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Landscape Journal 29:1–10 ISSN 0277-2426
© 2010 by the Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System
ecological message to nonprofessionals, pioneering the
use of television media with his show The House We Live
In aired by CBS from 1960 to 1961 (Figure 2).3 McHarg
made major contributions to landscape architecture,
though aspects of these contributions are problemati-
cal, particularly as they relate to science.
McHarg was an inventor of ecological planning,
and he became a champion of ecological design. As he
explicitly stated in his best- selling book, Design with
Nature (1969), “It was not only an explanation but also
a command” (McHarg 2006c; 1997, 122).4 McHarg’s ma-
jor advancements in landscape architecture include
the conception of a novel relationship among nature,
design, and science; the promotion of the map- overlay
method; and the use of scientifi c theories to measure
desired outcomes in the planning and design process.
As chair of the resurrected Department of Landscape
Architecture at the University of Pennsylvania, he infl u-
enced generations of landscape architects. He was hon-
ored accordingly with numerous awards and medals,
including election as a Fellow to the American Society
of Landscape Architects (1972) and receipt of the Amer-
ican Society of Landscape Architect’s Medal (1984), the
LaGasse Medal (1988), the Harvard Lifetime Achieve-
ment Award (1992), and the Japan Prize (2000).
Underlying all of these achievements was McHarg’s
belief that science was a truth serum that would reveal
the verifi able facts of nature to humans. Science pro-
vided not only an explanatory model for understand-
ing nature but also a prescriptive one. Equipped with
the revelatory powers of science, nature would serve as
a guide to design and planning. While McHarg consis-
tently substantiated his ecological ideas with scientifi c
theories, he possessed no formal training as a scientist
and he never claimed to be one. In fact, he only took one
science class in 1938 at the West of Scotland Agricultural
College (MY 1976, 105; McHarg 1996, 82). Although
he once referred to himself as a quasi- pseudo- crypto-
scientist, many considered him to be a scientist.5 David
Orr has suggested that McHarg was “more of a scientist
than many he employed. He was a perceptive observer
of the wayward ways of men and their tendency towards
ABSTRACT Ian McHarg undoubtedly will be remembered as one
of the most infl uential landscape architects of the 20th century.
His charismatic personality, grand narrative Design with Nature,
and unwavering conviction that science would provide meaning
and purpose for landscape architects placed him at the center of
debates concerning nature, design, and planning. Yet his visions
have been criticized as well as praised. Rarely straying from the
ideas he developed in the 1960s, McHarg consistently contra-
dicted himself. He criticized humans for privileging man over all
other considerations, but he himself was autocratic, asserting his
views as absolute and superior to all. His vision of nature was
that of dynamic process, yet he sought to plot and rank natural
phenomena on static maps. In promoting outdated ideas about
science as a savior for landscape architecture, he used rhetorical
devices suggestive of religious discourse. His views were complex
as well as contradictory. His contribution of “scientifi c reasoning”
to the development of contemporary landscape architecture is
countered by his problematical assertions relating to the ecologi-
cal superiority of English landscape gardens, promotion of the
map- overlay method as a scientifi c process, and combination of
Lawrence Henderson and Charles Darwin’s work for his theory of
creative fi tting.
KEYWORDS history, science, design, nature
SCIENCE AS A TRUTH SERUM FOR LANDSCAPE
ARCHITECTURE1
As an author, academic, public personality, and
practitioner, Ian McHarg (1920–2001) profoundly
changed the teaching and practice of landscape ar-
chitecture (Figure 1).2 McHarg revealed the damaged
condition of the natural environment and held the
electrifying promise that landscape architects were in-
strumental to its repair. He condemned Renaissance,
Baroque, and École des Beaux- Arts formalism and
championed the use of natural sciences in environmen-
tal design. To raise landscape architecture from what he
perceived to be the lowly and wanton ways of garden
art, not only did he write and teach about the value
of science to design but also, with his offi ce Wallace,
McHarg, Roberts, and Todd (WMRT), he set out to use
science in the design of regional landscapes. As such,
he spearheaded multidisciplinary teams including ex-
perts from various scientifi c fi elds, and he advanced the
map- overlay method—a key to his ecological model
and a precursor of computerized Geographic Infor-
mation Systems (GIS). Notably, he sought to bring his
The Nature of Ian McHarg’s Science
Susan Herrington
2Landscape Journal 29:1–10
In 1959 McHarg started the course “Man and En-
vironment,” which involved guest lecturers investi-
gating “the scientifi c conceptions of matter, life, and
man; the views of God, man, and nature in the major
philosophies and religions” and the ecological inter-
actions of humans and nature (McHarg 1996, 140). In
time, theologians declined invitations to the course.
