This research project focuses on a participatory protocol for ecologically informed planning and design. This is an action based research project, in which I will be facilitating a design process with community and business groups. The process which I will be using in this community planning process provides a framework for making operable the concept of joined up thinking, a current theme in much governmental literature on a national level, and represented by the Agenda 21 process. (O'Riordan 1998) (Future 1998). (Ward 1993).

The research is characterized by the following assumptions: sustainability[1] offers a valid and important conceptual framework for planning and design, public participation in this process is advantageous and an interdisciplinary approach is essential to understand the complex issues involved in sustainable planning.

This research is being conducted within the context of an existing, successful approach to ecological regeneration on a broad scale (The Mersey Basin Campaign[2]). What the project intends to add to this process is a richer picture of sustainable development, through the integration of several key concepts and themes, as well as a method or means of getting the concepts across in a meaningful way.

The goal of this literature search is to develop the major themes and concepts clustered around the process of sustainable development. It is argued that a rigorous approach will of necessity combine several key themes, and that much research to this date has been lacking in at least one, often more, of these key themes.

Aims of literature review

· Develop a conceptual framework for evaluating and understanding current research in the field

· Learn from best practices – integrate principles into action based research

· Elucidate research methodological issues in the field

· Gain transdisciplinary perspective

· Develop/define concepts and themes of subject areas

· Explore research and applications of these themes

· Show interrelationships between themes – leading to testing of research question – is there a necessary/beneficial relationship of all these themes in application

Literature review areas:

Systems Thinking

Design

Participation

Landscapes

Ecological Design

For this assignment, I have mainly focussed on the area of systems thinking. A note form draft of the key areas for the other four concepts is included in Appendix A.
Systems Thinking

The aim of this section of the literature review is to set the theoretical framework for the action based research project, by deepening theoretical grounding through the lens of systems thinking, and begin to develop the structure of the overall literature review[3]. This section begins with the general theoretical concepts of systems thinking, a prerequisite to its main focus, an exploration of the applications of systems thinking to making the concept of sustainable design operational.

This review will explore the major concepts and paradigms inherent in systems thinking, both from a theoretical/conceptual point of view (arising from basic research) and from the point of view of developments and concepts arising from the uses of systems thinking in action research. This sketching of concepts will include: definitions and themes, relationships between the concepts (including some exploration of relationships with the other areas of the literature review for this research project). The major headings for these concepts are:

Holism
Time – change and development
Patterns and self-organisation
Perception and cognition

A discussion of epistemological and methodological issues arising in the field of systems thinking will follow. A section on criticisms and difficulties with systems thinking will then lead into a discussion of current areas of research. A description of context of this research project leads into a discussion of the other areas of this literature review and how they are related to systems thinking.

Systems Thinking - Overview

Systems thinking is an emerging discipline, which has developed over the last 40 years in many different fields and through a range of applications.

The term system was first used to refer to both social systems and living organisms in an influential work by Lawrence Henderson (Capra 1996, pg. 27). Since that time, “a system has come to mean an integrated whole whose essential properties arise from the relationships between its parts, and systems thinking the understanding of a phenomenon within the context of a larger whole” (Capra 1996, pg. 27). The root of the word system is derived from the Greek synhistanai, ‘a complex whole put together’ (Skeat 1993, pg. 468; Capra 1996, pg. 27).

The development of systems thinking can be characterised as an attempt to find common principles that can apply at different levels of scale and across different types of complex phenomena. It is not a new science or a discipline, but rather “a methodology that makes possible the collection and organization of accumulated knowledge in order to increase the efficiency of our actions” (de Rosnay 1975, pg. 57).

Context of theory development

Checkland, author of Systems Thinking, Systems Practice, sees that systems thinking has arisen in part in response to three problems in science: ‘complexity in general, the extension of science to cover social phenomena, and the application of science in real world situations’ (Checkland 1991, pg. 74). He does not feel that these problems have yet been solved or dealt with satisfactorily, but that systems thinking has offered a way to supplement scientific reductionism.

Reductionist science is typified by Descartes maxim that research should be conducted by dividing problems into smaller parts as units of study has had many successes in studying the physical world (Capra 1996). Limits to reductionist science’s ability to describe and analyse complex systems, and the way in which these interact, have become increasingly apparent. Indeed in Checkland’s view, this is the ‘crucial problem which science faces’ (1991, pg. 59).

