Landscape, Subjectivity and Relevance
A thinkpiece by Shannon Bray
The direction that planning legislation now before Parliament is taking has prompted considerable reflection within the landscape architecture profession.
Much of that discussion has focused on what has changed, what has been lost, and what risks being diminished as landscape assumes a different position within the planning system.
Many of those concerns are justified. Landscape architects have spent decades helping Aotearoa New Zealand understand the value of landscape and the consequences of change, so it is natural that the profession would be concerned when established landscape provisions are reduced, reframed or potentially redacted.
Yet I have found myself reflecting on a different question. Rather than asking only what the reforms reveal about the Government’s understanding of landscape, I wonder what they reveal about how landscape architecture has been understood, and perhaps how we have presented ourselves.
Throughout the reform process, the profession worked hard to explain why landscape matters. We pointed to established methodologies, professional guidance, assessment frameworks, case law and decades of practice experience. We emphasised that landscape assessment is structured, disciplined and evidence-based. We challenged the notion that landscape is merely a matter of personal preference and argued, correctly in my view, that landscape assessments are far more robust than they are often given credit for.
All of that is true.
But I am increasingly wondering whether it is also incomplete.
For a long time, landscape architects have been wary of the word “subjective”. We hear it as a challenge to our expertise. We worry that it diminishes the credibility of our assessments or reduces our role to little more than expressing opinions. In response, we have spent years refining methodologies that bring structure, consistency and rigour to our work. That effort has been necessary and the profession is stronger because of it.
At the same time, I wonder whether we have become so focused on demonstrating the objective dimensions of landscape assessment that we have unintentionally downplayed the thing that makes our discipline distinctive.
Landscape is not simply the physical environment
We all know that landscape is not simply the physical environment. Throughout our careers we have spoken about the interaction between people and place, recognising physical, perceptual and associative dimensions as integral to understanding landscape. Yet when subjective enters the conversation, many of us become uncomfortable, as though acknowledging it somehow weakens our position.
Perhaps that discomfort is misplaced.
Landscape is experienced by people. People perceive it, remember it, attach meaning to it and form relationships with it. The qualities we routinely discuss as landscape architects - identity, belonging, attachment, character, memory and sense of place - are all rooted in human experience. They are subjective by their very nature. That does not make them less important. If anything, it is precisely what makes them important.
The profession has sometimes treated subjectivity as a problem to be managed or explained away. I am becoming increasingly drawn to the opposite conclusion. Perhaps the subjective dimension of landscape is not a weakness in our discipline, but one of its greatest strengths.
People care about landscapes because places mean something to them. They care about the street they grew up in, the reserve where their children learned to ride a bike, the coastline they walk every morning, the rural outlook that contributes to a community’s identity, or the maunga that anchors cultural connection and belonging. These relationships are not always easily measured or mapped, yet they are real. They are often the very reason landscape becomes relevant within planning processes.
This seems especially important at a time when planning systems are increasingly focused on delivery, efficiency and measurable outcomes. Housing supply, infrastructure provision and economic growth can be tracked through targets, outputs and statistics. Landscape asks different questions. It asks not only what a place looks like, but what it means. It asks how change will be experienced, how identity may be strengthened or diminished, and how communities relate to the places they inhabit.
One of the enduring tensions within planning is the distinction often drawn between technical evidence and community opinion. Expert evidence is commonly viewed as objective and reliable. Community views are more likely to be characterised as emotional, anecdotal or subjective. There are good reasons for caution. Not every concern is well-founded, and not every preference should determine a planning outcome.
However, landscape architects should be among the first to challenge the idea that lived experience is somehow separate from the evidence base. If landscape is fundamentally concerned with the relationship between people and place, then people’s experiences of place are not merely noise within the system. They are part of the evidence. Not the only evidence, and certainly not evidence that should automatically prevail, but evidence nonetheless.
a greater challenge
Perhaps this is where the planning reforms present a challenge for the profession.
Much of our response has focused on what decision-makers may have misunderstood about landscape. Yet I wonder whether we should spend equal time reflecting on how we have described our own contribution. If we present ourselves primarily as a technical profession undertaking technical assessments, should we be surprised if others see us as one technical discipline among many? The strength of landscape architecture has never been our ability to identify landforms, map character areas or apply assessment criteria. Those tasks are important, but they are not what makes the profession distinctive. Our distinctive contribution lies in helping people make sense of the relationship between place and meaning.
That requires us to become more comfortable with complexity.
For much of my career I have participated in and watched landscape architects debating one another’s assessments, challenge methodologies and defending competing conclusions. Sometimes that is necessary. Professional scrutiny strengthens the discipline and decision-makers ultimately need conclusions. Yet if landscape is partly founded in perception, memory, association and meaning, should we really be surprised when different people reach different conclusions?
The profession has spent years demonstrating that landscape assessment is rigorous and defensible. We should continue to do so. But perhaps we have sometimes confused rigour with certainty. In doing so, we risk overlooking one of the most important things landscape architecture brings to planning: an ability to understand and navigate differing perspectives.
Communities do not experience places in the same way. Mana whenua, long-term residents, newcomers, developers, planners and professionals may all see the same landscape differently. Even landscape architects can look at the same place and identify different values, risks or opportunities.
Rather than seeing those differences as a weakness, perhaps we should recognise them as part of landscape's richness. Our role is not always to determine which perspective is correct. Often it is to understand why different perspectives exist, what values sit behind them, and what they tell us about the relationship between people and place. In that respect, landscape architecture is not simply a discipline concerned with landscapes. It is a discipline concerned with people.
A relevance that is larger than legislation
The recent shaping of the RMA reforms has prompted many discussions about provisions, frameworks and statutory tests. Those conversations are important. Yet I suspect our long-term relevance depends on something larger than legislation. It depends on our collective ability to explain why landscape matters in the first place. Not because it can be measured. Not because it can be mapped. Not because it can be reduced to a set of criteria. But because people care about it.
The reforms have prompted us to reflect on what may have been lost. They should also prompt us to think more carefully about what makes our contribution unique. Perhaps our value does not lie in proving that landscape can be reduced to a set of objective truths. Perhaps it lies in helping communities and decision-makers navigate the richness, complexity and sometimes competing meanings that people attach to place.
Perhaps it is time we stopped defending ourselves against subjectivity and started embracing it. Not as a retreat from rigour, but as a recognition of what landscape architecture has always been about. Our role is not to eliminate different perspectives, but to understand them, test them and help others navigate them.
If the profession is looking for relevance in a changing planning system, we may not need to look any further.
The subjective dimension of landscape is not our weakness. It is our strength.
Shannon Bray is a Fellow of Tuia Pito Ora New Zealand Institute of Landscape Architects (NZILA) and a former NZILA President (2015-17).