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Wherever we are, whenever we are awake, we are experiencing the landscape, from the city to the remote wilderness. We perceive our surroundings using all our senses. We orientate ourselves by the pattern of the landscape and find pleasure or displeasure in it. These patterns, and the landscape they compromise, are dynamic, not static. The processes - geological, ecological or cultural - operate over varying time intervals ranging from millions of years to a few hours. Thus landscape is an amalgam of patterns, our perceptions, and the processes that change both patterns and perceptions. We have become used to thinking of ourselves as separate from and, to different degrees, in control of the world around us. Recent developments in our understanding of how nature really works, of the effect of self-organized processes and patterns, of how we perceive and react to our surroundings, have enabled many disciplines to discover ways of working and designing with the forces of nature and culture. We may no longer view ourselves as masters of nature, but try to learn ways in which development can proceed in greater harmony with it. This book takes all these themes and explores what patterns are, how we perceive them and our responses to them. Then the patterns and processes of geology, ecology and culture are explored in turn, leading in each case to means of analysis and using the new understanding in a range of design applications, including many case studies. The original concept for Landscape: Pattern Perception and Process is to bring together the work and subject areas of a range of disciplines including psychologists, philosophers, geologists, ecologists, cultural geographers, foresters, urban planners and landscape architects, and to synthesize these all together. Since many landscape and environmental problems require multi-disciplinary approaches for their solution, this book demonstrates how the best integration can be achieved.
