A Research Agenda for Landscape Studies of Planning

Elgar Research Agendas outline the future of research in a given area. Leading scholars are given the space to explore their subject in provocative ways, and map out the potential directions of travel. They are relevant but also visionary.

This timely Research Agenda explores the complex and contested role that landscape plays in planning. It promotes theoretically driven, pluralistic research to enrich understanding of the landscape-planning interplay, examining how the broader discipline of landscape studies can complement and critique the dominant field of landscape science.

An expert, multidisciplinary and international team of authors discuss the centrality of landscape in modern socio-environmental conflicts and advocate for landscape to be situated and studied as a matter of concern in planning. Using innovative case studies, such as the attempts to master landscapes to defend against flooding in New Orleans and post-fire landscapes in Sweden, they illustrate the importance of studying this area in an ‘undisciplined’ manner beyond the limits of contemporary academic discourse. Ultimately, this book demonstrates how a broader and more interdisciplinary approach to landscape studies can help to conceptualize current landscape issues and conflicts as well as identifying future solutions.

Students and scholars of landscape studies and environmental and landscape planning will greatly benefit from this pioneering Research Agenda. It is also a key resource for those studying architecture and human geography.