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The Nature of Ian McHarg's Science

Article in Landscape Journal February 2010
DOI: 10.3368/lj.29.1.1

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The Nature of Ian McHargs Science

Susan Herrington

ABSTRACT Ian McHarg undoubtedly will be remembered as one

of the most inuential landscape architects of the 20th century.
His charismatic personality, grand narrative Design with Nature,
and unwavering conviction that science would provide meaning
and purpose for landscape architects placed him at the center of
debates concerning nature, design, and planning. Yet his visions
have been criticized as well as praised. Rarely straying from the
ideas he developed in the 1960s, McHarg consistently contradicted himself. He criticized humans for privileging man over all
other considerations, but he himself was autocratic, asserting his
views as absolute and superior to all. His vision of nature was
that of dynamic process, yet he sought to plot and rank natural
phenomena on static maps. In promoting outdated ideas about
science as a savior for landscape architecture, he used rhetorical
devices suggestive of religious discourse. His views were complex
as well as contradictory. His contribution of scientic reasoning
to the development of contemporary landscape architecture is
countered by his problematical assertions relating to the ecological superiority of English landscape gardens, promotion of the
map-overlay method as a scientic process, and combination of
Lawrence Henderson and Charles Darwins work for his theory of
creative tting.
KEYWORDS history, science, design, nature

SCIENCE AS A TRUTH SERUM FOR LANDSCAPE

ARCHITECTURE 1

Landscape Journal 29:110 ISSN 0277-2426

2010 by the Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System

s an author, academic, public personality, and

practitioner, Ian McHarg (19202001) profoundly
changed the teaching and practice of landscape architecture (Figure 1).2 McHarg revealed the damaged
condition of the natural environment and held the
electrifying promise that landscape architects were instrumental to its repair. He condemned Renaissance,
Baroque, and cole des Beaux-Arts formalism and
championed the use of natural sciences in environmental design. To raise landscape architecture from what he
perceived to be the lowly and wanton ways of garden
art, not only did he write and teach about the value
of science to design but also, with his office Wallace,
McHarg, Roberts, and Todd (WMRT), he set out to use
science in the design of regional landscapes. As such,
he spearheaded multidisciplinary teams including experts from various scientific fields, and he advanced the
map-overlay methoda key to his ecological model
and a precursor of computerized Geographic Information Systems (GIS). Notably, he sought to bring his

ecological message to nonprofessionals, pioneering the

use of television media with his show The House We Live
In aired by CBS from 1960 to 1961 (Figure 2).3 McHarg
made major contributions to landscape architecture,
though aspects of these contributions are problematical, particularly as they relate to science.
McHarg was an inventor of ecological planning,
and he became a champion of ecological design. As he
explicitly stated in his best-selling book, Design with
Nature (1969), It was not only an explanation but also
a command (McHarg 2006c; 1997, 122).4 McHargs major advancements in landscape architecture include
the conception of a novel relationship among nature,
design, and science; the promotion of the map-overlay
method; and the use of scientific theories to measure
desired outcomes in the planning and design process.
As chair of the resurrected Department of Landscape
Architecture at the University of Pennsylvania, he influenced generations of landscape architects. He was honored accordingly with numerous awards and medals,
including election as a Fellow to the American Society
of Landscape Architects (1972) and receipt of the American Society of Landscape Architects Medal (1984), the
LaGasse Medal (1988), the Harvard Lifetime Achievement Award (1992), and the Japan Prize (2000).
Underlying all of these achievements was McHargs
belief that science was a truth serum that would reveal
the verifiable facts of nature to humans. Science provided not only an explanatory model for understanding nature but also a prescriptive one. Equipped with
the revelatory powers of science, nature would serve as
a guide to design and planning. While McHarg consistently substantiated his ecological ideas with scientific
theories, he possessed no formal training as a scientist
and he never claimed to be one. In fact, he only took one
science class in 1938 at the West of Scotland Agricultural
College (MY 1976, 105; McHarg 1996, 82). Although
he once referred to himself as a quasi-pseudo-cryptoscientist, many considered him to be a scientist.5 David
Orr has suggested that McHarg was more of a scientist
than many he employed. He was a perceptive observer
of the wayward ways of men and their tendency towards

selfish destruction of the environment (2007, 9). Problems nevertheless emerge from McHargs conceptions
and use of science.
Despite all of McHargs triumphs, some aspects of
his science were inaccurate. Specifically, his ideas regarding the ecological superiority of English landscape
gardens, the promotion of the map-overlay method as
an objective process, and the combining of Lawrence
Henderson and Charles Darwins scientific theories
were misguided. Landscape architects and students of
landscape architecture continue to perpetuate these inaccuracies. Analyses of McHargs texts, projects, and lectures are useful in teasing out the problematic strands
of this great landscape architects ecological message.
Ultimately, they demonstrate that science, like history,
is continually revised and that only by incorporating
these changes into our own body of knowledge can we
benefit from its wisdom.
SOME MAJOR CONTRIBUTIONS OF MCHARG

Science Links Design to Nature

As an assistant professor at the University of Pennsylvania in 1954, McHarg was charged with the task of
creating a new landscape architecture curriculum. He
viewed the profession as plagued by low self-esteem in
both the academic community and in society in general (McHarg 1996, 129). McHarg admired the modern
revolutionaries Christopher Tunnard, Thomas Church,
and Lawrence Halprin, but he found most practitioners
in North America uninspired and mediocre at best. He
sought to change this state of affairs by developing a
landscape architecture curriculum that was better than
the program at his alma mater, Harvard University. He
did this by recruiting top-ranked architecture students
and developing courses and studios that included a
body of knowledgethe natural sciencesmissing
from his own experience as a student at Harvard. Scientists were frequent guests to the school, and in 1960
McHarg hired Nicholas Muhlenberg, a scientist with
background in forestry and ecology, as part of the permanent faculty (McHarg 1996, 172).
2

