This seminar addresses the major theoretical models and methods of assessing the visual aspects of the landscape, including legal and other means for design and management of the landscape.

The seminar occurs on two Wednesdays each month during the spring semester.

Seminar reading and discussion, and demonstrations and experiments include:

I am convinced that these issues are central to design in general. My objective, simply stated, is to expose these issues and the research supporting them. I am particularly interested in preparing students who will be designing landscape plans which incorporate visual quality issues to face the major theoretical constructs within which their activities will be taking place.

Theories and Methods of Landscape Planning
GSD 3307, Lecture, Fall, with: Juan Carlos Vargas-Moreno

This course has three aspects. The first is a series of lectures by Carl Steinitz in which different elements of theories and methods applicable to landscape planning are critically surveyed. Each lecture and its readings include one or more case studies in which that particular aspect of theory or method was central to its success or failure. Second, and seen as a whole, these methods share fundamental operations in the inventory, organization, and analysis of spatial data. These are introduced through lectures and via exercises in a workshop format. Third, each student replicates and presents a landscape analysis from a documented case study using computer-based techniques. A comparison of these case studies provides insights into theories and methods and their shared techniques and also illustrates how they can be adapted to particular landscape planning situations.