Design with Nature

by Ian L. McHarg

"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." --Lewis Mumford

". . . important to America and all the rest of the world in our struggle to design rational, wholesome, and productive landscapes." --Laurie Olin, Hanna Olin, Ltd.

"This century's most influential landscape architecture book." --Landscape Architecture

". . . an enduring contribution to the technical literature of landscape planning and to that unfortunately small collection of writings which speak with emotional eloquence of the importance of ecological principles in regional planning." --Landscape and Urban Planning

In the twenty-five years since it first took the academic world by storm, 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 that will, as Lewis Mumford ecstatically put it in his Introduction to the 1969 edition, "replace the polluted, bulldozed, machine-dominated, dehumanized, explosion-threatened world that is even now disintegrating and disappearing before our eyes."

Genres: Architecture, Urban Planning, Design, Nonfiction, Landscape Architecture, Urbanism, Urban Design

208 pages, Hardcover

First published March 26, 1969

About the author

was a Scottish landscape architect and a renowned writer on regional planning using natural systems. He was the founder of the department of landscape architecture at the University of Pennsylvania in the United States. His 1969 book Design with Nature pioneered the concept of ecological planning. It continues to be one of the most widely celebrated books on landscape architecture and land-use planning. In this book, he set forth the basic concepts that were to develop later in Geographic information systems.

Reviews

[J · Rating 5 out of 5]

A hell of a resource if you're ever put in charge of colonizing a new planet. McHarg alternates between case studies and philosophic chapters that veer towards pantheistic. Many of the revolutionary ideas and techniques McHarg writes about are now common practice, but it's still an interesting read for anybody with an interest in cities.

[ahn mur · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ian McHarg’s “Design with Nature” has garnered a great deal of notoriety in the fields of both landscape architecture and conservationism. Taken as a whole, the prose can be lofty and is, in certain parts, somewhat dated (having never been updated), but generally it is both detailed and philosophical: a kind of walk through the woods with Ian McHarg. It gives an excellent understanding of the foundation of environmentally-sensitive planning.

In the Introduction, Lewis Mumford introduces ecology as the effort to balance society’s relationship with nature. He introduces Ian McHarg, the author of the book, as a far more than a town planner and landscape architect: as an ecologist. Design with Nature, Mumford postulates, lays the groundwork for the future and for the hope of mankind to develop a new methodology in approaching the natural world.

Design with Nature was a thoughtful meditation. There were aspects of the prose relating to its historical context that I did not agree with, particularly low density development. I would be interested to see the book interpreted with a modern lens. How modern technological resources could be used and how further developed ecological scientific understanding might influence the physiographic determinism approach would be particularly helpful. Nevertheless, I found reading Design with Nature to be very useful and, especially, inspiring. It is a voice of bravery in a world of economic savagery.

[Jingyan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Informative, alarming, practical and inspiring view on the relationship between earth and human, first printed 45 years ago. In 1990, the author was awarded the National Medal of Art by the President Bush who stated then: "I hope that in the 21st century the largest accomplishment of art will be to restore the earth."
Quote from the last paragraph in the book:
"In the quest for survival, success and fulfillment, the ecological view offers an invaluable insight. It shows the way for the man who would be the enzyme of the biosphere- its steward, enhancing the creative fit of man-environment, realizing man's design with nature."

[John · Rating 3 out of 5]

Well...

Of course, there's no doubt that "Design with Nature" is a landmark publication in regional planning and landscape architecture, fusing the two masterfully. It contains a cohesive design vision for incorporating an understanding of nature into the ethos of civilization and its development processes. It also demonstrates an influential approach for architecting entire regions, namely overlaying transparent maps with different geographic criteria to analyze the holistic suitability of different land use. Assuming it was novel at the time, the influence on how we manage regional information with geographic information systems either cannot be understated, or was just so clearly just a key form of analysis that it was reinvented again and again, or most likely a combination of these things that will be impossible to untangle historically.

But... I don't know if time has worn on it well.

