-makers for ‘big data’, which are increasingly available and amenable to
complex analyses that would have been unthinkable pre-computers, means it is
possible to access and use many different sources of information. Some is based
on individual-level data, which can be most useful but involves complex
mechanisms to access anonymised versions of it in compliance with data
protection legislation. Other data may be compiled and made available at area
level, such as the Index of Multiple Deprivation available (but calculated slightly
differently) in Scotland, Wales, England and Northern Ireland. It takes national
census data on, for example, housing, employment, social class and car
ownership to create a single measure of how deprived an area is. The virtue of
using such data is that it avoids primary data collection, and can be combined
with GIS-derived data such as area or percentage of green space or woodland, or
distance from the centre of each data zone to the nearest green space. However,
such area-level data will not pick up on individual variations.
By contrast, primary data collection allows for very idiosyncratic differences
in how people might want to use the outdoor environment to be expressed and
recorded (e.g. Curl et al. 2016). In our increasingly multicultural society, it may
be important to allow for such differences in understanding what may or may not
count as a salutogenic environment. A very different approach, using conjoint
analysis as a form of discrete choice experiment, has also been shown in our
work to be of value to planners of the environment, offering ways to explore
prioritisation of resources and sensitive to different sub-groups within the
population under study. As with all primary data collection, attention must be
paid to adequate sample size, appropriate response rate and representativeness of
sample in gathering and interpreting the data, where limitations on
generalisability may pertain.

Longitudinal research – opportunities and challenges

Longitudinal study designs have enormous potential for researching landscapes,
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health behaviours and quality of life. A well-founded longitudinal study that
(crucially) involves an environmental intervention, and a control or comparison
without an intervention, and a pre–post-intervention design, remains one of the
best ways to investigate environmental influence and to reduce the suggestion of
confirmation bias. It avoids the flaws found in many studies where local
residents are surveyed only after some change has been implemented, and
without comparison to any other site; such studies almost invariably show local
people’s enthusiasm for the change in their environment, which may simply
reflect enthusiasm for anyone paying attention to their community, investing in it
and asking them for their opinions of it.
By contrast, a well-designed project, such as the second phase I’DGO study
illustrated above, has the potential at least to offer causal evidence for the benefit
(or otherwise) of changes to the landscape. Such studies are termed ‘natural
experiments’ in psychology to differentiate them from experiments in controlled
conditions where participants are recruited and asked to spend time and
undertake specified tasks in defined locations (whether laboratories or
predetermined locations such as a park or an urban street). A natural experiment
involves an intervention happening in the real world, and so is more likely to
reflect people’s everyday lives and the usual settings for their everyday
activities. It therefore has greater ecological validity than artificially designed
experiments, which are considerably easier to set up and control (and thus often
used in environmental psychology) but not always possible or desirable
ethically. However, as the examples show, it is extremely difficult to undertake a
natural experiment based on a major intervention in the landscape (whether
urban, peri-urban or rural) and to get the timing of funding, planning,
intervention, and both pre- and post-survey right.
In practice, such a study requires considerable forward planning and an
excellent working relationship with those funding and implementing the
environmental changes in order to secure funding for the research element of the
study. Research support, which is usually funded from a different source than the
intervention itself, needs to be applied for in confidence that it will not be
awarded too late to undertake the baseline survey, but also that the intervention
will happen as planned, in a timely fashion, and the post-intervention survey can
be undertaken before the research funding runs out. In practice, all of these
aspects are vulnerable to delays and changes of plan. In addition, maintaining a
cohort of the same individuals to survey both before and after the intervention
(the ideal study design) is also vulnerable to practical difficulties in retaining
participation, especially if the research is undertaken in areas of poverty,
deprivation and/or high turnover of residents. Such difficulties beset many a
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well-designed longitudinal research project and it is only through establishing
good working relationships with all organisations and funders involved that any
prospect of success is possible.
This might suggest that it is better for a landscape architect to be involved
both in designing the research study and in designing and supervising
implementation of the environmental intervention. Such involvement might ease
some of the problems but is rarely possible in practice as the skills and time
commitment needed for one may be at odds with the other. It is also the case that
acting as an independent researcher allows the study to be completely unbiased
and less susceptible to criticism of conflict of interests. As stated earlier, the
research examples described in this chapter point to ways of gathering evidence
in which landscape architects as researchers have a great deal to offer, but which
are likely to require working within a larger team with a considerable range of
expertise, including qualitative and quantitative techniques and often very
sophisticated statistical analysis. The findings are also likely to offer results of
great value to landscape architects because they provide an evidential base on
which to promote the need for our profession in planning and designing our
living environments at all scales, from city level to local community and street.
Our role as experts in designing spaces that support health and wellbeing may be
recognised anew, drawing on such research, providing we undertake it in ways
that answer twenty-first-century public health needs for robust and meaningful
evidence.

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SUGGESTED FURTHER READING
Allan, G. and Skinner, C., eds (1991) Handbook for Research Students in the Social Sciences, London: The
Falmer Press. Aimed at helping research students, working full- or part-time in the social
sciences.
Aspinall, P.A. (2007) ‘On quality of life, analysis and evidence-based belief’, in Ward Thompson, C. and
Travlou, P., eds. Open Space: People Space. Abingdon: Routledge, 181–194. This offers a useful
introduction to the principles and virtues of conjoint analysis.
Aspinall, P.A. (2010) ‘On environmental preference: Applying conjoint analysis to visiting parks and
buying houses’, in Ward Thompson, C., Aspinall, P.A. and Bell, S., eds. Innovative Approaches
to Researching Landscape and Health, Open Space: People Space 2, Abingdon: Routledge, 179–
208. This provides an applied example of conjoint analysis offering insights that are of practical
use in decision making about investing in environments.
Field, A. (2013) Discovering Statistics using IBM SPSS Statistics, 4th ed., London: Sage. An excellent and
very readable guide to correct use and interpretation of statistical analyses based on SPSS.
Gideon, L., ed.(2012) Handbook of Survey Methodology for the Social Sciences, New York: Springer. This
provides a comprehensive overview of survey methodology in the social sciences.
Sallis, J.F. and Owen, N. (2002) ‘Ecological models of health behavior’, in Glanz, K., Rimer, B.K. and
Lewis, F.M., eds. Health Behavior and Health Education: Theory, Research, and Practice, 3rd
ed., San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, 462–484. An introduction to health models.
Ward Thompson, C. and Travlou, P., eds (2007) Open Space: People Space, Abingdon: Routledge. An
introduction to ways of exploring landscape architecture, inclusive access to outdoor
environments and quality of life.
Ward Thompson, C., Aspinall, P.A. and Bell, S., eds (2010) Innovative Approaches to Researching
Landscape and Health: Open Space: People Space 2, Abingdon: Routledge. This introduces
researchers in landscape architecture to new and relevant approaches to research methodology
and practice.

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REFERENCES
Allan, G. and Skinner, C., eds (1991) Handbook for Research Students in the Social Sciences, London: The
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Maas, J., Verheij, R.A., de Vries, S., Spreeuwenberg, P., Groenewegen, P.P. and Schellevis, G.S. (2009)
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(2009) ‘Development of the Scottish Walkability Assessment Tool (SWAT)’, Health and Place,
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health-related quality of life and stress based on a Danish national representative survey’,
Scandinavian Journal of Public Health, 38, 411–417.
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Associated with Patterns of Outdoor Activity?’ accepted at the 1st International Symposium on
Environment, Behaviour and Society, University of Sydney, 9–11 February, available:
http://www.idgo.ac.uk/PDFs/Sugiyama_WardThompson_NOS_and_outdoor_activity_June2006.pdf
(accessed 7 January 2015).
Sugiyama, T. and Ward Thompson, C. (2007a) ‘Outdoor environments, activity and the well-being of older
people: Conceptualising environmental support’, Environment and Planning A, 39(8), 1943–
1960.
Sugiyama, T. and Ward Thompson, C. (2007b) ‘Older people’s health, outdoor activity and supportiveness
of neighbourhood environments’, Landscape and Urban Planning, 83(2), 168–175.
Sugiyama, T. and Ward Thompson, C. (2007c) ‘Measuring the quality of the outdoor environment relevant
to older people’s lives’, in Ward Thompson, C. and Travlou, P., eds. Open Space: People Space,
Abingdon: Routledge, 153–162.
Sugiyama, T. and Ward Thompson, C. (2008) ‘Associations between characteristics of neighbourhood open
space and older people’s walking’, Urban Forestry & Urban Greening, 7(1), 41–51.
Sugiyama, T., Ward Thompson, C. and Alves, S. (2009) ‘Associations between neighborhood open space
attributes and quality of life for older people in Britain’, Environment and Behavior, 41(1), 3–21.
Sugiyama, T., Giles-Corti, B., Summers, J., Du Toit, L., Leslie, E. and Owen, N. (2013) ‘Initiating and
maintaining recreational walking: A longitudinal study on the influence of neighborhood green
space’, Preventive Medicine, 57(3), 178–182.
Sustrans (n.d.) Community Street Design, available: http://www.sustrans.org.uk/diystreets (accessed 10
January 2015).
Ward Thompson, C. (2011) ‘Linking landscape and health: The recurring theme’, Landscape and Urban
Planning, 99(3), 187–195.
Ward Thompson, C. (2013) ‘Activity, exercise and the planning and design of outdoor spaces’, Journal of

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 Environmental Psychology, 34, 79–96.
Ward Thompson, C., Aspinall, P.A. and Bell, S., eds (2010) Innovative Approaches to Researching
Landscape and Health: Open Space: People Space 2, Abingdon: Routledge.
Ward Thompson, C., Roe, J., Aspinall, P.A., Mitchell, R., Clow, A. and Miller, D. (2012) ‘More green
space is linked to less stress in deprived communities: Evidence from salivary cortisol patterns’,
Landscape and Urban Planning, 105(3), 221–229.
Ward Thompson, C., Curl, A., Aspinall, P.A., Alves, S. and Zuin, A. (2014) ‘Do changes to the local street
environment alter behaviour and quality of life of older adults? The “DIY Streets” intervention’,
British Journal of Sports Medicine, 48, 1059–1065.
White, M.P., Alcock, I., Wheeler, B.W. and Depledge, M.H. (2013) ‘Would you be happier living in a
greener urban area? A fixed-effects analysis of panel data’, Psychological Science, 24(6), 920–
928.

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Chapter 15: Thermally comfortable
urban environments

Robert D. Brown and Terry J. Gillespie

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INTRODUCTION
More than half the world population lives in cities, and that proportion is
increasing. However, cities are becoming more climatically inhospitable
environments because of two anthropogenic phenomena: global climate change
(e.g. Seneviratne et al. 2012) and urban heat island intensification (e.g. Watkins
et al. 2007; Chow et al. 2012; Mishra et al. 2015). The World Meteorological
Organization (2015) has reported that
(t)he first 12 years of the 21st century have seen record temperatures …, exceptional heat waves
in Western Europe (2003) and Russia (2010) … Many other extremes were also experienced
elsewhere in the world. The year 2013 has been marked by extreme heat in Australia, drought in
Brazil and the United States, and record summer heat in parts of China.

Microclimates are everywhere. Indoor microclimates tend to be carefully

controlled and are almost unnoticeable, but outdoors the microclimate can vary
widely. As people move through the landscape they pass through a series of
microclimates that might make them feel too warm or too cool, and might even
be dangerously hot or cold. The 2003 European heat wave alone caused more
than 70,000 deaths (Robine et al. 2008).
Cities should be designed to create microclimates that ameliorate the effects
of global climate change and urban heat island intensification and lead towards
the creation of sustainable cities (e.g. McCarthy et al. 2010; Grimmond et al.
2010; Brown 2011; Brown et al. 2015). Research has indicated that
appropriately designed green spaces can create park cool islands (PCI) through
shading of surfaces and increased evapotranspiration (e.g. Spronken-Smith and
Oke 1998; Declet-Barreto et al. 2013). Further research is needed to determine
how to maximize the effect of PCIs and to evaluate whether they are effective in
all climate zones and all urban environments (Brown et al. 2015).
There is increasing evidence of the effects of urban microclimates on human
health and well-being (e.g. Vanos et al. 2010; Wolch et al. 2011; Vanos 2015).
Heat waves are becoming more frequent and more intense making people
increasingly vulnerable to heat stress (Harlan et al. 2006). Reductions in the
amount of radiation that people receive in urban areas can lower negative health
effects that are often associated with urban heat islands (e.g. Thorsson et al.
2014). Air pollution can be reduced in urban areas when the urban heat island is
mitigated (Harlan and Ruddell 2011) through natural rather than artificial
cooling (e.g. Shashua-Bar et al. 2011; Chow et al. 2011). People need access to

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solar radiation in order to satisfy their requirement for Vitamin D (e.g. Holick
2004) while not exposing themselves to the dangers of erythema (sunburn) and
possible skin cancer. This is particularly important in landscapes where people
are required to spend time in places such as school playgrounds (e.g. Vanos
2015). Research needs to identify how to optimize the amount of solar radiation
that people experience in different environments. And perhaps most importantly,
outdoor spaces that are designed to be more thermally comfortable are used
more, thus encouraging people to include outdoor physical activities in their
lifestyle – an important aspect of promoting a healthy lifestyle and reducing
obesity rates.
Wildlife is increasingly at risk of extirpation or extinction due to habitat loss
and a key component of a species’ habitat is the microclimate. The Karner blue
butterfly, for example, has been extirpated in Ontario, Canada, likely due to loss
of habitat and fragmentation (Chan and Packer 2006). It requires very specific
microclimatic conditions to survive and reproduce. Research has identified how
landscapes can be designed to provide the necessary microclimate (Brown et al.
2011). Global climate change will result in more species at risk of population
decline due to their inability to adapt to changes in their local habitat, including
their surrounding microclimates. Research is required to understand the
microclimate needs of both flora and fauna in urban natural areas so that future
designs can provide appropriate habitat.
Some diseases are spreading as the climate warms. For example, Lyme
disease is spreading into new areas due to global climate change (Ostfeld and
Brunner 2015) putting human health and well-being at risk. Research has
indicated that microclimate modification can reduce the possibility of humans
contracting the disease (e.g. Ward and Brown 2004). Lyme disease relies on
black-legged ticks to inject the spirochete into humans, and the ticks need very
specific microclimatic conditions to survive. If the microclimate is made
inhospitable through microclimatic design, we might be able to remove the tick
and reduce the possibility of humans contacting Lyme disease. This preliminary
work requires follow-up studies to confirm its efficacy, and other infectious
diseases are emerging or spreading (McMichael 2013) and require research into
how urban design can reduce the impact of disease on human populations.
It takes an increased amount of energy to cool buildings in urban areas during
heat waves compared to normal summer weather. The landscape has been shown
to affect the amount of cooling required in buildings (e.g. McPherson et al. 1989;
Millward et al. 2014). Appropriately designed urban environments lower urban
heat islands and stabilize the thermal environment of buildings, thus lessening
energy demands and the draw on building heating and cooling systems. This in
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turn decreases the risk of municipal power outages where people might become
more susceptible to heat stress (e.g. Salamanca et al. 2014). However, more
research is needed to identify how to maximize building cooling in urban areas
through landscape modification, particularly during heat waves.
This is a small sample of the many roles that microclimate plays in the
landscape. Virtually all research in the landscape should consider microclimate.
For example, studies of people’s visual preference might be affected by the
microclimate and whether or not study participants are thermally comfortable. In
addition the diversity, abundance, and survival of plant species is also largely
dependent on microclimate.
A great deal of important research remains to be done and this chapter will
describe both appropriate instruments for measurement and approaches to
estimating microclimate components. The discussion and examples will focus
primarily on the thermal comfort of people in the landscape, but many of the
instruments and methods can be used to study other microclimate-related
questions in other contexts. In addition to microclimate research that informs
design directly, there is a need for research that increases the knowledge base of
landscape architecture as an academic discipline. The methods, instruments, and
techniques described in this chapter can be used for both basic and applied
microclimate research.
Johansson et al. (2014) reported that the number of urban microclimate and
human thermal comfort studies has been increasing in number but there is no
standard approach either in terms of instrumentation or analysis. This chapter
provides a standard approach to instrumentation and measurement that is based
on micrometeorological theory and practice, and calls for further study into
identifying appropriate methods for measuring and assessing human thermal
comfort.

