Design is a means to satisfy social demands, and such demands come from human desires. Only when individuals' desires fuse and grow into a collective consensus, can they be manifested and conveyed in various landscape forms as new public goods. As a public goods serving human desires and social demands, landscape design faces both challenges and opportunities preceding undergoing public crises. In this issue, LA Frontiers explores the implications of human desires on public behaviors through cross-disciplinary lenses of philosophy, social psychology, cognitive science, cultural studies, anthropology, sociology, history, etc. It would offer inspiring insights for landscape professionals to identity their role in responding to contemporary demands and those of future societies. At present, in view of the spatial isolation caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and the consequent prevalence of contactless services, the current conventional space-time narrative may be dramatically changed. The fact that both "observing" and "being observed" now become consumer goods within landscape enables landscape architects to recognize and examine people's suppressed desires and unmet needs, introspect the rationality and necessity of marginal desires, and thus, redefine the sophisticated interactions between landscape design and human desires, as well social demands.

Landscape Architecture Criticism offers techniques, perspectives and theories which relate to landscape architecture, a field very different from the more well-known domains of art and architectural criticism. Throughout the book, Bowring delves into questions such as, how do we know if built or unbuilt works of landscape architecture are successful? What strategies are used to measure the success or failure, and by whom? Does design criticism only come in written form? It brings together diverse perspectives on criticism in landscape architecture, establishing a substantial point of reference for approaching design critique, exploring how criticism developed within the discipline. Beginning with an introductory overview to set the framework, the book then moves on to historical perspectives, the purpose of critique, theoretical positions ranging from aesthetics, to politics and experience, unbuilt projects, techniques, and communication. Written for professionals and academics, as well as for students and instructors in landscape architecture, it includes strategies, diagrams, matrices, and full colour illustrations to prompt discussion and provide a basis for exploring design critique.

Gardens at the Frontier addresses broad issues of interest to architectural historians, environmental historians, garden writers, geographers, and other scholars. It uses different disciplinary perspectives to explore garden history’s thematic, geographical, and methodological frontiers through a focus on gardens as sites of cultural contact. The contributors address the extent to which gardens inhibit or further cultural contact; the cultural translation of garden concepts, practices and plants from one place to another; the role of non-written sources in cultural transfer; and which disciplines study gardens and designed landscapes, and how and why their approaches vary. Chapters cover a range of designed landscapes and locations, periods and approaches: medieval Japanese roji (tea gardens); a seventeenth-century garden of southern China; post-war Australian ‘natural gardens’; iconic twentieth-century American modernist gardens; ‘international’ willow-pattern design; geology and designed landscapes; gnomes; and landscape authorship of a public garden. Each chapter examines transfers of cultural ideas and their physical denouement. This book was originally published as a special issue of Studies in the History of Gardens & Designed Landscapes.

This book synthesizes views of America's changing environment, and the Ideal of that environment, from the time of the Founding Fathers to the present. It is an exceptionally engaging account of American attitudes toward pristine and altered landscapes which they encountered, settled in, modified, and moved westward from during the last three centuries.

Ian McHarg’s ecological planning approach has been influential since the 20th century. However, few empirical studies have been conducted to evaluate the performance of his projects. Using the framework of landscape performance assessment, this book demonstrates the long-term benefits of a renowned McHargarian project (The Woodlands town development) through quantitative and qualitative methods. Including 44 black and white illustrations, Landscape Performance systematically documents the performance benefits of the environmental, social, and economic aspects of The Woodlands project. It delves into McHarg’s planning success in The Woodlands in comparison with adjacent Houston developments, which demonstrated urban resilience after Hurricane Harvey in 2017. Lastly, it identifies the ingredients of McHarg’s ability to do real and permanent good. Yang also includes a number of appendices which provide valuable information on the methods of assessing performance in landscape development. This book would be beneficial to academics and students of landscape architecture and planning with a particular interest in Ian McHarg.