Urban-region planning 47today some landscape architects, building beyond aesthetics and amenities in
small spaces, are elevating serious ecological science, urban planning, and other
key fields to theforefront for solutions.
Aregion could be transformed by planning in a number of ways. First, the
big project,such as Arthur Morgan’s TVA dam-system project in the US South and
Robert Moses’ New York parkway system (Morgan 1971 ,Hall2002), is what many
people think about for regional planning. Design a regional plan so brilliantly
that, after public review and refinements, government implements it as a whole.
Asecondapproach, call it theplanned trajectory approach,effects a policy change
which establishes a trajectory of change. The Portland urban growth boundary
is an example, whereby few people could see anything different after five years,
small differences were widespread after 10 years, and from 20 years onward Port-
land looked quite distinct from all other US cities (Avin and Bayer2003,Ozawa
2004).Another approach, effectively aland-mosaicorpuzzle-pieces plan,provides
for implementable changes in small-to-mid-size areas that fit together to form
thewhole region; no pieces are left out. The Greater Barcelona Region land-
mosaic plan illustrates this, whereby planning solutions for each separate por-
tion, as well as for small features repeated across the land, were outlined (Forman
2004a).
Planners have long valued, even emphasized, urban greenspaces mainly for
people (Rowe 1991, Warren1998,Ishikawa2001,Clark2006). The emphasis on
ecology and key environmental dimensions has become prominent more
recently (Plattet al.1994, Atkinsonet al.1999,Ravetz2000,Steinitz and McDowell
2001, White2002,Steiner 2002, Orr 2002, Marsh 2005, Hiltyet al.2006). This
trend seems partly due to increasing recognition of the central importance of
ecological dimensions in the city and its region, and partly to society’s interest
in sustainability. These approaches use the science of ecology, instead of simply
coloring in green bushes and trees on and among city buildings. The ecology
used is still introductory or general, but the trend harbors well for the future
in planning.
In parallel with this trend, a few urban regions are now being studied as
a whole by teams of ecologists and other experts. Prominent among these are
Melbourne (McDonnellet al.1997,vander Ree and McCarthy2005,Hahs and
McDonnell2007),Baltimore (Nilon and Pais1997,Pickettet al.2001, Pickett
2006),Phoenix (USA) (Jenerette and Wu2001,Luck and Wu 2002, Grimmet al.
2003),and Berlin (Sukoppet al.1995, Breusteet al.1998,Kowarik and Korner
2005).Fortuitously, the predominant scientific paradigms and approaches vary
in the different urban regions. The key paradigms include urban-to-rural gradi-
ent, landscape ecological pattern, watershed analysis with water and material
flows, dynamics of plant and animal communities (biotopes), and the city as an
ecosystem with energy and material flows. Though not done for the objective