Land Management @ Scale
The Green New Deal will be won or lost at scale: the scale of planning must match the scale of our impacts on the land. Landscape architecture practice focuses largely on cities and towns, passing over ninety-seven percent of the American landscape and missing the opportunity to make significant advances on climate and environmental goals through the critical path of large-scale land management.
Balancing complex and layered needs of regional and territorial land management can have positive climate impacts, strengthen ecological health, and better manage natural resources while promoting access, recreation, economic benefit, and cultural opportunities. This provides a framework for management and protection of park networks, corridors, and critical resources while dynamically accommodating inevitable growth.
Unfortunately, few entities can reach this level of cross-disciplinary and multi-jurisdictional coordination due to various factors, including lack of funding, illegibility of process, or lack of political support for long-term planning when short-term “wins” often drive elections. Therefore, models for multi-benefit land management need to be amplified to create a dialogue around possibilities and incentives.
Projects must address territorial issues through multi-benefit planning for water, people, and the environment that integrates land management best practices. This requires understanding what lands are most critical, who the players are within a region’s network of land management and ownership, and how multi-benefit lands can be amplified through a toolkit of strategies. When combined, the “what, who, and how” of large-scale planning and land management can create economic and environmental benefits that truly match the scale of our global impacts.
97% of the American landscape exists largely outside of the influence of landscape architecture practice. However, the past work of landscape architects like Jensen, Simonds, and Olmsted sets a strong precedent for rural, large-scale projects.