ABSTRACT
The Routledge Research Companion to Landscape Architecture is a statement! A statement of the increasingly important role that landscape architecture plays in society. This volume reflects a profession that has its own history and is equipped with its own tools and measures for intervention in open spaces, a practice that theoretically and spatially reflects our current relationship with what has traditionally been called nature. It does so at a time when questions about the use of global resources and the way the human and non-human worlds link together are arguably more crucial than ever. From the point of view of our current juncture—which is witnessing the large-scale effects of waning industrial capitalist structures including economic restructuring, urban expansion, climate change and impending technological developments such as increased automatization and the emergence of artificial intelligence—designers from all disciplines are crucial ‘first responders’, culturally digesting as well as contributing to these shifts and transformations. 1 Being attentive to large-scale design problems as well as to the shifting, conflicting and often non-linear temporalities of the natural world, landscape architects are particularly well positioned to make a significant contribution to this difficult predicament.
