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Workshop Proposal

Summary
Introduction
Specialist meeting format
Objectives of the workshop
Relationship to other activites
Results of prior NSF support
References

Summary

We propose to conduct a workshop in the late summer of 2000 that will bring together representatives of the disciplines interested in landscape change, drawn from both the investigative sciences, such as geography, and the design disciplines, such as landscape architecture. Our purposes are to promote the building of a collaborative research community; to develop a joint research agenda; and to facilitate the exchange of ideas. We present arguments for selecting this particular theme and combination of disciplines at this time. The workshop steering committee will be chaired by a geographer (Goodchild) and a landscape architect (Fritz Steiner of Arizona State University). It will address its major objectives in the context of four themes: information technologies, decision making, landscape perception and assessment, and environmental and social sciences. The workshop will be structured as a series of plenary presentations, breakout discussions, and plenary discussion following the model developed since 1988 by the National Center for Geographic Information and Analysis. Findings of the workshop will be published in the form of a report, and other methods of disseminating findings will also be exploited.

Introduction
Workshops that bring together 20 to 40 scientists for periods of 2 to 3 days have proven very effective at achieving a range of goals. They can be excellent mechanisms for cross-fertilization between disciplines, by allowing scientists with different perspectives to exchange ideas in an intensive mix of formal and informal settings. They can be useful mechanisms for community building, by facilitating relationships between scholars that often survive and evolve into productive long-term collaborations. They can also be effective tools for promoting the setting of research agendas, and for facilitating exchanges between the consumers and producers of research (for example, they have been used to exchange research results between scientists as producers, and software developers as consumers).

Since its inception in 1988, the National Center for Geographic Information and Analysis has organized roughly 30 such workshops, or specialist meetings. The model formula was defined in the original NCGIA proposal, and has evolved since then based on experience and feedback. 19 specialist meetings were held under the original NCGIA cooperative agreement (SES 88-10917), and a further 10 under the Varenius cooperative agreement (SBR 96-00465). The role of each meeting in community building and agenda setting is documented in the meeting reports, and summarized in the NCGIA Annual Reports, all of which are available on the NCGIA web site www.ncgia.org or in hard copy from NCGIA. Further details on the specialist meeting format are provided below.

We propose to conduct a specialist meeting focused on the design aspects of landscape change. Specifically, we wish to promote a dialog between practitioners in the landscape design disciplines, primarily landscape architecture, and researchers in a variety of related disciplines. All three of the motivations described above are relevant: we aim to foster cross-fertilization, by bringing together professionals with a range of perspectives on the same issues; community building, by initiating long-term collaborations; and agenda setting, by facilitating a negotiation between the design disciplines whose focus is on landscape intervention, and other disciplines whose primary focus is on the scientific investigation of aspects of landscape.

We believe that landscape change offers a timely and compelling opportunity to explore the relationships between scientific investigation, the development of policy, and the practice of intervention and design. Landscape change is high on the public agenda, in issues of urban sprawl, environmental sustainability, and quality of community life. Landscape architecture and urban planning have long been recognized as academic disciplines, based on the systematic study of practice and the education of new generations of practitioners, and have a complex and evolving relationship to disciplines that are dominated by basic research rather than by a focus on normative implementation.

In 1967 Ian McHarg initiated an earlier dialog between landscape architecture and the environmental sciences, by obtaining funding from the Ford Foundation to recruit a faculty of natural scientists into the Department of Landscape Architecture at the University of Pennsylvania to "integrate their perceptions into a holistic discipline applied to the solution of contemporary problems" (McHarg, 1996, p. 192). The notion that one can practice landscape architecture by integrating the views of soil scientists, hydrologists, ecologists, climatologists, etc., echoes the multi-layered view of geography that McHarg did much to popularize with his Design with Nature (McHarg, 1969), and has been important in the building of many environmental programs.

Much has changed since 1967. First, the multi-layered model that McHarg experimented with using transparent overlays has evolved into the technology of geographic information systems (GIS; see Foresman, 1998, for a history of the development of GIS, and see Longley et al., 1999, for a comprehensive review of GIS), a collection of tools that support the handling and manipulation of vast amounts of digital geographic data. Landscape architects are now routinely trained in the use of GIS. Moreover, models and methods of analysis developed by researchers in related disciplines are now readily executed within GIS environments, providing a more effective connection between basic research and practice. For example, it is now easy for a landscape architect investigating the impacts of a project on groundwater to make use of an array of sophisticated groundwater modeling tools, all embedded in commonly available GIS packages.