The major role of modern science has been seen to be to provide enough information and predictive ability to make control of natural systems possible. Uncertainty has been seen as a factor to be dealt with and reduced through the gathering of more quantative data and the use of more powerful tools to analyse the data. This deterministic approach, characterised by a positivist epistemology (a view of the world that suggests that it is possible to both understand and objectively describe the world through objective scientific measurement) is particularly associated with ‘Newtonian science, the Darwinian theory of evolution, neo-classical economics and methods such as cost-benefit analysis’ (Tognetti 1999, pg. 690).

A major shift in the last three decades has been an increasing awareness of global ecological problems, which highlights the difficulties that reductionist science has of dealing with highly interrelated and complex systems (Tognetti 1999) (Shiva 1989; Harrison 1992; George 1999; Hawken, Lovins et al. 1999; Boothby 2000; Grossman 2000; Therivel and Partidario 2000).

Historical development

Many of the concepts of systems thinking can be traced back as philosophical threads throughout human history. Aristotle contemplated the nature of pattern and relationships (Capra 1996). Kant was the first thinker to discuss the concept of a self-organising system, where “the part must be an organ producing the other parts - each, consequently, reciprocally producing the others… Only under these conditions and upon these terms can such a product be an organized and self-organized being”(Kant 1980, Part 11, § 4, pg. 65).

Early explorations of what developed into systems thinking included Broad’s The Mind and its Place in Nature (Broad 1923), Smut’s Holism and Evolution (Smuts 1926) and Woodgers’s Biological Principles (Checkland 1991, pg. 77). Work in philosophy also contributed to the development of what became systems thinking, such as Appearance and Reality by (Bradley 1893) and Whitehead’s Process Philosophy (Whitehead 1929) (Checkland 1991).

Bertalanffy ‘s ideas of a general system theory and open systems brought the terms system and system thinking into much wider scientific use in the 1940’s and onwards, especially once the concepts were developed in the emerging field of cybernetics (Bertalanffy 1968; Capra 1996, pg. 46). In 1954, he helped to found the Society for General Systems Research, which started as the Society for the Advancement of General Systems Theory (Checkland 1991 pg. 77). Woodger translated Modern Theories of Development: An Introduction to Theoretical Biology (Bertalanffy 1964) and assisted the author in revising it (Checkland 1991 pg. 77).

Bertalanffy suggested that thinking in terms of change and development, central issues in thinking about living systems, required ‘a new science of complexity’ and that this could not be fulfilled by Newtonian mechanics, with its emphasis on forces and trajectories (Capra 1996, pg. 47).

Concepts and paradigms

Holism

‘The whole is more than the sum of its parts’. This axiom is a basic philosophical assumption of systems theory. (Checkland 1991; Capra 1996; Gibson, Ostrom et al. 2000).

The concept that the ‘whole is more than the sum of its parts’ was argued by Aristotle, linked to the idea of organisms fulfilling a purpose, with the purpose as a causal explanation for the organism, but after the success of the Scientific Revolution in the 17^th century, this concept was largely overtaken by a reductionist point of view (Checkland 1991, pg. 75). Much of the discussion in modern biology focussed on ‘purpose’ in living organisms has rejected the concept of teleology ‘the doctrine that structures and behaviour are determined by the purposes they fulfil’ (Checkland 1991 pg. 75). Instead, teleonomy has been used to describe behaviour which appears as if a purpose was fulfilled (used in Medawar 1977).

Checkland argues that systems thinking is based on two pairs of ideas, or concepts: emergence and hierarchy and communication and control (Checkland 1991, pg. 75).

Emergence

Emergence is the appearance of characteristics from a relationship of parts that is not merely an additive property of the characteristics of the lower parts, but is a new, or emerging property of that particular level of organisation (Gibson, Ostrom et al. 2000). The taste of sugar cannot be explained by the properties of the chemical which make up its molecules. The concept of emergent properties is related to the concept of holism; it is these emergent properties that make it impossible to understand the whole simply from adding together its parts.

Hierarchy

In his process of looking for ‘the pattern which connects’, Bateson used a ‘conceptual framework of hierarchically arranged logical types’ (Tognetti 1999, pg. 702). This conceptual framework was based on the work of Bertrand Russell (logical typing in a hierarchical order) (Russell 1967; Bateson 1979, pg. 21) and Alfred North Whitehead, (Whitehead 1929) philosophers who worked on a ‘process philosophy’.