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THEORETICAL FOUNDATION
Whenever people are outdoors they are experiencing their environment as an
exchange of energy between themselves and their local environment. If they are
receiving as much energy as they are giving off they will feel thermally
comfortable. But if the balance tips towards receiving too much energy a person
will feel too warm, and if this tips too far they can experience hyperthermia.
Similarly, receiving too little energy can lead to a person feeling too cool and
possibly experiencing hypothermia. These are extremes but even a small
imbalance can lead to thermal discomfort. The goal of the design of outdoor
environments should be to provide thermally neutral environments for people in
all seasons, and in all possible climate futures.
The conceptual framework is fairly simple. Designs must be appropriate for
the prevailing climate of a region. The macroclimate cannot be controlled
through landscape modification. Nothing can be done to change the location of
the sun in the sky or substantially change the temperature of an air mass. This
macroclimate tends to be quite stable over time but in the past 100 years or so
has slowly been changing, a phenomenon known as global climate change
(GCC). Cities within these fairly stable climates often modify the conditions
somewhat and have their own urban heat island (UHI) at the mesoclimate scale,
where built-up areas tend to be warmer and drier than the surrounding
countryside (e.g. Howard 1833; Oke 1982). It is at the macroclimate scale where
regional design affects policy for making land use decisions. These decisions
have quantitative (land development) and qualitative implications (land cover
such as type of buildings, forest, open space, etc.). It’s at the microclimate scale
that landscape architects can most affect conditions through urban design. It’s
not clear what the world climate will be in the future, but urban areas must be
designed so that they will provide thermally comfortable environments and
minimize the impact of UHIs in all possible future climates (Brown 2011).
There are two main research questions that need to be investigated. The first is
‘How do built environments affect the macroclimate to create microclimates?’
That is, how are temperature, humidity, wind, and radiation modified by
buildings, plants, and surfaces in the landscape? The second question is ‘How do
humans perceive their thermal comfort under different microclimatic
conditions?’ As these two questions get answered in more and more detail,
evidence-based landscape architecture (Brown and Corry 2011) will allow
designers to create urban environments that modify the macroclimate to create
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microclimates that are both thermally comfortable under normal weather
conditions, and safe during heat waves or extreme cold.
Microclimate theory is founded on the concept of energy budgets. Energy
flows into and through landscapes in a variety of forms. The main inputs of
energy to a landscape are in the form of solar radiation (from the sun) and
terrestrial radiation (from all surfaces on earth and the atmosphere). Solar
radiation can be reflected or absorbed by surfaces depending on the albedo of
the surface. A light coloured surface has a high albedo and will reflect more
solar radiation than a dark coloured surface which will absorb most of the solar
radiation that it receives. Terrestrial radiation is almost entirely absorbed by
most surfaces.
Since energy can be neither created nor destroyed, the radiation that is
absorbed by a surface has to go somewhere. The energy is consumed by four
main streams: evaporation, convection, conduction, and emitted terrestrial
radiation. For example, if a surface is wet some water will evaporate and carry
energy away, cooling the surface. If a surface is dry this pathway is not available
and all the energy will go into the other three streams. Some of the energy will
be conducted into the material based on its thermal admittance. When wind
passes over a heated surface the air will carry heat away through a process called
convection. In addition, everything on earth emits terrestrial radiation based on
its temperature. The hotter a surface, the more terrestrial radiation it emits.
Energy budgets can also be applied to humans and equations can be written to
estimate the flows of energy to and from a human body. There are three main
inputs of energy: solar radiation, terrestrial radiation, and metabolic heat
generated inside the body. The metabolic energy is dependent on the activity
level of a person (e.g. sitting, walking, running). A person at rest generates a
relatively small amount of internal heat, while a very active person can generate
a large amount of internal energy. There are three main ways that energy is lost
from a person’s body: evaporation, convection, and emitted terrestrial radiation.
The overall energy budget of a person can be written as an equation as
follows:
Budget = [SR(abs) + TR(abs) + M] – [E + C + TR(emit)], in watts [1]

Where:
SR(abs) = solar radiation absorbed by the person
TR(abs) = terrestrial radiation absorbed by the person
M = metabolic energy generated within a person
E = evaporative heat loss from a person
C = convective heat loss from a person
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TR(emit) = terrestrial radiation emitted by a person

The equation yields the energy balance, in watts. Writing an equation like this
provides the opportunity to consider each stream of energy in turn and evaluate
which stream might be causing over- or under-heating of a person.
Equation [1] is the basis for several outdoor thermal comfort models such as
COMFA (Brown and Gillespie, 1986), Physiological Equivalent Temperature
(Höppe 1999) and Universal Thermal Comfort Index (UTCI, 2009). These
models include equations for calculating convective and evaporative heat loss.
Estimates of metabolic energy generated within a person at various activity
levels and insulation value of clothing can be found in published tables (e.g.
Brown and Gillespie 1995; ISO 2007).
The theory of energy flows in the landscape is well-established. Measurement
and testing over many years has supported the concepts and can be used as the
basis for evidence-based landscape architecture. What is less well-known is how
elements in the landscape affect the microclimate. The understanding of people’s
perception of their thermal comfort is also less well-established and there are
still many questions to be answered. There is evidence that a person’s perception
of their thermal comfort can vary over time, particularly in different seasons. For
example, people tend to acclimatize over time so a warm day after a cold winter
might encourage people to go outside in a T-shirt and shorts. But those same
people might put on a sweater and long pants if they experienced that same
warm day at the end of a hot summer.
Johansson et al. (2014) reported that more than 100 energy budget models
have been developed and many different questionnaires have been used in
thermal comfort studies. There is no generally accepted approach to either
modeling or field measurements so study results cannot be compared. Relatively
little research has been done to test energy budget models against people’s
perceptions of their outdoor thermal comfort. This is an area that should be
investigated further to strengthen the evidence base of landscape architecture.

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METHODS FOR MEASUREMENT AND
ESTIMATION OF MICROCLIMATE ELEMENTS:
HOW DO ELEMENTS IN THE LANDSCAPE
AFFECT COMPONENTS OF MICROCLIMATE?
The components of microclimate are: solar radiation, terrestrial radiation, air
temperature, air humidity, and wind. Each component has specialized
instrumentation and techniques to ensure accurate and precise measurements.
While measurement might seem easy and straightforward, without extreme care
and attention measurements are likely to be neither accurate nor precise and can
lead to erroneous conclusions.
The following sections outline appropriate methods for measuring and
estimating microclimatic elements. Some of the more technical instruments
might require the collaboration of a micrometeorologist, but by following the
advice provided a landscape architecture researcher can collect accurate and
precise measurements.

Radiation

Solar radiation

Measurement

Solar radiation is measured with instruments called pyranometers (‘fire-meters’).

The most accurate models are ‘thermal pyranometers’ which sense the strength
of the solar radiation by measuring the elevation in temperature of a black disk
exposed to the sun (e.g. Eppley; Kipp and Zonen; Huskvarna). A glass dome
covers the sensor to protect it from the influence of wind and rain, and to block
incoming terrestrial radiation. These most accurate instruments might be
required when measuring solar radiation in a situation with a complex
arrangement of buildings and vegetation. The output voltage from these sensors
is usually recorded with a data logger (e.g. Campbell Scientific). A more
portable option is the LP02-LI19 pyranometer (Hukseflux), which is a hand-held
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device.
The ‘photocell pyranometer’ (e.g. LI-COR model LI-200) is a less expensive
and easy to use option (see Figure 15.1). The photocell does not sense across the
whole solar spectrum, but this shortcoming is mediated by using an appropriate
calibration factor. However, this calibration factor is only valid for
measurements under open sky and is not valid in complex settings where the
solar spectrum has been significantly modified, such as by reflection from
buildings or under a leaf canopy. Both hand-held meters and data loggers are
used to read the signals from these sensors. Solar radiation data recorded at
weather stations and published by national weather services may be taken from
both photocell and thermal pyranometers.

Figure 15.1
A small LI-COR pyranometer can be used to measure incoming solar radiation in open areas (photo: T.
Gillespie)

Estimating

Estimates begin with the ‘solar constant’ which is the average power on a
surface held perpendicular to the solar beam at the top of the atmosphere – about
1370 W/m2. This power is reduced during transmission through the atmosphere
by the factor Am, where A is the transmissivity and m is a measure of the path
length through the atmosphere. Thus, the power in the solar beam (Sb) on a
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horizontal surface at ground level is:
Sb = 1370 Am · sin E, in W/m2 [2]

where E is the elevation angle of the sun above the horizontal. For sunny
situations, which are often most relevant to designing for thermal comfort, A
values average about 0.8 and range from 0.9 in a very clear atmosphere to 0.6 in
a smoggy air mass (Oke 1988; Roumpakias et al. 2015).
For elevation angles greater than ten degrees, the path length is computed
from:
m = P/(101.3 · sin E) [3]

where P is the atmospheric pressure, in kilopascals.

The elevation angle (in degrees) can be determined from diagrams (e.g.
Brown and Gillespie 1995, Chap. 6) or from the following formula:
sin E = sin L · sin D + cos L · cos D · cos 15 · (12 − t) [4]

where L is the latitude of your location (in degrees), D is the latitude where the
sun is directly overhead at noon on that day (the solar declination), and t is the
time in hours and decimal hours using a 24-hour clock. D is determined from
selecting the appropriate value off a diagram that is readily available online or in
Brown and Gillespie (1995, p.103).
Some of the solar radiation that is scattered out of the direct beam by air
molecules or particles as the beam travels through the atmosphere on a clear day
arrives at the ground as ‘diffuse radiation’ (Sd) from the blue sky. This radiation
can be estimated from (Campbell and Norman 1998):
Sd = 0.3 · [1370 · (1 − Am ) · sin E], in W/m2 [5]

The total solar radiation arriving on a horizontal surface at the ground (SR) is
simply the sum of the beam and diffuse components:
SR = Sb + Sd, in W/m2 [6]

Under thick overcast cloud SR is calculated as 20% of equation [6].

Solar radiation measurements and estimates usually refer to a horizontal
surface. For use in thermal comfort considerations these data must be modified
because an upright human is like a vertical cylinder, not a horizontal plate. If the
objective is to determine the influence of radiation on comfort in an existing
landscape, the direct measurement of all radiation components using a radiation
thermometer (see the ‘Total radiation’ section, below) is strongly recommended.
However, if measured or estimated solar radiation on a horizontal surface is to
be used in a comfort study, there is a procedure to convert these data to the
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radiation that would be received by a vertical cylinder (Kenny et al. 2008). The
solar beam radiation on a vertical surface (Sbv) is:
Sbv = Sb · cotan E, in W/m2 [7]

For thermal comfort estimations the data are usually required in watts, and
therefore Sbv is multiplied by the cross-sectional area of the cylinder (length ·
width) because the beam radiation comes only from one specific direction.
The solar diffuse radiation for a vertical cylinder (Sdv) under an open sky is:
Sdv = 0.5 · Sd, in W/m2, [8]

since any point on the cylinder views half the sky.

For a vertical cylinder we must also add the solar radiation that reflects
diffusely in all directions from the ground (Sdg). The ground occupies the other
half of the cylinder’s view and has reflectivity Rg, therefore:
Sdg = 0.5 Rg · SR, in W/m2 [9]

If buildings or trees occupy some of the sky hemisphere, then the view factor
for the sky should be appropriately reduced below 0.5, and the ground view
factor should be increased so the sum of the two view factors always equals 1.
For both the above components of diffuse solar radiation, conversion to watts
requires multiplication by the surface area of the cylinder (π · diameter · length ,
ignoring the small contribution from the cylinder top), since diffuse radiation
comes from all directions.
In summary, the total solar radiation received by a vertical cylinder is:
SRv = Sbv · (cross-sectional area) + (Sdv + Sdg) · (surface area), in watts [10]

For use in equation [1], this must be multiplied by the solar absorptivity of the
person, which is the fraction of received solar energy that is not reflected and
depends on the colour of the person’s clothing and skin.

Terrestrial radiation

Measurement

Terrestrial radiation is emitted by everything in the earth-atmosphere system, at

wavelengths that are about ten times longer than the red light in the solar
spectrum. Although we can’t see this radiation, we can sense it when we stand
near a warm stove or a cold window, and it is a very important component in the
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energy balance of a person. Terrestrial radiation is measured by instruments
called pyrgeometers (‘fire-earth-meters’). As with thermal pyranometers, the
temperature of a black disk exposed to the radiation is monitored but the dome
over this sensor is designed to transmit the longer terrestrial wavelengths and
block the shorter-wavelength solar energy (e.g. EKO MS-202 Pyrgeometer).
These instruments are expensive and mainly used in research projects. Their
voltage output signal is monitored by a data logger. If high quality
measurements of both incoming and outgoing terrestrial and solar radiation are
desired, instruments housing both upward and downward looking pyrgeometers
and pynanometers (see Figure 15.2) are available (e.g. Kipp & Zonen model
CNR1).

Estimating

There are few sites where a pyrgeometer is being used continuously to monitor
terrestrial radiation. Therefore is it usually necessary to estimate terrestrial
radiation when exploring designs for urban thermal comfort. The terrestrial
radiation from a clear sky (TRs) can be estimated by (Monteith and Unsworth
1990):

Figure 15.2
A Kipp & Zonen CNR1 includes both upward and downward looking pyranometers and pyrgeometers to
simultaneously measure solar and terrestrial radiation (photo: T. Gillespie)

TRs = 213 + 5.5 · Ta, in W/m2 [11]

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where Ta is the air temperature in 0C. For overcast thick cloud, the value
computed from equation [11] should be multiplied by 1.25.
A similar approach can be used to estimate the terrestrial radiation from
objects on the ground (TRg) that are shaded from direct solar radiation:
TRg = 320 + 5.2 · Ta, in W/m2 [12]

The temperature of objects receiving direct solar radiation should be measured

(Tg) and the emitted radiation determined from (Oke 1988):
TRg = E · 5.67 · 10−8 · (Tg + 273)4, in W/m2 [13]

where E is the emissivity, which is a factor that accounts for differing abilities of
various surfaces to emit radiation. This factor is close to 0.95 for most surfaces.
Terrestrial radiation from the sky or ground arrives from all directions in the
appropriate hemisphere. Therefore, when representing a person as a vertical
cylinder, the inputs of terrestrial radiation can be estimated in the same fashion
as was described above for diffuse solar radiation. With an open sky, both
ground and sky view factors are 0.5, so the total terrestrial radiation input on the
vertical cylinder (TRv) is:
TRv = (0.5 TRs + 0.5 TRg) · (surface area of cylinder), in watts [14]

If ground objects occupy some of the sky hemisphere, the ground and sky
view factors should be adjusted accordingly.

Total radiation
As outlined above, the estimation of radiation received by a person in the
outdoors from measurements made by horizontal sensors is complex. The use of
a ‘cylindrical radiation thermometer’ (CRT) is a simple, accurate, and precise
option. This device is a vertical cylinder that mimics the shape of a standing
person. The cylinder we have used is about 11 cm tall with a diameter of 1 cm
(or other similar height to diameter ratios could be used), and is painted to match
the albedo of a person. The colour should match the skin colour of the
population being modeled. When it reaches an equilibrium temperature, the
absorbed radiation is equal to the sum of the long wave radiation emitted by the
cylinder plus its convective heat loss to the wind. To obtain the long wave and
convective losses, and therefore know the absorbed radiation, a temperature
sensor is embedded in the cylinder, and the accompanying air temperature and
wind speed are measured. Details on the construction of a CRT, and the
calculation of the absorbed radiation, are given in Kenny et al. (2008). This

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device can be mounted on an instrument tripod (see Figure 15.3) or used as a
portable hand-held device.
The cylindrical shape of a CRT has an important advantage over the spherical
shape of a globe radiation thermometer for work outdoors when some of the
solar power is arriving as a direct beam. A spherical sensor presents the same
cross-sectional area perpendicular to the direct beam, regardless of the sun’s
location in the sky. However, the direct beam will be captured by a standing
person or the sides of a vertical cylinder according to their cross-sectional area
multiplied by the cosine of the sun’s elevation angle. This means the sphere
increasingly overestimates the amount of beam radiation received by a person as
the elevation angle of the sun increases. The cylinder correctly mimics the
reduction of direct solar radiation on a person when the sun is in high in the sky,
but the globe does not capture this effect.

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Figure 15.3
A radiation shield should always accompany temperature and humidity sensors to eliminate radiation error
(photo: T. Gillespie)

Temperature and humidity

Temperature and humidity sensors are often found together in instruments that
can be purchased for field use. It is essential that these sensors be shielded from
direct radiation (see Figure 15.3). Radiation shielding is provided in some
instruments, otherwise they must only be used in the shade. In addition, it is
highly desirable to ventilate the sensors. Ventilation may be provided by a
downstream fan (electrical or spring-driven), or by good exposure to the wind.
Since temperature and humidity vary with distance away from the ground
surface, it is best to make these measurements at a standard height so that
observations at different locations or times are not confounded by differences
due to exposure height of the sensors. For thermal comfort research a
measurement level in the chest-to-head height range is recommended, similar to
the standard 1.5 m sensor height used at weather stations.

Air temperature

Measurement

Mechanical sensors that display temperature on a dial usually have the pointer
connected to a ‘bimetal’ coil. The coil is made from two metals with different
thermal coefficients of expansion, so it twists with changing temperatures and
moves the pointer. These sensors are usually inexpensive, but may not be
accurate.
The familiar liquid-in-glass thermometer is an obvious possible choice for
measuring air temperature, but has fallen out of favour for field use because of
its fragility. However, robust units are available that provide protection,
radiation shielding and ventilation (using a spring-driven fan). Usually these
instruments house two in-glass thermometers mounted side by side – one dry,
and the other with a wet sock over the bulb for humidity measurement – and are
called psychrometers (many options are available: search ‘Assmann
Psychrometer’ on the internet)
Electronic temperature sensors are now widely available in packages that are
very suitable for field use (e.g. EXTECH RH 300; Davis Instruments; Omega).
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The sensor is usually a ‘thermistor’ whose electrical resistance varies with
temperature, and a suitable circuit provides a digital readout. Typically, the
sensor is not shielded or mechanically ventilated by the manufacturer, so care
must be taken to provide shade and expose it to the wind. Louvered shields are
available for this purpose (Figure 15.3). Specifications for these sensors often
include a ‘time constant’. This is a measure of the time required for the sensor to
reach about two-thirds of its response to a change in temperature. Since a
sensor’s response slows as it approaches a new temperature, it is advisable to
wait at least three time constants before taking a new reading when moving from
one spot to another.
All of the above temperature sensors require visual readout. If there is a
requirement for measurements over extended time, or at several locations
simultaneously, electronic sensors are available for use with data loggers (e.g.
Campbell Scientific). These sensors are usually housed in a shield that provides
radiation protection and allows ventilation by the wind.