McHarg noted: “Scientifi c expositions amplifi ed the un-
derstanding of the miraculous in nature. No scriptural
description of the supernatural could remotely com-
pare to the scientifi c view” (1996, 161). He also inves-
tigated the Potomac River Basin with students as part
of his design studio. Building upon his experience with
large, collaborative projects at Harvard, McHarg incor-
porated numerous scientists into the fold of this multi-
disciplinary team. The study integrated an assortment
of scientifi c data, including “meteorology, geology, geo-
morphology, groundwater and surface hydrology, soils,
vegetation, wildlife, limnology, and, where appropriate,
physical oceanography and marine biology” (McHarg
1996, 194). This project was “the fi rst of its kind to use
the physiographic region and the river basin as the pri-
mary organizing context for ecological planning and
design—a framework that linked past, present, and an-
ticipated future actions and multiple landscape scales
from garden to region” (Spirn 2000, 105). For McHarg,
this regional planning study was an “expansion of pro-
fessional responsibility” (McHarg 1996, 195) that estab-
lished his ecological planning method (1996, 197).
In 1963, McHarg contended that the ecological
and natural sciences offered an important theoretical
framework for landscape architects and planners. In
“Man and Environment,” which appeared in Leonard
Duhl’s The Urban Condition, McHarg asked readers
to trade in older, humanist ideas regarding nature for
the scientist’s view of the evolution of nature. He pos-
ited: “The inheritors of the Judaic- Christian- Humanist
tradition have received their injunction from Genesis,
a man- oriented universe” (McHarg 2006f; 1963, 3).
McHarg viewed religious doctrine as separating hu-
mans from nature, whereas science provided an inte-
grative view of humans and nature. In this way, nature
selfi sh destruction of the environment” (2007, 9). Prob-
lems nevertheless emerge from McHarg’s conceptions
and use of science.
Despite all of McHarg’s triumphs, some aspects of
his science were inaccurate. Specifi cally, his ideas re-
garding the ecological superiority of English landscape
gardens, the promotion of the map- overlay method as
an objective process, and the combining of Lawrence
Henderson and Charles Darwin’s scientifi c theories
were misguided. Landscape architects and students of
landscape architecture continue to perpetuate these in-
accuracies. Analyses of McHarg’s texts, projects, and lec-
tures are useful in teasing out the problematic strands
of this great landscape architect’s ecological message.
Ultimately, they demonstrate that science, like history,
is continually revised and that only by incorporating
these changes into our own body of knowledge can we
benefi t from its wisdom.
SOME MAJOR CONTRIBUTIONS OF MCHARG
Science Links Design to Nature
As an assistant professor at the University of Pennsyl-
vania in 1954, McHarg was charged with the task of
creating a new landscape architecture curriculum. He
viewed the profession as plagued by low self- esteem in
both the academic community and in society in gen-
eral (McHarg 1996, 129). McHarg admired the modern
revolutionaries Christopher Tunnard, Thomas Church,
and Lawrence Halprin, but he found most practitioners
in North America uninspired and mediocre at best. He
sought to change this state of affairs by developing a
landscape architecture curriculum that was better than
the program at his alma mater, Harvard University. He
did this by recruiting top- ranked architecture students
and developing courses and studios that included a
body of knowledge—the natural sciences—missing
from his own experience as a student at Harvard. Sci-
entists were frequent guests to the school, and in 1960
McHarg hired Nicholas Muhlenberg, a scientist with
background in forestry and ecology, as part of the per-
manent faculty (McHarg 1996, 172).