Second, new disciplines and subdisciplines have emerged to conduct research in areas that are essential to the design process. They include environmental perception, landscape assessment, the human dimensions of global change, land use analysis, and land conversion modeling.

Third, the growth of information technologies has drawn attention to information as a commodity that is essential to the design process. Decision making is now seen as an enterprise involving many stakeholders, in which information plays a vital role. There is interest in developing GIS and spatial decision support systems that serve the needs of all participants in the decision process (see, for example, the work on Public Participation GIS under the Varenius project, Craig et al., 1999), and the Federal Geographic Data Committee's six Community Demonstration Projects (http://www.fgdc.gov/nsdi/docs/cdp.html) are aimed at demonstrating the value of geographic information in planning at the community level.

These trends have shifted the research base significantly. Whereas in 1967 it was the environmental sciences that were seen by McHarg as the primary producers of research to support enlightened landscape architecture, by 1999 the relevant producers are as likely to be geographic information scientists, social psychologists, behavioral geographers, or decision theorists. The same basic need remains, however-to develop a dialog between basic researchers and design professionals, in the interests of cross-fertilization of ideas, development of collaborations, and negotiation of a research agenda that is both useful to design professionals and interesting and stimulating to basic researchers.

Specialist meeting format

We propose to hold a specialist meeting in the late summer of 2000 in Santa Barbara, to bring together specialists in the landscape design disciplines-landscape architecture and regional planning-with specialists in the environmental and social sciences, the decision and information sciences, and the landscape sciences (landscape perception, landscape ecology). The meeting will be organized by a Steering Committee of prominent practitioners and scientists whose interests represent many of the disciplines that will be represented at the meeting. The following individuals have already agreed to serve on the Steering Committee, and short biographical details are provided for each:

Susan Crow (Product Specialist with Environmental Systems Research Institute (ESRI), and faculty affiliate to the Community and Regional Development Division of the Institute of Government at The University of Georgia)

Jack Dangermond (President of Environmental Systems Research Institute, a leader in GIS software, with Masters degrees in Urban Planning and Landscape Architecture from the University of Minnesota and Harvard University respectively)

Tom Evans (Assistant Professor of Geography at Indiana University and Research Associate at the Center for the Study of Institutions, Population and Environmental Change, with research interests in modeling population-environment relationships, demography, GIS, and satellite remote sensing)

Susan Everett (Executive Director of the Landscape Architecture Foundation and a Fellow of the American Society of Landscape Architects)

Michael Goodchild (Professor of Geography at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and Director of the Center for Spatially Integrated Social Science at the Santa Barbara site of the National Center for Geographic Information and Analysis)

Doug Johnston (Director of the Geographic Modeling Systems Lab, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign)

Mary Kihl (Associate Dean and Director of the Herberger Center in the College of Architecture and Environmental Design, Arizona State University)

Marguerite Madden (Associate Director of Environmental Science at the Center for Remote Sensing and Mapping Science, Dept. of Geography, University of Georgia. Her research interests are geographic information systems, remote sensing, and landscape ecology)

E. Bruce MacDougall (Professor of Landscape Architecture and Regional Planning, Adjunct Professor of Geography, and Director of the Office of Geographic Information and Analysis, University of Massachusetts, Amherst)

Laura Musacchio (Assistant Professor in the School of Planning and Landscape Architecture and Center for Environmental Studies (CAP LTER Project) at Arizona State University. Her research focuses on landscape change in urban watersheds and riparian systems)

Joan Nassauer (Professor of Landscape Architecture in the School of Natural Resources and Environment, University of Michigan, she conducts research in landscape perception, landscape ecology, and watershed management)

Forster Ndubisi (Professor of Landscape Architecture at Washington State University and President of the Council of Educators in Landscape Architecture)

James Palmer (Associate Professor of Landscape Architecture at the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry, Syracuse, NY. His resesrch interests lie in public landscape perceptions, professional landscape assessments, and GIS models of these perceptions)

James Sipes (Landscape architect with Jones & Jones, Seattle, with extensive experience in academic positions and computing editor of Landscape Architecture)

Frederick Steiner (Professor and Director of the School of Planning and Landscape Architecture, Arizona State University. His research interests include applied landscape ecology, ecological planning and design, and land suitability analysis)

Carl Steinitz (Alexander and Victoria Wiley Professor of Landscape Architecture and Planning, teaching at the Harvard Graduate School of Design since 1966. His interests are reflected in his teaching and research on landscape change, methods of landscape analysis, visual quality, and landscape planning and design)

Monica Turner (Professor in the Department of Zoology, University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her research interests include landscape ecology, natural disturbance dynamics, land-use change, and simulation modeling)

Thomas Woodfin (Associate Professor of Landscape Architecture at Texas A&M University. His research interests include GIS in land planning decision-making, cartographic expression of economic landscape systems, and development of the capitalist world-system)

The Steering Committee will be co-chaired by Fritz Steiner and Michael Goodchild. It will be responsible for general oversight, and for selecting the participants in the workshop.