Estimating

Temperature data are often available from a nearby standard weather station
operated by the national weather service. In some cases, the data may be
available from an urban station, but stations are often located at sites like
airports, to reduce or avoid urban influences. These data should be adjusted due
to the UHI, based on the information provided in Table 15.1.
Table 15.1
Information for estimating temperature increase due to UHI

Urban Heat Island (UHI)

• The UHI is near zero under cloudy, windy conditions and maximized under clear sky and light wind
conditions (Oke 1982)
• The UHI is small from near sunrise to early afternoon
• The UHI increases from early afternoon to a maximum about 4 hours after sunset
• Then the UHI decreases from the time of maximum to near zero shortly after sunrise
• The maximum UHI is related to city population. The maximum urban-to-rural temperature differences
observed in many cities in North America (NA) and Europe (Eur) are summarized in the following
table (after Oke 1988, p.291)

Population Max UHI (C) - NA Max UHI (C) - Eur

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 103 2 2

104 5 4

105 8 6

106 12 8

Surface temperature

Measurement

Sensors that detect the terrestrial radiation from an object and use these data to
display the object’s surface temperature are often called ‘infra-red thermometers’
(IRTs) since this radiation lies in the infra-red spectral band. This is a very
useful tool for quantifying the effect of variables such as colour, orientation to
the sun, vegetation and construction materials on surface temperature. Surface
temperature measurements can also be used in equation [14] for more accurate
estimates of emitted radiation, rather than assuming that surfaces are at air
temperature.
The least expensive IRTs are designed to be used indoors for such things as
detecting hot and cool spots on walls due to insulation differences. They may be
successfully used outdoors but typically lose accuracy when surface
temperatures drop below about 10 °C. More expensive versions are designed to
give accurate results over a wider range of temperatures, if this is required (e.g.
Omega). Operating range and accuracy can be found in the performance
specifications from the manufacturer. These devices are simply pointed at the
surface of interest and the temperature is read from a digital display, or models
are available with a voltage output for use with a data logger. Users are
cautioned that these devices will not give accurate results for shiny metal
surfaces because these materials will reflect infra-red radiation from the sky or
nearby surfaces into the IRT and spoil the reading.
The ultimate tool for observing surface temperatures is the infra-red camera
(e.g. FLIR). This device provides a digital picture of the objects in its view and
displays their temperatures as different colours on the screen, along with a scale
that relates colour to temperature (e.g. Omega, Apple). The images can be saved
for later review and analysis.

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Humidity

Measurement

The moisture content of the atmosphere is typically expressed as the relative

humidity (RH) or dew point temperature (DPT). Relative humidity is the ratio of
the current water vapour content of the air to the maximum possible content at
the current temperature, expressed as a percentage. It therefore depends on both
the water vapour content and the temperature. However, the temperature to
which the air must be cooled in order for water vapour to begin condensing into
liquid dew (the DPT) depends only on the air’s moisture content.
The classic tool for measuring humidity is the psychrometer (see page 273).
Drier air causes increased evaporative cooling of the wet bulb, so the
temperature difference between the two thermometers can be used to determine
the humidity. Tables to convert from wet and dry bulb temperatures to both RH
and DPT are provided by the manufacturer of the instrument.
Electronic sensors whose resistance or capacitance depends on RH are used in
hand-held devices with a digital display, or provide an output suitable for use
with a data logger (e.g. Campbell Scientific). These RH sensors are often paired
with a temperature sensor at modest cost and are sufficiently accurate for
landscape design work.
DPT can be measured directly by devices that monitor the onset of dew on a
cooled mirror, but these ‘dewpoint hygrometers’ are expensive and generally
used only in meteorological research.

Estimating

Many humidity sensors provide their output as RH. Humidity data from national
weather station networks are usually expressed as DPT. You may find you have
humidity data expressed in one of these formats but the application you wish to
use requires the other format. Exact conversion from one of these measures to
the other is quite mathematically complicated, but here are two simple
conversion equations that are sufficiently accurate for many purposes (Lawrence
2005):
DPT = T − ((100-RH) / 5), in °C [15]

RH = 100 – 5 · (T – DPT), in % [16]

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 With T in the range 0–30 °C, and RH in the range 40–100%, these simple
conversions are accurate to within about 1 °C for DPT and 5% for RH. If more
accurate conversions are needed, tables or calculators can be found on the
internet (e.g. http://www.dpcalc.org/index.php).
Measured urban/rural water vapour differences are often quite small,
especially if there is some wind flow. There is a tendency for a slightly higher
water vapour content in rural air during the daytime when evaporation from
vegetation is strong, and lower rural vapour content at night when water loss
from the vegetation shuts down (e.g. Oke 1988). If humidity data from a rural
weather station must be used during the design stage of an urban project, it is
reasonable to assume the dewpoint differences are small enough to be ignored. It
is better to import rural dewpoint data rather than RH data, since DPT data
depend only on vapour content while RH data may be confounded by their
dependence on both vapour content and temperature.

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Figure 15.4
An anemometer with three cups can be effectively used to measure wind speed in uniform flow (photo: T.
Gillespie)

Wind

Measurement
Wind speed is measured by devices called ‘anemometers’ (see Figure 15.4).
Wind direction data are provided by a ‘wind vane’ which pivots into the
oncoming air flow while a sensor monitors the vane’s position relative to north.
Anemometers intended to measure the average horizontal wind speed over
several minutes, or longer time intervals, sense the rotation speed of a set of cups
(e.g. Met-One) or a propeller (e.g. Gill; Campbell Scientific). A propeller-type
anemometer must be mounted on a vane to continuously point it into the wind
while the cup-type does not require pointing. Both these types of anemometers
are available for mounting on a mast, with output signals for use with data
loggers. This arrangement has the advantage of providing unattended monitoring
over an extended time period, but costs increase if several locations must be
monitored.
To survey the wind situation at a number of locations within a site, hand-held
anemometers are available with digital readouts, often combined with
temperature and humidity sensors (e.g. Kestrel Weather Meters; Omega; La
Crosse Technology). Care must be taken to manually point a propeller-type,
hand-held unit into the wind.
More complex instruments are available to monitor both the horizontal and
vertical components of the wind, but this is generally not necessary for the
purpose of landscape design since the horizontal wind is usually much larger
than the vertical component.

Estimating
Wind data from a standard weather station are taken at a height of 10?m above a
smooth surface such as clipped grass. For use in a study that requires wind
estimates near 1.5?m above the ground, the following formula describes the
typical logarithmic decrease in wind speed from 10?m (W10) to 1.5?m (W1.5),
provided the test site is also open to the wind and has vegetation or other
roughness elements less than 1?m tall:

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 W1.5 = W10 · {ln [(1.5-d)/Zs]} / 6.65, in m/s [17]

Where:
Zs = 0.13 · h represents the roughness length, in metres
d = 0.67 · h represents the zero plane displacement, in metres
h = vegetation height or height of roughness elements, in metres

If the design site is open except for a windbreak, the 1.5?m wind from
equation [17] can be used along with knowledge of the windbreak’s porosity to
estimate the air flow downwind from the break (e.g. Brown and Gillespie 1995,
Fig. 7.3). If an estimate of the wind under a proposed tree canopy is needed, find
a similar existing canopy near an open area. Measure the wind first in the open,
then under the canopy, and again in the open. Average the values from the two
open site measurements and calculate the canopy-to-open wind speed ratio. This
ratio, along with the open site equation [17], will allow the required canopy wind
estimates for longer time periods to be made from nearby weather station data.
If a design project involves an urban setting, it is not possible to simply
estimate the wind speeds and directions near tall buildings and down urban
canyons from rural standard weather station data. This is a very complex
problem that is usually solved by building a scale model of the proposed project
and measuring the flow patterns in a wind tunnel or a water flume.

Data collection

Setting up instruments in the field

The following guidelines are suggested when setting up instruments to make
microclimatic measurements at an outdoor site. The standard height for
temperature, humidity and radiation measurements at weather stations is 1.5?m,
and this is also a satisfactory choice for gathering data to assess human comfort.
Instrument manufacturers can supply a tripod or mast that supports their sensors
with minimum interference to the local microclimate. Due to air transport by the
wind, temperature, and humidity often vary little across a location. In this
situation these sensors can be mounted on a fixed mast near the centre of the site
(Figure 15.5), but temperature and humidity sensors must be placed in a
louvered shield that blocks radiation and allows ventilation by the wind.
Radiation and wind measurements usually require a mobile support because they
can vary greatly at different spots across a site if elements that sometimes block
sunshine or wind are present. It is important to ensure that none of the supports
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for instruments cast shadows on radiation sensors. Manufacturers usually specify
a ‘time constant’ for a sensor, which is a measure of its speed of response to a
changing variable. A good guideline is to sample the sensor output at least every
two time constants in order to get true average values.

Figure 15.5
A typical set-up of microclimate instruments includes a pyranometer, temperature, and humidity sensors
inside a radiation shield, and an anemometer. In this case the anemometer is a propeller type and includes a
wind-direction indicator. This station also includes two cylindrical radiation thermometers (CRT) on the left
side. The anemometer is on the upwind side of the station and the pyranometer and CRTs are located so that
they are not in any shadow. (photo: J. Vanos)

It is often convenient for ease of data logging to mount all sensors on one
mobile support. This can be manually transported to different spots in a location,
or the site may be large enough that instrument transport by car or bicycle is
desirable (e.g. Klemm et al. 2015). If measurements are made by stopping at
various locations, it must be ensured that the transport vehicle is parked so it is
downwind of the sensors. If measurements are made while the sensors are in
motion, they must be mounted sufficiently ahead of the vehicle to sense the
undisturbed microclimate. It is difficult to get proper wind data on a moving
platform because the transport speed is added vectorially to the true wind. Vanos
et al. (2012a) provide an example of a measurement package mounted on a
bicycle for surveys along transects through parks. In this study the mobile station
started and ended in the same location to determine how much the prevailing
conditions had changed during the test. The results provided a thermal transect

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of the temperature and humidity in the park as well as the immediately adjacent
neighbourhoods.

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METHODS FOR MEASUREMENT AND
ESTIMATION OF HUMAN THERMAL
COMFORT: HOW DO HUMANS PERCEIVE
THEIR THERMAL COMFORT UNDER
DIFFERENT MICROCLIMATIC CONDITIONS?
Several different approaches have been used to identify the thermal comfort of a
person in an outdoor environment. The most common and simplest is to ask
people (ISO 1995). This has the advantage of being quick and easy, but as much
as half of the variance between objective and subjective responses has been
attributed to cultural effects (Knez and Thorsson 2006). Another approach is to
observe where people choose to spend time in a landscape. The assumption
would be that people will seek out thermally comfortable locations to spend their
time. These subjective approaches focus on the question of ‘thermal comfort’. If
an assumption is made that thermal neutrality leads to thermal comfort, then
there are some objective approaches as well. Measurements can be taken of skin
temperature or core temperature. There is evidence that a person’s core and/or
skin temperature might provide an indicator of their thermal situation and this
should be further investigated.
The following sections describe various approaches to measuring thermal
comfort and analyzing the results.

Measurement
A simple questionnaire can be used to provide an estimate of people’s
perceptions of their thermal comfort level (i.e. thermal sensation). A five-point
scale is commonly used (ISO 1995) with the categories: I would prefer to be
much warmer; I would prefer to be warmer; I would prefer no change; I would
prefer to be cooler; I would prefer to be much cooler. A seven-point scale can
also be used and would include the categories of I would prefer to be slightly
warmer, and I would prefer to be slightly cooler in the above noted categories.
Subjects can also be asked to rate their thermal sensation and the seven
categories would be hot, warm, slightly warm, neutral, slightly cool, cool, and
cold. Different studies use different scales so it can be difficult to compare
results. There should be a standard approach (Johansson et al. 2014) and it
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remains an important research question to identify the most appropriate
approach.
Study participants are asked to remain in a predetermined location for a
predetermined amount of time and at the end of that time are asked to select one
of the possible responses listed above. The amount of time needed for a person
to achieve thermal equilibrium varies by season (Johansson et al. 2014) and
likely by other variables, leaving the required amount of time as an important
research question.
Simultaneously, microclimate measurements are taken at the participants’
site-specific location. When the data are analyzed the goal is to find a
relationship between the perceived thermal sensation of the subjects and the
energy budget calculations based on site-specific microclimatic conditions. A
typical study would take subjects to a wide range of microclimatic conditions
including a windy, shady spot through to a sunny spot with very low wind speed
in order to expose participants to a range of thermal comfort levels.
A similar study that does not require study participants to consciously
consider their perceived thermal sensation is an observational study. A landscape
with a wide range of microclimatic conditions is selected. This might be a plaza
that has an area of heavy shade that also receives strong winds, and an area that
is in the full sun and has very little wind. A time is selected when the area is
likely to have many visitors, say during lunch time, or on a weekend afternoon.
The microclimates of the plaza are either measured using mobile stations, or
estimated using procedures described earlier in this chapter. Then the locations
of visitors are recorded on a map at some predetermined time interval. This
depends somewhat on the size of the space and the number of visitors, and as in
other aspects of thermal comfort research, the standardization of the time
interval of measurement is an important research question that needs
investigation. During observation it is important to note physical characteristics
of individuals such as amount and colour of clothing and their activity level (e.g.
whether they just completed a run or have been sitting quietly for several
minutes).

Estimation
More than 100 energy budget models for estimating the human thermal comfort
level associated with various microclimatic conditions have been developed over
the years (Johansson et al. 2014), most of which are for use in indoor situations.
These models need to be validated through comparison of their output with the
subjective responses of individuals (e.g. Kenny et al. 2009; Vanos et al. 2012b),
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and the output of the various models should be compared in order to determine
the most accurate and precise model.

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DISCUSSION
Many things that people intuitively believe to be true about microclimate are
proven wrong when carefully studied. For example, it’s common for someone to
walk into the shade of a tree on a hot sunny day and proclaim that it’s about ten
degrees cooler than in the sun. If air temperature was measured accurately and
precisely it would reveal that, at a standard height of 1.5?m above the ground,
the temperature is essentially the same in the shade and in the sun. A person
feels much cooler in the shade because they are receiving less solar radiation.
There are many examples of this kind of misunderstanding of microclimate
that can lead to erroneous design decisions which can either have no positive
effect or inadvertently make the microclimatic conditions worse. For example,
wind can cool a person through convective heat transfer, but the amount of
cooling depends on the temperature difference between a person’s skin and the
air. If the air is much colder than a person’s skin, like it is in winter, the amount
of convective cooling can be large. But during heat waves when the air
temperature might be the same as a person’s skin temperature there is no
convective cooling. And if the air is hotter than a person’s skin, wind can
actually add heat to a person (Brown et al. 2015). If the humidity of the air is
high there will be little opportunity for a person to lose heat through evaporation.
So while it might seem logical to give a person a fan during a heat wave, the
effect of having hot air pass over a person’s body during a heat wave with high
humidity could actually exacerbate one’s vulnerability to heat stress and lead to
hyperthermia.
Most of the components of microclimate are invisible to the human eye and
instruments are needed to measure them. It is essential that the correct
instrument is used in the correct manner. For example, human eyes only see
about half of the radiation emitted by the sun. The other half is the completely
invisible near infrared (NIR), which has the same amount of energy as the
visible portion. A light meter only measures the visible portion, so must not be
used to measure solar radiation. If air temperatures are measured without an
adequate radiation shield and appropriate ventilation, the resultant values will
not actually be measurements of air temperature, but some combination of air
temperature and radiation absorbed by the instrument.
The amount of radiation and wind experienced by a person in the landscape
can be substantially modified over very short distances through landscape
architectural design, while air temperature and air humidity cannot typically be
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modified very much over short distances (Brown and Gillespie 1995). Radiation
and wind have different levels of effect on thermal comfort in different seasons.
During cold winter conditions the convective cooling effect of the wind can be
much larger than the input of radiation. The opposite is the case in summer,
when convective cooling is minimized and radiant input is maximized (Brown
and Gillespie 1995). This means that the priority for microclimate modification
research should focus on radiation levels for summer situations, and wind in
winter.
Air temperature and humidity can be modified at the mesoscale but require
large interventions. For example, a large well-shaded urban park can cool the air
as it moves over well-watered, shaded surfaces. The relationship between how
specific landscape forms promote cooling (e.g. large greenspaces and shade
spaces) is inherently complex and requires further research to identify the most
effective ways for landscape architectural design to maximize the cooling in
urban areas.
Recent advancements in the area of ‘research through designing’ (Lenzholzer
et al. 2013) provide opportunities for an additional method of microclimate
research involving experiments. Some experimental methods make invisible
microclimate elements visible and can be valuable in communicating
microclimate to the public. For example, a model of a landscape can be put in a
wind tunnel and smoke can be used to illustrate wind flow. The effect of various
possible interventions on wind flow can be illustrated. Other experiments could
include full-scale temporary installations where the effect on the solar radiation,
wind, and surface temperatures can be measured.
It’s essential that the correct instruments be used in the proper manner and
that the resulting data are analyzed using correct and appropriate methods.
Landscape architectural researchers need to ensure that the data they collect are
both accurate and precise. If they are unfamiliar with the use of technical
information it can be valuable to collaborate with micrometeorological and/or
microclimatological researchers. If this is done, the field of microclimate
modification through urban design has the potential to substantially ameliorate
the effects of GCC and UHI intensification on human health and well-being.
Individual landscape architects can design urban environments that modify the
climate (and future climates) to create safe, thermally comfortable places for
people. This design must be supported with solid, scientific, defensible
information that is learned through the methods outlined in this chapter.