Landscape Journal 29:110

In 1959 McHarg started the course Man and Environment, which involved guest lecturers investigating the scientific conceptions of matter, life, and
man; the views of God, man, and nature in the major
philosophies and religions and the ecological interactions of humans and nature (McHarg 1996, 140). In
time, theologians declined invitations to the course.
McHarg noted: Scientific expositions amplified the understanding of the miraculous in nature. No scriptural
description of the supernatural could remotely compare to the scientific view (1996, 161). He also investigated the Potomac River Basin with students as part
of his design studio. Building upon his experience with
large, collaborative projects at Harvard, McHarg incorporated numerous scientists into the fold of this multidisciplinary team. The study integrated an assortment
of scientific data, including meteorology, geology, geomorphology, groundwater and surface hydrology, soils,
vegetation, wildlife, limnology, and, where appropriate,
physical oceanography and marine biology (McHarg
1996, 194). This project was the first of its kind to use
the physiographic region and the river basin as the primary organizing context for ecological planning and
designa framework that linked past, present, and anticipated future actions and multiple landscape scales
from garden to region (Spirn 2000, 105). For McHarg,
this regional planning study was an expansion of professional responsibility (McHarg 1996, 195) that established his ecological planning method (1996, 197).
In 1963, McHarg contended that the ecological
and natural sciences offered an important theoretical
framework for landscape architects and planners. In
Man and Environment, which appeared in Leonard
Duhls The Urban Condition, McHarg asked readers
to trade in older, humanist ideas regarding nature for
the scientists view of the evolution of nature. He posited: The inheritors of the Judaic-Christian-Humanist
tradition have received their injunction from Genesis,
a man-oriented universe (McHarg 2006f; 1963, 3).
McHarg viewed religious doctrine as separating humans from nature, whereas science provided an integrative view of humans and nature. In this way, nature

provided a wellspring of truth about the world, and science, a means to reveal this truth. Relating this idea directly to the design and planning process, he surmised,
We have asked Nature to tell Man what it is, in the way
of opportunities and of constraints for all prospective
land-uses (McHarg 2007, 44).
In terse prose, McHarg repeatedly condemned
Judeo-Christian traditions and Western culture in general as the legitimizing force behind our separation and
dominion over nature, and he consistently promoted
science as the alternative. This argument appears in his
papers Man and Environment (2006f; 1963) and Values, Process, and Form (2006g; 1968), his speech Man:
Planetary Disease (1971), his book Design with Nature
(1969), his lecture The Garden as a Metaphysical Symbol (1980), and an essay for the American Society of
Landscape Architects (2006c; 1997). McHargs support
of science sometimes assumed a religious fervor, and
he has been described as the Billy Graham of ecology
(Hedgpeth 1986, 48). The opening chapters of Design
with Nature (McHarg 1969) take readers from the countryside of Scotland, dune development in the Netherlands, natural disasters, pollution, tacky commercial
strips and dense urban living (that would inspire a later
generation of designers), and homage to the people of
Japan (whom he viewed as indivisible from nature) to a
tirade against Western Civilization that valued only individuality, economic determinism, and anthropocentric art. At the end of this blistering critique, he asked,
Where else can we turn for an accurate model of the
world and ourselves but to science? (McHarg 1969, 29)

Historical Gardens and Ecological Integrity

A recurring feature in McHargs texts and lectures was
the use of representational analogies to validate designing with nature. In making comparisons to show similarities, his analogies were central to both the discovery
and explanation of scientific theories. Most notably,
Sir Isaac Newton explained his theory of gravitation by
drawing a likeness between the way the earth pulls on
an apple falling from a tree and the way it attracts the
moon. McHarg frequently used the frozen hexagonal

symmetry of snowflakes (Figure 3) or the elegant utility of a birds beak to symbolize the inherent beauty of
natures designs. Moreover, to represent natures design
at a larger scale, McHarg consistently referred to 18thcentury English landscape gardens, which he viewed
as representing ecological concepts. Humans creating
these gardens were designing with nature, while earlier
Western gardens were not designed with nature.
McHarg frequently berated Renaissance gardens as
the penultimate expressions of Judaic-Christian traditions and Western culture. He found they clearly show
the imprint of humanist thought. A rigid symmetrical
pattern is imposed relentlessly upon a reluctant landscape (2006f; 1963, 8). In Design with Nature (1969) his
critique of historical landscapes took a full chapter, titled On Values. McHarg began with American Indians
in North America, who he claimed evolved a most harmonious balance of man and nature (1969, 67). He then
moved on to the imperious Renaissance gardens, where
he perceived the imposition of a simple Euclidean geometry upon the landscape (1969, 71). Ultimately, the
French Baroque gardens designed by Le Notre were
testimony to the divinity of man and his supremacy
over a base and subject nature (1969, 71).6 Despite
the fact that the term ecology was not coined until the
19th century, McHarg found that these gardens had no
ecological concept of community or association (1969,
71).7 For these reasons, McHarg used them as representational analogies of not designing with nature.
Unlike those involved in earlier gardening traditions, McHarg (1969) wrote, a handful of 18th-century
landscape architects believed that some unity of man
and nature was possible and could not only be created
but idealized (1969, 72). For McHarg, English landscape gardens were designed by adhering to a sites
natural functions, making them analogies of designing
with nature. He claimed: Never has a society accomplished such a beneficent transformation of an entire
landscape (1969, 72). He admitted that the designers of
these gardens took their cues as to what nature looked
like from the Romantic painters Claude Lorraine, Nicolas Poussin, and Salvator Rosa (1969, 73). Nonetheless,
Herrington

McHarg assured readers, in the English landscape garden the ruling principle was that nature is the gardeners best designeran empirical ecology (1969, 73).
In advocating for nature, science, and design,
McHarg also introduced a novel definition of nature. He
posited that places are only comprehensible in terms of
physical and biological evolution (1967, 105) and that
nature as a process is subject to the forces that produce
and control the phenomena of the biophysical world.
This definition of nature as a process is an enduring
contribution. And the method he advocated for integrating natural processes into design and planning was
equally enduring. This method used mapping as a process for conducting extensive landscape inventories.

Map Overlays in the Ecological Model

The map-overlay method was key to McHargs ecological model. This process spatially referenced the
inventoried data and weighted its relative importance
to design decision-making as part of the analysis. Originally, the map-overlay system involved layers of transparent film over a base map. Other types of transparent
materials, and eventually the computer, replaced the
film overlays. Each layer of film was dedicated to a single
inventoried factor, such as topography or historic sites,
which was rated from a high to low value. The darkest
gradations of tones represented areas with the highest
value and the lightest tones indicated areas with the
least significant value. All of the mapped layers were
then superimposed to create a composite map that in
McHargs words looked something like a complex X-ray
photograph with dark and light tones (1969, 35).
For McHarg, the composite map was where the
truth was revealed. Development suitability was rated
on the map from highest (lightest color) to lowest (darkest). According to McHarg, the integration of social and
natural information across the site enabled designers to
chart future development in ways that closely adhered
to natures intrinsic progression towards stability. He
augmented the map analyses with technical reports,
suitability matrices, diagrammatic sections, decision