Participants will be selected by a dual process, following NCGIA practice. An open call will be issued at least six months prior to the meeting, through email list servers and open WWW sites, and in print media where possible. Respondents will be asked to provide a) a short resume and b) a two-page statement of their interests in and positions on the topic of the workshop. Responses will be circulated among the steering committee, and participants will be selected using the following criteria:

1. Ensuring representation of traditionally under-represented groups;

2. Providing opportunities for young scholars;

3. Ensuring adequate coverage of the disciplines and perspectives of relevance to the workshop; and

4. Ensuring a broad representation from the producers of decision support software (only ESRI is represented on the Steering Committee).

In addition, the Steering Committee will identify key individuals to be invited to the workshop, based on the same criteria, in order to supplement the open call. Invited participants will also be required to provide resumes and position papers.

Once the participant list is finalized, approximately three months before the meeting, it will be posted, along with the resumes and texts of the position papers received from all participants, on a public NCGIA WWW site, with cross-links to other key sites.

The meeting will last three full days, and will be organized according to the four themes discussed below: information technologies, decision making, landscape perception and assessment, and environmental and social science. Each theme will be allocated one half day; the first half day will be allocated to introductions, and the last to developing a final consensus.

The four major sections of the meeting will be structured along similar lines. Each will begin with a keynote presentation, given by an expert in the area of the theme and summarizing the state of scientific knowledge and design practice. If no single individual can be found to present both perspectives for a particular theme, then we will identify two, one an expert in design practice and the other in scientific knowledge. The keynote presentation(s) will be followed by open plenary discussion, and then the participants will break into smaller groups for more intensive discussion. The section will end with a plenary discussion for presentation of small group findings and further discussion.

Besides the plenary and small group sessions, participants will have ample opportunity to interact less formally during breaks and meals.

Following the meeting, the Steering Committee will develop a report, to be published on the meeting WWW site and made available in hard copy. Steps will be taken to ensure its widespread availability in the appropriate communities. In addition, we will define additional mechanisms for dissemination of workshop findings in abbreviated and elaborated form, through newsletters and special issues of journals respectively.

Objectives of the workshop

We wish to achieve a range of objectives at the workshop, within the three goals described above-cross-fertilization, community building, and research agenda setting-and in the context of the four themes. Of course many combinations of disciplines can make strong cases for workshops of this nature. We believe several points make a compelling case for this particular combination at this time:
  • The workshop will bring the investigative sciences that deal with landscape change together with the landscape design disciplines. Thus the proposed dialog will be between disciplines already firmly established in the academy, but with very different perspectives on the same phenomena.


  • As noted earlier, landscape change and place-based decision-making are currently high on the public agenda.


  • The discipline of landscape architecture has long recognized the constructive tension that exists between investigative science and interventionist design, and its familiarity with these issues is valuable to scientists who do not normally address the normative implementation of their results.


  • The topic of landscape change offers an excellent opportunity for a dialog of this nature.
Several general questions will be addressed at the workshop:
  • What basic research issues are raised by the call for "smart growth", "sustainable communities", and "livable communities"? What do these terms imply about the need for knowledge in the relevant social and environmental sciences, the decision sciences, the information sciences, and landscape perception, and what gaps exist in our current knowledge?


  • What are the roles of industry, government agencies, professional societies, and foundations in promoting, funding, and conducting research in landscape change? What mechanisms might foster greater collaboration with the academic sector?

  • What are the best structures for conducting multidisciplinary research in this area, and for integrating multidisciplinary perspectives? Do adequate structures already exist, or is there need for new ones?


  • What specific research needs to be undertaken under each of the four themes? What research issues should have highest priority?


  • What previous efforts among the design disciplines have attempted to establish research agendas (e.g., Palmer et al., 1984), and are they in need of updating?


  • What do we know about integrating basic research and scientific knowledge accumulation with prescriptive intervention and normative design? What do we know both in general terms, and specific to landscape change?