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CONCLUSIONS
Microclimatic design research is inherently complex yet has important
implications for human health and well-being. Considerably more research needs
to be done to more deeply understand the complex interactions between
landscape elements, meso- and microscale climatic factors, human thermal
comfort, and heat stress across different climate zones. High quality instruments
are available for this research, but must be used in a proper manner to assure
accurate and precise measurements. The field of outdoor human thermal comfort
research is quite new and there is no standard method for measuring, estimating,
and assessing information. Research should focus on two questions:
understanding the complex relationship between urban landscape and urban
microclimate, and understanding how microclimate affects human thermal
comfort and vulnerability to heat stress in outdoor environments. The results of
this research are needed to inform urban design so that human thermal comfort
and microclimatic design can be considered, along with socio-economic,
ecological and political considerations, when developing or modifying urban
environments.

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Thanks to Dr. Jennifer Vanos and Dr. Natasha Kenny for their valuable
comments and suggestions. This chapter was substantially improved by the
comments and suggestions of the editors.

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SUGGESTED FURTHER READING
Brown, R.D. ( 2010) Design with Microclimate: The Secret to Comfortable Outdoor Space, 2nd ed.,
Washington DC: Island Press.
Brown, R.D. ( 2011) ‘ Ameliorating the effects of climate change: Modifying microclimates through
design’, Landscape and Urban Planning, 100( 4), 372–374.
Brown, R.D. and Gillespie T.J. ( 1995) Microclimatic Landscape Design: Creating Thermal Comfort and
Energy Efficiency, New York: John Wiley.
Campbell, G. and Norman, J. ( 1998) An Introduction to Environmental Biophysics, 2nd ed., New York:
Springer.
Erell, E., Pearlmutter, D. and Williamson, T. ( 2011) Urban Microclimate: Designing the Spaces between
Buildings, London: Earthscan.
Johansson, E., Thorsson, S., Emmanual R. and Kruger, E. ( 2014) ‘ Instruments and methods in outdoor
thermal comfort studies – the need for standardization’, Urban Climate, 10( 2), 346–366.
Klemm, W., Heusinkveld, B.G., Lenzholzer, S., Jacobs, M.H. and van Hove, B. ( 2015) ‘ Psychological and
physical impact of urban green spaces on outdoor thermal comfort during summertime in the
Netherlands’, Building and Environment, 83( 83), 120–128.
Lenzholzer, S. ( 2015) Weather in the City: How Design Shapes the Urban Climate, Rotterdam: nai010
Publishers.
Monteith J.L. and Unsworth, M.H. ( 2013) Principles of Environmental Physics: Plants, Animals and the
Atmosphere, 4th ed., Oxford: Academic Press.
Oke, T.R. ( 1988) Boundary Layer Climates, 2nd ed., London: Routledge.

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REFERENCES
Brown, R.D. ( 2011) ‘ Ameliorating the effects of climate change: Modifying microclimates through
design’, Landscape and Urban Planning, 100( 4), 372–374.
Brown, R.D. and Gillespie, T.J. ( 1986) ‘ Estimating outdoor thermal comfort using a cylindrical radiation
thermometer and an energy budget model’, International Journal of Biometeorology, 30( 1), 43–
52.
Brown, R.D. and Gillespie, T.J. ( 1995) Microclimatic Landscape Design: Creating Thermal Comfort and
Energy Efficiency, New York: John Wiley.
Brown, R.D. and Corry, R.C. ( 2011) ‘ Evidence-based landscape architecture: The maturing of a
profession’, Landscape and Urban Planning, 100( 4), 327–329.
Brown, R.D., Kenny, N.A. and Corry, R.C. ( 2011) ‘ Testing the microclimatic habitat design framework in
abandoned sand and gravel extraction sites using the Karner blue butterfly’, Ecological
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Brown, R.D., Vanos, J., Kenny, N. and Lenzholzer, S. ( 2015) ‘ Designing urban parks that ameliorate the
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(producers/capabilities perspective)’, Procedia Environmental Sciences, 1, 247–274.
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pollution and potential co-benefits from mitigation and adaptation’, Current Opinion in
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Harlan, S.L., Brazel, A.J., Prashad, L., Stefanov, W.L. and Larsen, L. ( 2006) ‘ Neighborhood
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Holick, M.F. ( 2004) ‘ Sunlight and vitamin D for bone health and prevention of autoimmune diseases,
cancers, and cardiovascular disease’, American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 80( 6)(Suppl.),
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Howard, L. ( 1833) The Climate of London: Deduced from Meteorological Observations Made in the
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ISO (International Organization for Standardization) ( 2007) ISO 9920,’ Ergonomics of the thermal

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 environment – estimation of thermal insulation and water vapour resistance of a clothing
ensemble, Geneva: International Organization for Standardization.
Johansson, E., Thorsson, S., Emmanual, R. and Kruger, E. ( 2014) ‘ Instruments and methods in outdoor
thermal comfort studies: The need for standardization’, Urban Climate, 10( 2), 346–366.
Kenny, N.A., Warland, J.S., Brown, R.D. and Gillespie T.J. ( 2008) ‘ Estimating radiation absorbed by a
human’, International Journal of Biometeorology, 52( 6), 491–503.
Kenny, N.A., Warland, J.S., Brown, R.D. and Gillespie T.J. ( 2009) ‘ Part A: Assessing the performance of
the COMFA outdoor thermal comfort model on subjects performing physical activity’,
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Klemm, W., Heusinkveld, B.G., Lenzholzer, S., Jacobs, M.H. and van Hove, B. ( 2015) ‘ Psychological and
physical impact of urban green spaces on outdoor thermal comfort during summertime in
tNetherlands’, Building and Environment, 83( 83), 120–128.
Knez, I. and Thorsson, S. ( 2006) ‘ Influences of culture and environmental attitude on thermal, emotional
and perceptual evaluations of a public square’, International Journal of Biometeorology, 50( 5),
258–268.
Lawrence, M.G. ( 2005) ‘ The relationship between relative humidity and the dewpoint temperature in
moist air: A simple conversion and applications’, Bulletin of the American Meteorological
Society, 86( 2), 225–233.
Lenzholzer, S., Duchhart, I. and Koh, J. ( 2013) ‘ “Research through designing” in landscape architecture’,
Landscape and Urban Planning, 113, 120–127.
McCarthy, M.P., Best, M.J. and Betts, R.A. ( 2010) ‘ Climate change in cities due to global warming and
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thermal comfort while exercising in urban landscapes and implications for bioclimatic design’,
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climate–human–behaviour interactions with modifications to the COMFA outdoor energy budget
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Chapter 16: The urban water challenge

Antje Backhaus, Ole Fryd and Torben Dam

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INTRODUCTION
This chapter explores how landscape architecture research contributes to
generating knowledge that helps to solve urban water challenges. The global
urban population is expected to increase by 60 per cent from 2014 to 2050 (UN
DESA 2014). The global urban area is expected to double or triple by 2030, in
comparison to the year 2000 (Seto et al. 2011). These are changes that define
hydrological challenges such as increasing water requirement and water
shortages, insufficient infrastructure for wastewater and urban drainage, and
greater flood risk. Local water supplies might become scarce, or the water
quality might be poor. In some parts of the world cities are in decline and the
dwindling number of users makes the existing urban water system expensive
and/or infeasible to operate.
Urban water challenges are exacerbated by climate change. In general, the wet
regions on this planet are expected to get wetter while the dry regions will get
drier (IPCC 2014). Many of the wet and wetter regions comprise relatively
mature and fully built up cities that need to be retrofitted to manage future
precipitation rates. Many of the dry and drier regions are subject to massive
population growth. The new cities in these regions need to be able to provide
water for their residents and preferably also reduce the ecological impact of
urbanisation.
Taken together, the growth, decline and transformation of cities across the
world and the current and future climate changes call for innovative research and
new approaches to water management. For more than a century engineers have
provided the expertise for implementing water and sanitation infrastructure in
cities. The conventional methods for sizing, costing and constructing
infrastructure such as pipes, channels and dikes are now challenged by the
uncertain magnitudes of climate change and also by the pace of urban growth
and decline. As stand-alone solutions, engineered ‘grey’ infrastructures are
criticised for being mono-functional, cost-intensive, ‘fail-safe’ rather than ‘safe-
to-fail’ (Ahern 2011), and unable to provide synergy with other aspects of urban
development such as promoting health and biodiversity (Fryd et al. 2010; Ahern
2011; Liao 2012). Integrated approaches to urban water management are
expected to help to reduce ecological and hydrological impacts of urbanisation
and also to help to increase the quantity and quality of urban green space.
Integrated urban water management calls for new ways of collaborating and an
ability to overcome sectorial and disciplinary divides.
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 What is needed, then, are research methods that can help to increase
knowledge about integrated urban water management. As a discipline, landscape
architecture provides important expertise on the role of water in the urban
landscape. In particular, landscape architecture is expected to contribute
evidence-based design expertise that can complement contributions other
disciplines are making, and all together collaborate in their striving towards
integrated responses to the global urban water challenge. One such integrated
response is what we call ‘landscape based stormwater management’ (LSM), an
approach that utilises natural processes and mimics the natural water cycle by
promoting infiltration and evapotranspiration in the city while reducing the
amount of surface runoff. LSM is also referred to as water sensitive urban design
(WSUD) in Australia, low impact development (LID) in North America and
sustainable urban drainage systems (SUDS) in the United Kingdom (Fletcher et
al. 2015).
The term LSM is used here to emphasise the potential of the role that urban
landscapes play in relation to water management. LSM also aims to provide
synergy between the urban water challenge and other aspects of urban
development such as promoting urban greening, biodiversity and human health.
In this chapter we discuss research approaches that help to generate knowledge
to inform landscape architecture contributions to LSM. The main questions that
guide our research are (a) what are relevant research approaches in landscape
architecture that can help to address global urban water challenges, and (b)
which methods and methodological considerations should be taken into account?
Following this introduction, the chapter first provides a conceptual framework
upon which our research is based. Here we introduce the specific focus and
theoretical backdrop to our work on LSM. Second, we present and discuss three
studies pertinent to this topic. Here we describe our approaches to study design,
data collection, sampling and data analysis. In the third section, we discuss
different aspects of our research approach and methods, such as the role of the
researcher, and also aspects of scale and study design. In the final section, and
based on a comparative discussion of our three research examples, the chapter
outlines directions and perspectives for future research.

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CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK
The research methods illustrated in this chapter have been part of three
collaborative studies undertaken between the years 2008 and 2010. The
theoretical basis for the research draws on (a) understanding urban water
challenges as ‘wicked problems’ and (b) on processual approaches to
understanding relationships between research and design. It is anticipated that
when cities try to respond to the urban water challenge they are faced with very
complex tasks. They cannot rely on any linear relationships to exist between, on
the one hand, climate change and rapid urbanisation, and consolidated
approaches and techniques to improving urban water infrastructure on the other
hand.
First, any urban water solution faces competition for space above and below
ground by residents and investors regarding transportation, ecological
conservation and many other interests. Second, climate change and urban
transformation processes put the urban water system under pressure, both alone
and in tandem. Together, competition for space, climate change and urban
transformation call for an innovative response. Addressing urban water problems
is an example of being faced with a very complex challenge, one that has, in
planning theory, also been called a ‘wicked problem’ (Rittel and Webber 1973).
When, as was the case in the past, planning and research have adopted linear
procedures that involve straightforward forms of data collection and analysis and
problem solving, planners and researchers have tended to comprehend problems
as ‘tame’ (Conklin 2005). Such seemingly simple understandings and methods
are not suitable for problems like those posed by the urban water challenge.
Wicked problems are characterised by a high level of complexity and
uncertainty, and also by considerable value divergences amongst stakeholders
(Head 2008).

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Figure 16.1
Sketch by Sven Ingvar Anderson (1994) showing the spiral of the design process with the amount of facts
involved (stripes), the degree of determination in the design sketching (dots) and the design result (flower)

Wicked problems have no stopping rule, and the process of solving a wicked
problem is identical to understanding the problem’s nature (Rittel and Webber
1973; Conklin 2005). Literature on wicked problems emphasises social learning
and transdisciplinary research as a means to work with wicked problems
(Roberts 2000; Head 2008). Actors from different sectors and disciplines must
be capable of interacting with each other and also of learning to resolve the
problem together. In doing so they should pursue an interactive process. In such
a process, preliminary solutions are developed and reviewed first, and then again
and again, each time with the aim to define new tasks and problems, which are
resolved in continuous learning loops (Kline and Rosenberg 1986; Uhl-Bien et
al. 2007; Fryd et al. 2010).
Such a process is typical for a landscape architect working in practice and
using the design process for problem solving. Understanding such a design
process can be aided by following the lines seen in a sketch drawn by Anderson
(1994) (Figure 16.1). This sketch is drawn in the shape of a circular cone, a
conical helical line that spirals upwards while narrowing towards its apex. The
sketch is meant to represent the phases of the design process and to illustrate the
amount of facts involved (stripes) and the degree of determination in the design
sketching (dots) that gradually informs the synthesis that is materialised in the
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final design. These phases confront, contextualise and integrate different kinds
of technical, spatial, experimental or social knowledge in a spiralling process of
consideration, action and reconsideration (e.g. Schön 1991; Stappers 2007; von
Seggern et al. 2008).
A designer such as a skilled landscape architect can focus on and develop
solutions to a problem even if not all of the desirable information is available. In
addition, one may realise that there are always various solutions that would work
in a given context (Steenbergen 2008). Hence, designing and the process of
designing are found to be suitable approaches to conducting research that
involves finding solutions to wicked problems. Besides conducting research
using design, and trying to understand the processes behind design, there is an
emerging field of research which uses the design process itself to find answers to
research questions, thus doing ‘research through designing’ (see Lenzholzer et
al. – Chapter 4).
Research through designing elevates the design process from being the central
working tool of a practitioner to becoming a research approach, one that
employs several methods of continuous analysis and reflection, and one that
makes the process of problem solving comprehensible and, to some degree,
repeatable for others. In all of the three studies presented in this chapter,
researchers are assuming the role of a ‘reflective practitioner’ (Schön 1991). As
reflection is the key element within design-based research, the process of
observation is of great importance. In the studies presented, the term
‘observation’ is understood in a rather broad sense, as described by John Zeisel
(2006, p.41): ‘It means looking at phenomena connected to a problem by
whatever means necessary: looking with one’s eyes, asking questions, using
mechanical measurement devices, and so on.’
Some of the studies presented focus on understanding the process of designing
LSM systems. They involve the landscape architect as a subject, and one who
reflects on their practice. Other studies focus on the outcome of the process, that
is the resulting landscape architecture project. Here the researcher is taking on
the role of a more distant observer, analysing the specific design challenge from
the outside. Both processes are forms of case study research (see Swaffield –
Chapter 7).
To put our studies into a broader context, we adopt the notions of
sustainability transitions and ‘niches’. In transition literature, niches are defined
as ‘protected spaces that allow nurturing and experimentation with the co-
evolution of technology, user practices, and regulatory structures’ (Schot and
Geels 2008, p.538). These niches can shortcut a transition process that may
otherwise take decades. The specific technological transition discussed in this
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chapter is the move from conventional underground and linear water
infrastructures managed more or less exclusively by engineers to the more
holistic and circular LSM approach that aims to utilise the urban landscape and
to provide synergy between multiple agendas and disciplines. ‘Niche
experiments’ can serve as a learning room or a so called ‘transition arena’ where
niche actors (e.g. innovators) interact with the actors of the existing regime (e.g.
government officers) and third party stakeholders (e.g. community groups) with
a view to influencing the ‘cognitive frames’ that may facilitate or impede novel
solutions (Schot and Geels 2008). Several climate change researchers
recommend approaching climate change adaptation as a learning process and a
social and political process (e.g. Smit et al. 2000; Fünfgeld and McEvoy 2011).
Transition theory indicates that strategic experimentation of design alternatives
in protected niches is an approach relevant to informing decisions and
facilitating the transfer of knowledge into practice. See Mguni et al. (2014) for a
more comprehensive analysis of transition management in relation to LSM.
Based on this theoretical backdrop, we found some aspects especially
important in defining a study’s research approach, and for reflecting on the
conceptual framework. We anticipate, that to work with urban water, the
researcher needs to address and reflect on the spatial scale (e.g. centimetres to
kilometres, or raindrop to catchment), the temporal scale (e.g. minutes to
months, or short-term to long-term observations), the research objective and the
technical research design, therein the role of the researcher, the object of study
and the scale of the study. Spatial scale, temporal scale, the role of the
researcher, research objective, analytical focus and the case study design can be
studied along a continuum between two extremes, as depicted by the double
arrowheads in Figure 16.2. The continua include small scale and large scale
(subject to a clearer definition of these scales), short term and long term (subject
to definition), process oriented or outcome oriented study, and whether the study
has a focus on living human subjects or non-living objects. All studies can be
mapped along these continua. The aim is to help researchers to be mindful about
the methodological choices and delineations made in the technical research
design, especially when dealing with the urban water challenge.