Landscape Journal 29:110

trees, and other techniques to reveal the natural processes of a site. Map overlay, however, is consistently
attributed to McHargs ecological method.
In the early 19th century, epidemiologists used
similar mapping techniques to establish the location of
contagions in cities (Tufte 1983, 27). Likewise, McHargs
mapping method shares commonalities with the overlays employed by the U.S. Defense Department to determine target locations for intercontinental missiles
during the Cold War (Cloud 2001, 203). In landscape
architecture, the map-overlay method advanced by
McHarg was similar to that used by Warren Manning in
the early 20th century to record and classify site information (Zube 1986; Neckar 1989).8 In 1950 Jacqueline
Tyrwhitt provided one of the first explicit descriptions
of the map-overlay method in the design process in her
book Town and Country Planning Textbook (Steinitz,
Parker, and Jordan 1976, 445). Tyrwhitt was a professor
at the Graduate School of Design in the Department of
City Planning and Landscape Architecture at Harvard
University from 1955 to 1969. While McHarg was not
the inventor of the map-overlay method, he certainly
championed it as no other individual before him.
McHarg introduced his method to landscape architects in 1965 in his Landscape Architecture article
Plan for the Valleys vs. Spectre of Uncontrolled Growth
with David Wallace. Examining and layering geological, topographical, economic, and a multitude of other
factors, they demonstrated how planned growth could
save seven million dollars as compared to uncontrolled
growth (McHarg and Wallace 1965, 180). The mapoverlay method also features significantly in Design
with Nature. There, McHarg structured the text so that
chapters rife with condemnations of corrupt cities,
Western values, rampant pollution, and urban pathologies alternated with chapters detailing the life-saving
solutions of his map-overlay process. Many of these
projects were completed with University of Pennsylvania students and his office, WMRT. Accompanied by
God-like aerial views of the earth, these polychromatic
maps revealed to readers how one might design with

nature, thereby locating intrinsically suitable locations for various types of development. The answer was
simplemap it.
McHargs ecological method was both a diagnosis and prescription for development (Palmer 2001,
Spirn 2000), and he believed it an objective procedure
that could be replicated to produce the same outcomes.
Describing the Woodlands project, to Landscape Architecture readers in 1975, McHarg and Jonathan Sutton noted, Having accumulated and interpreted the
biophysical data describing the region and [an] 18,000
a[cre] site, a method was developed which insured that
anyone would reach the same conclusions . . . any engineer, architect, landscape architect, developer, and the
client himself were bound by the data and the method
(McHarg and Sutton 1975, 78).
Later in life, McHarg was enthusiastic about the
importation of his mapping method into computerized,
geographic, information systems, exclaiming, More
data can be ingested, evaluated, and synthesized faster,
and more accurately than ever before (2006c; 1997,
119). He surmised that finally, the computer will solve
the command show me the locations where all most
propitious factors are located and most detrimental
factors are absent (2006c; 1997, 118). To be sure, the
computer fulfilled his quest for a systematic method of
landscape design based on scientific data, but McHargs
approach was also substantiated by scientific theories
concerning evolution and adaptation.

Creative Fitting
As a means of lending scientific integrity to his ecological approach, McHarg developed a scientific theory
called creative fitting that both explained and validated
designing with nature. McHargs method was ecological not only because it used ecological data but also because the outcomes it produced matched the processes
of adaptation and evolution. It helped determine where
proposed human uses, such as buildings and roads,
intrinsically fit on the land. Since this design method
located the fittest environment for various land uses, it

also fulfilled the basic principles of adaptation (2006c;

1997, 124125).

Adaptation. In McHargs words, the theory of creative

fitting has absolutely no status whatsoever, except insofar as all the parts have been derived from excellent
scientists (2007, 21). Indeed, creative fitting conjoined
the scientific theories of Charles Darwins The Origin of
Species (2003; 1859) and the lesser-known scientist Lawrence Hendersons The Fitness of the Environment (1958;
1913). Creativity, for McHarg, was not an act exclusive to
human artists but rather a directional process towards
higher levels of order, which he thought occurred in the
laws of both thermodynamics and evolutionin living
and nonliving systems (2007, 22). McHarg defined fit as
a blend of two scientific propositions: Charles Darwins
idea that the surviving organism is fit for the environment (2007, 23) and Lawrence Hendersons theory that
the actual environment, the actual world, constitutes
the fittest possible abode for life . . . this fitting then is
essential to survival, according to Darwin, and there
is always a most fit environment for every system seeking an environment (2007, 2324). In 1981, McHarg
wrote, Every organism, system, constitution, is required to find the fittest environment, adapt that environment and itself in order to survive (McHarg 1981,
93). In 1997, he again referred to his theory of creative
fitting in a definition of ecological design:
Ecological design follows planning and introduces the
subject of form. There should be an intrinsically suitable location, processes with appropriate materials,
and forms. Design requires an informed designer with
a visual imagination, as well as graphic and creative
skills. It selects for creative fitting revealed in intrinsic
and expressive form (McHarg 2006c; 1997, 123).

He concluded: And, thanks to Charles Darwin and Lawrence Henderson, we have a theory (2006c; 1997, 124).

Evolution. Creative Fitting also explained how McHargs

ecological method produced outcomes matching the

Herrington

trajectory of evolution. He anchored his theory of fit in

the Darwin / Henderson combination, stating, All systems are required to seek out the environment that is
most fit, to adapt these and themselves, continuously . . .
Systems which are fit are evolutionary successes; they
are maximum success solutions to fitness (2006b; 1978,
87). McHargs explanations of the Darwin / Hendersoninspired theory of creative fitting stressed that evolutionary progress, left to nature, moves towards some
optimal point of successthat best evolutionary success is best defined by maximum fit solutions (McHarg
1969, 120; 1996, 245; 2007, 23).
This may be why the living and nonliving things,
that were in McHargs view unfit, drew his criticism.
They did not fulfill what he deemed the optimizing
directionality of adaptation. In defining what is unfit,
McHarg (1969, 170) noted:
Our language conforms to this notion of the unfit as the unhealthy, crippled, deformed, although
there may well be excellences that overcome this.
Beethoven transcended deafness. So unfitness would
include not only the broken piano, but also the defaced painting . . . the house in shade or the glaring
street, the anarchic city; these are all unfit.

Stability. Another dimension concerning the outcomes

of evolution and adaptation is the idea of stability as a
benchmark of ecological health. McHarg argued that
stable and healthy forests, marshes, deserts, streams
can be defined, that succession and retrogression can
be identified (2006a; 1966, 39). He further asserted:
Complexity, diversity, stability (steady state), with a
high number of species and low entropy are indicators
of health and systems moving in this direction are evolving (1967, 107), and again attested that an increase
in the number of species correlates with an increase in
stability (2006g; 1968, 57). He concluded that ecological fitness must meet the evolutionary side (trending
towards complexity and diversity) of the simplicitycomplexity, uniformity-diversity, instability-stability,
independence-interdependence criteria (2006g; 1968,
6

Landscape Journal 29:110

60), and on all counts the complex environment will be

more stable(1969, 120).

