Managing Change in the Landscape: A Synthesis of Approaches for Ecological Planning

Abstract

The field of ecological planning has expanded vastly in the past four decades. The expansion has occurred, not only in terms of the type, scale, and scope of issues it addresses, but also in the diversity of approaches currently in use. Existing information on approaches and methods in ecological planning is not organized in a systemic and coherent fashion to readily illuminate theoretical-methodological issues inherent when one approach is favored over the other. Sustained design, planning, and management of landscapes depend largely on how we understand, evaluate, and interpret landscapes. This article isolates five key contemporary approaches to ecological planning, advances a critical synthesis of the approaches, and prescribes situations when to favor one approach rather than another in balancing ecological concerns with human use. Each approach offers an alternative perspective on how to best balance ecological concerns with human use. This article argues that despite the differences among the approaches, significant overlap exists. In practice, the approaches draw on relevant principles from each other. The article concludes that no approach itself can address the scope and complexity of ecological planning problems. Planners and landscape architects should adopt the strong but workable features of all the approaches, as needed.