I found it to take an undue effort to get through, especially given that I'm generally quite engaged by ecological design and related subjects. Oddly, part of the problem comes from its format. The 1971 Doubleday/Natural History Press copy that I have looks like such as slender volume in a pleasant square-ish shape just barely large enough to be a coffee-table book. However, the font is tiny, so there's a lot of material in this puppy; it would be three times as thick with today's typesetting. I appreciate that the volume isn't wasteful and is more economical this way, but it seems like it takes forever to get through.

Unfortunately, it isn't only the format that I found taxing. This book isn't a design guide, manual, textbook, or demonstration, but is instead a design manifesto. And it has a lot to say about how things would be better if we were all rational naturalists who could appreciate the intrinsic complexity and systemic order of nature and thus put down buildings where they'll stay up and not wreck the water supply or good farmland or whatever, instead of just plonking down buildings and highways along a straight line or wherever will produce the most immediate economic profit.

However, the book doesn't think that introducing this new paradigm is sufficient, and decides to be, well, maybe a bit bitter and confrontational about the way it sees things as currently going. I see this as where the book falls short of one of the major mottos that design tries to live up to: "Most Advanced, Yet Appropriate", where designs will advance society as far as they can go yet still be appealing and readily applicable to the context in which they are being introduced. Yet, while failing to be appealing, it still fails to reach outside of the biases of its day, with weird anti-Christian and anti-homosexual positions bolstered by the same pseudo-scientific logic. One wonders if this kind of argument has led to environmentalism being seen by many as an incompatible ideology instead of the policy outcome of being informed about the nature of the environment.

On the plus side, the book is quite cohesive, unlike "Design for the Real World" (another massively influential ecological design book to come out around the same time). Its complaints are never made just to complain, but are always in service of the larger design vision. In this, it masterfully demonstrates "designerly ways of knowing", where it combines applying scientific and technical principles, developing the subjectivities of relevant participants, and single-case problem solving to address particular challenges.

The case-study sections, when the book is actually doing the work of planning, is when it is at its strongest. Even then, it can wander (particularly into geology) without clearly expressing how this information forms a criteria or leads to the information that forms a criteria. It's demonstrating an approach and showing how that approach fits into a design practice, but isn't actually aiming to educate the reader on how to use this design approach in any detailed way. I would have liked to have seen more about how ecological knowledge feeds into ecological assessment.

Along this line, I'm not unsympathetic to another reviewer's criticism that there's "no design here, just abstract musings and maps". In "Landscape Architecture: A Manual of Environmental Planning and Design" (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2...), they note something along the lines of that landscape planning is what happens in two dimensions and landscape design is what happens when you bring in the third. This book does have some cross sections, so I'll grant it being "landscape architecture". Still, I feel that even though it doesn't actually do landscape design, it is a design manifesto for the reasons I mentioned above.

Writing now from the future, you just want to say "We know, but what we need to know is how to pursue this work." The author may of only had his contemporaries on his mind, but we're now at a place where anyone who would be interested in this book would have a sympathetic enough perspective, but probably be lacking in the depth of specific ecological knowledge to pull it off.

What I think is appropriate now is less praise of a "scientific" perspective and more specific science made operational for the designer. In an academic context, this book is *not* a textbook for students of landscape architecture, regional planning, and environmental design. It could be a book read to explain the historical context for those fields, or for introducing various philosophies of those fields, or some similar effort for setting the context of our current approaches. I don't know if the textbook that introduces how to do ecologically-informed landscape design, planning, and architecture at a variety of scales with contemporary tools and scientific knowledge exists.

The creation of such a textbook for our time would be an enormous contribution.

[Mario Joaquín · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fundamental thesis and practice for landscape architecture and regional planning. A gift from Ian McHarg to future generations

[Sarah · Rating 2 out of 5]

It's always so tough to enjoy a book that you're forced to read for a meager 10% of your grade in a class, this one, however, was extra difficult to enjoy. It's dated, that's the problem. Everything is "man's domain" and ideas that are commonplace in planning/architecture/urban design are presented (repeatedly) as something outrageous, which maybe they were 50 years ago. So maybe my problem isn't really with this book or it's author, but rather with the fact that we're still reading it in 2009, when there's gotta be new stuff out there that would take us beyond designing with nature, to maybe designing for nature, design by nature, nature by designers, who knows, just anything but Design with Nature! My favourite part? A reference to "the bitch goddess success". I wish I could work that into the paper I have to write on this sucker now.