Hierarchy theory is concerned with the relationships between different levels of scale, and in particular what is different between one level of complexity and another. An understanding of emergent properties leads to the system description of each lower level of complexity as nested in a higher level of complexity, in which it is a part, but which is itself made up of smaller systems. (Koestler 1969) coined the term ‘holon’ to describe these entities, from the Greek word ‘holos’ or whole, and the suffix –on, such as in proton or neutron, reminiscent of ‘particle or part’ (Naveh and Lieberman 1994).

This theoretical viewpoint leads to an understanding that descriptions of reality must of necessity involve analysis at several levels of complexity simultaneously. This is a central idea in hierarchy theory, that analysis and comprehension of any complex system requires “understanding the constraints at higher and lower levels of spatial-temporal resolution” (Gibson, Ostrom et al. 2000, pg. 225). This can be conceived as a ‘constraint envelope’ within which the process occurs and must remain.

Communication and control

Cybernetics is the science of communication and control, developed since the 1940’s in the USA. Wiener was one of the early developers, and coined the term cybernetics, from the Greek word for steersman. He defined cybernetics as ‘the entire field of control and communication theory, whether in the machine or in the animal’ (Wiener 1948; quoted in Checkland 1991, pg. 84).

Feedback

In the Macy conferences, Gregory Bateson and Margaret Mead helped to develop a coherent theory of feedback and circular causality in systems (Capra 1996).

Homeostasis – self regulation

The process of homeostasis self regulatory mechanism whereby the organism is able to maintain constant such properties as levels of blood sugar, oxygen, body temperature, etc.’ (Checkland 1991, pg. 80) was first described by Cannon. This is often quoted from his book Wisdom of the Body (Cannon 1932).

Time – change and development

Succession and development

Diversity

Bateson discussed a ‘flexibility budget’ that relies on diversity as a resource to allow systems to respond to perturbation and shifts in context. ‘He characterized climax in ecosystems as the "ecological saturation of all the possibilities of differentiation", illustrative of his notion that organization is a greater limiting factor than energy’ (Tognetti 1999, pg. 695).

Time and irreversibility

Irreducible Uncertainty and Bifurcations

(Noble 2000) (Coveney and Highfield 1991)

Edge of chaos and emergence

Paradox of self organisation versus designed systems
Emergent properties and generative structures – e.g. DNA
Order and chaos, balance

Patterns and self -organisation

Coherence and integrity

Autopoiesis

Maturana and Varela coined the term autopoiesis to denote their understanding of the organisation of living beings. It is derived from the root auto – or self and the Greek work poiesis, which means making, and shares the same root as the word poetry [Capra, 1996 #665]. Thus autopoiesis can be seen as self-making, and living organisms can be characterised by the process of self-reproduction [Maturana, 1987 #714].

Second-order cybernetics

Gaia – the concept of the best fit

The Gaia hypothesis is underpinned by the concept that the Earth acts like a living organism, with self-regulatory mechanisms which maintain suitable conditions for life on Earth operating in a dynamic interplay of the physical environment, and living organisms [Lovelock, 1991 #709].

Symbiogenesis is the concept that evolution of organisms may involve a tight coupling of organisms that behave in a synergetic way, with one organism providing benefit to the other. This tight coupling eventually results in the creation of a new organism altogether. This may be the way that mitochondria became incorporated into eukaryotic cells. The have been hypothesized as free swimming bacteria which were ingested by the larger cells and instead of being digested, survived to become the engine of respiration of the cells [Margulis, 1987 #767].

Perception and cognition

Metaphor and embodied knowledge

Epistemological and methodological issues

Trans-disciplinarity

An interdisciplinary approach implies a focus on a problem from the point of view of several disciplines. A trans-disciplinary approach implies an attempt to create an integrative framework which can both allow for disciplinary skills and knowledge to be applied to a particular research question and further a systems point of view. “What distinguishes systems is that it is a subject that can talk about the other subjects…it is a meta-discipline whose subject matter can be applied within virtually any other discipline” [Checkland, Peter #794, pg. 5].

problem solving
meta level
pattern which connects
importance of communication

“The concept of system is the crossroads of the metaphors; ideas from all the disciplines travel there” (de Rosnay 1975, pg. 58).

Multiple criteria for assessment

Much of the assessment of systems thinking in research has been pragmatic, and has attempted to evaluate the use of the concepts as a heuristic tool, developing criteria for evaluation in the light of research context and goals of the participants (Martinez-Aliera, Mundaa et al. 1998; Rijsberman and van de Ven 2000; Thissen 2000).