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Figure 16.2
Conceptual framework, outlining variations in research approaches relevant to research on the urban water
challenge. In each individual research project, the researchers decide on the parameters to be studied along
a continuum between two extremes

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THREE STUDIES ON THE URBAN WATER
CHALLENGE
In this section we introduce, compare and discuss three landscape architecture
studies that address water related research questions. Here we describe our
research design and methods used, including aspects of data collection and data
analysis, as well as specific study results. All of the three studies relate to our
own previous research on LSM in Northern Europe. LSM refers to the practise
of managing the urban stormwater runoff in the urban landscape through
retention, infiltration and evapotranspiration, thus supporting a natural water
cycle with a locally improved microclimate, groundwater recharge, water
availability for vegetation and so on. The LSM approaches to water management
comprise and use a range of different measures such as green roofs, porous
pavement, bio-swales and ponds (see e.g. Woods-Ballard et al. 2007). This is in
contrast to the conventional approach to urban drainage, which focuses on
collecting, conveying and discharging stormwater away from the city as quickly
as possible and with little concern for downstream environmental impacts. LSM
captures the interface between different technologies and disciplines and
highlights the conflicts and uncertainties related to ‘grey’ and ‘green’ responses
to urban water management (Fryd et al. 2010). It is therefore a relevant study
area to help understand the role that landscape architecture research plays in
relation to the urban water challenge at large.
The selected studies are: (1) a review of twenty LSM projects implemented in
Northern Europe (Backhaus and Fryd 2013), (2) a first-loop catchment strategy
for the retrofitting of LSM solutions in an existing built up area of Copenhagen
(Backhaus and Fryd 2012) and (3) a design experiment that includes
professional landscape architects (Backhaus et al. 2012). A summary of the three
studies is included in Table 16.1. The three studies are analysed using the
conceptual framework outlined in Figure 16.2.
Below, the three studies are presented one by one. The three studies are
compared and discussed in subsequent sections of this chapter.

Study 1: review of twenty LSM design projects in Northern Europe

This review study forms the start of a longer research process on LSM design
and was conducted to gain an overview of the current situation in built LSM
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projects. The purpose of the study was to complement the existing LSM
literature which in 2008 was restricted to designers’ own project descriptions
(e.g. Dreiseitl et al. 2001), technical analyses (e.g. Sieker et al. 2006) or specific
geographic regions (e.g. Echols and Pennypacker 2008). The study was thus
conducted with the aim of finding answers to the basic research question of this
review: ‘What is the current state of the art in urban landscape stormwater
management?’
The research question mentioned above was further refined during the running
of the study and it evolved through a process of abductive reasoning (Lipton
1991), starting from the first general interest in learning about the ‘state of the
art’ of stormwater management, leading towards a more specific investigation of
the aesthetic performance of LSM systems. Thus, the study applied a normative
multiple case study approach combining ‘empirical observation with normative
assessment’ (Thacher 2006, p.1632).
During a first intensive phase of data collection, LSM cases from Europe and
North America were visited on site or reviewed in the literature. The decision to
focus on those two regions was taken due to practical reasons, such as data and
site accessibility for the authors. The collected data was compiled in a Microsoft
Access database. From the database twenty case studies from Denmark,
Germany, the Netherlands, Norway and Sweden were selected for detailed
comparison. The criteria for case selection were the maximum variation in age,
size, character, design premise and national context (Flyvbjerg 2006). In
addition, the selection process was influenced by the authors pre-existing site
knowledge, recommendations from peers, and the body of literature describing
individual projects available from libraries, the internet and in the form of grey
publications from project stakeholders, such as landscape architects or municipal
employees.

Table 16.1
Main characteristics of the three studies presented in this chapter. Each project reflects the role of landscape
architecture research in the context of broader transdisciplinary research projects addressing the urban water
challenge

Study One Study Two Study Three

Title of the The aesthetic performance of Analysing the first loop Stormwater management
original urban landscape-based design process for large-scale challenges as revealed
publication stormwater management sustainable urban drainage through a design experiment
systems: a review of twenty system retrofits in with professional landscape
projects in Northern Europe Copenhagen, Denmark architects (Backhaus et al.
(Backhaus and Fryd 2013) (Backhaus and Fryd 2012) 2012)
Objective To evaluate stormwater To analyse the process of To identify and address
management projects and to developing a LSM retrofit challenges that landscape
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 inform future landscape strategy in order to refine architects face in the process
design with LSM future design processes of designing stormwater
projects
Study Multiple holistic case study Single embedded case study Single embedded case study
design Retrospective comparative Transdisciplinary team LSM design experiment with
analysis 20 built LSM developing a LSM retrofit six groups of professional
projects strategy for a sewershed landscape architects
Retrospective analysis of Retrospective comparative
design process analysis of design processes
and design outcomes
Data Site visits, personal One year design process Three weeks design
collection observations, photographic where an interdisciplinary experiment/workshop, sketch
documentation research team develops a designs
joint solution
Review of literature, maps Video recordings, personal
and design drawings Workshops and meetings observations, note taking
with end-users
Semi-structured interviews Semi-structured interviews
with designers and project Sketch designs, maps with designers
stakeholders
Sampling Selection of cases by Collecting all design Each design team develops
maximum variation in age, documents shared within the one design proposal
size, character, design interdisciplinary group of
premise and national context researchers Professional landscape
as well as practical architects are chosen for their
considerations about the interest in LSM, their
availability of project dedication of time, and their
material assumed ability to work fruit-
fully with others
Data Classification and grouping Review of sketches, maps Transcription of interviews
handling of data and photos followed by a coding process
and identifying key themes
analysis Transcription of interviews Chronological mapping
followed by a top-down Review of sketches and
analysis for verification of Pattern interpretation design drawings, redrawing,
findings from other data pattern interpretation
sources

Data was collected for each of the twenty case studies though a range of
methods. Personal observations were made at site visits by at least one of the
authors. During the site visits personal notes and photographs were taken for
documentation. All photographs were systematically organised in a photo
database for each site. Available literature such as reports, info sheets, articles
and book chapters, as well as maps and design drawings were collected and
reviewed in order to get the best possible overview of the design and
construction of each project. These documents were used by the authors to
develop short project descriptions. Semi-structured interviews were conducted
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with designers and other project stakeholders to gain insight into the projects’
genesis, design intentions and problems that have occurred during construction
and use. Specifically, personal communication was used to shed light on
questions that had arisen from the literature review and the site visits. The data
collected was predominantly used to support the authors’ project understanding.
The twenty selected cases were compared in a retrospective analysis. The
analysis was structured around a series of parameters that were found relevant in
previously published reviews (e.g. Beneke 2003; Mitchell 2006; Martin et al.
2007; Echols and Pennypacker 2008) and in other complementary sources (e.g.
Dreiseitl et al. 2001; Wöbse 2002; Strom et al. 2009). Through a process of
abductive reasoning and discussions with peers, the authors selected five key
parameters to analyse and compare the twenty projects (see Table 16.2).
Through a retrospective analysis of the twenty cases using the selected five
key parameters, the study identified specific characteristics of stormwater
management projects that might optimise or minimise a project’s aesthetic.
Inspired by the method of a ‘close reading of the aesthetic language’ (Hauxner
2003), the examination of ’aesthetic performance’ was done by the authors, who
have advanced degrees in landscape architecture and urban design. Assessments
were based on the authors’ empirical observations and normative preference
ratings of the visual appearance of the selected projects.

Table 16.2
Five key parameters selected for project analysis and comparison

Key parameters

A. Terrain Changes on the assumption that surface runoff management requires detailed considerations
of modifying and levelling terrain, and of surface sculpting (see Beneke 2003; Wöbse 2002; Strom et
al. 2009).
B. Water Dynamics and Dimensioning on the assumption that stormwater management requires
designers to possess good dimensioning skills that are needed for the calculation of water storage
volumes and infiltration capacity, as well as a capacity for reasoning about the uncertainty of climate
change predictions and climate variability (see Geldof and Kluck 2008; Backhaus et al. 2012).
C. Stormwater Accentuation on the assumption that landscape based stormwater management projects
are often characterised by explicit stormwater accentuation in the design, as water is seen as an
attractive landscape element to be highlighted in the project (see Dreiseitl et al. 2001;Hoyeretal.
2011).
D. Construction and Maintenance appeared as a recurring point during stakeholder interviews and peer
discussions (see Hintze 2009). The lifespan of components in urban projects as well as maintenance
demands are key issues for all investments, and thus also for landscape based stormwater
management projects.
E. Site History and Context on the assumption that urban landscape architecture responds to the history
of the site and its context (see Hayden 1997; Chemetoff 2009).

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 In relation to terrain changes, it was found that visible stormwater
management can enhance the experience of local terrain and larger terrain
changes, and thus should be implemented with sensitive respect for the users’
landscape experience. Area restrictions can force designers to prepare for
massive terrain changes; these can lead to an ‘unsettled’ design that is not
feasibly adapted to the site. In water dynamics and dimensioning, it was found
that LSM can accentuate otherwise often unrecognised precipitation dynamics in
urban areas, for example by keeping and staging stormwater runoff as a physical
design element that would otherwise disappear fast into the sewers. Permanent
open water surfaces and running water can be difficult to realise, if not combined
with existing surface water bodies or through properly sized ponds. The
appropriate sizing of single elements seems to be a common design challenge.
As a specific example, LSM projects must be able to accommodate large water
volumes on rare occasions, but at the same time the sites must be inviting and
stimulate other activities during dry periods. Steep slopes and a strong basin
shape may impede the multifunctional use of the space.
A key finding of stormwater accentuation was that visible stormwater
management accentuation ‘at any cost’ often results in unsettled designs.
Furthermore, stormwater management is often too weak to be a sole connecting
idea for a good and aesthetically pleasing design, as precipitation is irregular and
the water element is mostly absent, despite being a main design feature. Simple
designs using few key stormwater management elements appear to work better
than systems with multiple water features. The analysis of construction and
maintenance issues revealed that LSM systems may require intensive
maintenance; this must be carefully considered in the design process. In
addition, mistakes may occur during construction due to lack of experience that
can lead to system failure. This calls for the sharing of knowledge amongst
professionals and across sites. The study of site history and context confirmed
that, for LSM, generalised textbook designs cannot meaningfully be transferred
to new sites in a generic way.

Study 2: catchment-wide LSM strategy in Copenhagen

Little knowledge exists on how to adapt existing urban drainage systems by use
of LSM at the scale of entire sewer-sheds. The purpose of this study was to
compare and assess two different water management options for reducing
combined sewer overflows from a 15km2 fully built up sewer catchment in
western Copenhagen. One option was to enlarge the existing underground sewer
system through conventional engineering measures. This option would be a
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‘tame’ problem in social and technical terms, yet the solution might be non-
adaptive to the dynamics of climate change and urban transformation. Another
option was to adopt an LSM approach and implement it in the existing urban
environment. This option would be linked with more social and technical
uncertainty, but also shed light on the opportunities and barriers for LSM
retrofits. The two specific research questions were: (1) ‘Which “insights” and
“setbacks” emerge in the process of designing a large scale LSM retrofit
strategy?’ and (2) ‘How can these insights inform future design processes for
similar LSM retrofitting strategies at the sewer-shed scale?’
The main approach taken in this study was to develop a draft master plan for
the specific catchment area in Copenhagen and to analyse the design process in a
retrospective manner. The development of the master plan was executed by a
group of eight PhD students spanning landscape architecture, economics,
engineering, environmental chemistry, geology and urban planning, in
collaboration with a group of relevant professional peers from the City of
Copenhagen and from the water utility company HOFOR, as well as private
engineering consultancies, and also with the PhD students’ academic
supervisors. All participants were partners in the research project ‘Black, Blue &
Green – Integrated infrastructure planning as key to sustainable urban water
systems’, which was funded by the Danish Council for Strategic Research and
followed a triple helix model of university–government–industry relations (see
Etzkowitz and Leydesdorff 2000).
The master plan was developed between October 2008 and December 2009,
and the process was structured around two workshops and five joint meetings
between academics and partners from the public and private sector. In addition
to officially scheduled workshops and meetings, numerous meetings,
interactions and data exchanges occurred between the individual PhD students as
the catchment plan was shaped. The master plan was presented to key
institutional stakeholders and professional peers at a national symposium in
December 2009. The developed master plan and the process of developing the
master plan in Copenhagen form an embedded single case study. The stages of
the master planning were monitored and documented, and the process of
designing was subjected to an analysis, where ‘insights’ and ‘setbacks’ were
revealed and discussed to determine their importance in a successful design.
The data used for the analysis comprised all graphic documents shared among
the full group of PhD researchers. This included maps, sketches, photos and
modelling results that were either presented at the joint meetings and workshops
or which were circulated among the full group of PhD students. The data
collection was done by two of the PhD students, who were part of the bigger
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team and had a background in landscape architecture and urban planning. The
first data collected were background data available from the internet, municipal
databases and policies and reports. Such data were, for example, aerial photos,
topographic maps, historical maps or maps on soil conditions and land use types.
During the research and design process new data was generated, for example in
the form of groundwater maps (generated by a peer researcher in the team), data
from site visits and observations (photos, notes and sketches), as well as maps
produced by the team through analysis and layering of information and design
ideas. For more detailed information on data collection and data analysis, please
see Backhaus and Fryd (2012) and Fryd et al. (2013).
A retrospective analysis of the design process was conducted to understand
and communicate the lessons learned from the case study. Illustrations produced
and shared by the researchers during the development of the master plan were
collected and compiled in a chronological process diagram (see Figure 16.3)
reflecting their spatial design scale and the date of circulation among the team of
PhD students. By comparing the final master plan with each design step outlined
in Figure 16.3, key ‘insights’ and ‘setbacks’ in the design process were
identified. The insights were identified as moves that led more or less directly to
a better problem understanding, and thus formed part of the final solution. The
setbacks were referred to as phases in the process, which impeded the
development of the solution.
By mapping the design process it was identified that most initial studies were
done at the catchment level, whereas the more detailed analyses and designs at
the lot or neighbourhood level occurred towards the end of the design process.
The intermediate district scale emerged as an important transition level, where
catchment level strategies could be specified to frame site level interventions,
and where detailed plot level studies could provide feedback on potential
limitations of the overall catchment strategy. Whilst most initial analyses and
decisions were based on plan drawings (i.e. two-dimensional top view plan
drawings), the more fine-grained detailing emphasised the importance of section
drawings as a tool for understanding and working with the urban water system.

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Figure 16.3
Diagram of the design process. The timeline outlines illustrations shared by the research team, the type of
illustration, their spatial scale (along the y-axis) and the time when they were produced in the design
process (depicted along the x-axis). Important steps in the process are identified as ‘insights’ and ‘setbacks’.
(source: Adapted from the full diagram published in Backhaus and Fryd 2012)

The two most important findings emerging from this study were the need to
develop context specific solutions, and the utilisation of the underlying
hydrological conditions as a generator of sustainable urban form. From a
transdisciplinary research perspective, the development of a master plan that
reflects a multi-level catchment strategy provided a key breakthrough for the
team as a whole. During the initial stages, multiple analyses were done to find a
problem definition and research question that everybody could relate to; but a
shared understanding of the problem and the potential solutions were lacking.
The catchment strategy suggested a range of sub-strategies and specific sub-
questions to be addressed. Specifically the catchment strategy outlined specific
areas where LSM should be linked to the consolidation of urban green areas,
areas where groundwater recharge should be in focus and areas where LSM
should be avoided (Backhaus and Fryd 2012; Fryd et al. 2013). With the multi-
level approach, each discipline, institution and individual could relate to at least
one of the tasks at hand. The catchment strategy allowed researchers to work in
parallel on different aspects and on different scales. The landscape design
process became a medium for facilitating ownership, collaboration and

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knowledge exchange amongst all researchers involved in the project. The
research process showed that ‘scientific research’ (done by geologists,
environmental chemists and engineers) and ‘design research’ (done by landscape
architects) must be combined and is interdependent in the successful
development of an integrated urban water management solution.

