Designing Aotearoa New Zealand with nature: landscape regeneration of Western Waiheke Island

Abstract

Design with Nature had a global impact on late twentieth-century landscape architectural practice. This paper looks at both the direct influence of the text and how McHarg's ideas were developed on Waiheke Island New Zealand. The project that we will examine is the Western Waiheke Entrance Landscape (Western Landscape), a 430-ha (1065 ac.) landscape project that is now 30 years old. The project was designed by a New Zealand landscape architect/planner, Dennis Scott [DJScott Associates Ltd (DJSA)] and has been widely deemed as a well-rounded ecological, social and economic success winning the NZILA enduring landscape award in 2017 (NZILA in Showcase: enduring category winner: Waiheke Western Entrance Headland Landscape, D J Scott Associates. https ://nzila .co.nz/showc ase/waihe ke-islan d-weste rn-entra nce-headl and-lands cape, 2017). The DJSA design methodology combines integrated catchment management and a wide range of human activity into an ecologically regenerated landscape. We argue that this approach is a conscious, yet indigenous, development of Ian McHarg's theory and methodology as expounded in the seminal book Design with Nature. These ideas and the consequences for the transformation of an important landscape point to new directions for socio-ecological practice.

Towards a framework for targeting national-scale, native revegetation in Aotearoa New Zealand’s agroecosystems

“…At the landscape scale, collective planning programmes that have been successfully implemented in multi-use rural landscapes in New Zealand can be used as model examples, such as integrated catchment management approaches (e.g. Tyson et al 2017;Scott et al 2019) and landscape-scale, rural predator control programmes (Glen et al 2019). Ultimately, a combination of both top-down, centralised oversight and bottom-up, broad-actor network of stakeholders will likely be optimal (e.g.…”

Seven approaches to research in socio-ecological practice & five insights from the RWC–Schön–Stokes model

“…[2] Besides those cited already, for McHarg’s enduring influences on theories, see Bryant & Turner ( 2019 ), Lamb ( 2019 ) and Steiner ( 2019a ); on education, Cohen ( 2019 ); on ecological planning, Lieberknecht ( 2019 ), Lim ( 2019 ) and Mainzer et al ( 2019 ); on academia, practice and government, Palazzo & Hollstein ( 2019 ). For McHarg’s international influence, see Evans ( 2019 ) and Scott et al ( 2019 ).…”