PROBLEMS AND LIMITATIONS OF McHARGS

CONTRIBUTIONS

Reaction to McHargs Work

Design with Nature made its debut in 1969, and since
then conceptions of nature, design, and science have
developed in landscape architecture in myriad ways.
Some of these changes have been the direct consequence of reinterpreting McHargs work. Without doubt
he sustained a devout following, particularly among his
past students. The landscape architecture office Andropogon Associates, founded by Carol Franklin, Colin
Franklin, Leslie Sauer, and Rolf Sauer (McHargs former
students), has produced award-winning landscapes in
the name of designing with nature. On the teaching
front, Ecology and Design: Frameworks for Learning
(Johnson and Hill 2001) has revamped the role of ecological thinking in design education; some consider it
the postscript of Design with Nature (Pittari 2003, 115).
Former students have also challenged McHargs
autocratic views, expanding the scope and intent of his
ecological message. Whereas McHarg viewed the city
as the antithesis of nature, his former students, Anne
Whiston Spirn and Michael Hough, found the urban
environment brimming with natural systems worthy
of our attention (Spirn 1984; Hough 1995). McHargs
colleagues also countered some of his positions on the
future of landscape architecture, bringing a humanist
dimension to his ecological method. McHarg sought
to make landscape design and planning a hard science (Olin 1999, 16). Laurie Olin, in both his practice
with Robert Hanna and his teaching at the University of
Pennsylvania, however, combined ecological concerns
with artistic expression. When James Corner joined the
University of Pennsylvania in 1988, he intentionally exploited the subjective beauty of maps. With Anu Mathur,
Corner argued that maps were part of the repertoire of
representational strategies used to generate a catalytic

locale of inventive subterfuges for the making of poetic

landscapes (Corner 1992, 275).
Even the latest trend in landscape architecture
landscape urbanismhas ties to McHargs work. Richard Weller (2006) has posited that landscape urbanism
must conjoin the rigor and conviction characterizing
McHargs ecological method with the exquisite imagery and theoretical sophistication that defines Corners
work. For Weller, We are aptly reminded that landscape
architecture is at best an art of instrumentality, or better still, an ecological art of instrumentality (2006, 77).
Indeed landscape urbanism shares commonalities with
McHargs work, particularly its emphasis on graphic
and analytic techniques, and its dependency on systems and strategy over form and design.
Critics of McHarg have frequently observed his disinterest in social issues. As early as 1971, Michael Laurie cautioned: By his own admission McHarg barely
touches upon social issues beyond the realm of survival (206, 248). And yet some of the most serious criticism leveled at McHarg concerns his disdain for art and
his low regard for site design, particularly at a garden
scale. In Recovering Landscape, Marc Treib stated:
[McHarg] mixed science with evangelisma sort of
ecofundamentalism . . . McHargs method insinuated
that if the process were correct, the consequent form
would be good, almost as if objective study automatically gave rise to an appropriate aesthetic. In response
to his strong personality and ideas, landscape architects jumped aboard the ecological train, becoming
analysts rather than creators, and the conscious making of form and space in the landscape subsequently
came to a screeching halt (1999, 31).

Given that Treibs essay is the first chapter of Recovering Landscape, readers might wonder whether landscape architecture is recovering from McHarg. Spirn
also noted:
When McHarg calls ecology not only an explanation, but also a command, he conflates ecology as a
science (a way of describing the world), ecology as a

cause (a mandate for moral action), and ecology as an

aesthetic (a norm for beauty). It is important to distinguish the insights ecology yields as a description of
the world, on the one hand, from how these insights
have served as a source of prescriptive principles and
aesthetic values, on the other (2000, 112).

The following is an attempt to begin unraveling

McHargs appropriation of science.

The Ecological Superiority of English Landscape

Gardens?
As is evident in McHargs writings and lectures, the English landscape garden, compared with other historical gardens, served as a representational analogy for
designing with nature. Analogies may be useful communication tools, but they have a history of representing wrong theories in science. For example, during the
majority of the 20th century, paleontologists believed
that duckbilled dinosaurs inhabited aquatic environments. The dinosaurs had bills and webbed feet like the
ducks we see today, so it was postulated that they lived
like ducks (Figure 4). As a result, professional publications, educational dioramas, and popular books displayed duckbilled dinosaurs, such as Corythosaurus,
swimming in water or emerging from a murky swamp.
Later examination of their fossilized remains, however,
indicated that despite their ducklike appearance, these
dinosaurs were not aquatic creatures but lived on land
(Turner 2000).
McHargs analogy between designing with nature
and English landscape gardens from the 18th century
suffers in this way. The paleontologist sees the webbed
feet and ducklike bill of the dinosaur. She thinks it looks
like a duck and so concludes it was an aquatic animal.
Likewise, McHarg saw an English landscape garden, its
valley flooded with curvy lakes, its undulating meadows
with sheep, its clumps of trees; he thought it looked like
nature and concluded the garden was designed with
nature. Despite appearances, duckbilled dinosaurs
lived on land and the designers of English landscape

Herrington

gardens often radically changed the natural systems of

their sites.
This zeal for the superiority of English landscape
gardens glosses over both the human and site subjugation resulting from their creation, placing in question
their benefit to existing human populations and the
natural systems of the site. For example, in his promotion of English landscape gardens, McHarg obliquely
referred to the enclosure acts that made many of these
gardens possible. He noted that, before the 18th century,
agricultural patterns were awkward and unproductive:
Starting with a denuded landscape, a backward agriculture, and medieval pattern of attenuated land holdings, this tradition rehabilitated an entire countryside
(McHarg 1969, 72).
While enclosure generally was an economic success
for landowners, it provided little appreciable benefit for
the landless tenant farmers. Moreover, this success was
largely due to technological advances in farming, and it
came at the expense of peoples common rights. Enclosure acts disenfranchised the poor by forcing them to
work as tenant farmers on the enclosed land or leave to
find work elsewhere. As early as the 18th century, critics
such as Mary Wollstonecraft condemned the enclosure
acts. She argued that the exploitation of poor people
for the sake of maximizing agricultural production and
creating landscape gardens was inhumane (Bohls 2005,
145146).
In the 20th century, Denis Cosgrove analyzed the
impact of enclosure on farmers, noting: [A] majority
saw their position eroded and their land slipping from
their grasp as enclosure acts forced them to bear the
costs of fencing and hedging while depriving them of
crucial traditional sources of communal livelihood
(1998, 192). Cosgrove also stressed the division of space
and labor in these enclosed lands. The tenants hired to
maintain the plantings, statuary, and water features in
landscape gardens were prohibited from using them.
They could enter these spaces only as laborers. According to Cosgrove, The 60 persons, for example, permanently employed to cater for Blenheims 2,500 acres, are
entirely excluded from its landscape (1998, 215).
8

