The Living Landscape: An Ecological Approach to Landscape Planning

The Living Landscape has made a lasting contribution to ecological planning through its detailed documentation of this planning process and thoughtful comparison of the process's application in case studies. Dr. Steiner demonstrates in his book that ecological planning is just not a static plan-making process, but rather a dynamic process that requires consistent and meaningful input from stakeholders. In addition, he sees plan-making as a process that has implications for different scales of the environment, from the nation to the neighborhood. He stresses that the ecological planning process does not end when the plan is finished, but rather the process continues through the linkage of planning concepts to physical design. Given the strengths of this book, it is an essential volume for the library of any professional or student in the disciplines of the built environment and environmental management.

It is a rare planning book that outlines a detailed process for guiding landscape change in a deliberate and ecologically sound manner. The Living Landscape accomplishes this in a robust, clear and convincing way. The second edition improves on the first by including more landscape design information, updating case studies, and deepening the planning method (for instance, by including more on the use of Geographic Information Systems). The liberal use of cases is a strong asset of the book; each step in the ecological planning process is illustrated and explained by way of 'stories' from real places around North America. The Living Landscape is useful reading for students and practitioners in landscape architecture, architecture, environmental planning and natural resource management.

The second edition of The Living Landscape has came out nine years after the first. The first, in fact, was published in 1991, it received an ASLA Merit Award for Communications in 1993, and then it was translated into Italian in 1994, where it was very well received among scholars and students of planning as well as in the schools of architecture throughout the country. The very first difference between the two editions is the publishing series. The first did not form part of a series while the second is now in the McGraw-Hill "Professional Architecture" series. The Professional Architecture series is devoted to giving helpful tools to practitioners who are on the field and The Living Landscape provides a very wide set of how-to and why-to-do-it instructions, where-to-keep information, and best practices examples to learn from, organized around an eleven-step Ecological Planning Model. I consider The Living Landscape a refined, high-level professional handbook devoted to enhance the toolbox of any present or future planning practitioners. The Living Landscape II edition, as was the first, is built around a scheme of eleven steps called "Ecological Planning Method" briefly presented in the first chapter and used as a step-by-step pattern to guide readers into the organization of a planning process. The "Ecological Planning Method" is a framework for presenting information to decision-makers, and to display "a common language, a common method among all those concerned about social equity and ecological parity" (p. 9). The approach to planning presented by Steiner is innovative for two reasons. The first is the incorporation of ecology in planning - briefly "the use of biophysical and sociocultural information to suggest opportunities and constraints for decision making about the use of the landscape" (pp. 9-10). The second reason is the author's stress on the citizen's involvement in almost every step of his method. These two issues, even if they are the prime themes of the book, are prudently embedded into the body of the full text. Ecology and citizen involvement are the leitmotif of the entire book which is composed of a precise combination of techniques and tools presentation, useful references to literature, light - but effective - revocations of the theoretical frameworks on the issues, and application examples deriving from real plans or projects. The eleven-step Ecological Planning Model goes from the identification of problems and opportunities (step 1) and the establishment of goals (2) to inventories and analysis at regional (3) and local level (4). It proceeds with the realization of detailed studies (5) and the definition of planning concepts (6). The landscape plan (7) follows and it is directly assessed and criticized by citizens (8), who are involved and educated along the whole process-phasing. Design exploration (9) comes next and the study of the implementation of the plan and projects (10) precedes the administration (11) that

I am a graduate student in landscape ecological planning. I would recommend Dr. Steiner's book for students, professionals and the lay leaders interested in making a difference in their community. The idea of planning is sometimes hard to grasp by communities that are ruled by economics and development,not ecology. Dr. Steiner shows us step by step how to include ecology into communities and how that may give us other alternatives that we may not have considered.The use of case studies in this book enhances the practical application of ecological planning in real world situations.I would recommend this book for anyone interested in ecology, planning or being part of your community's future.