Political Economies of Landscape Change

"Places of Power: Political Economies of Landscape Change" asks how politics and economics transform the landscapes we inhabit. This volume explores the connections between political economy and landscape change through a series of conceptual essays and case studies. In so doing, it speaks to a broad readership of landscape architects, geographers, and related fields of social and environmental research. The book consists of an introductory essay with nine chapters commissioned from leading geographers, landscape architects, political scientists, and economists, and a concluding essay on implications for future landscape inquiry and design.

The book is organized in three major sections. Part one, titled Landscapes of Struggle, Possibility, and Prosperity, includes a chapter on new axioms for reading the landscape followed by two chapters that read processes of economic development and distress in mountain landscapes of the U.S. and South America. Part Two on Political and Economic Driving Forces of Landscape Change includes two chapters each on political driving forces (political constructs and institutions) and economic driving forces (environmental economics and global financial markets). Part Three, titled Integrative Landscape Change compares innovative rural landscape policies in Europe and the U.S., and draws implications for future landscape inquiry, planning, and design.

"Places of Power" contributes to the Landscape Architecture Foundation’s Landscape Futures Initiative, which explores driving forces of landscape change that societies and designers will face in the 21^st century.

Politics and economics exert profoundly important, and dynamic, influences on land use, landcover, and landscape experience. Likewise, landscapes shape political economies from the site to global scales.

This book examines the complex relationships between political economy and landscape change. It encompasses perspectives ranging from radical landscape interpretation to sustainable livelihoods, real estate economics, institutions, international landscape policies, and global finance. It asks what difference "design", can make within the broader structural contexts of landscape change.

The perspectives in this book share a common concern for what economist and futurist Kenneth Boulding termed "integrative power" – the power of human solidarity, respect, and love – to direct political and economic change toward paths of sustainable landscape design. They speak to landscape architects, planners, urbanists, geographers, and social scientists about some of the most pressing issues of our times.