australian institute of landscape architects (AILA®)
The Australian Landscape Principles

Adapting to Climate Change

Putting a Value on Landscape

A strategic framework for planning, design and management
of our urban environment

 

Human activity threatens the fundamental capacity of landscape to sustain life on earth.

The Australian Landscape Principles have been developed as a strategic response to this issue, based on respect for the inherent and measurable values of landscape when developing planning, design and management strategies for climate change adaptation in our natural and built environments.

The Australian Institute of Landscape Architects calls on the federal and state governments to develop an overarching sustainable settlement policy as a matter of national priority.

  

The Australian Landscape Principles articulate an ethical decision-making framework for landscape planning, design and management within the built environment.

Their purpose is to strategically direct landscape interventions both in our existing and future built environments towards more sustainable, holistic outcomes.

The Australian Landscape Principles

  1. VALUE OUR LANDSCAPE

  2. PROTECT › ENHANCE › REGENERATE

  3. DESIGN WITH RESPECT

  4. DESIGN FOR THE FUTURE

  5. EMBRACE RESPONSIVE DESIGN

       

PDF Landscape Principles brochure

Sustainable Settlement 

AILA Climate Change 

Green Infrastructure

AILA home page

AILA policies & statements

the AILA national Office

 

CSIRO Climate Adaptation Flagship  

Climate Change: The Latest Science

other CSIRO research
 

The relevance of landscape

Landscape provides the fundamental support system for
life on earth.

Our living environment reflects human habits of consumption and waste, and historic attitudes towards the landscape have resulted in its currently degraded condition.

Our attitude to the landscape shapes the wider environment in physical, economic, social and cultural terms.

Putting a value on landscape

Because 90% of the Australian population live in our cities and coastal built environments, our urban built form has become the most common landscape we rely on to support the majority of human physical and social needs.

Planning, design and management of the urban landscape requires an understanding of the functionality and performance of the built environment as a total system.

It involves far more than simply arranging and maintaining “green stuff”- the trees and vegetation - it includes the impacts of human activity on soils, water, vegetation, biodiversity, materials and energy use, as well as how we understand, value and interact with our environment over time.

All urban landscapes have the capacity to enhance and regenerate the natural benefits and services provided by ecosystems in their natural state.

Single dwellings, housing estates, parks, industrial estates, shopping malls, infrastructure corridors or regional recreation areas have the potential to function as an integral part of this broader global life-support system.

The key to unlocking this potential lies in how landscape value is managed.

The challenge

The issue of climate change has brought a new urgency to questions of how we manage landscape across a range of scales.

Continuing to ignore the landscape performance value of our urban ecosystems through insensitive or ill-informed development effectively condemns the broader environment to further degradation.

There is a critical need to develop a collaborative, equitable, co-ordinated and long-term approach to urban landscape planning, design and management which aims not merely to minimise damage to ecosystems but to proactively maximise opportunities for the enhancement and regeneration of natural resources.

We must consider landscape systems in a more comprehensive manner, including the previously disregarded contribution of our urban ecosystems.

The challenge is to develop design based approaches to landscape and all urban development that deliver sustainable outcomes in terms of economics, health and environmental systems.

  
   
 

Value Our Landscape

The quality of the landscape underpins the viability of life on earth. Regardless of scale, every landscape embodies a range of complex, multidimensional and interdependent values and these values must be comprehensively articulated before they can be accurately assessed.

Design and management strategies must acknowledge the interrelated (physical, socio-cultural and economic) knowledge systems and processes involved in landscape decision-making, and the critical importance of collaborative approaches to sustainable landscape outcomes.

Detailed, inclusive and creative landscape assessment is the primary tool for sustainable landscape management.

 

Protect   ›  Enhance   ›  Regenerate

The hierarchy of decision-making for any landscape design/intervention should incorporate innovative, measurable strategies to:

  • protect existing environmental features and ecosystems

  • enhance existing resources in a creative, sustainable manner

  • regenerate lost or damaged ecosystem services

 

Design With Respect

All values of landscape deserve respect, and should be given equal consideration when design/intervention is proposed.

Intervene with respect for existing context—work with nature and culture to implement design solutions that are measurably responsive to existing environmental, socio-cultural and economic conditions, and which demonstrate respect for local, regional and global context.

 

Design For The Future

Design with regard to the possibility of future change.

Accept the moral and ethical responsibility of adopting decision making processes which enhance resilience in terms of environmental, socio-cultural and economic outcomes for future generations.

 

Embrace Responsive Design

Our knowledge of natural and cultural environmental processes is incomplete, and the full potential significance or value of the landscape remains unknown because of this uncertain state of knowledge.

Design processes should be consistently innovative, adaptable and responsive, continuously re-evaluating assumptions and values and adjusting to demographic and environmental change.

  
 

 

Ecosystem Services and Landscape Management

Ecosystem services is the term used to describe the ‘free’ goods and services provided by the ecological processes of healthy landscape systems, ie. those organisms and processes which clean our air and water, pollinate plants, filter and recycle nutrients, modify our climate and enhance potential for human flourishing through interaction with the natural environment.

A genuinely ‘sustainable’ landscape (ie. one which is designed and managed against long-term sustainability indices/outcomes) can provide a range of valuable ecosystem services which actually improve environmental quality rather than simply minimise the damage to natural systems.

On a practical level, we need to develop ways to assess and measure the value of ecosystem services preserved or increased through sustainable landscape practices. Equally critical is the need to refine and quantify current understanding of those often less tangible linkages between our sense of connection with the wider environment and human health/spiritual well-being.

What is needed is a renewed focus on the potential for improved landscape ‘performance’—particularly within urban ecosystems—in the context of addressing broader issues of sustainability and adapting to climate change.

The central issue here is how we might better manage our urban landscapes in order to reveal, enhance and regenerate the value of ecosystem services across a broader range of landscape scales.

 

Implementation

By overlaying the landscape principles as a decision-making tool across the broad spectrum of landscape practice, and at a range of landscape scales, strategic goals can be derived against a series of measurable components of landscape.

These strategic goals can then be employed as a basis for measuring landscape performance (in terms of the integrated potential of such components to provide ecosystem services), against which targets can be set for achieving more sustainable landscape outcomes. We can also begin to quantify the relationship between landscape quality and human performance, including the higher functions of human existence.

For more information on Implementation Guides visit:
www.aila.org.au/climate/implementation

 

Case studies

Case studies illustrate how enlightened landscape management approaches can be used to enhance the performance of and reduce the impacts of the built form on its surroundings—and to enable both to function as integral components of larger landscape processes affecting energy, water, carbon and biodiversity.

Visit the Listed Case Studies: www.aila.org.au/climate/case

    
     

The Australian Landscape Principles were developed in partnership with
CSIRO Climate Adaptation Flagship
www.csiro.au/ca		    
   
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