Study 3: Vanløse School design experiment

Despite a number of potential benefits of using the urban landscape for
managing stormwater runoff the adoption of LSM technology was slow in
Denmark around the year 2010. As an emerging technology, LSM was linked to
a process of building awareness, capacity and trust among stakeholder groups,
including landscape architects (Fryd et al. 2010). This study was set up to
answer the research question: ‘Which design challenges do landscape architects
meet, when working with landscape based stormwater management?’
A three-week ‘design experiment’ (de Jong and van der Voordt 2005;
Steenbergen 2008) was conducted and twenty professional landscape architects
were invited with the aim to gain insight into the LSM design process and thus
potentially support future design processes through provision of information and
further research. The landscape architects taking part in the design experiment
were gathered into six teams to work on a specific site in Copenhagen, Denmark.
All of the landscape architects were selected from design practices in the cities
of Aarhus and Copenhagen for their interest in urban stormwater management,
their willingness to dedicate the necessary time and their assumed ability to work
fruitfully with other design offices. Most of the participants were acquainted
with the concept of LSM, but only one team had experience with completed
(constructed and built) projects.
As presented in Figure 16.4, the design experiment started off with a two-day
training workshop on stormwater management to ensure all the participants had
at least a basic knowledge of the subject. The participants were informed about
the frontier of technical knowledge, for inspiration they were shown
international examples of LSM design, and these examples were then discussed
regarding their specific implications in the Danish context. The teams were then
introduced to the assignment of designing a stormwater management solution for
Vanløse Primary School in Copenhagen. The teams worked on the assignment
separately in their home offices. After one week, all teams met to present their
initial ideas and sketches, and to receive feedback from the other teams and also
from a panel of experts, which included internationally acclaimed LSM
practitioners as well as experienced senior university staff. The design
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experiment ended with a final presentation and discussion involving a public
audience, key stakeholders and the expert panel. The workshop set-up allowed
the researchers to observe the designers whilst working, and to gain different but
comparable design proposals for one particular site.
Data collection methods included video recordings, note taking, semi-
structured interviews (e.g. Bryman 2008), design observations (e.g. Hannula et
al. 2005; Zeisel 2006) and comparison of competition entries (e.g. Hauxner
2003). Video recordings were done during the full duration of the four workshop
meetings (day one, day two, midway meeting and final meeting). Personal notes
from the researchers and the expert panel supplemented the video recordings.
Each team was visited once at their office by researchers to observe the design
process and to interview the design teams. The interview questions were
designed to reveal the teams’ progress and idea development. Questions
included: Where do you see the biggest problem in your design at the moment?
What do you think is the most important skill you need in order to complete this
design task successfully? What could be the biggest chance for improvement of
the area that is addressed in your solution? Finally, the six draft designs were
submitted as A1 posters and PDF files at the midway meeting and the six final
design proposals were submitted after the final presentation. See Backhaus et al.
(2012) for more details about the research methods.

Figure 16.4
Set-up of the design experiment with two workshop days in the beginning, a 2.5 week design phase, where
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the teams worked individually with one midway meeting, and concluded with the final presentations

Using multiple data sources was intended to get the best possible picture of
the landscape architects’ design processes and to allow for triangulation between
the different results. The video recordings were transcribed and coded. The
coding was done manually using keywords and specific topics in order to reveal
patterns, similarities and recurring themes. Personal notes were coded using the
same system. For the purposes of analysis and comparison, the six pairs of
proposals were normalised by redrawing, and described briefly in a consistent
manner using the same terms for identical design elements. The observations of
the teams’ design processes, the interviews and the draft final design proposals
were compared in relation to themes arising from analysis of the different
observations, as well as themes identified prior to the workshop from the
authors’ general knowledge of LSM design aspects (see also Study 1 above).
Microsoft Excel tables were used to sort and compare the data by teams and
topics. Eleven key themes were identified (see Table 16.3).
The required responses to the eleven themes can be summarised as a need for
further research and knowledge on many topics (specifically A to D), a need for
dissemination of already existing knowledge amongst students and practitioners
(specifically B to D and I), a need for improved collaboration between experts,
designers and administrators (specifically H, I, J and K) and a need for more
practical experiences which are relevant in order to improve practice in more or
less all of the identified topics.

Table 16.3
Key themes and recommendations identified from the authors’ general knowledge of LSM design aspects,
supported by and specified according to the studies’ findings

Key themes

A. Dimensioning – simple calculation schemes for LSM are needed to assist the design process
B. Water quality management – existing scientific knowledge is generally not used by the practitioners.
Comprehensible guidelines tailored to assist the designers are needed
C. Biodiversity – further research on suitable plant species, maintenance needs and ecological outcome
is needed
D. Economy – baseline figures on construction and maintenance costs are needed to produce
economically feasible solutions
E. Integration in the natural watershed – there is a potential in linking small scale site designs with
minimal terrain works and supporting ecological connectivity
F. Terrain – runoff conveyance challenges terrain works
G. Context – suitable design elements need to be selected in response to site constrictions
H. Synergies – are critically important for good site integration, but risk exaggeration

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 The perception of water and water dynamics – designers tend to forget that systems are green most
I. of the time, not blue
J. Scales – surveying of multiple spatial scales and their connection is critical for integrated design
K. Land administration and ownership – needs to be addressed to enable implementation and
interconnected designs

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SYNTHESIS AND DISCUSSION
Study 1 adopted a multiple case study approach. The strength of the study is the
rigour of the analysis. By using literature-derived key parameters for
comparison, the study approach can be used in other contexts. Study 1 also
provided a framework for project assessment with a focus on aesthetics. The
value judgments made in the preference rating assessment is, however, less
easily replicable than the overall approach itself. The researchers are acting as
observers, describing their subjective understanding of the projects, herein
possibly weighting assessment criteria differently from how others would.
Arguably, subjectivity is a necessity to cope with aesthetical assessment and to
allow influence from the poetic and symbolic aspects of design (see Hauxner
2003). Future research could expand on the number of disciplines, or include
assessments conducted by non-professional actors.
Study 2 confronted the water challenge by working with and suggesting
alterations to the urban landscape, and we extracted guidelines for design
processes from our own design process. While doing so, we worked towards an
understanding of the problem through designing and attempting to solve the
problem of large-scale LSM retrofitting which aligns with the literature on
wicked problem management. By providing a draft solution, hence going beyond
the purely descriptive layering of existing data, we generated a framework for
discussion across disciplines and stakeholder groups and facilitated more
detailed assessments of the design solution, its sub-components and the
underlying problem understanding. The approach taken in this study highlights
the value that research through designing can have in a transdisciplinary research
setting, and it also highlights the capacity of landscape design as a means to
translate multiple data sets into symbiotic, yet tangible design solutions. The
thorough cross-examination of the drafted strategy, combining problem
formulation, analysis and design solution, is where more in-depth research
findings emerge; here specifically about insights and setbacks in a
transdisciplinary design process. Through the mapping exercise summarised in
Figure 16.3, we provided a systematic framework for interrogation that can be
applied to other planning and design processes.
Study 3 utilised the strengths of the second study by adopting a research
through designing approach. This study addressed the urban water management
challenge by first developing tentative solutions that were then systematically
assessed and discussed; lessons learned are valuable resources for resolving
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similar challenges in the future. The study is site-specific in order to support
knowledge generation and knowledge sharing, and to facilitate comparison in a
retrospective design evaluation. The third study addressed the potential
weaknesses of the second study in terms of the dependence on individual actors
and their social relationship. It is less vulnerable to the risk of one team failing to
complete the task. By having a larger number of teams working on the same
problem, context dependent and context independent parts of the design
solutions and of the occurring problems during the design process become
obvious. Study 3 was more thoroughly engaged with the process of designing,
and developed a kind of experimental design laboratory in which landscape
architecture practitioners take roles as active objects of the research analysis.
The dependence of the researcher on participants’ willingness and commitment
to collaborate, and to allocate time and resources to the project, must be taken
into account when choosing to adopt the experimental design approach. In this
study, everything was done through in-kind contributions, motivated by the
business advantage the participating landscape architects gained over their peers
in terms of LSM specific knowledge. Future research grant applications might
need to consider and specify the actual costs of running design experiments, in
order to ensure that adequate resources are made available.
Comparing the three studies presented above it is noticeable how three
different research questions lead to three different research approaches. The
asterisk, square and circle markings in Figure 16.5 indicate where we place the
three studies on a continuum within the different aspects of the research.
All three studies adopt a case study approach. Since learning from previous
landscape designs are key to future problem solving and to the choices that
landscape architects make in the process of designing, knowledge obtained
through case studies is very important to inform practice. Such knowledge also
serves as precedent-setting cases for designers when they consider new design
solutions and adopt new design tendencies. Each of the three studies is working
with a different number of cases. While the first study, which aimed to get an
overview of the state of the art and analyse the consequences of LSM in built
projects, is designed with 20 cases, the two later studies worked with fewer cases
but focused on a more in-depth analysis. This seems quite typical, as an
overview is needed in the beginning of a process. Here just a few key assessment
criteria are used to review a representative range of cases with a view to
identifying general trends. Focusing on only one or a few cases allows research
on the full complexity of a chosen case. This also depends of course on the
design of the research project as described in the conceptual framework of this
chapter. In the three presented studies, the selected cases predominantly reflect
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the ‘usual’ within the field in order to be able to extract, as far as possible,
generally valid statements.
All three studies seem to prove the suitability of using the notion of ‘wicked
problems’ to work with the urban water challenge. Especially in Studies 2 and 3,
the involvement of human actors plays a major role. This greatly contributes to
problem complexity and, unlike a laboratory set-up where studies are typically
reduced to a few parameters, research involving human actors in real-world
cases serves as an important setting for landscape architecture research.
Research is done, in such cases, by a transdisciplinary group that acknowledges
the nature of wicked problems as a premise for the research design. Based on
real-world cases, approaches including research through designing and design
experiments enable such research groups to divide research questions into
manageable parts. Looking for design solutions thus becomes as a series of
testing certain assumptions and hypotheses. Design-led studies are also based on
understandings where accepting complexity is the norm. We argue that real-
world settings result in real-world findings and real-world problem formulation.
Such research can reflect on a problem derived from practice, with the aim of
giving recommendations back to practitioners who, in this case, are addressing
the urban water challenge. We are thus working as ‘reflective practitioners’ who
observe and analyse, and who sometimes engage with the issue investigated.

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Figure 16.5
Based on Figure 16.2, this figure illustrates how the three studies presented in this chapter differ in focus
and research approach. Each study is represented by a different marking (asterisk, square, circle). The
dashed arrows indicate the span of scales covered by Study 2 and Study 3

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Figure 16.6
The different roles of the researcher in the three studies presented in this chapter

Figure 16.6 shows how the researcher’s role has changed in the different
studies, from that of a purely distant observer in Study 1, to a reflective designer
in Study 2 and, finally, to a facilitating experimenter in Study 3.
Taking different roles allows researchers to study issues of interest from
different perspectives. One result of being able to look at one thing from
different angles can be that researchers gain insights through getting a more
holistic view of a problem; this is achieved by taking a comprehensive look at
the three studies of this chapter together. Another aspect of interest is that, when
compared with research approaches commonly assumed in, say, natural science,
researchers of all three studies of this chapter needed to handle subjectivity. We
did so with different degrees of subjectivity. In the case of acting as a distant
observer, we took on the most ‘classic’ role as critical analysts. Without obvious
personal engagement and thus no feelings and strong personal preferences
involved, we aimed to keep the research transparent and replicable. Subjective
assessments, if gained through repeatable study processes, might well be
accepted as scholarly sound and publishable research. If, on the other hand,
researchers decide to engage with the design process themselves, they may well
get intense insight into the researched subject but, at the same time, might find
themselves needing to argue for wanting to include elements of subjectivity into
an otherwise objective study. Research that includes elements of subjectivity,
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generated through creative design input, might, even though the design process
is kept fully transparent, render a study with a lack of transferability, in
particular if it is a single case study, as seen in Study 2.
Researchers must be aware that any research including elements of
subjectivity is potentially more susceptible to external critique. We argue,
however, that if researchers state their intentions clearly, provide comprehensive
process documentation, and thoroughly reflect upon their own role as
researchers (and designers) and the potential impact of their role on research
results, the findings have much value for practitioners and the quality of the
findings very much resembles the practitioners’ experiences. We argue further
that these may very well be findings that are of much value for and in their
quality very close to practitioners’ experiences. Finally, in cases where
researchers take on, in one and the same study, two different roles, as done in
Study 2 described above, the researcher and designer duality must be accounted
for through and by the study design. While researchers, who are designers
themselves, are investigating the work of other designers and doing so by
looking at several designs in parallel, their study findings are expected to have
the highest possible level of objectivity. The approach and methods of Study 3 is
still not commonly applied for research purposes, and the inclusion of subjective
elements in it might need to be addressed in future studies, studies that are done
in a similar manner, but in different contexts and on other topics, and then
comparatively assessed in concerted reviews and meta-studies.
The specific characteristics of the design process presented in Studies 2 and 3
benefit from the hermeneutic qualities that are inherent to planning and
designing. Where interpretative elements are accepted it is not necessary to
define planning and designing as research activities that are seen in opposition
to, say, natural science. A design-based research paradigm would then rather be
a matter of including cooperation by and a combination of a number of different
fields in one study. In such studies, the design process is, at the same time,
studied as an ‘object’ and, simultaneously, used as a research method to generate
new knowledge. When considering the design process as a mode of translating
theory (e.g. on urban water management) into practice (Gänshirt 2007), and
when including retrospective design evaluation (e.g. Deming and Swaffield
2011), design-based research becomes a method that proves to be a valuable
means to approaching and understanding complex problems.
Furthermore, design experiments aid researchers who need to be working
dynamically across scales. This is a factor that is very important within urban
water management, and where the consideration of watersheds is often of
importance in understanding site-scale problems, and vice versa. Working in
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feedback loops that include small, intermediate and large-scale aspects is a
special competence that designers possess and that they feed into the process of
problem finding and problem solving. In our comparative study of twenty
different European LSM cases we were able to compare projects of a more or
less similar scale. Here scale is defined by the projects and thus mainly
administrative. Scale is critically reviewed, in Study 1, as part of amongst others
‘Water dynamics and dimensioning’. Dealing with LSM projects, the watershed
scale is always very important. The LSM projects need to integrate with the
whole watershed, for example in relation to runoff control or receiving water
body peak flows. However, the watershed scale is often larger than the
administrative site scale, yet out of the direct research focus when comparing the
designs ‘as built’. Having identified this as an issue, the following studies,
Studies 2 and 3, changed the focus towards a multi-level approach, considering
the design issues on the specific site scale in parallel to, for example, hydraulic
issues (hydraulic modelling, catchment management strategies, water
engineering), which are specifically important on the larger catchment scale.
In the examples above we, as researchers, also worked across temporal scales.
In our study comparing cases of built forms of LSM projects, the case selection
included a variety of projects that were in their early stages and others that had
reached mature stages. These different age examples were selected in order to be
able to analyse aspects of wear and tear and long-term maintenance. Working
across temporal scales proved to be very valuable. Where, on the other hand,
examples such as presented in the design experiment in Study 3, researchers are
able to only cover a ‘snapshot in time’, they are not able to consider effects that
long-term processes might have.
The planning and design approaches used in the presented studies were well
suited to foster collaboration across different disciplines and stakeholder types.
Working jointly on solving a planning problem led, in the studies presented
above, not only to agreeing on a joint aim and creating a common working
language, but also helped to define fields where further investigation is found to
be necessary.

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CONCLUSIONS
There still is an insufficient understanding of the kind of knowledge that
landscape architects need to have in order to successfully address the urban
water challenge. This chapter presents three studies that demonstrate how
landscape architecture contributes methods that can support research on urban
water issues. All three studies have helped to generate new knowledge in ways
that are closely linked to landscape architecture design traditions.
When looking at the three studies together, and in their chronological order,
readers may appreciate how we, the authors of this chapter, have ourselves
evolved as researchers through engaging with the process of doing research. In
this process we have dared to step out of the role of the purely descriptive and
analytical researcher. In our desire to confront pressing problems, we have
adopted an active and explorative role and used the designing process as a key
research method. Using this method we were able to address the urban water
challenge in close collaboration with ‘real-world’ partners, thus building bridges
across disciplinary and sectoral boundaries. Through using designing for
purposes of conducting research we have been able to generate new knowledge.
In conclusion, three specific issues can be highlighted. First, design research
benefits from using designed examples as precedents for new studies (see
Prominski – Chapter 12). Studying precedents can help to summarise existing
knowledge and provide a shared knowledge platform within and across
disciplines. This, in turn, can help to inform future decisions and thus speed up
the transition towards a more water sensitive urban environment. Second, design
research can help to overcome any standstill where rational thinking struggles to
define a problem or develop a solution in the face of uncertainty and complexity.
As such, new research paradigms, such as research through designing, can
overcome obstacles where classic deductive research methods fail to cope with
the complex nature of wicked problems. Third, landscape architectural research
approaches are well suited, by including processes of change, to actively
harnessing uncertainty.

