About This Issue

The five articles in this omnibus issue report on research and scholarly work conducted in North America and on a map of Rome, Italy. Research methods used by the authors range from quantitative and qualitative survey research and design performance evaluation to historiography. Among the authors, there are three associate professors and two assistant professors at institutions in the United States.

The article by Courtney Crosson examines the potential of transitioning Tucson, Arizona, to a net zero water balance, where water demand in the city equals locally available water supply by 2050. The article concludes that urban design strategies must assess all water as a single resource system. It suggests new forms and languages to integrate alternative water sources with existing city fabrics to achieve sustainable net zero balance water systems. In another setting in the desert landscape of southern Arizona, Kirk Dimond adapts the theoretical pattern language popularized by Christopher Alexander and colleagues in developing a new pattern for integrating solar photovoltaic cells into the urban landscape. He argues that such a system must efficiently integrate the location of solar energy production with the location of energy consumption to reduce energy sprawl in rural landscapes as growth of renewable energy systems continues to rise. The article surveys the judgment of various energy professionals in proposing a solar photovoltaic pattern for use in the urban environment.

César Torres Bustamante examines figure– ground relationships in Giambattista Nolli’s Pianta Grande di Roma, a 1748 map of Rome. He argues that figure–ground relationships use two Gestalt psychology principles (proximity and contour) that can shift figure and ground from biased and exclusionist poles into mutualistic and contingent entities. This condition offers the opportunity to map unique conditions in the landscape.

Taner Ozdil performs a content analysis of 314 tenured or tenure-track position descriptions over the period 2007–2016. Although findings reiterate the importance of teaching and experience, there is a clear and increasing demand for research and scholarship as well as service to the community. The position descriptions emphasized the importance of both a candidate’s educational, academic, and scholarly credentials in landscape architecture and the length and scope of professional experience in academia or practice. There remains a demand for teaching in core areas of the profession. John Dean Davis examines methods used when consulting archives to write landscape histories. With use of a “field method,” he suggests that researchers can identify important actors and events among their archival traces and write landscape histories that animate social, political, and biological processes and struggles important to that landscape. He argues that landscape is a particularly insightful and inclusive way to organize historiography.