Conceptualizing Sustainable Landscape and Landscape Sustainability: Implications for Landscape Planning and Design

The ground beneath our feet is rarely just dirt or grass; it is a living, breathing stage where nature and human life constantly interact. In the scientific world, this stage is called a landscape. It is not merely a view to be admired, but a complex system where forests, farms, cities, and rivers mix with the people who live, work, and travel there. As the planet warms and wildlife struggles to survive, experts have long sought a way to manage these spaces so they can endure. Two ideas have emerged to guide this effort: the "sustainable landscape" and "landscape sustainability." While they sound similar, they mean different things. One describes a specific, ideal place we hope to create—a garden, a park, or a city block that functions well. The other describes the ongoing ability of a place to keep working over time, adapting to changes like drought or population growth. Understanding the difference between the destination and the journey is crucial, because without it, we might build beautiful places that collapse when the climate shifts, or we might plan for the future without knowing what a successful outcome actually looks like.

A team of researchers from the Warsaw University of Technology set out to untangle these two concepts. They noticed that while scientists and planners use these terms constantly, they often use them to mean different things, sometimes even swapping them as if they were identical. This confusion makes it hard to measure success or to design spaces that truly last. To fix this, the researchers did not go out into the field to measure soil or count birds. Instead, they went into the library of human knowledge. They gathered nearly two thousand scientific articles published between 1990 and 2023 that discussed these ideas. They read through them carefully, looking specifically for how authors defined "sustainable landscape" and "landscape sustainability." They filtered out anything that did not offer a clear definition, leaving them with a collection of 154 distinct explanations. They then sorted these explanations into groups to see what patterns emerged, asking whether the definitions focused on nature, on people, on a mix of both, or on how things change over time.

The researchers found that the two concepts are not enemies fighting for the same definition, nor are they the same thing. Instead, they work together like a blueprint and a building. "Landscape sustainability" is the process and the framework; it is the set of rules and the ability of a system to keep functioning, adapting, and providing benefits like clean water or food over many years. It is the capacity to survive change. "Sustainable landscape," on the other hand, is the result. It is the specific, physical space that exists when that process works well. It is the desired state of the land, the actual park or farm that you can walk through. The study showed that when scientists talk about the "sustainable landscape," they are often thinking about the final product: a place with stable soil, diverse plants, and resources that do not run out. When they talk about "landscape sustainability," they are thinking about the engine that keeps that place running: the management, the planning, and the ability to handle shocks like a flood or a heatwave.

The analysis also revealed a significant blind spot in how we think about these spaces. Most of the definitions the researchers found were built around human needs. Whether the focus was on ecology or economics, the ultimate goal was almost always described as keeping humans happy, healthy, and safe. Nature was valued because it provided services to people, such as pollination or flood control. Very few definitions treated other species as equal partners in the landscape. Only a tiny handful of the researchers they studied mentioned that humans and other animals should coexist in a way where both are supported as equals, rather than one serving the other. The study suggests that our current thinking is heavily centered on human survival, often overlooking the idea that a truly sustainable landscape must also support the wild creatures that live there, regardless of whether those creatures help us directly.

Another key finding was that the way we talk about these ideas is shifting. In the past, people often thought of a sustainable landscape as a static picture—a perfect, unchanging state that we could build and leave alone. The newer research, however, treats it as a moving target. The definitions now emphasize that landscapes are always changing. They must be flexible. A sustainable landscape is not a statue; it is more like a river that changes its course but keeps flowing. The researchers found that the most modern definitions focus on adaptability and resilience. They argue that a landscape is only sustainable if it can handle the unexpected, such as a new disease, a changing climate, or a shift in how people use the land. This means that planning for the future requires us to stop trying to freeze a landscape in time and start designing systems that can bend without breaking.

Despite these insights, the researchers noted that the field still lacks a single, agreed-upon dictionary definition. Because different experts come from different backgrounds—some are biologists, others are architects or city planners—they use the same words to describe different things. This lack of agreement makes it difficult to create a standard way to measure whether a landscape is truly sustainable. You cannot easily compare two projects if one team is measuring the number of bird species and another is measuring how much money the local community saves. The study concludes that to move forward, we need to accept that "landscape sustainability" is the long-term process of keeping a place alive, while "sustainable landscape" is the specific, healthy place that results from that process. By clarifying this relationship, the researchers hope to help planners and designers build spaces that are not just beautiful for today, but resilient enough to thrive for generations to come.