Environment, ethics, and design: An inquiry into the ethical underpinnings for a contemporary Muslim environmentalism and its environmental design implications

In Saudi Arabian urban landscapes, and across the Muslim world, negligence and the displacement of symbols of the natural reflect an inability amongst the public to find relevance, within the predominant development paradigm, to the Islamic ideals about nature, landscape, city, home, and garden. It also highlights the discontinuity between the Muslims\u27 evolving scholarship on environment, on the one hand, and contemporary developments in the theory and practice of environmental planning and design on the other. Building on the dynamic nature of Islam as a framework for thought and life, I conduct a basic rereading of some relevant Islamic precepts. I look for intimations in support of a higher sensitivity towards nature and environment and still relevant to contemporary living. This then serves as a platform for generating a comprehensive, but by no means exhaustive, list of principles and themes for urban landscape design. I present these as useful tools to revive a positive attitude towards the environment and to engender a new sensibility, for designers, that captures the essence of tradition while remaining committed to its postmodern context. The style of the inquiry and the abstract nature of design implications I supply help retain the potential for wider applicability. Because those themes and principles are at the seams of tradition and contemporaneity, the categories for the debate on the environment are derived accordingly. I, therefore, preface this inquiry with a survey of the historical shifts in the idea of nature in Western thought and the frustrations of the prevailing paradigms of modernism. I use examples, wherever feasible, to underscore the significance of urban-natural landscape as catalyst of values and ideas. The final product of the study depicts actual and potential applications for the aforementioned set of ecological design principles and themes in the recent experience of Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. I present and critique two landscapes, representing different planning mindsets, scales, and contexts. The conclusions use the findings of this exercise to point out a future direction for local environmental design thinking and practice