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SUGGESTED FURTHER READING
This book chapter is based on the authors’ earlier research on LSM. For more
information about the three studies presented in this chapter please see the full
papers by Backhaus and Fryd (2012), Backhaus and Fryd (2013) and Backhaus
et al. (2012). For Study 2, see also Fryd et al. (2013).
Antje Backhaus expands on the role of landscape architecture in relation to the
urban water challenge in an essay in the bilingual German/English publication
‘Grüne Infrastruktur. Green Infrastructure’ (BDLA 2015).
A British SUDS Manual can be downloaded free of charge from: htt​-
p:/​/www​.cir​ia.​org/​Res​our​ces/​Fre​e_p​ubl​ica​tion​s/Su​DS_m​anu​al_​C75​3.as​px
Recommended research exploring the interface between landscape
architecture and water management includes the work by Kelly Shannon and
Bruno de Meulder in Vietnam and Belgium, Anuradha Mathur and Dilip da
Cunha in India and the United States, Bernardo Secchi and Paola Vigano in
Italy, and Antje Stokman, Hille von Seggern and Martin Prominski in Germany.
Christian Nolf, Fransje Hooimeijer and Liao Kuei-Hsien are also notable
researchers in this field, among many others.
Leading international designers linking landscape architecture and urban
water management include Kongjian Yu and Herbert Dreiseitl. The most recent
books describing their works are Designed Ecologies: The Landscape
Architecture of Kongjian Yu (Saunders 2012) and Waterscapes Innovation
(Dreiseitl and Grau 2014).
Landscape architecture plays an important role in ongoing urban water
management transition processes across the world. See for example Copenhagen
(e.g. Skt Kjelds Kvarter, htt​p:/​/ww​w.k​lima​kva​rte​r.d​k), Melbourne (e.g. Little
Stringybark Creek, htt​ps:​//ww​w.w​ate​rse​nsi​tiv​eci​tie​s.o​rg.​au), New Orleans (e.g.
Greater New Orleans Urban Water Plan, htt​p:/​/ww​w.l​ivi​ngw​ith​wat​er.​com​),
Rotterdam (e.g. Benthemplein, htt​p:/​/ww​w.r​ott​erd​amc​lim​ate​ini​tia​tiv​e.nl) and
Singapore (e.g. Bishan Park, htt​p:/​/ww​w.pu​b.g​ov.​sg/​abc​wat​ers). In April 2015,
China launched a national initiative on ‘Sponge Cities’ which initially provides
funding for pilot projects in sixteen cities.

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REFERENCES
Ahern, J. ( 2011) ‘ From fail-safe to safe-to-fail: Sustainability and resilience in the new urban world’,
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Backhaus, A. and Fryd, O. ( 2012) ‘ Analyzing the first loop design process for large-scale sustainable
urban drainage system retrofits in Copenhagen, Denmark’, Environment and Planning B:
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Backhaus, A. and Fryd, O. ( 2013) ‘ The aesthetic performance of urban landscape-based stormwater
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Deming, E.M. and Swaffield, S. ( 2011) Landscape Architectural Research: Inquiry, Strategy, Design,
Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley.
Dreiseitl, H. and Grau, D. ( 2014) Waterscapes Innovation, London/Hong Kong: DesignMedia Publishing.
Dreiseitl, H., Grau, D. and Ludwig, K.H.C., eds ( 2001) Waterscapes: Planning, Building and Designing
with Water, Basel: Birkhäuser Verlag.
Echols, S. and Pennypacker, E. ( 2008) ‘ From stormwater management to artful rainwater design’,
Landscape Journal, 27( 2), 268–290.
Etzkowitz, H. and Leydesdorff, L. ( 2000) ‘ The dynamics of innovation: From national systems and “mode
2” to a triple helix of university–industry–government relations’, Research Policy, 29( 2), 109–
123.
Fletcher, T.D., Shuster, W., Hunt, W.F., Ashley, R., Butler, D., Arthur, S., Trowsdale, S., Barraud, S.,
Semadeni-Davies, A., Bertrand-Krajewski, J.-L., Mikkelsen, P.S., Rivard, G., Uhl, M., Dagenais,
D. and Viklander, M. ( 2015) ‘ SUDS, LID, BMPs, WSUD and more: The evolution and
application of terminology surrounding urban drainage’, Urban Water Journal, 12( 7), 525–542.
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245.
Fryd, O., Jensen, M.B., Ingvertsen, S.T., Jeppesen, J. and Magid, J. ( 2010) ‘ Doing the first loop of
planning for sustainable urban drainage system retrofits: A case study from Odense, Denmark’,
Urban Water Journal, 7( 6), 367–378.
Fryd, O., Backhaus, A., Birch, H., Fratini, C.F., Ingvertsen, S.T., Jeppesen, J., Panduro, T.E., Roldin, M.
and Jensen, M.B. ( 2013) ‘ Water sensitive urban design retrofits in Copenhagen: 40% to the
sewer, 60% to the city’, Water Science and Technology, 67( 9), 1945–1952.

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Fünfgeld, H. and McEvoy, D. ( 2011) ‘ Framing climate change adaptation in policy and practice’,
Working Paper 1, Melbourne: Victorian Centre for Climate Change Adaptation Research.
Gänshirt, C. ( 2007) Werkzeuge für Idee: Einführung ins Architektonische Entwerfen , Berlin: Birkhäuser
Verlag.
Geldof, G.D. and Kluck, J. ( 2008) ‘ The Three Points Approach’, Proceedings from the 11th International
Conference on Urban Drainage, Edinburgh, Scotland, UK, available: htt​p:/​/we​b.s​be.​hw.​ac.​uk/​sta​-
ffp​rof​ile​s/b​dgs​a/1​1th​_I​nte​rna​tio​nal​_C​onf​ere​nce​_on​_Ur​ban​_Dr​ain​age​_CD​/IC​UD0​8/p​dfs​/36.pdf.
Hannula, M., Suoranta, J. and Vadén, T. ( 2005) Artistic Research: Theories, Methods and Practices,
Helsinki/Gothenburg: Helsinki Academy of Fine Arts and University of Gothenburg/ArtMonitor.
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Hintze, M. ( 2009) Personal communication, Allod Real Estate and Asset Management Company, Berlin
Karow Nord.
Hoyer, J., Dickhaut, W., Kronawitter, L. and Weber, B. ( 2011) Water Sensitive Urban Design: Principles
and Inspirations for Sustainable Stormwater Management in the City of the Future, 018530-
SWITCH, Berlin: Jovis Verlag.
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Index

Page numbers followed by f indicate figures.

Page numbers followed by n indicate note numbers.
Page numbers followed by t indicate tables.

Aarhus Convention on Access to Information 161

ABMs. See agent-based models
Access to Justice on Environmental Matters 161
Aesthetic Creation Theory 28
aesthetics 217–19
agent-based models (ABMs) 130
agriculture/agricultural: landscapes 38, 109, 161, 166; mechanised 131;
scientists 58; urban 200, 201f. See also Zürich case study
AHD. See Authorised Heritage Discourse
air pollution 263
Alnarp Rehabilitation Garden 253
Alport Valley case study 169–75; description of 169; long-term forest
management plan 170; results 172–3, 174f; study design and protocol 171–2,
171f, 172f; study participants 170–1; visual stimuli 170
American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA) 66, 91
Amiel, Henri Frédéric 211
Anderson, Sven Ingvar 287f
anemometer 276–7, 276f
Antrop, Marc 80
APIs. See application programming interfaces
application programming interfaces (APIs) 141
architect/architecture. See case studies; Delphi method; landscape architecture;
research; systematic review
arts: theory and 40–1, 46–9
ASLA. See American Society of Landscape Architects
Australia 48; National Heritage List 224; Throsby Park 228, 229f;
Wingecarribee Shire, New South Wales, Australia 224–31
Authorised Heritage Discourse (AHD) 211
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Backhaus, Antje x, 285–306
Bell, Simon x, 1–8, 11–23
Benthem, Roel 187
Berger, John 47
Berleant, A. 218
‘Big Data’ 44
Bijhouwer, Jan 187
blogs 154
Boerenverstand project 125–7; assignment and research question 125; methods
and materials 125–6; outcome 127; results 126
Böhme, Gernot 50
Borgdorff, Henk 191
Bosma, Koos x, 120–35
Bowring, Jacky 48
Boyle’s Law 41
British Mountaineering Council 171
Brown, Lancelot ‘Capability’ 11
Brown, Robert D. x, 263–84
Bruns, Diedrich x, 1–8, 11–23, 85–102, 136–60
Bryson, Bill 180
Bullock, A. 217–18
Burra Charter 217
Byrne, D. 211

Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE) 171

Campbell, Heather 76
Carter, Paul 48
case studies: Alport Valley case study 169–75; of an emerging body of theory
115; approach to research 299; based on types 114f; choosing the cases
108–10, 110f; comparison of 110–14, 111f, 112f; critical 109–10, 117;
definition of 107; embedded geographical cases 112, 113f; evidence versus
theory with 108; of exploratory nature 114–15; extreme 109; generalisation of
research and 108; identification of type of case under investigation 116;
I’DGO TOO 243–8; in landscape architecture 105–19; landscape based
stormwater management design projects 290–3, 291t, 292t; landscape based
stormwater management strategy in Copenhagen 291t, 293–6, 295f; L’DGO:
Inclusive Design for Getting Outdoors 237–43; matching to research question
114–15; multiple analyses of 110–12, 111f, 112f; nature of case study research
107–8; overview 105–6; paradigmatic 108; of particular landscape settings
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 114; percentage of papers reporting use of 94–5, 94t; pragmatic approach to
106; prototypical 109; purposive samples of 108, 117; selection of 108; social
media and 158; to test or challenge theoretical claims about complex
situations 115; theoretical 109, 110f; ‘Under the Sky’ 106; of urban water
challenge 289–303; Vanløse School design experiment 291t, 296–7, 297f,
298t; Wingecarribee Shire, New South Wales, Australia 224–31; within-case
comparisons 116; Zürich case study 164–9
CASP-19 241
Catholicism 129
CBC. See Choice-Based Conjoint studies
CELA. See Council of Educators in Landscape Architecture
Cerwonka, Allaine 48
China 213–14; China Principles document 217
Choice-Based Conjoint (CBC) studies 251, 251f
Christensen, K.S. 73
Christiaansen, Krijn 125
cities. design guidelines for 199–200; microclimates in 263–4; theoretical
foundation 265–7; thermally comfortable urvan environments 263–84. See
also microclimates
citizen science 138
client–designer–contractor 11–12
CMP. See Conservation Management Plan
commissioner–designer 11–12
concept: design 18–20, 19f; of landscape biography 121–3; research and 54–5;
social media and 138–42; of urban water 286–9; of virtual environments
162–3; of walking 179–81
conjoint analysis 248–53, 249f; questionnaire development 250–1, 251f; results
and scenario modelling options 252–253
Conservation Management Plan (CMP) 219, 220f
construction and maintenance 292t
constructivist landscape theory 144
Corner, James 50
Cosgrove, D.E. 212, 213
Council of Educators in Landscape Architecture (CELA) 87
CPRE. See Campaign to Protect Rural England
crowdsourcing 137–8
CRT. See cylindrical radiation thermometer
CSM. See walking, continuous/stop-motion walking
culture, in landscape meanings and values 211–34; aesthetics of 217–19;
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 analysis and evaluation of 223–4; assessment of landscape characteristics
222–3, 223t; conceptual framework 212–19; description of 212–14; heritage
and 215–17, 216t; history of ‘landscape’ 214–15; identification and
documentation of cultural landscape resources 222; overview 211–12;
planning model for heritage conservation management policy 220f;
Wingecarribee Shire, New South Wales, Australia 224–31
cylindrical radiation thermometer (CRT) 271–2, 272f

Dam, Torben x, 285–306

data analysis: in process research 30–1
data collection: in process research 29–30
DBSCAN. See density-based clustering algorithms
DBU. See Deutsche Bundesstiftung Umwelt
de Certeau, Michel 128
de Jonge, Nico 187
Delphi method 86–9; academic perspectives and 87; competencies of landscape
architect 88; defining characteristics of 86; description of 86, 87f;
development of 86; feedback on 88; general procedure of Delphi study 87f;
methodology of landscape architecture Delphi study 87–8; questionnaire
designed for 88; research domain results 89t; results of Delphi study 88–9,
99–100; subjects of study 87–8
Deming, Elen 49–50
Denmark: landscape based stormwater management strategy in Copenhagen
291t, 293–6, 295f; Vanløse School design experiment 291t, 296–7, 297f, 298t
dendrology 1
density-based clustering algorithms (DBSCAN) 148–9
de Roo, Gert 43–4
Descartes, Rene 48
design: conceptual 18–20, 19f; current meaning of research through 59–61;
definition and basic concept of 54–5; evolution of research through 56–9;
project design 16–22; projective 58–9; relevance to theory 49–51; research
and 11–14, 28–9, 54–64; research into, for and through 55–6; study and 28–9;
technical 20–2, 21f
design guidelines 194–208; challenges in 194; components of 206–7; definition
of 194–5; design research landscape 205–6; to help combine nature protection
and open space use 200–2; larger research landscape and 205; overview
194–5; process-orientated design of urban river spaces 196–9, 198f, 199f;
process to develop 203f; research about 206; for shrinking cities 199–200;
strengths and weaknesses of 204–5; theoretical framework 195–6
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Deutsche Bundesstiftung Umwelt (DBU) 199, 200
DFG. See German Research Foundation
Diefenthaller, I. 216
digital terrain model (DTM) 170
directive. See European Flood Directive; European Water Framework Directive
discipline. See landscape architecture; social media; theory, role in landscape
architecture
‘DIY Streets’ 245
DMs. See dynamic models
Dorling, Danny 44
DTM. See digital terrain model
Duchhart, Ingrid xi, 54–64
dynamic models (DMs) 130

Eckbo, Garrett 40
ECLAS. See European Council of Landscape Architecture Schools
ecology 196
ELC. See European Landscape Convention
emoticons 154
energy, theory of 266–7
environment. See cities; concept; health, landscape and; landscape architecture;
virtual environments
EU. See European Union
European Council of Landscape Architecture Schools (ECLAS) 2, 77, 87, 91
European Flood Directive 196
European Landscape Convention (ELC) 78, 161, 180
European Union (EU) 106, 130, 196; Horizon 2020 research programme 235
European Water Framework Directive 196
EUROQOL 241
experiments. See case studies; Denmark; systematic review; urban water,
challenge of; walking
explore. See case studies

Facebook 145, 154

fields. See landscape architecture; theory, role in landscape architecture
Flickr 151, 151t
Forestry Commission 171
forests. See Alport Valley case study
Forman, Richard T.T. 42
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Foucault, Michel 50
FP7 HERCULES project 130
Francis, M. 106
Frayling, Christopher 191
Freud, Sigmund 47
Friends of the Peak District 171
Frontiers of Architectural Research 5
Fryd, Ole xi, 285–306

GCC. See global climate change

Gehl, Jan 182
general research question (GRQ) 19
geographer/geography. See case studies; geographic information system; maps
geographic information system (GIS) 130
GeoNames 147
geo-social information 137
geo-social media 141
Gephi 154
German Nature Protection Law 202
German Research Foundation (DFG) 196
Germany: Ostwürttemberg using WebGIS technologies 142–4
Germ Theory of Disease 41
Gillespie, Terry J. xi, 263–84
GIS. See geographic information system
global climate change (GCC) 263, 265
Grahn, Patrik 253
Greffe, X. 214
Gros, Frédéric 180
GRQ. See general research question

Han, Feng 213–14

Hartig, Terry 42
health, landscape and 235–62; conjoint analysis of 248–53, 249f; I’DGO TOO
243–8; L’DGO: Inclusive Design for Getting Outdoors 237–43; overview
235–7; research methods for design of salutogenic landscapes 253–7; research
on environments that support outdoor access in ageing society 237–43;
residential streets 243–8
Hehl-Lange, Sigrid xi, 161–78
heritage management 131; planning model for heritage conservation
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 management policy 220f
high-bay racking 200, 201f
Historic Urban Landscape (HUL) concept 219, 232
Home Zone 245
Horizon 2020 research programme 18
horticulture 11, 66
Howard, Peter 76
HUL. See Historic Urban Landscape concept
humanities: theory and 40–1, 46–9
Husserl, Edmund 48, 180

ICOMOS. See International Council on Monuments and Sites

I’DGO TOO 243–8; additional measures used 246–7, 246f; other data analyses
and results 247–8; questionnaire analysis 247; questionnaire results 247;
recruitment of participants 245–6; research design 245; research questions
244; street design intervention 244–5
IFLA. See International Federation of Landscape Architects
IFPRA 27
Information Processing Theory 41–2
infra-red camera 274
infra-red thermometers (IRTs) 274
Ingold, Tim 182
integrity: in process research 32–3
interdisciplinary 5, 24, 25, 26, 58, 66, 68, 72, 80, 81, 100, 120, 122, 231, 255
International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS) 216
Internationale Bauaustellung (International Building Exhibition) 131
International Federation of Landscape Architects (IFLA) 87, 91
International Physical Activity Questionnaire (IPAQ) 254–5
International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN): Category V Protected
Landscapes 214
intervention: for street design 244–5
IPAQ. See International Physical Activity Questionnaire
IRTs. See infra-red thermometers
IUCN. See International Union for Conservation of Nature

Jackson, J.B. 49, 213

Jacobs, Jane 182
Jacobs, Peter 80–1
Japan 217
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Jeans, Dennis 213
Jellicoe, Sir Geoffrey 47
JoLA. See Journal of Landscape Architecture
Jonas, Wolfgang 191
Journal of Design Research 5
Journal of Environmental Engineering and Landscape Management 90
Journal of Landscape Architecture (JoLA) 5, 77, 90, 106
Journal of Landscape Ecology 90
Journal of Urban Design 5
justice 32, 43, 69, 78