  • What benefits would be gained from designating a set of communities as long-term research sites, comparable to the Long Term Ecological Research sites sponsored by NSF, and now extended to include urban and marine ecology?


  • What changes should be made in the curricula of the design disciplines, notably landscape architecture, to reflect recent advances in the four themes of the workshop? What is the state of pre-college education in this area?
Specific issues related to the four themes are discussed in the next sections.

Information technologies

Geographic information technologies have had enormous impact on the process of decision making over the past two decades. One of their attractions is the creation of an audit trail-without a clear record of how a decision was made, it is easy to accuse the process of being arbitrary and capricious. Another attraction lies in the ease with which digital information can be communicated and shared with many stakeholders, through the WWW or simple map-making software. Of course there are many counter-arguments (see, for example, Pickles, 1995), but the popularity of GIS among regulatory agencies is indisputable.

By formalizing geographic data in a database and by capturing aspects of the decision process in an audit trail, GIS allows us to begin to address questions of the role of information in decision making:
  • What levels of spatial, thematic, and temporal detail are needed to inform effective design?


  • How can the benefits of data be estimated and compared to the costs of data acquisition?


  • How do the limited representations possible in today's GIS, and in digital systems generally, impact the decision process and the ability of individuals and groups to express their views?


  • How can alternative methods of data acquisition, sketching, and other design tools be incorporated into GIS?


  • What changes are needed in today's GIS to facilitate public participation in decision making?
Many of these issues have already been discussed in GIS-centered workshops on public participation GIS and related topics. The workshop will bring experts in these research areas together with design experts to build better collaborations between the two communities, and to negotiate a research agenda that satisfies the needs of both. We will collaborate with the National Center for Geographic Information and Analysis to publicize the workshop and to ensure appropriate participation.

Decision making

The decision sciences focus on formal models of the decision making process, and their knowledge is clearly of importance in the design aspects of landscape change. We will solicit participation from this community in the proposed workshop, working through partnerships with appropriate agencies, including the National Center for Environmental Decision Making Research.

Specific questions to be addressed at the workshop include:
  • What is the state of knowledge with respect to decision making by communities, and what has been the pattern of success and failure among the design disciplines in applying this knowledge to landscape change?


  • What can be done to increase awareness of this knowledge among the design disciplines, specifically landscape architecture and regional planning?


  • What gaps exist in our current knowledge that must be filled to improve the practice of landscape architecture and regional planning?

Landscape perception and assessment

Landscape perception is recognized as a significant subfield in several disciplines, notably geography. We will ensure adequate representation from this community at the workshop, working through partnership with the relevant specialty groups of the Association of American Geographers and noted leaders in the field.

Specific questions to be addressed include:
  • What is the state of theory regarding human behavior in response to landscape change, and the role of landscape in perception and attitude formation? Do certain groups of people develop different attachments to landscape that affect their way of life?


  • What economic effects are attributable to landscape change?


  • What do we consider when deciding whether a landscape is "healthy", "livable", or "sustainable"?


  • What is the stability of human landscape perceptions (e.g., Palmer, 1997)? How do changes in the environment affect our perceptions? Do we acclimate or adapt to such changes, or do they change our quality of life?


  • Are there ways that landscape assessments are used by one cultural group to control another cultural group? To what extent are landscape assessments objective science or cultural interpretations?


  • How can landscape assessments be used to help prepare for possibly catastrophic events, such as global climate change? What are possible scenarios in response to global climate change, and how do they affect various populations?
Environmental and social science

In the McHarg model of 1967, landscape architecture integrated reductionist knowledge in the environmental sciences into holistic design. We believe that the workshop can perform a useful function by updating this conception.
  • What new areas of science have emerged in the past 30 years that are essential to the practice of landscape design?

  • How effectively has the McHarg model been implemented over the past 30 years? What problems have been discovered in its implementation that can be addressed by new initiatives?

  • Is the multilayer model capable of addressing questions of the complexity demanded by current conceptualizations? For example, do we know enough about the pathways by which biological and chemical agents generated by urban growth move, disperse, concentrate, etc? Are existing paradigms sufficient to address these questions?
Landscape ecology is one of the disciplines that has particular interest in investigating landscape change. We will work with the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis to publicize the workshop, and to identify appropriate participants.

Relationship to other activities

The proposed workshop is linked to a number of other activities. Reference has already been made to the FGDC's Community Demonstration Projects, which are investigating the role of information in community decision making with limited funding from the Reinventing Government initiative, and to the NCGIA's Varenius project, which has sponsored efforts to promote the redesign of GIS to meet the needs of communities and to encourage public participation.