Stakeholder Involvement

In research into complex issues, there is an increasing recognition that a high degree of participation from a broad range of stakeholders in determining research goals can assist not only in increasing the relevance of research to policy and implementation, but can also increase the quality of the research process itself (Freemark 1995; Darier, Marchi et al. 1999; Roe 2000; Trenam 2000; van de Kerkhof and Leroy 2000) (Tognetti 1999, pg. 695) (Wilts 2000).

Post Normal Science

Despite many differences in aims in twentieth –century philosophy, there has been a general agreement on one major concept: ‘the impossibility of apprehending an objective cosmic order with the human intelligence’ (Tarnas 1991, pg. 353).

In post-normal science, decision making is seen as ‘a reflexive process of inquiry and learning’ (Tognetti 1999, pg. 694), which is applied in a cycle of learning and reflection on the learning, but is not seen as a way to produce a ‘right answer’.

Necessary when:

high uncertainty
complex systems
decisions need to be made with high stakes

Characterised by:

reflexive approach
inclusion of stakeholders’ goals and perceptions
qualitative and quantative data
iterative systems methodology
attention to difficulties in quality of data and analysis
thick description

(Funtowicz and Ravetz 1994; Ravetz 1997; Waltner-Toews and Wall 1997; van de Kerkhof and Leroy 2000)

Tognetti traces the origins of these ideas, the basis of post-normal science, whose main theorists are Ravetz and Funtowicz to Bateson’s work in ‘biological organization and human interaction’ (Bateson 1972; Bateson 1979).

Adaptive Management

In the early 1970’s, C.S. Holling, C.J. Walters and associates pioneered the process of adaptive management, advocating for “environmental assessment systems that are designed and implemented so that they can adapt to continual uncertainty and take advantage of surprise (Noble 2000, pg. 97). Adaptive Environmental Assessment and Management is a ‘philosophical and methodological framework designed to deal with the uncertainties inherent in environmental change’ (Grayson, Doolan et al. 1994, pg. 246). This is an iterative process that recognises that it is not possible to control complex processes through planning and management (Noble 2000, pg. 98).

Soft systems methodology and action research

This is a research method that seeks to gain knowledge through a process of intervention in the system being studied. It has been closely related to systems thinking from its beginning (Baskerville and Wood-Harper 1996, pg. 237). In order to achieve a degree of methodological rigour, there are several cyclical processes that aim to increase the researchers’ reflexive attention to methodical issues. The first stage is collaborative diagnosis of the problem/s between researcher and the participating stakeholders. Researchers and practitioners then collaborate in the next activity, action planning, which is followed by an action-taking phase of implementation. A phase of evaluation than takes place, which involved the researcher as well as the collaborators, and which may be a recursive process in which another phase of action is planned in the light of the learning (Baskerville and Wood-Harper 1996, pg. 238). As much of the research into sustainable development is responding to a relatively new imperative and new approaches, it is by its nature often action research, or research in which there is intervention in a system by the research project. (Baskerville and Wood-Harper 1996, pg. 240).

Reflexivity

Constructivism

Criticisms and difficulties

Although systems research has advanced significantly since the 1970s, what we know about real systems behavior is much less than what we do not know (Noble 2000, pg. 105).

One of the criticisms of systems theory is that it is too general to provide meaningful interpretations of phenomena. There is a balancing act between the drive for generalisable principles and the thick description, or grounding in content and context that offers a continuous challenge to researchers applying systems thinking. Checkland quotes an influential paper by Boudling (1956) with regards to this challenge.

We always pay for generality by sacrificing content, and all we can say about practically everything is almost nothing. Somewhere however between the specific that has no meaning and the general that has no content there must be, for each purpose and at each level of abstraction, an optimum degree of generality. It is the contention of the General Systems Theorists that this optimum degree of generality is not always reached by the particular sciences. (Boulding 1956; quoted in Checkland 1991, pg. 9).

There are many researchers who feel that the contributions of systems thinking to research methodologies, science and sociology are still unknown and under development (Checkland, 1991; Lyle, 1994).

However, there is a burgeoning field of systems thinking applied to complex research, and the tools and concepts seem to offer a useful, and in the light of global environmental change and the call for increased planning for sustainability, possibly necessary, way of describing and understanding complex systems and ecosystems.