Herrington 3
symmetry of snowfl akes (Figure 3) or the elegant util-
ity of a bird’s beak to symbolize the inherent beauty of
nature’s designs. Moreover, to represent nature’s design
at a larger scale, McHarg consistently referred to 18th-
century English landscape gardens, which he viewed
as representing ecological concepts. Humans creating
these gardens were designing with nature, while earlier
Western gardens were not designed with nature.
McHarg frequently berated Renaissance gardens as
the penultimate expressions of Judaic- Christian tradi-
tions and Western culture. He found they “clearly show
the imprint of humanist thought. A rigid symmetrical
pattern is imposed relentlessly upon a reluctant land-
scape” (2006f; 1963, 8). In Design with Nature (1969) his
critique of historical landscapes took a full chapter, ti-
tled “On Values.” McHarg began with American Indians
in North America, who he claimed “evolved a most har-
monious balance of man and nature” (1969, 67). He then
moved on to the imperious Renaissance gardens, where
he perceived “the imposition of a simple Euclidean ge-
ometry upon the landscape” (1969, 71). Ultimately, the
French Baroque gardens designed by Le Notre were
“testimony to the divinity of man and his supremacy
over a base and subject nature” (1969, 71).6 Despite
the fact that the term ecology was not coined until the
19th century, McHarg found that these gardens had “no
ecological concept of community or association” (1969,
71).7 For these reasons, McHarg used them as represen-
tational analogies of not designing with nature.
Unlike those involved in earlier gardening tradi-
tions, McHarg (1969) wrote, a handful of 18th- century
landscape architects believed that “some unity of man
and nature was possible and could not only be created
but idealized” (1969, 72). For McHarg, English land-
scape gardens were designed by adhering to a site’s
natural functions, making them analogies of designing
with nature. He claimed: “Never has a society accom-
plished such a benefi cent transformation of an entire
landscape” (1969, 72). He admitted that the designers of
these gardens took their cues as to what nature looked
like from the Romantic painters Claude Lorraine, Nico-
las Poussin, and Salvator Rosa (1969, 73). Nonetheless,
provided a wellspring of truth about the world, and sci-
ence, a means to reveal this truth. Relating this idea di-
rectly to the design and planning process, he surmised,
“We have asked Nature to tell Man what it is, in the way
of opportunities and of constraints for all prospective
land- uses” (McHarg 2007, 44).
In terse prose, McHarg repeatedly condemned
Judeo- Christian traditions and Western culture in gen-
eral as the legitimizing force behind our separation and
dominion over nature, and he consistently promoted
science as the alternative. This argument appears in his
papers “Man and Environment” (2006f; 1963) and “Val-
ues, Process, and Form” (2006g; 1968), his speech “Man:
Planetary Disease” (1971), his book Design with Nature
(1969), his lecture “The Garden as a Metaphysical Sym-
bol” (1980), and an essay for the American Society of
Landscape Architects (2006c; 1997). McHarg’s support
of science sometimes assumed a religious fervor, and
he has been described as the Billy Graham of ecology
(Hedgpeth 1986, 48). The opening chapters of Design
with Nature (McHarg 1969) take readers from the coun-
tryside of Scotland, dune development in the Nether-
lands, natural disasters, pollution, tacky commercial
strips and dense urban living (that would inspire a later
generation of designers), and homage to the people of
Japan (whom he viewed as indivisible from nature) to a
tirade against Western Civilization that valued only in-
dividuality, economic determinism, and anthropocen-
tric art. At the end of this blistering critique, he asked,
“Where else can we turn for an accurate model of the
world and ourselves but to science?” (McHarg 1969, 29)
Historical Gardens and Ecological Integrity
A recurring feature in McHarg’s texts and lectures was
the use of representational analogies to validate design-
ing with nature. In making comparisons to show simi-
larities, his analogies were central to both the discovery
and explanation of scientifi c theories. Most notably,
Sir Isaac Newton explained his theory of gravitation by
drawing a likeness between the way the earth pulls on
an apple falling from a tree and the way it attracts the
moon. McHarg frequently used the frozen hexagonal
4Landscape Journal 29:1–10
trees, and other techniques to reveal the natural pro-
cesses of a site. Map overlay, however, is consistently
attributed to McHarg’s ecological method.
