Abstract
In the landscape, beginnings and endings overlap. Healthy landscapes are ecosystems, and they survive by constant change. In a self-sustaining landscape, marsh becomes meadow becomes forest, then returns to meadow after fires, or even to marsh after floods. Individual plants and animals die, but the community—the landscape—lives on through a constant “recycling” process.
If you are thinking a year ahead, sow seed. If you are thinking ten years ahead, plant trees. If you are thinking one hundred years ahead, educate the people.
—Chinese proverb
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Notes
- 1.
Edward Tenner, Why Things Bite Back: Technology and the Revenge of Unintended Consequences (New York: Vintage, 1996). Tenner is a former science and history editor at Princeton University Press. His lively account of technology proves you should be careful about what you wish for.
- 2.
A. Phillips, “International Policies and Landscape Protection,” in Landscape and Sus-tainability, ed. J. F. Benson and M. H. Roe (London: Spon Press, 2000). Other chapters in this book rein-force the concept that landscapes (often viewed bioregionally) are unifying constructs within which sustainable policies have the greatest chance at success.
- 3.
Arthur Neslen and Karl Mathiesen, “China, EU, and Canada to Take Lead on Climate at Montreal Meeting,” Climate Home News, 13 Sep 2017, www.climatechangenews.com/2017/09/13/china-eu-canada-take-lead-climate/; Lisa Friedman and Brad Plumer, “U.S. Governors at U.N. Assembly: ‘You Have Allies’ on Climate Change,” New York Times, 18 Sep 2017, www.nytimes.com/2017/09/18/climate/climate-change-unga-governors.html.
- 4.
P. H. Ray and S. R. Anderson, The Cultural Creatives: How 50 Million People Are Changing the World (New York: Three Rivers Press, 2000). See also James Richards, “Placemaking for the Creative Class,” LAM, Feb 2007, 32.
- 5.
Malcolm Gladwell, The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference (New York: Back Bay Books, 2000).
- 6.
Lao Tzu. Tao Te Ching, translated by Gia-fu Feng and Jane English. (New York: Vintage, 1997). “Deal with problems when they are small” is a central tenet of this Taoist classic.
- 7.
This concept can be studied in detail through the “soft” martial arts, such as aikido; I have been teaching this discipline for many years and apply it frequently to ecological concepts as well.
- 8.
James Steele, Sustainable Architecture: Principles, Paradigms, and Case Studies (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1997), 244.
- 9.
For a summary, see Steele, Sustainable Architecture, chapter 1. Construction-specific recommenda-tions were in section 4 of the original report.
- 10.
Sonja Bisbee Wulff, “CSU Students Learn Sustainable Landscape Design at Tropical Re-sort,” Fort Collins Coloradoan, 12 Jul 1999, A5.
- 11.
For those deeply interested in the difficulties of defining or communicating about the nature/culture “split,” see K. Sorvig, “Nature/Culture/Words/Landscapes,” Landscape Journal 21, no. 2 (2002): 1–14. Clearer communication about these issues is ever more essential, even in the most pragmatic landscape or planning practice.
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© 2018 Kim Sorvig and J. William Thompson
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Sorvig, K., Thompson, J.W. (2018). Sustaining Principles, Evolving Efforts. In: Sustainable Landscape Construction. Island Press, Washington, DC. https://doi.org/10.5822/978-1-61091-811-4_13
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