Landscape Journal 29:110

In his Design with Nature (1969) chapter On Values, McHarg included a photograph of Blenheim Palace showing John Vanbrughs Grand Bridge crossing
over Lancelot Browns flooded Glyme Valley (Figure 5).
McHarg seems to have been unaware of the human
labor that produced and maintained this landscape in
noting that English landscape designers used native
plant materials to create new communities that so well
reflected natural processes that their creations have endured and are self-perpetuating (1969, 72). On the page
with a photograph of the Blenheim Palace landscape,
McHarg continued his promotion of English landscape
gardens, noting the water courses graced with willow,
alder and osier, while the meadow supported grasses
and meadow flowers (1969, 73).
In actuality, Lancelot Brown made sweeping
changes to the existing hydrology and terrain of the
Blenheim Palace site. He did far more than plant trees
and meadows at Blenheim. Starting in 1763, he redirected a major waterway, damned it, flooded the first
floors of the Grand Bridge, wiped out Lady Sarahs waterfall and canal, and after a succession of cascades
redirected this water into the Thames River, which he
boasted would never forgive him (Green 2000, 53). According to Clemens Steenbergen and Wouter Rehs analyses of Browns work at Blenheim, Its landscape seems
to have been forged with a sledgehammer; it is a visual
tour de force (1996, 321). This certainly is a description
correlative to dominating nature rather than designing
with it. Moreover, Brown radically changed the hydrology and terrain on numerous other sites he designed.
This flawed view of certain historical landscapes
representing designing with or without nature prevailed in McHargs lectures and writings. In 1997, in an
essay for the American Society of Landscape Architects,
McHarg surmised that Baroque gardens like Versailles
sought to demonstrate mans dominion over nature.
This constitutes the worst possible admonition to the
explorers who were then about to discover and colonize
the earth. Anthropomorphism, dominion, and subjugation are better suited to suicide, genocide, and biocide
than survival and success (1997, 105) More problematic,

some landscape architects persist in upholding these

faulty representational analogies. John Dixon Hunt has
noted that the profession continues to attribute rectilinear gardens with badness and serpentine gardens with
goodness (2000, 212). This is due to the supposition that
gardens that look like 18th-century English gardens are
designing with nature and so are good, and that gardens
that similar to Baroque or Renaissance gardens are not
designing with nature and so are bad.

The Map-Overlay Process Is Like a Scientific

Method?
The objectivity of maps. The mapping process so fundamental to McHargs method is also strangely at odds
with his emphasis on nature as a dynamic process.9 The
act of plotting static features as a way of designing with
nature is inconsistent with the idea that nature is a phenomenon marked by gradual changes through a series
of states. As Spirn has observed, the conflict between
preservation and change is McHargs most persistent
inconsistency (2000, 102).
Yet another problem with McHargs mapping process is his persistent claims to its objectivity. Although
McHarg promoted the map-overlay method as an objective approach to design, the compilation of facts is
not bias-free, and maps can be as subjective as other
forms of depiction (Harley 1989a, 1989b, 1990; Wood
1992; Cosgrove 2008). In the classic text The Iconography of Landscape, J. B. Harley introduced maps as part
of the broader family of value-laden images (1989b,
279). Tracing a history of mapmaking from the decorative maps of the 16th century to the scientific phase of
mapping in the 20th century, Harley posited that maps
are far from value-free. Moreover, 20th-century maps
created under the guise of scientific disinterestedness
while free from heraldic banners, jewel encrusted compasses, or dueling Minotaursserve to legitimatize
power relations.
These power relations are legitimized not only by
what maps contain but also by what they omitthe silences of maps. According to Harley, It is asserted here
that mapsjust as much as examples of literature

exert a social influence through their omissions as much

as by the features they depict and emphasize (1989b,
290). For example, describing 17th-century maps of English estates in Ireland, surveyors often excluded the
cabins of Irish families in their otherwise accurate
maps. These omissions revealed not only religious tension but also the power of English landholders to expunge the Irish from their conceptualizations of the
landscape. For Harley, Silences on maps thus come to
enshrine self-fulfilling prophecies about the geography
of power (292). What you see is what you get.
While Harley used historical maps to make his
point, contemporary maps, including those created
with computers, may further increase the disconnect
between maps and the realities of a site.10 Contemporary maps foster the notion of a socially empty space,
and computer generated maps lessen the burden of
conscience about people in the landscape (Harley
1989b, 303).11 Critics wonder, Are we really designing
with nature, or are we simply addicted to our maps and
the technology behind them? (Dunstan 1983, 61)
Given that maps are not objective, this opens
their creation to partiality. A latent bias in McHargs
ecological method was his preference for low-density
development as a desired outcome. WMRTs Plan for
the Valleys in Maryland; for Medford Township in New
Jersey; and for The Woodlands in Texas endorsed lowdensity housing. In the plan for Medford, for example,
single-family residences on lots bigger than one acre
are weighted the highest and considered the best type
of new development in comparison to all other densities. Throughout Design with Nature, McHarg advocated the spacious countryside and its scenic qualities
over denser, urban living.
To legitimatize his preference for low density,
McHarg referred to John Calhoun and Jack Christians
work on crowding in rat populations and the theory
of pathological togetherness. In Design with Nature,
McHarg warned of the direct relationship between high
density and a decline in the size of litters, deformed
young, and ultimately the failure of the mothers to
provide milk, and cannibalism (1969, 193). McHarg
Herrington

applied the findings of Calhoun and Christian, whose

rats were living in conditions of extreme crowding, in
his ecological model of Philadelphia. Mapping a range
of factors from ethnic distribution, density and economic factors to various social diseases, he conjoined
high density with pathology, noting, Its premature
to predict correlations. The single obvious one is poverty, but densityindeed the adjacent population map
bears a remarkable correspondence to the pattern of
pathology (193). With the rise of cluster housing and
later new urbanism, low-density housing has been associated with increased dependence on cars, a diffusion
of single-function infrastructure, and greater ecological
disturbances. Yet, even in his 25th anniversary edition of
Design with Nature, McHarg did not change his stance
on dense living and the city.
McHarg was aware of the cultural biases of mapmaking. In his biography, Quest for Life, he revealed how
race played a role in the Washington Metropolitan Transit Authority project. He noted: [A] covert value system
was being utilized in conjunction with an overt ecological inventory (1996, 340). While how he avoided this
covert value system is unclear, he claimed that for this
project, like others, the process was overt, explicit, and
replicable, just like a scientific experiment (1996, 341).
McHargs belief in the objectivity of maps was
deeply entrenched in culture. As Monmonier noted:
Map users are generally a trusting lot . . . they readily
entrust map-making to a priesthood of technically competent designers and drafters (Monmonier 1996, 1).
Developers deploy the presumed objectiveness of map
analyses purposely to lie in ways that do not benefit the
environment or the local people (Monmonier 1996).