[dawn · Rating 1 out of 5]

more accurate title might be:
"mcharg philosophy of paganism and land analysis" ... no design here, just abstract musings and maps.

i did not appreciate his condemnation of judaism as nature raper, and for as caustic and accusitory as several chapters were, i would expect that mr. mcharg lived a decidedly non-western lifestyle; off-grid, net-zero, the whole bit, lest he be Hypocrite Extraordinaire. and while i understand his intense passion for the subject at hand, i found nothing of value as a contemporary reader. perhaps i was too quickly turned off by the angry finger-pointing, but i just wasn't inspired by his many analyses of floodplains and value-scaled plants. too dated to read.

[McHarg · Rating 5 out of 5]

El mejor libro de SIG que hay... aunque realmente no vaya de SIG... Es un precedente que hay que leer, porque aquí empezó todo.

[Jon · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book combines ideas from urban planning and landscape architecture with ideas from ecology. What is to be gained? A lot of lyrical passages about the beauty of nature, which grow more and more tiresome the longer they go on. It's not that the book is without its merits. McHarg's text, after all, is considered a classic. And when he gets down to practicalities, he often has intriguing ideas to present. But every other chapter is theory rather than practicum, and reading this theory fifty years later is like reading a set of dated truisms amid a collection of late 1960s liberal diatribes.

McHarg especially has it out, it seems, for Christianity, which he often blames for the environmental ills of the planet. Christianity is anthropocentric, he denotes, and as such we don't pay attention to the earth's natural balance. (What, I might ask, would paying attention to the earth's natural balance entail other than stewardship and a belief in human-centered superiority? I don't know any cats or dogs or pigs or chickens that worry about preserving the planet's balance. If they overpopulate or do environmental damage the earth naturally takes care of it--through evolution, if you will. The distribution of the animal changes, as does the distribution of the other animals and plants it affects. So too, one might argue, with humans, if indeed we are here merely by chance and are merely one other creature among the rest of the globe's inhabitants. The idea that we need to keep nature balanced, the way it was supposed to be, is then itself an anthropocentric one, one that implies that we are somehow above the other creatures on the planet. Anyway, the constant attacks on Christianity obviously wore thin on me.)

But as I noted, the practicum chapters were of some interest. An early one discusses the ocean and the beach. Much of this is old information to me from other reading I've done--how important beach dunes are, how various attempts to keep beaches in place using groins actually damage beaches further down, and so on. But it was concrete.

Those sort of points make for interesting studies later in the book, when McHarg lays out the best ways to, for example, choose where to lay roads. Too often, he points out, we pay attention chiefly to costs--and by that, he means, the physical costs, of laying a road. Hence, highways are placed where there is less development or where development is cheap (i.e., poor communitities) and where the land offers the cheapest means to lay the road (less drilling, etc.). But this often doesn't equate to what the actual cost is--that is, the actual cost needs to include the culture and social cost. When we lay down a highway through a community, we're splitting the community in half and we are likely killing off neighborhoods. And when we lay a road through pristine forestland that birds use for nesting, we may also be laying out environmental effects that will in turn affect the social and cultural ones. His solution? He takes various maps that lay out the different costs associated with each route for a road. Overlaying this maps allows us to see which route is likely the most cost effective.

In another practicum chapter, McHarg looks at different environments that are best for city building, laying out a hierarchy of preferred land on which to build, in this descending order: flat land, forest, steep slopes, aquifers, aquifer recharge areas, floodplains, marshes, and surface water. Knowing these preferences, we should thus really aim not to build on floodplains and to build on flat land. The only qualifier? Flat land is also the best land for agriculture, so we have to be attuned to those needs as well.

