Understanding Metropolitan Landscapes

Understanding Metropolitan Landscapes considers and reflects on the fundamental relationships between metropolitan regions and their landscapes. It investigates how planning and policy help to protect, manage and enhance the landscapes that sustain our urban settlements. As global populations become more metropolitan, landscapes evolve to become increasingly dynamic and entropic; and the distinction between urban and non-urban is further fragmented, yet these spaces play an increasingly important role in sustainable development.

This book opens a key critical discussion into the relational aspects of city and landscape and how each element shapes the boundaries of the other. It covers topics such as material natures, governance systems, processes, and policy, presenting a compendium of concepts and ideas that have emerged from landscape architecture, planning, environmental policy, and landscape management.

Using a range of illustrated case studies, it provokes discussions on the major themes driving the growth of cities by exploring the underlying tensions around notions of sustainable settlement, climate change adaptation, urban migration, new modes of governance, and the role of landscape in policy and decision-making at national, provincial, and municipal levels.