Designing with nature
The Daily Record
April 25, 2019
By Joe Nathanson

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As an alum of PennDesign, I have been receiving reminders that this year is the 50th anniversary of the publication of a major work, “Design with Nature,” by Ian McHarg. A Scotsman born near Glasgow, McHarg, after spending seven years in the British military during and following World War II, wanted to pursue a career in landscape architecture. Never having completed high school and having only some limited post-war college experience, he managed to be accepted by Harvard for a program of study in his desired field.

After a brief return to his native Scotland, he was invited to join the faculty at the University of Pennsylvania, where he became the founder and department chairman of the Department of Landscape Architecture and Regional Planning. It was there that he had the time to reflect on his approach to landscape design and organize his theories and practical experience into words. And, his words had a major impact.

“This (the 20th) century’s most influential landscape architecture book” was how the publication Landscape Architecture assessed McHarg’s 1969 book. The architectural critic and social commentator Lewis Mumford offered this high praise of the work: “In presenting us with a vision of organic exuberance and human delight, which ecology and ecological design promise to open up for us, McHarg revives the hope for a better world.”

Happily, for those of us in the Baltimore region, one of the practical planning assignments that came his way was right here in Baltimore County.

‘Near-perfect pastorality’

As the region’s suburbanization was moving apace in the 1950s and early 1960s, development pressures were particularly threatening to the northwestern sector of the county, the areas known as the Greenspring and Worthington Valleys. Local concerns about this threat led to the creation of a citizens group, the Valleys Planning Council. This grassroots nonprofit group commissioned McHarg and his Penn faculty colleague, city planner David Wallace, to produce a land-use study and land preservation strategy.

Their 1964 Plan for the Valleys largely achieved its land preservation objectives for this region and served as a model for others.

John C. Schmidt, writing in Baltimore Magazine in 1967, noted, “Three years have passed since 270 families living in the Green Spring and Worthington Valleys unveiled a unique and impressive plan for future development of this prestigious area. In that time, the self-financed group has grown in numbers to over 1,000 members and shown itself to be an effective regional force. It has won many more battles than it has lost in its drive to preserve the pastoral character of the countryside by choking off typical urban sprawl.”

Schmidt continued, “The most apparent effect of the group’s work is that the lava-like advance of suburbia, which had already penetrated from Baltimore to the fringes of the 75-square·mile valley area, has been contained for the most part. Fortune magazine described the valleys ‘as among the largest pieces of near-perfect pastorality that still lie within a half-hour’s drive of a major U.S. city’.”

By using the term “design with nature” McHarg wanted us to know that the way we most effectively use and modify our land resources is when it is planned and designed with respect for and with an understanding of the ecology and the natural forces that shape the landscape.

Years before the threats of climate change would become part of our civic conversation, he saw that shaping the built environment with due regard for nature could avoid major natural hazards and achieve sustainability. Though not steeped in the technology himself, McHarg is credited with advancing the basic concepts that were to coalesce in Geographic Information Systems.

Man’s place in nature

In the half century since its publication, in the words of the current dean of PennDesign, Frederick “Fritz” Steiner, “‘Design with Nature’ has done much to redefine the fields of landscape architecture, urban and regional planning, and ecological design. It has also left a permanent mark on the ongoing discussion of mankind’s place in nature and nature’s place in mankind within the physical sciences and humanities.

Described by one enthusiastic reviewer as a “user’s manual for our world,” ‘Design with Nature’ offers a practical blueprint for a new, healthier relationship between the built environment and nature. In so doing, it provides nothing less than the scientific, technical, and philosophical foundations for a mature civilization.”

McHarg ventured into the world of public advocacy and was among the proponents of establishing Earth Week to highlight environmental concerns. As we mark another Earth Day, it’s appropriate that we pay homage to one of the leading figures in the modern environmental movement.

Joe Nathanson is the retired principal of Urban Information Associates, Inc., a Baltimore-based economic and community development consulting firm. He writes a monthly column for The Daily Record and can be contacted at [email protected].