In the early 19th century, epidemiologists used
similar mapping techniques to establish the location of
contagions in cities (Tufte 1983, 27). Likewise, McHarg’s
mapping method shares commonalities with the over-
lays employed by the U.S. Defense Department to de-
termine target locations for intercontinental missiles
during the Cold War (Cloud 2001, 203). In landscape
architecture, the map- overlay method advanced by
McHarg was similar to that used by Warren Manning in
the early 20th century to record and classify site infor-
mation (Zube 1986; Neckar 1989).8 In 1950 Jacqueline
Tyrwhitt provided one of the fi rst explicit descriptions
of the map- overlay method in the design process in her
book Town and Country Planning Textbook (Steinitz,
Parker, and Jordan 1976, 445). Tyrwhitt was a professor
at the Graduate School of Design in the Department of
City Planning and Landscape Architecture at Harvard
University from 1955 to 1969. While McHarg was not
the inventor of the map- overlay method, he certainly
championed it as no other individual before him.
McHarg introduced his method to landscape ar-
chitects in 1965 in his Landscape Architecture article
“Plan for the Valleys vs. Spectre of Uncontrolled Growth”
with David Wallace. Examining and layering geologi-
cal, topographical, economic, and a multitude of other
factors, they demonstrated how planned growth could
save seven million dollars as compared to uncontrolled
growth (McHarg and Wallace 1965, 180). The map-
overlay method also features signifi cantly in Design
with Nature. There, McHarg structured the text so that
chapters rife with condemnations of corrupt cities,
Western values, rampant pollution, and urban patholo-
gies alternated with chapters detailing the life- saving
solutions of his map- overlay process. Many of these
projects were completed with University of Pennsyl-
vania students and his offi ce, WMRT. Accompanied by
God- like aerial views of the earth, these polychromatic
maps revealed to readers how one might design with
McHarg assured readers, in the English landscape gar-
den “the ruling principle was that ‘nature is the garden-
er’s best designer’—an empirical ecology” (1969, 73).
In advocating for nature, science, and design,
McHarg also introduced a novel defi nition of nature. He
posited that places are “only comprehensible in terms of
physical and biological evolution” (1967, 105) and that
nature as a process is subject to the forces that produce
and control the phenomena of the biophysical world.
This defi nition of nature as a process is an enduring
contribution. And the method he advocated for inte-
grating natural processes into design and planning was
equally enduring. This method used mapping as a pro-
cess for conducting extensive landscape inventories.
Map Overlays in the Ecological Model
The map- overlay method was key to McHarg’s eco-
logical model. This process spatially referenced the
inventoried data and weighted its relative importance
to design decision- making as part of the analysis. Origi-
nally, the map- overlay system involved layers of trans-
parent fi lm over a base map. Other types of transparent
materials, and eventually the computer, replaced the
fi lm overlays. Each layer of fi lm was dedicated to a single
inventoried factor, such as topography or historic sites,
which was rated from a high to low value. The darkest
gradations of tones represented areas with the highest
value and the lightest tones indicated areas with the
least signifi cant value. All of the mapped layers were
then superimposed to create a composite map that in
McHarg’s words looked something like a “complex X-ray
photograph with dark and light tones” (1969, 35).
For McHarg, the composite map was where the
truth was revealed. Development suitability was rated
on the map from highest (lightest color) to lowest (dark-
est). According to McHarg, the integration of social and
natural information across the site enabled designers to
chart future development in ways that closely adhered
to nature’s intrinsic progression towards stability. He
augmented the map analyses with technical reports,
suitability matrices, diagrammatic sections, decision
Herrington 5
also fulfi lled the basic principles of adaptation (2006c;
1997, 124–125).