In an extended example, McHarg focuses on a plan for the city of Baltimore and how that city can continue to grow without giving in to sprawl, selecting the proper places to grow and the proper places to preserve and what the density in these locations should be.

Next, McHarg turns to a theoretical discussion of how we would go about creating a proper environment for an astronaut sent to live in space. He shows how all the various systems are integrated and how difficult it is to account for everything that nature does naturally. The astronaut easily can find that he or she has not accounted for some need and throw the system out of whack. This leads into the chapter on Staten Island, which again is planned according to different values and needs, using overlaying maps that give planners the means to know where the best places for conservation are, as well as the best places for urbanization, both residential and commercial.

In the next theory-heavy section, McHarg approaches a group of thinkers he calls "Naturalists." Here he lays out the idea that we need not see evolution, the survival of the fittest, as necessarily negative. He argues that natural organisms adapt to one another, that the fittest only surviving is actually a way of advancing nature so that it is more interdependent. The lion that eats the caribou, for example, is doing the caribou a favor in terms of keeping its stock lower and also helping it to evolve to a higher state through only letting the most fit survive. Parasites depend on hosts, but hosts often adapt to depend also on the parasite. Whole ecosystems exists because of this interdependence. One of those, arguably, is our own body, which consists of a host of cells, most of them cells that have learned to specialize in particular tasks in order to make the body work together efficiently. The cells are interdependent, supporting a much greater whole, the way each living thing supports the greater whole of the earth.

Next, McHarg turns to a project on the Potomac River basin. Much as he has done in earlier chapters, he lays out the various areas as being most suitable for various resources in order to understand where it would be best to urbanize and so on. The one intriguing point he makes in this chapter is that we are too prone to zone things for one use, whereas nature does not zone: various uses can be gleaned from one area in nature, and we should do the same in the city. But other than that, the discussion of the Potomac seems like yet another practicum that repeats information that has gone before. The techniques to discover what the best places to build are well known by now, and so the extended examples grow increasingly tiresome.

Potentially, the section on Washington, D.C., could prove interesting insofar as McHarg attempts to apply his ideas to a city that is already in existence, rather than to the suburbs of a city that is expanding. But in the end, I found this section to be disappointing. His main point seems to be that we need to take into account more than finances when designing sites. In D.C., it would be important to take into account the "pallette" of the particular area, make the landscape conform to the overall tone of the section of the city. Of course, this is easier said than done, since in the end it is the market that determines how we value space. His earlier points about taking into account how altering that space affects value seemed more direct to the point.

The book ends with a chapter on the health of a city, which is perhaps one of the most interesting and thought provoking. Here, he uses his mapping system to denote neighborhoods in Philadelphia with various diseases, mental diseases, and pollution, along with economic troubles, crime, race, education, unemployment, income, density, and so on. Putting all these together helps to establish a "healthy" area of the city as being in the north and west. But why is not as clear. He then goes into studies of population carried on with rats, showing how density of living has great affects on health. Though apparently able to have a denser population in their environment, the rats at some point begin to stop multiplying as fast, and disease--physical and mental--begins to become more rampant. Those rats that are dominant don't have the health problems; the rats that are submissive do. They become loners or sexually deviant or sickly. This, he thinks, is because of the stressful stimuli that exist in high densities. There seems that there might be some correlation to human populations as well, as denser areas have greater amounts of antisocial behavior and sickness. But the ideas, while intriguing, are not entirely proven or provable. But surely, one wouldn't then say that humans need to move into suburbs and less dense areas for health reasons--or would one? Here he briefly looks at how attempts to gentrify troubled areas with such densities rarely solve the problem. The original inhabitants are usually pushed out of the area, and what social network they had to deal with their problems is thus taken apart. I found myself here wanting to read more about density and its effects.

In the end, then, McHarg notes how we can take into account various factors of our environment as we build and plan and rework cities. This is a valid point but one that seemed, in McHarg's reasoning, too bound to his anti-Christian 1960s ethos.