Inaccurate and diverse data. Monmonier has posited

that all maps contain lies. These lies are not always intentional but can be attributed to the inaccuracies of
|the data, particularly with imprecise resource-related
data. Data sources commonly used in landscape planning and design (for example the Unites States Geological Survey) are often flawed, as are procedures
for compiling these data. For example, according to
10

Landscape Journal 29:110

Monmonier, Floodplains defined locally by a single

elevation tend to include either too much or too little
of the real flood plain (1996, 76). Cosgrove also scrutinized the conflation of knowledge and mapmaking,
noting that the graphic power of McHargs maps lies
in their ability to calculate claims about phenomena
that escape normal bodily experiences (2008, 168). For
example, its not always possible to experience the intersection of bedrock geology and residential values on
a site. This situation, however, often forces mapmakers
to use secondary sources subject to the types of inaccuracies cited by Monmonier. Inaccurate data hinders the
type of scientific rigor that McHarg aspired to achieve
with his overlay method.
Another problem with the map-overlay method
is the notion that physical values, such as information
gleaned from a soil boring, may be operationalized the
same way that cultural values, such as historical significance, may be. McHargs method was attacked for
giving too much weight to science instead of intuition
(Spirn 2000). Critics, wrote Spirn, lose sight of the most
important aspects of the ecological inventorits systematic comprehensiveness and the relation of different
aspects of the environment (2000, 108). The breadth of
issues and values that the map-overlay method could
address was unprecedented. But the ability to integrate
biophysical features as well as cultural factors through
the Cartesian sieve of the overlay method overlooked the
complexity of cultural issues.
In Design with Nature, the location of a highway
provides the first example of the map-overlay method at
work. Information like bedrock conditions, slopes, and
soils conditions are ratedlow suitability (Zone 1), medium suitability (Zone 2), or high suitability (Zone 3) for
road construction. Soil values, for example, ranks silts
and clay soils areas low, and these areas are portrayed
in darker tones. Sandy loams are ranked medium, and
these areas are of a mid-range tone. Gravelly sand or silt
loams and gravelly to stony sandy loams are rated high
and given the lightest tone because these soils are good
for roadway construction.

In the same study, but on different layers, the rating

approach is applied to cultural criteria such as residential, institutional, and scenic values. Residential values,
for example, are marked low for road construction suitability where the market value of housing is more than
$50,000, medium for houses valued between $25,000
and $50,000, and high for road-construction suitability
in areas with houses under $25,000. This ranking raises
concerns about social inequities in the map-analysis
procedure. Why are the wealthier homeowners permitted to hide in the shadows of the darker tones? Moreover,
when people living in inexpensive housing exist on the
same tonal plane as gravelly sand, how is this designing
with nature? McHarg admitted that this example privileges the wealthy but surmised that it nevertheless is a
success because the method is explicit (1969, 40).

Scientific proof. McHarg consistently referred to the

map-overlay method as an ecological model that was
scientifically defensible. Scientific approaches to understanding the world are based on the following four
elements:
1. observation of specific facts or phenomena
2. formulation of generalizations about such

phenomena
3. production of causal hypotheses relating different

phenomena
4. testing of the causal hypotheses by means of further

observation and experimentation (Pigliucci 2002,

128129).

McHarg argued for this positivist conception of

landscape architecture. He thought that design and
planning solutions, like those in science, should be verified for their ecological integrity. As early as 1965, he
outlined the data collection and mapping for his new
ecological model in his lecture Ecological Determinism. According to McHarg, these procedures included
six steps:

1. ecosystem inventory
2. description of natural processes
3. identification of limiting factors
4. attribution of value
5. determination of prohibitions and permissiveness

to change
6. identification of stability or instability (2006a;

1966, 24)

By 1967 McHarg expanded the last step to a set of

binary ecological criteria by which design outcomes
could be affirmed as positive or negative, bringing his
methodology into complete alignment with positivist
thinking.
During the early 1990s landscape architects criticized McHargs unequivocal endorsement of mapoverlays and GIS as a positivist method. Some argued
that these approaches to design were incapable of
considering the rich array of cultural aspects comprising landscapes. In 1991, James Corner identified positivism as a tyranny in landscape architecture. Corner
described the positivist tyranny as one grounded in science, based on descriptions and explanation of design
processes, and overly methodological. For Corner, one
only has to plow through the complex matrices of Christopher Alexanders Notes on the Synthesis of Form (1964)
or to look at the exhaustive collection of data involved
in McHargs suitability analyses to see the laborious nature of such an enterprise (1991, 117). The tyranny for
Corner, however, was not the voluminous amount of
work but the notion that the data itself would automatically guide designers to a credible solution.
The problem raised here concerns the lack of proof
substantiating the ecological superiority of McHargs
method. While McHarg championed that the outcomes
of his method could be verified, there have been few
systematic assessments of his built projects. In the
1970s the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development hailed The Woodlands, WMRTs award winning project in Texas, as a great success (Morgan and

Herrington

11

King 1987, 142143). Other awards followed, but the

project gained its fame as an application of McHargs
ecological approach conjoined with The Woodlands
status as a Housing and Urban Development New Town
(Morgan and King 1987, 149), not through the replication and testing of the design solution.
Landscape architects have studied the project as
well. In the 1990s, Cynthia Girling and Kenneth Helphand found that subsequent developments in The
Woodlands did not McHargs signature open-swale
system. Instead, by 1985, development there used the
conventional curb-and-gutter system (Girling and Helphand 1994, 166167). Urban designer Ann Forsyth
found that residents complained about the wild look
of the open swales and that some thought the focus on
hydrology diminished the importance of maintaining
corridors for wildlife (Forsyth 2003, 13). These studies,
however informative, probably are not the rigorous scientific testing McHarg envisioned.12
Evaluations of McHargs design solutions compared with those of ecological health could help determine whether his model is scientifically credible. We
learn from mistakesthe identification of ecological
failures in his solutions would suggest adjustments to
his method. This certainly was not lost on McHarg. He
noted in Design with Nature: We can accept that scientific knowledge is incomplete and will forever be so,
but it is the best we have and it has that great merit,
which religions lack, of being self-correcting (1969,
29). Nonetheless, even if we used McHargs ecological
criteria to self-correctto check whether his method
produced landscapes of great ecological integrity compared to other methodsthere are problems with some
of his ecological theories. These ideas are noteworthy
because they have permeated both professional and
academic thinking in landscape architecture.

Creative Fitting or Religious Fitting?