Other related activities include the Aurora Partnership, an effort to promote a new generation of GIS tools designed for spatial decision support, and the Open GIS Consortium, a grouping of corporations, agencies, and universities dedicated to the development of open specifications for the next generation of GIS.

Perhaps the most relevant activity is a proposed study by the National Research Council's Committee on Geography and Mapping Science Committee, "A Framework for Place-Based Planning and Design" (see www.nas.edu under Earth Science, Board on Earth Science and Resources, Current Projects). At the time of writing the project was under review by the NRC's Governing Board. As currently proposed, it "will examine the conceptual, scientific, technological, social, and organizational framework for place-based environmental and community planning and design, and will provide guidelines and procedures for successful place-based planning." The proposed work plan includes background papers solicited by the study panel from experts; a workshop to "provide a broader community overview of the topics", and a final meeting at which the panel will review the results of the workshop and develop conclusions and recommendations.

The NRC study's emphasis on the development of guidelines and procedures is clearly complementary to this proposal's emphasis on cross-fertilization, community building, and research agenda setting. Should both projects be approved, they will be fully coordinated, with cross-appointments to the steering committee, cross-participation in the workshop, and other efforts designed to achieve maximum complementarity.

Results of prior NSF support (Goodchild)

Collaborative Agreement SES 88-10917 between NSF and the University of California, Santa Barbara (with subcontracts to the University at Buffalo and the University of Maine) provided funding for the National Center for Geographic Information and Analysis through the end of 1996, with a no-cost extension through 1997. Its objectives were to conduct research in geographic analysis utilizing geographic information systems (GIS); to promote the use of GIS throughout the sciences; to increase the nation's supply of experts in GIS; and to provide a national focus of research, with links to related efforts in other countries. Goodchild was PI on this award. Under this award NCGIA researchers addressed 18 topics, known as Research Initiatives; published 54 books, 646 refereed journal articles, and 734 other articles, and gave 1006 research presentations; developed extensive materials in support of instruction at all educational levels, including the 1990 NCGIA Core Curriculum in GIS; developed and distributed software and data sets; and organized successful international conferences in rapidly advancing areas of research.

The Varenius project, NCGIA's project to advance geographic information science, was initiated in 1997 under Cooperative Agreement SBR 96-00465, with subcontracts to the University at Buffalo, the University of Maine, and the University of Minnesota, and with Goodchild as PI. The Varenius effort is organized into three Strategic Research Areas, each with a panel of internationally known experts: cognitive models of geographic space; computational implementations of geographic concepts; and geographies of the information society. An Advisory Board oversees the entire project. During the period of the award (2/1/97-1/31/00) a total of nine Specialist Meetings were held, three on topics of the highest priority in each of the three Strategic Research Areas; in addition a workshop on Status and Trends in Spatial Analysis was supported through a supplement. Each meeting included approximately 30 scholars, drawn from all of the disciplines relevant to the topic by an international process of open selection and invitation. Following each meeting, continued collaboration was promoted by programs of seed grants and visiting fellowships. Each Varenius meeting resulted in a report summarizing the state of knowledge in the area and prioritizing a multiyear research agenda. It also resulted frequently in substantial redirection of the interests and collaborative links of the participants, thus helping to advance GIScience.

References

Craig, W., T. Harris, and D. Weiner (1999) Report of Varenius Workshop: Empowerment, Marginalization and Public Participation GIS. Santa Barbara, CA: National Center for Geographic Information and Analysis. Also http://www.ncgia.ucsb.edu/varenius/ppgis/PPGIS98_rpt.html

Foresman, T.W., editor (1998) The History of Geographic Information Systems: Perspectives from the Pioneers. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall PTR.

Longley, P.A., M.F. Goodchild, D.J. Maguire, and D.W. Rhind, editors (1999) Geographical Information Systems: Principles, Techniques, Management and Applications. New York: Wiley.

McHarg, I. (1969) Design with Nature. Garden City, NY: Natural History Press. McHarg, I. (1996) A Quest for Life. New York: Wiley.

Palmer, J.F. (1997) Stability of landscape perceptions in the face of landscape change. Landscape and Urban Planning 37: 109-113.

Palmer, J.F., R.C. Smardon, and J. Arany (1984) Summary of the landscape architecture research needs survey. Agora (Winter 1984): 17-19.

Pickles, J., editor (1995) Ground Truth: The Social Implications of Geographic Information Systems. New York: Guilford.