Kaiser Meyer Olkin measure of sampling 247

Kamiya, Gary 65, 81
Kaplan, Rachel 41
Kaplan, Stephen 41
Kinder and High Peak Advisory Committee 171
knowledge 182; constructivist 43; dualism of 47–8
Kolen, Jan xi, 120–35
Kühn, Norbert 199
Kuhn, Thomas 50

landscape: definition of 180; descriptions of 38, 180; health and 235–62; history
of 214–15; representational models 39; rural 222, 223t; temporality of 49
Landscape and Ecological Engineering 90
Landscape and Urban Planning 5, 66, 90, 100
landscape architecture: academic versus project-based research 2, 11–23;
assessment of research priorities and quality 85–102; case study method of 70,
105–19; challenge of publication 65–84; constructivist landscape theory 144;
context of ‘scientification’ 54; culture, in landscape meanings and values
211–34; definition of 4; design guidelines 194–208; discipline versus
disciplinary field 51n1; educational process for 6; founders of 11; history of 1;
key themes in 70; methodology of systematic review 90–1; ‘mode 2’ 66;
multi-disciplinary origins of 2; overview 1–2; philosophy and 42–3; ‘post-
academic science’ 66; process approach to research in 17–18, 17f, 24–34;
professionals in the field 67; publication of research 65–84; purpose of 15;
relationship between research and design 54–64; research basis 68–70, 69f;
researcher 3–4; role of theory in 37–53; as a scholarly profession 71; social
media and 136–60; systematic review of papers in 90–9; technological
development for 12; thermally comfortable urban environments 263–84;
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 urban water challenge 285–306; virtual environments and 161–78; walking
and 179–93
landscape based stormwater management (LSM): description of 286; design
projects 290–3, 291t, 292t; strategy in Copenhagen 291t, 293–6, 295f
landscape biography 120–35; combined use of methods and sources for 123;
conceptual framework of 121–3; ‘dwelling perspective’ of 123–4; examples
using approach of 125–8; heritage management and 131; ‘historicising’
approach to 123; history of 120; human-made landscape and 123; next
developments of 129–32; overview 120; principles for using as a research
approach 123–4; rationale for using in landscape research 121; relevant
historical research and reflection of 124; sources and methods of 124–5; of
urban landscapes 128–9
Landscape Change Model 39
landscape character units (LCUs) 223–4
landscape ecology 42
Landscape Ecology 90
Landscape Education Foundation 106
Landscape History 90, 91
Landscape Institute 91
Landscape Journal 5, 90, 100
Landscape Online 90, 91
Landscape Planning & Urban Ecology 66
Landscape Research 5, 70, 90
Lange, Eckard xi, 161–78
LCUs. See landscape character units
L’DGO: Inclusive Design for Getting Outdoors 237–43; analyses of data 242–3;
focus groups 238–9; questionnaire administration 242; questionnaire
development 239–42, 239f; research design 238–42; research ethics 238;
research questions 237–8; results of 243; theoretical foundations of 237
Le Corbusier 56–7
Lefebvre, Henri 50
legislation: German Nature Protection Law 202
le Nôtre, André 11
LE:NOTRE Institute 106, 116
LE:NOTRE programme 106
Lenzholzer, Sanda xi, 54–64
Lewis, Peirce 213
LID. See low impact development
Lieberman, Arthur 42
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‘The Limes nowadays – A biography’ 127–8; assignment and research question
127; methods and materials 127; outcome 128; results 128
Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC) 154
LinkedIn 145, 146t
liquid-in-glass thermometer 273
liveability 29, 180
Living Reviews in Landscape Research 90
LIWC. See Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count
Lowenthal, David 213
low impact development (LID) 286. See also landscape based stormwater
management
Lyme disease 264
Lyotard, Jean-François 45

Macey, David 45
Macfarlane, Robert 180
Macquarie, Lachlan 228
management. See Alport Valley case study; case studies; culture, in landscape
meanings and values; Denmark; heritage management; landscape based
stormwater management; landscape biography; models; urban water,
challenge of
maps: of embedded geographical cases 113f; of identified hotspots and tourist
route densities 150f; of public input to landscape assessment 143f;
Wingecarribee Shire, New South Wales, Australia 225f
Martens, Conrad 228
Marxism 45, 47
material/materialist. See Boerenverstand project; ‘The Limes nowadays – A
biography’
McHarg, Ian 57
McHargian landscape theory 41
media 171–5, 171f, 172f, 174f
Meijering, Jurian xi, 85–102
Meinig, D.W. 215
Meining, Donald 213
mental 38, 40, 129, 141, 144, 186, 237
Merchant, Caroline 47–8
Merleau-Ponty, Maurice 48
Meyer, Elizabeth 46
microclimates 263; data collection 277–9; disease in 264; estimating 280;
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 instruments 278f; measurement 279–80; methods for measurement and
estimation of elements of 267–79; misunderstandings about 280–1; radiation
267–72; temperature and humidity 272–5, 272f; wind 276–9, 276f. See also
cities
models: agent-based 130; continuous/stop-motion walking 188f; digital terrain
170; dynamic 130; energy 267; of landscape 39; logic model of longitudinal
approach to study design 249f; planning model for heritage conservation
management policy 220f; virtual 165f; Wingecarribee Shire, New South
Wales, Australia study model 227f
Montens, Cathelijne 125
multi-disciplinary. See landscape architecture
Murphy, Michael D. 37–8

National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) 250

natural sciences: theory and 40–3
nature protection 200–2
Naveh, Nev 42
neighbourhood open space (NOS) 241
Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) 120
Netvizz 154
networking 136
New Zealand 48, 109, 110f, 111–12
NICE. See National Institute for Health and Care Excellence
Nicholson, Geoff 179–80
NodeXL 154
norms/normative 3, 13, 41, 45, 57, 70, 76, 108, 117, 153, 161, 195, 290, 293,
300
NOS. See neighbourhood open space
NWO. See Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research

observations 11, 16, 20, 28, 29, 37, 44, 46, 65–6, 73, 80, 95–6, 99, 111, 157,
190, 215, 222, 224, 228, 247–8, 253–4, 280, 288, 290, 292–3, 296
OCs. See online communities
Olmsted, Frederick Law 11
online communities (OCs) 155
OPENspace 247, 255
opinion mining 154
Orions, Gordon 43
Outstanding Universal Value (OUV) 217
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OUV. See Outstanding Universal Value

Pajek 154
PDNPA. See Peak District National Park Authority
Peak District National Park 169. See also Alport Valley case study
Peak District National Park Authority (PDNPA) 171
perspectives. See Delphi method; landscape biography
phenomenology theory 180–1
philosophy: in landscape architecture 42–3
‘Placebook Scotland’ 80
Plachter, H. 212–13
plants. benefits for 169; collecting expeditions for 11; ecological processes in
112; importing 48; innovative methods of planting 200; newly planted 164;
rare 144; species of 28–9; survival of 264. See also vegetation
positivism 42–3
Post Occupancy Evaluation 55
practitioners 1, 3, 4, 11, 27, 37, 46, 65–7, 71, 77–8, 90, 106, 128, 183, 194, 196,
204, 207, 218, 288, 296–7, 299–300, 302
process research: approach to 24–34; data analysis 30–1; data collection and
sampling 29–30; formulating a research question 27–8; integrity 32–3;
overview 17–18, 17f, 24–5; reporting 31–2; research design and study design
28–9; research methodology and process approach to 25–7
Prominski, Martin xi–xii, 180, 194–208
psychoanalytic theory 47
psychologist/psychology 6, 38, 40–2, 44, 55–6, 66, 85, 239, 255–6
psychometer 275
publication: challenge of 65–84; clarity in 76; direct quotations in 76–7;
emerging themes 79t; key areas of research 77–80; keywords in 70; literature
review 75; methods reporting 74, 74t; overview 65; peer-reviewed 76; quality
of research and research papers 71–7; research paper defined 74–5; research
‘voices’ of 76; standards for assessing quality of research 71, 71t; systematic
review of papers in landscape architecture 90–9; trends in published research
77; in the United Kingdom 65–8
Public Participation in Decision-Making 161
pyranometers 267, 268f; CNR1 270f; photocell 267, 268f
pyrgeometers 270, 270f

QALYS. See Quality Life Years

QDA Miner 154
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QOL. See quality of life
Quality Life Years (QALYS) 255
quality of life (QOL) 239–40, 239f
questions: formulating a research question 27–8; general research 19

radiation: shielding 273; solar 267–72; terrestrial 270–1, 272f; total 271–2
REF2014 72–3, 74
Relph, Edward 46
Renes, Hans xii, 120–35
reporting: in process research 31–2
research: about design guidelines 206; academic research versus project-based
research 2; academic versus non-academic 13; aspects of doing research 15f;
assessment of priorities and quality 85–102; basis 68–70, 69f; case study
approach to 299; challenge of publication 65–84; conceptual research design
18–20, 19f; current meaning of research through designing 59–61; definition
and basic concept of 54–5; Delphi method as research method 86–9; design
and 11–14, 54–64; designing a research project 16–22; emerging themes 79t;
evolution through designing 56–9; integrated approach to 15; into, for and
through design 55–6; key areas of 77–80; knowledge gain and 17; literature
review 75; matching case studies to research question 114–15; methodology
24; methods reporting 74, 74t; paper defined 74–5; peer-reviewed journals 5;
process approach to 24–34; process overview 17–18, 17f; project research
versus research project 13; proposal checklist 14t; quality of papers 71–7;
rationale for using landscape biography in landscape research 121; reporting
31–2; social media challenges and 147–8; standards for assessing quality of
71, 71t; technical research design 20–2, 21f; trends in published research 77;
types of landscape architecture studies 14–16; ‘voices of’ 76
researcher 3–4; roles of 301, 301f
Research Excellence Framework 71, 72
research through designing (RTD) 56, 60t; constructivist 61; current meaning of
59–61; evolution of 56–9; future of 61–2; transformative 61; types of 59, 60t
residential streets 243–8
Riley, Robert 42
Rio Declaration on Environment and Development 161
River. Space. Design 196–9
Roe, Maggie xii, 65–84
Rose, Gillian 47
Rössler, M. 212–13
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques 180
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S-A-D. See Survey-Analysis-Design
salutogenic landscapes, research methods for 253–7; as alternative research
methods 253; longitudinal research and 256–7; objectivity, subjectivity and
use of self-report measures 253–5; overview 253; questionnaires and area-
level versus individual data 255–6
sampling: percentage of papers reporting use of random or non-random sampling
method 95, 95t; procedure of 90; process in systematic review 92f; in process
research 29–30
Savannah Theory 43
Schlüter, Otto 213
scholarly/scholarship: in landscape architecture as a profession 71
Schön, Donald 195
Schultz, Henrik xii, 179–93
science: description of 40
‘scientification’ 54
scientism: theory and 43
SCOPUS: search query applied in 91t
Scottish Walkability Assessment Tool (SWAT) 247
SDI. See spatial data infrastructures
sentiment analysis 154
SentiStrength 154
SentiWordNet 154
Simon, Herbert 55
Sinclair, Ian 180
site history and context 292t
SMA. See social media analytics
SNA. See social network analysis
SNE. See supportiveness of the neighbourhood environment
social constructionists 141
social media 136–60. access rights and 153–4; big data and crowdsourcing
137–8; case studies and 158; classifications of 137; conceptual framework to
study role of 138–42; content of 137; definitions of 136–7; extended
transdisciplinary framework with interaction typology 140f; false information
and 157; methods for studying impacts of 153–4; outlook 157–8; overview
136; as ‘place’ and interface of communication 139–41; research methods
examples and 142–53; role in research 139, 139f, 140f; social discourse and
‘construction of reality’ 141–2; text options and 145; transdisciplinary
framework with 139f; validation of data 156–7; validity of 156; value of 157;
variety of 156; velocity of 137, 155; volume of 155. See also technology
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social media analytics (SMA) 153
social network analysis (SNA) 153
social sciences: theory and 40–1, 43–6
sociobiology 43
solar radiation 267–70; access to 264; estimating 268–70; measurement of 267,
268f
SOS. See Statement of Significance
space 163; accessibility of 190–1; open space use 200–2; urban river 196–9,
198f, 199f
spatial data infrastructures (SDI) 129–30
specific research questions (SRQs) 19
SPSS. See Statement of Significance
SRQs. See specific research questions
Stallybrass, O. 217–18
Statement of Significance (SOS) 224
Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) 242
Steinitz, Carl 58
Stemmer, Boris xii, 136–60
Stigsdotter, Ulrika 253
Stokman, Antje 196
stormwater accentuation 292t, 293
Studies in the History of Gardens & Designed Landscapes 90
SUDS. See sustainable urban drainage systems
supportiveness of the neighbourhood environment (SNE) 242
Survey-Analysis-Design (S-A-D) 39
sustainable urban drainage systems (SUDS) 286
Swaffield, Simon xii, 49–50, 70, 105–19
SWAT. See Scottish Walkability Assessment Tool
Switzerland: Zürich case study 164–9
systematic review: of case studies 116–17; formulation of research question
codes 92–3; imagery as data source 99; methodology of 90–1; overview of
sampling process 92f; of papers in landscape architecture 90–9; papers not
following basic scientific reporting structure 99; percentage of papers related
to a particular research domain 97, 98t; percentage of papers reporting
quantitative and qualitative analysis of data 96–7, 97t; percentage of papers
reporting research objective, question or hypothesis 93, 94t; percentage of
papers reporting research objective or question 93, 94t; percentage of papers
reporting use of case study, experiment or other study design 94–5, 94t;
percentage of papers reporting use of random or non-random sampling
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 method 95t; percentage of papers reporting use of various data collection
methods 95–6, 96t; ecommendations 98–9; results of 93, 94t, 95t, 96t, 97t,
98t; sampling collection codes 93; search query applied in SCOPUS 91t

Taylor, Ken xii, 211–34

technology: for landscape architecture 12; in landscape biography 129–30. See
also social media
temperature and humidity 272–5, 272f; air temperature 273, 274t; electronic
sensors for 273; humidity 275; surface temperature 274
terrain, changes in 292t, 293
Theile, Simone xii, 136–60
the Netherlands 130; Amsterdam tourism behaviour 148–53, 149t, 150f, 151t;
Boerenverstand project 125–7; ‘The Limes nowadays – A biography’ 127–8;
Zuid-Holland 145–8, 146t
theory, role in landscape architecture 37–53; description of 37–9; as a discipline
and profession 39–40; evidence versus 108; overlapping fields in 69f;
procedural 40; relationship to natural sciences, social sciences, and arts and
humanities 40–1; relevance to design 49–51; scientism and 43
theory of energy 266–7
thermometers: infra-red 274; liquid-in-glass 273
Thompson, Catharine Ward xiii, 42, 235–62
Thompson, Ian H. xii, 37–53
3D. See three dimensional landscape visualization
three dimensional (3D) landscape visualization 162
Tilden, F. 221
Tobi, Hilde xiii, 1–8, 11–23, 24–34, 85–102
Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus 43
trans-disciplinary 3, 58, 121, 158, 207
transformation. See research through designing
Twitter 145, 146t, 154

UCINET 154
UHI. See urban heat island
‘Under the Sky’ 106
UNESCO. See United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization
United Kingdom: Alport Valley case study 169–75; emerging themes identified
in 78–9, 79t; National Institute for Health and Care Excellence 250; research
publication 65–8
United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO):
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 World Heritage Area 112, 122, 131, 232
urban heat island (UHI) 274t
urbanism 56–7
urban river spaces 196–9, 198f, 199f
urban water, challenge of 285–306; case studies 289–303, 300f, 301f; conceptual
framework 286–9, 289f; design process 287, 287f; landscape based
stormwater management design projects 290–3, 291t, 292t; landscape based
stormwater management strategy in Copenhagen 291t, 293–6, 295f; overview
285–6; Vanløse School design experiment 291t, 296–7, 297f, 298t
Uzzell, D. 221

van den Brink, Adri xiii, 1–8, 11–23, 24–34, 54–64, 85–102
van Etteger, Rudi xiii, 179–93
van Lammeren, Ron xiii, 136–60
Vanløse School design experiment 291t, 296–7, 297f, 298t
vegetation 11, 124, 164, 170, 199–200, 205, 230, 252–4, 267, 274–5, 277, 290.
See also plants
vernacular 38, 215
virtual environments 161–78; Alport Valley case study 169–75; comparison of
dynamic movement and static representation 163–75; conceptal framework of
162–3; history in landscape architecture 162; models 165f; overview 161–2;
research question and hypothesis 163–4; space and 163; three dimensional
landscape visualization 161; Zürich case study 164–9
Volunteered Geographic Information 137
von Seggern, Hille 180, 181

walking 179–93; conceptual framework 179–81; continuous/stop-motion

walking 186–9, 188f, 190; engaging with the landscape 182–9; interplay of
walking modes 184–5, 184f; overview 179; reflection and 189–91;
‘strollology’ experiments 180; wandering-method 183–6, 184f
water. See urban water, challenge of
water dynamics 292t
water sensitive urban design (WSUD) 286. See also landscape based stormwater
management
WebGIS platform 142
Weddle, Arnold 66
Whyte, William 182
wildlife 264
Williams, Raymond 47
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Wilson, E.O. 43
wind 276–9, 276f; estimating 277; measurement of 276–7
Wingecarribee Shire, New South Wales, Australia 224–31; context 225–6;
documentation, assessment, and analysis 228–31, 229f; location of 225f;
paddock 230f, 231; Portion Plans 228; study method 226–8, 227f
WordStat 154
World Heritage Area 112, 122, 131, 232
World Meteorological Organization 263
WSUD. See water sensitive urban design
Wylie, J. 215

Zeisel, John 57
Zürich case study 164–9; dynamic walkthroughs 164, 166f; results 167–8, 167f;
static images 164, 165f; study design and protocol 166–7; study participants
164–6; visual stimuli 164

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