The illusion of design. While Darwin- and Hendersoninspired theory occupy McHargs ecological thought
for more than 30 years, his interpretations of their work
were not entirely accurate. McHarg was clearly captivated
12

Landscape Journal 29:110

by Hendersons recounting of how the world became

fit for life. Hendersons The Fitness of the Environment
(1958) is a classic text explaining how hydrogen and
oxygen and their particular characteristics make possible the production of living protoplasm, and thus, a fit
condition for life. Be that as it may, scientists seriously
questioned Hendersons foray into the metaphysical implications of his workan explanation of who or what
was designing this earth for life (Mendelsohn 2008).
Some readers of The Fitness of the Environment,
like McHarg, found that Hendersons theories validated
the idea that there was a design for earth, which made it
fit for every form of life that has existed, does now exist,
and all imaginable forms (McHarg 2007, 23).13 According to historian Everett Mendelsohn, Henderson did not
believe there was a grand designer for earths natural
systems, and he spent a significant portion of his career
defending and explaining his metaphysical claims. In a
letter cited by Mendelsohn, Henderson contended:
What I maintain is that there is a pattern in the ultimate properties of the chemical elements and in the
ultimate physiochemical properties of all phenomena
considered in relation to each other. I do not mean
to say that this pattern is exactly of the same nature
as the pattern of a watch or an organism. Still less do
I mean to say or to imply anything about design of
mind. The only minds that I know are the minds of
the individual organisms that I encounter upon the
earth (Mendelsohn 2008, 10).

In this letter Henderson argued against an interpretation of his work claiming that natural organisms
are designed by some God-like mind. Richard Dawkins
has called this misinterpretation the illusion of design
(1996, 34). Since some things in the worldthe beautiful symmetry of a butterfly for exampleappear to have
been designed, some argue that they must have been
intentionally designed by an intelligent being. According to Dawkins, Natural selection is the blind watchmaker, blind because it does not see ahead, does not
plan consequences, has no purpose in view (1996, 21).
Since Henderson proposed that the earth was designed

for life, for some people this suggested a grand designer

in the wings. Unfortunately for the atheist Henderson,
Intelligent Design enthusiasts cite his metaphysical accounts more often than scientists do (Denton 1998).
McHarg was not an Intelligent Design advocate, but
God held a spectral presence in his thinking on nature
and science. His writings and lectures are laced with religious overtones of heresy, good, evil, and a perpetual
guilt that our brains make humans a planetary disease.
McHarg (1996) implied that God praises the ecological
designer over others. Even his film Multiply and Subdue the Earth suggests his disillusionment with the frequently cited line from Genesis: So God created man
in his own image . . . and God said to them, Be fruitful
and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it (Bible
2007). In an interview in 1976, McHarg remarked, So
far as Im concerned, ecology is a kind of heavy-footed
religion. Its a religious quest, this idea about something
that unites all rocks, plants, animals and men (MY
1976, 109).
Through history, scientists have been theists or
atheists, but McHargs desire to find a purpose and
unity in natures design muddles the science in his
theory of creative fitting. On one hand he promoted a
scientists view of adaptation regarding evolution. On
the other, he was unwilling to accept the remorseless
Darwinian prognosis that the world had evolved with
no grand design. Even if we choose to believe that nature has a design, with creative fitting as its proof, there
are problems with the outcome of its plan, particularly
with regard to optimization and balance.

Optimization. The process of adaptation involves the

mutation of genes, which is random, so there is no bias
towards improvement. Dawkins asked, How on earth
is mutation supposed to know what will be good . . . by
what mysterious built-in wisdom does the body choose
to mutate in the direction of getting better, rather than
worse? (1996, 305306). The desire to believe that adaptation is moving towards greater improvement is simply
that, a belief, and has never been verified.

Like his interpretation of Hendersons work,

McHargs ideas about adaptation may have been more
influenced by religious ideas. According to Stephen Jay
Gould, [A] popular impression regards Darwins principle of natural selection as an optimizing force, leading
to the same end of local perfection that God had supplied directly in older views of natural theology (1997,
5). In Western cultures, where scientific ideas have replaced natural theology with Darwin as the mainstay,
evolutionary theories have been frequently misinterpreted as attaining theologys end game. This certainly
explains McHargs misinterpretation of Darwin, but how
did it affect the profession he so profoundly changed?
Landscape architects continue to suffer from this
misreading of Darwin with regard to native plants. The
argument follows that since native plants lived in North
America before Western settlement, they existed in a
natural state and thus must have naturally evolved as
the best-adapted plants for their given location. Biologists have pointed out that natural selection is only a
better than principle, not an optimizing device (Gould
1997, 6). Nonetheless, students of landscape architecture often claim that native plants are the best-adapted
plants for a landscape. One can hardly blame them. Not
only did McHarg roll out a version of adaptation optimization but advocacy groups and nurseries also began
selling native plants, confirming the theory.

Natural balance. According to McHarg, another criterion for creative fitting is a stable ecosystem. Stability,
however, has been one of the most contested criterions for describing a healthy ecosystem. The idea of a
stable, balanced natural state may be traced back to
natural philosophy in the 18th and 19th centuries. By
the 1930s, however, numerous ecologists found there
was no evidence of ecological stability in unexploited
natural populations or communities (McCoy and
Shrader-Frechette 1992, 188). Healthy ecosystems did
not necessarily exhibit stability or balance. In the 1950s,
stability was replaced by dynamic balance, and is sometimes used by present-day interpreters of McHargs
work (Sagan 2006, 82). This proved to be as difficult
Herrington

13

to substantiate as balance, stability, and steady-state

(McCoy and Shrader-Frechette 1992, 185). According to
McNaughton, Continued assertions of the validity of
one or another conclusion about diversity-stability, in
the absence of empirical tests, are acts of faith, not science (1977, 515). Notions of balanced nature and stability principles have misrepresented the foundations
of resource management, nature conservation, and environmental protection (Wu and Loucks 1995, 439).
McHarg attributed his definition of stability to
Robert MacArthur (1967, 107), a frequent guest in his
classes (McHarg 1996, 137). In a retrospective of MacArthurs contributions to ecology, Stephen Fretwell has
speculated on why this respected scientist upheld the
idea of stability as a benchmark for healthy ecosystems,
surmising that his work surrounding stability and diversity was what everyone wanted to hear in the thenbudding ecology movement (1975, 7). Perhaps McHarg
faced a similar situation.
Like optimization, religious thought rather than
science may have influenced McHargs views on natural balance. Frederick Turner has posited that many
environmental concepts about nature are still infused
with religious beliefs, noting: Very often the environmentalists ideas of nature retains these characteristics
of the transcendent God . . . The basic feature of nature
is homeostasis . . . nature in this view has an ideal state,
which is perfect and should not be tampered with
(1993, 3839).
This belief in natural balance and evolutionary
stability continues to permeate landscape architecture
and its educational institutions. Consider the 2005 International Federation of Landscape Architects Charter
For Landscape Architectural Education. It states that
landscape architects will engage in the conservation
and enhancement of the built heritage, the protection
of the natural balance and rational land use planning
for the utilization of available resources.14 Or think of
the numerous concept statements by landscape architecture students explaining how their designs will restore natures balance.