[Maria Gulley · Rating 4 out of 5]

Design with Nature is a classic landscape architecture text. As the title may suggest, McHarg's goal was to promote what he calls ecological design, an approach to large-scale design that takes into account pre-existing ecology and geography. He makes this argument through a series of case studies interspersed with more philosophical chapters on the role of man in design and in the world. While a lot has changed in the 50 years since its original publication, McHarg's insistence on assigning value to both human and nature needs (and how those are actually aligned, but somehow it's short-term profits that are prioritized) and site suitability had a major impact on urban design, and his principles are still applied today. Some of the philosophical musings are a bit dated and clearly of their time (and occasionally truly cringe-worthy), but a surprising amount of it hold up. He discusses poverty, race, environmental justice, gentrification, and many other current issues, although not always in those exact terms. If you're interested in landscape architecture, urban ecology, urban or regional planning, and land use practices, it's an interesting read.

[Emgarcia · Rating 3 out of 5]

mchargian methods of environmental planning/design have been the main methods for these fields the last couple decades, and i don't think people feel more connected with nature at all. of course, my perspective is one of an individual writing this 50 years later, but i constantly keep thinking about how thinking about ecology and people as something separate is one of the very high level technocratic designers/policymakers. plugging in a bunch of ecological factors and testing to see a result will not always result in a cohesive plan that resonates with people and history. so, if you're thinking about human needs and desire, of course you will want the most healthy and sustainable option. but my critique is that mchargian methods exclude this process and makes too many jumps to realize a "natural" ecology (which in the US is pretty bogus). not quite conservation, preservation, or human design. one can make the argument that this is in every planner or architect's office whose next project is a megamess of greenwashy slosh

[Po · Rating 2 out of 5]

I had to read this for my urban planning class. McHarg knows his stuff but he spends way too much time jumping between telling you literally everything about sand dune formation to discussing paganism and Christianity. You’ll spend a chapter discussing highways and he’ll refer to a road commissioner as a philistine (because he’s the bad guy in this part of the narrative). Then he’ll experiment with astronauts and tell you about ancient seas and mans blood all within pages. His book was revolutionary when it was first published but we now have access and information we didn’t then so his writing seems to make a lot of assumptions. Meh.

[Joseph Reilly · Rating 5 out of 5]

His philosophies and methods were decades ahead of their time. This is a very philosophical book. McHarg believes humans are meant to improve the biosphere, we are essentially "masters of the biosphere". Every plant and animal on Earth serves a purpose except for humans. Some how our fascination with money has obstructed our true purpose. He also goes into several strategies of city planning including his layered mapping strategies which are still used today in modern Geographic Information Systems.

[Logan Price · Rating 3 out of 5]

I loved the first chapter as it was more storytelling and theory, but the rest was a little more technical than I was expecting. McHarg is also pretty antagonistic towards the Christian creation perspective. I'll probably revisit this with more appreciation once I'm further down the landscape architecture path.

[Kirby Obsidian · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of those books that I treasure because it gave me a new awareness and a different way of thinking about being in the world. In this case, it has mainly to do with habitat and with how we Humans carve out our space in it. This book got me understanding myself as a part of nature, part of an environment, instead of as an intrusion, manager or owner of an environment.

[E.T. · Rating 3 out of 5]

与想象中的很不一样，不是纯理论讲解，而是案例分析；章节间相对独立，专业涉及广，更像是文献合集。叠加透明图的分析研究方法极妙。 读书笔记:http://www.douban.com/note/218733550/

[Jayden Edwards · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think is a great source for an architectural history essay. It describes nature’s importance in design and how we can use nature to our advantage without harming nature for future generations

[Trevor · Rating 2 out of 5]

Despite being a forerunner in GIS-driven environmental planning, the outdated information and long passages of lofty philosophical musings make this book a tough read. You can tell the author’s heart is in the right place, but 50 years later, these methods of environmental planning and conservation have only served as window dressing on the pyrrhic late-stage capitalist real estate and infrastructure developer practices.