Current areas of research - Applied systems thinking

Many different fields, e.g.

information science (Brier 1998)
information technology (Checkland 1991; Baskerville and Wood-Harper 1996)
landscape ecology (Naveh and Lieberman 1994; Kay, Regier et al. 1999; Naveh 2000)
ecological economics (Tacconi 1998; O'Connor 2000)
agro-ecosystems (Waltner-Toews and Wall 1997)
water issues (Aspinall and Pearson 2000; De Marchi, Funtowicz et al. 2000)

Context of This Research Project

Goal of research

The overarching goal of this project is to research a process of participatory design for sustainable systems at a landscape level of scale. In the context of spatial planning and current environmental problems, Forman, states, there is a clear need to “rethink existing planning principles and approaches” (1998, pg. 449)..

This research project encompasses the integration of 5 areas, with the proposition that the integration of each is essential to facilitate a successful large scale, long term sustainable planning process. A brief description of each area follows.

Conceptual Framework

copyright jan 2001 joanne tippett

drawn by buddy williams

Applied Systems Thinking

This research project seeks to explore the use and value of systems thinking as a conceptual basis for making the concept of sustainability operable at a landscape level of scale. It is posited that the concepts of systems theory provide an essential foundation for such an endeavour, with a realisation that such a framework will need to be updated as systems thinking is clarified and developed over time.

Core principles and processes form a generic framework for sustainability, made operational through a systems based concept of patterns and interconnections. These design principles are gradated along an axis from the core, generic, common, context-independent principles to the more heuristic, or pragmatically useful tools. The DesignWays process provides a way to integrate the generic, indispensable, principles and elements that a sustainable plan requires, with the contextual, value-dependent, historically and locally valuable aspects of a particular place, community or development.

Design

Design can be seen as a hinge between the future, present and past and between goals, vision and context. Design “conceiving and shaping complex systems. (Lyle 1994, pg. ix).

Participation

In a systems view, people are an inextricable part of the system under study. Participants’ values, goals and perceptions are an integral part of a viable plan.

Landscapes

A long term consideration is at the root of the concept of sustainability (de Groot 1992), embedded in the idea of thinking of future generations and the consequences of our actions over time (George 1999). Environmental thinking implies thinking about the earth, landscapes and spaces. Strategic sustainable thinking thus implies a linking of spatial and temporal consideration.

It is often difficult, however, for people to engage in long range thinking. Planning for large scale systems (in terms of scope) can assist people in thinking about longer term effects and interactions of projects.

Landscapes[4] offer a planning unit that participants can relate to and comprehend (Roe 2000) (Lewis 1996; Wood, Handley et al. 1999). This is especially important in strategic planning, when the often abstract nature of the information and concepts presented can deter public participation.

Landscape Ecology is a land and ecosystem based science underpinning spatial design (Forman 1998). Holistic Landscape ecology includes cultural aspects and systems concept (Naveh 2000).

Ecological Design

Ecological design connects human aspirations and landscape. It can be seen as a hinge between ecology and culture, connected by flows of energy, matter and information. It is the way we mediate flows through form, spatial arrangements, technology and management, transforming matter and energy into human artefacts. It is “ where the earth and its processes join with human behaviour to create form.” (Lyle 1994, pg. ix).

This refers to economic forms of production in the broadest sense, the ways in which humans interact with the environment to meet their needs, through activities such as agriculture, industrial processing, forestry and waste processing. Sustainable design implies that these needs can be met in a way that integrates with ecological processes thus reducing negative impacts on the global environment and protecting, possibly even enhancing, local landscapes.

Relationship to research in similar fields

In an attempt to deal with uncertainty in making predictions and to integrated social and well as ecological information, many approaches to Strategic Environmental Assessment use systems as their basic concept (Van Straaten, Nagels et al. 1995, pg. 32).(Grayson, Doolan et al. 1994; Noble 2000; Sophocleous 2000).

There are practitioners working on how to design using ecologically informed principles in particular sectors, e.g. agriculture (Fukuoka and Korn 1978; Fukuoka and Metraud 1985; Altieri 1987), industrial ecology (Tibbs 1993), energy supply (Delin 1979).

On a more general level, there is a developing field of applying systems principles in holistic decision making (Holmberg 1995; Savory and Butterfield 1999; Rijsberman and van de Ven 2000; Robert 2000) (Rosner 1995).

De Rosnay develops a systemic view of how to use systems thinking to analyse and understand complex systems in the book The Macrcospe, A New World Scientific System. He describes potential applications of the tools and conceptual framework that he has developed to education. In the chapter Scenario for a World, he sets out some of the ways in which a systemic approach could change our views of the future.

