Design with Fourth Nature

Novel Urban Ecosystems: Opportunities from and to Landscape Architecture

“…When debating new theories and concepts that can help respond to emerging environmental problems, it is imperative to welcome a myriad of perspectives and to combine efforts from different disciplines [45]. A collaborative learning process between scientists and practitioners is critical to producing effective knowledge and common language on multiple fronts, contexts, and scales [18,30,[45][46][47][48].…”

“…Will people accept or value new forms of urban nature? Otherwise, the integration and accommodation of NUE in urban environments will not be easy nor viable [48,52]. The successful implementation of new ideas, concepts, and solutions requires that people's perspectives are considered, even promoting their engagement and participation at different stages of the process [50].…”

“…Nevertheless, urban dwellers may not be prepared yet to fully embrace NUE, which implies that these ecosystems must be reshaped according to societal expectations while also striving to meet critical ecological and economic goals that are often misaligned [47,48,[54][55][56]. It may be helpful to educate people and explain what NUE represents, their potential op-portunities, and the role of society in their creation.…”

“…Design is a powerful tool to imprint and synthesize cultural values, tradition, memory, and beauty in a landscape to make its ecological function and value visually recognizable to users [55,56,65]. Through design, the positive aspects, ecological processes, and functions of NUE can be enhanced, and its negative aspects can be mitigated or eliminated (Box 1) [21,48,54].…”

“…Innovative strategies and solutions to approach novel systems can be conceptualized through "designed experiments" that allow collaboration between researchers and practitioners, exchange of knowledge, and complementation of experimentation techniques [47,65]. According to Felson and Pickett [65], "designed experiments" can be developed as socially and politically desirable projects to respond to the specific dilemmas of a particular location and enable a harmonious melding of the scientific process with artistic, aesthetic, cultural, political, ecological, and/or social goals (Box 2) [45,46,48,68,69]. "Designed experiments" can be integrated with routine urban construction and maintenance, reducing or eliminating the cost of experiments.…”