[Karen R · Rating 5 out of 5]

Overall, I enjoyed reading this book because it covered a variety of issues, tied them together and presented them in a manner that made them understandable to me, since I do not possess an extensive amount of knowledge on environmental issues. In certain chapters, it did cover some areas that I had not had any previous background in. This expanded my knowledge of environmental problems and increased my interest in new issues. For example, the book starts with a chapter titled “Sea and Survival” in which it describes how sand dunes are formed and the role they play in nature. McHarg articulates why they are important and goes on to explain why they are vulnerable and need to be sustained by humans. The author kept my attention through his strong reasoning and I feel that the many pictures, graphs, maps, and sketches he used aided in my understanding of his arguments.

[Sophie Hauser · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fantastic use of theoretical chapters highlighting the natural process of or world amongst practical case studies of how to improve mans relationship with our habitat.
Written in the 60s it could be seen as slightly outdated, as most of the ideologies are largely realized and methods are practiced, it is still relevant for anyone who is interested in mans relationship with nature and how we can improve it, particularly good for anyone getting into a profession related to this: landscape architecture, planning, ecology. The ideas in this book are extremely well communicated opened my eyes and making me think; needs to be promoted.
Only reason it doesn't get a five is at times it was hard to read and seemed to get stuck one point.

[Greg Balzer · Rating 5 out of 5]

The classic book on how to design in harmony with the natural environment. This book was green at least two decades before it was cool to be green - LEED, etc. It is really too bad that so many of the concepts expressed in this book have not been able to be implemented in the numerous new towns and planned communities developed since this book was published. A number of those communities pay lip service to conforming to site features such as topography, streams, rivers, solar exposure, views, wind patterns, etc., but economics, financial constraints, and other realities of the modern world have prevented full implementation.

[Briana · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fellow Goodreader (J) put it best: "A hell of a resource if you're ever put in charge of colonizing a new planet."

I picked up this book as an environmental engineer interested in learning more about the origins of GIS. (McHarg is said to be one of the first people to publish on the concept of "layering" visual data.) I walked away wishing I had read the book much earlier and had had the chance to meet McHarg in person.

I think I'll read his autobiography next.

[Phillip · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hear ye, hear ye oh aspiring designers, architects, and engineers of the world! And come read the true doctrine of listening to the land!

Mcharg delivers a captivating, honest, informative, constructively critical, yet optimistic tutorial on how man can be transparent in his design treatment of both Mother Nature and the races that inhabit her. I highly recommend for anyone interested in environmental topics or the urban design discipline.

[Lisa]

Design with Nature was an interesting read that covered two different topics concurrently - land use analysis and a new environmental ethic. The land planning portion is brilliant and equips landscape architects/planners with the ability to support design decisions. The switch between chapters on land planning case studies and chapters supporting a new worldview was sometimes a little forced. I would definitely recommend reading the case studies throughout the book.

[Karena · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent book for anyone interested in or studying architecture, planning, environmental design, or even sociology, geography or cartography. There is a study of social diseases in Philadelphia that are mapped toward the back of the book that correlate the rate of disease with increase in population density. This book makes you think.

[LandscapeArchitect Books · Rating 4 out of 5]

Recommended by Tom Turner - author of 'Garden History: Philosophy and Design 2000 BC - 2000 AD' - as one of forty books which - he suggests - every landscape student should have seen. Thanks to the Landscape Information Hub UK. http://www.lih.gre.ac.uk/histhe/books...

[Stephen · Rating 3 out of 5]

I am not in this field so it was a bit more technical than I was expecting but nonetheless I was so pleased to see how he used nature as his tool for creating a landscape. Nature has a lot to teach us and we seem to avoid what she has to say.

[Ian · Rating 3 out of 5]

Flashes of intellectual and passionate brilliance are bogged down by the biases of the author's time and profession. If you cut out certain sections of the book where McHarg seems to be foaming at the mouth, spitting on cities and economics, I may have given it a 5.

[Luke · Rating 5 out of 5]

gravy train for landscape architects

[Mike Mazza · Rating 5 out of 5]

So far so good.