14

Landscape Journal 29:110

MCHARGS LEGACY
The contradictions and inaccuracies do not detract from
the spectacular advancements McHarg made in landscape architecture and society in general. Rather, they
suggest his work be contextualized historically. Recent
books on McHarg are unwavering in their admiration
of him. Frederick Steiner has suggested: Ian McHargs
ideas about ecologically based design, human ecology,
and national and global inventories remain crucial to
our futures (2006, xiv). David Orr has noted: McHargs
vision of humankind and nature in harmony . . . may
help a generate wisdom and foresight amongst your
peers (2007, 14). McHarg certainly deserves this recognition, but without a historical critique of McHargs
ideas, we lose the opportunity to understand McHargs place in history. We also fail to learn from the
other fields that he relied upon in his work.
This is true of the sciences as well as of history. According to Michael Graham and Paul Dayton, scientific
knowledge is a dynamic process; they caution that when
ecologists loose touch with their historical roots, they
face a greater likelihood of recycling ideas and impeding scientific momentum (2002, 1481). This caution applies to landscape architecture, too. For example, if we
continue to maintain that maps are an objective form
of depiction, we too risk repeating the past and hindering knowledge about landscapes. This is not to say we
should abandon GIS or the map-overlay method. Maps
are extremely useful and efficient forms of communication, but they must be presented to students with this
awareness that they are not bias free. Like a perspective
sketch, they illustrate a point of view, and in doing so
they leave things out.
Why did McHarg not keep up with current research
on evolution and ecology? Despite 25 years of changes
in science and landscape architecture, the 1992 edition
of Design with Nature is virtually identical to the 1969
edition. Perhaps, as with MacArthur, whom McHarg so
admired, people liked what they heard. The environment was in crisis, and he had a solution that felt right.
Likewise, why was McHargs ecology more like a heavy-

footed religion? The son of a minister, McHarg perhaps

was inclined to measure the relations between organisms and their environment in terms of divine sources
of truth and goodness. But May have been due to the
scale of the questions he asked. McHarg wanted to
know how we are part of a larger, God-like scheme and
how the values and commitments we share might be
garnered to maintain this it. The answers to this question are surely most suited to religious speculation.
Spirn has remarked: It is difficult to imagine what
landscape architecture would be like today without the
presence of Ian McHarg, his publications, teaching,
and professional projects. (2000, 114). Indeed he was a
powerful and complex figure in the history of landscape
architecture. McHarg seized some of the most the crucial issues of his times and unearthed them in a powerful method for landscape architects. He challenged us
to take a stand in protecting the natural environment.
In short, he asked us to care, which is surely a substance
not only of science and religion but also of reason.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I thank Judith Major, Thaisa Way, and the Landscape Journal
reviewers and editors for their helpful comments on this paper.

NOTES
1. Portions of this article were presented on April 25, 2008, in
a session on landscape architecture and science (chaired by
Judith Major and Joy Stocke) at the Society of Architectural
Historians Annual Conference in Cincinnati.
2. See Spirn 2000. According to Steiner in The Essential Ian
McHarg (an excellent collection of McHargs writings and
lectures prefaced by Steiners introductions), The dictum
design with nature not only changed design and planning
but also influenced fields as diverse as geography, engineering, forestry, and environmental ethics, soil science, and
ecology (Steiner 2006, xiii).
3. McHarg also produced a film, Multiply and Subdue the
Earth (Hoyt, Blau, and McHarg 1969). See also Walker and
Simo 1996.
4. Where two publication dates are referenced, republication
date is followed by the original publication date.

5. This self-description is from Margulis, Corner, and Hawthorne 2006, an edited transcription of McHargs conversations with students. For the complete recordings, see
Margulis, MacConnell, and MacAllister 2006.
6. In Design with Nature McHarg attempted to reconcile the
Le Ntre-inspired plan of Washington, DC. He noted, It is
something of a paradox that the image of the city, most appropriate of kings, became the expression for that confederacy, which was to become a great democracy (McHarg 1969,
181). He was even more surprised that LEnfants plan used
the geomorphology of the site to locate major structures and
align them with other major landscape features (1969, 183).
7. Ernst Haeckel coined the term ecology or oekologie in 1876,
and ecological science emerged as a branch of biology devoted to the study of organisms relationship to each other
and to the physical environment in which they live.
8. For a brief history of the map-overlay method in landscape
architecture, see Steinitz, Parker, and Jordan 1976.
9. I thank a Landscape Journal reviewer for pointing this out.
10. Critiques of the maps produced through GIS appear extensively in geography literature. See Harvey 2000, Taylor 1991,
Taylor and Johnston 1995, and Openshaw 1991 and 1992.
11. Denis Wood has posited that since maps bring out contested
issues, they can provide a discursive territory that also provides an opportunity to debate what they dispute (1992, 19).
12. The Woodlands Corporation funded a hydrological study to
determine whether WMRTs unique design mitigated flooding. Using the 1978 plan and a mathematical model (HEC1), it found that the hydrological impacts were minimized
(Bedient et al. 1985, 550).
13. Admitting he may have overstepped the boundaries of
science, Henderson wrote: It is evident that a perfect
mechanistic description of the building of a house may be
conceived. Yet such design and purpose, whether or not in
themselves of mechanistic origin, are at one and the same
time determining factors in the result (1958, 307). One can
imagine this line appealing to McHarg, the combining of
design and purpose perhaps foreshadowing his television
series The House We Live In.
14. The complete August 15, 2005, version reads: It is in the
public interest to ensure that landscape architects are able to
understand and to give practical expression to the needs of
individuals, communities, and the private sector regarding
spatial planning, design organization, construction of landscapes, as well as conservation and enhancement of the built
heritage, the protection of the natural balance, and rational

Herrington

15

land-use planning for the utilization of available resources

(IFLA, 2005).

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AUTHOR SUSAN HERRINGTON is a Professor in the School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture at the University of British
Columbia. She is the author of On Landscapes, published by Routledge in 2009. Currently, she is writing a book on modern landscape architecture and the work of Cornelia Hahn Oberlander.

Figure 1. Ian McHarg (Architectural

Archives of the University of
Pennsylvania).

Figure 2. Ian McHarg interviewing psychologist Erich Fromm on the set

of The House We Live In, October 1960 (Architectural Archives of the
University of Pennsylvania).

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Figure 3. Snowflakes are examples of natures design (From Wilson Bentley, Studies among the Snow Crystals in Monthly Weather Review. 1902.
Plate XIX).

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Landscape Journal 29:110

Figure 4. Illustration by Richard

Deckert shows the Corythosaurus
Casuarius, genus of the Duckbill
Dinosaur, swimming and the other
dinosaurs on land. This drawing was
frequently used by paleontologists in
their publications (From Barnum Brown,
Corythosaurus Casuarius: Skelton,
Musculate and Epidermis in Bulletin
of The American Museum of Natural
History 35. 1916. Plate XXII).

Figure 5. Blenheim Palace Grand

Bridge (Photo by Nick Thompson).

Herrington

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