Ideas shape landscapes. How we organize and manage land is inherently connected to the language we use to describe it, and to describe our desires for it. The current global decline in biodiversity is the logical result of widespread policies that value and define land primarily in terms of extraction and production. Responding to this ecological crisis will require rapid deployment and improvement of new and existing policy instruments aimed at increasing resilience in socioecological systems. While visionary policies such as the Green New Deal capture the imaginations of many, they are deeply speculative and uncertain by nature. Change must come quick, but it can be incremental and decentralized. There is a need for methods to comprehend, improve, and sometimes dismantle the policies that already exist, to better support the natural living systems that all human life depends on. “Policy by Design” aims to advance the capacity of landscape architecture to visualize and ameliorate policy dilemmas concerning land use, and to better support socioecological resilience in our shared landscapes and environments.
Product: an illustrated article targeted to planning and design audiences and a publicly-accessible web resource