At the end of their update on using systems analysis to model potential states of the environment under different economic, technological and social practices, Meadows suggest that ‘a sustainable world cannot come into being if it cannot be envisioned’ (1998, pg. 224), and offer several principles and ideas of what a sustainable world could entail. Neither offers guideline on a process of design for applying these principles.

At the end of his synthesis of the developments in systems thinking in the book Web of Life, Capra suggests that “the theory of living systems… provides a conceptual framework for the link between ecological communities and human communities’ (1996, pg.297). He advocates the development of ‘ecoliteracy’, a concept developed by (Orr 1994).This work has since been developed into a set of principles for ecologically sound systems (California Department of Education with The Center for Ecoliteracy 1996).

However, none of this work has developed a clear process for applying these principles to envisioning and designing future systems in a systematic way.

Many other thinkers are writing about the importance of ecologically based design and innovation in creating a sustainable future (Tibbs 1993; Wann 1996; Benyus 1997; Hawken, Lovins et al. 1999).

Some practitioners and academics have developed ways of applying generic systems principles in ecological design, (Mollison 1990; Lyle 1994; Orr 1994; Van der Ryn and Cowan 1995; McDonough and Braungart 1998) (Todd and Todd 1994). This work has many promising applications (Baschak and Brown 1995) (Paterson and Connery 1997; Carr 1998; Rijsberman and van de Ven 2000).

Much of this work centres on principles of design, without a lot of attention to the process of design, especially with groups. Mollison and Lyle develop some work on the process of design, but it is not related to systems principles in a rigorous way. Alexander developed the idea of a pattern language, another approach to design that focuses on commonalities applied in context (1977). This goes some way to developing a process of communication in groups about desired future systems, but is missing a rigorous ecological underpinning.

(McHarg 1992; Naveh and Lieberman 1994; Lewis 1996; Thompson and F. 1997) (Forman 1998) have developed concepts and principles of design from the point of view of landscape ecology. This integrates principles (mainly focussed on ecological integrity from a landscape point of view) and ideas on timing and stages of design. Their ideas form an essential backdrop, context and integrating matrix for the design of human structures. Forman develops concepts of patterns and form in the landscape, and suggests a generic process for planning spatial development to conserve important ecological features in the landscape. The landscape ecology approach does not, however, provide an integrated approach for designing human settlements and productive infrastructure, such as industrial ecology or integrated waste flows in an ecologically informed way.

This research project will build on this work, in particular that of Mollison, Lyle, Alexander, McHarg, Lewis and Forman.

There are three major components of this research project that contribute to its innovative addition to previous research.

Looks at the integration of design theory, participatory planning, landscape ecology and ecologically informed design of productive infrastructures and human settlements, and works on developing these ideas in a pragmatic way.

Application of systems thinking as an integrative, pragmatic tool that underlies, or ties together the above topics.

Focus on process of design and communication. It is widely accepted that the concept of sustainable development itself can be understood in fairly simple terms, but that implementation and making the concept practically operable are complex and difficult to achieve in practice. Thus there is a need to animate this process, a way of making it more engaging and comprehensible for participants (Linehan and Gross 1998).

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[1] Sustainability lies in the interplay of maintaining environmental quality, and promoting economic vitality and social equity. Sustainable development can be defined as: ‘a dynamic process which enables all people to realize their potential and to improve their quality of life in ways which simultaneously protect and enhance the Earth’s life support systems’ FFF (1998). Opportunities for Change, A response by Forum for the Future to the consultation paper on a revised UK strategy for sustainable development. Cheltenham, Forum for the Future.

[2] Note: the literature review for my Masters thesis will focus on Integrated Catchment Management, as a way to operationally and coordinate planning at a landscape level of scale.

[3] In many ways this section is the most ambitious of all of the literature review sections, and as such will require considerable further work. However, it is such a key foundation for the overall research project that it is better to begin and have a sketched concept map than to leave the work until later when a more complete picture could be created all at once.

[4] Landscape as a delineation of geographical scale can be defined as a sub-regional category of geographical scale that incorporates smaller ecotopes, and is a coherent, recognisable unit, such as a river catchment basin. Landscapes are at least several kilometres across Kidd, S. (2000). “Landscape Planning at the Regional Scale: an example from North West England.” Landscape Research 25(3): 355 - 364..