Community Essay: What do we mean by sustainable landscape?

As an academic working in the field of landscape design and planning, I continually encounter references to the idea of a “sustainable landscape.” It is a concept of growing significance. For example, the European Landscape Convention, which has now been widely adopted by governments in Europe, refers twice to the role of landscape in sustainable development and also to the sustainable protection, management, and/or planning of landscapes. The term is routinely used by educators, private practitioners, researchers, consultants, and government officials who tend to assume a common understanding of its meaning. Yet the idea of a “sustainable landscape” often remains undefined, or is defined in relation to specific applications and geographical contexts. Conceptions differ significantly between “old world” and “new world” landscapes. Professionals working in landscape architecture, planning, and engineering prioritize different aspects of sustainability as do researchers and academics depending on whether their emphasis is on landscape science, design, management, planning, or history. I feel passionately about landscape and believe that intelligent decisions about its future are pivotal to sustainable development. This essay does not pretend to be a definitive statement on the nature of “sustainable landscape,” but I hope that it will provoke further thought about what the concept might mean both in theory and practice