Adaptation. In McHarg’s words, the theory of creative
fi tting “has absolutely no status whatsoever, except in-
sofar as all the parts have been derived from excellent
scientists” (2007, 21). Indeed, creative fi tting conjoined
the scientifi c theories of Charles Darwin’s The Origin of
Species (2003; 1859) and the lesser- known scientist Law-
rence Henderson’s The Fitness of the Environment (1958;
1913). Creativity, for McHarg, was not an act exclusive to
human artists but rather a directional process towards
higher levels of order, which he thought occurred in the
laws of both thermodynamics and evolution—in living
and nonliving systems (2007, 22). McHarg defi ned fi t as
a blend of two scientifi c propositions: Charles Darwin’s
idea that “the surviving organism is fi t for the environ-
ment” (2007, 23) and Lawrence Henderson’s theory that
“the actual environment, the actual world, constitutes
the fi ttest possible abode for life . . . this fi tting then is
essential to survival, according to Darwin, and there
is always a most fi t environment for every system seek-
ing an environment” (2007, 23–24). In 1981, McHarg
wrote, “Every organism, system, constitution, is re-
quired to fi nd the fi ttest environment, adapt that envi-
ronment and itself in order to survive” (McHarg 1981,
93). In 1997, he again referred to his theory of creative
fi tting in a defi nition of ecological design:
Ecological design follows planning and introduces the
subject of form. There should be an intrinsically suit-
able location, processes with appropriate materials,
and forms. Design requires an informed designer with
a visual imagination, as well as graphic and creative
skills. It selects for creative fi tting revealed in intrinsic
and expressive form (McHarg 2006c; 1997, 123).
He concluded: “And, thanks to Charles Darwin and Law-
rence Henderson, we have a theory” (2006c; 1997, 124).
Evolution. Creative Fitting also explained how McHarg’s
ecological method produced outcomes matching the
nature, thereby locating intrinsically suitable loca-
tions for various types of development. The answer was
simple—map it.
McHarg’s ecological method was both a “diagno-
sis and prescription” for development (Palmer 2001,
Spirn 2000), and he believed it an objective procedure
that could be replicated to produce the same outcomes.
Describing the Woodlands project, to Landscape Ar-
chitecture readers in 1975, McHarg and Jonathan Sut-
ton noted, “Having accumulated and interpreted the
biophysical data describing the region and [an] 18,000
a[cre] site, a method was developed which insured that
anyone would reach the same conclusions . . . any engi-
neer, architect, landscape architect, developer, and the
client himself were bound by the data and the method”
(McHarg and Sutton 1975, 78).
Later in life, McHarg was enthusiastic about the
importation of his mapping method into computerized,
geographic, information systems, exclaiming, “More
data can be ingested, evaluated, and synthesized faster,
and more accurately than ever before” (2006c; 1997,
119). He surmised that fi nally, the “computer will solve
the command ‘show me the locations where all most
propitious factors are located and most detrimental
factors are absent’” (2006c; 1997, 118). To be sure, the
computer fulfi lled his quest for a systematic method of
landscape design based on scientifi c data, but McHarg’s
approach was also substantiated by scientifi c theories
concerning evolution and adaptation.
Creative Fitting
As a means of lending scientifi c integrity to his eco-
logical approach, McHarg developed a scientifi c theory
called creative fi tting that both explained and validated
designing with nature. McHarg’s method was ecologi-
cal not only because it used ecological data but also be-
cause the outcomes it produced matched the processes
of adaptation and evolution. It helped determine where
proposed human uses, such as buildings and roads,
intrinsically fi t on the land. Since this design method
located the fi ttest environment for various land uses, it
6Landscape Journal 29:1–10
60), and “on all counts the complex environment will be
more stable”(1969, 120).
PROBLEMS AND LIMITATIONS OF McHARG’S
CONTRIBUTIONS
Reaction to McHarg’s Work
Design with Nature made its debut in 1969, and since
then conceptions of nature, design, and science have
developed in landscape architecture in myriad ways.
Some of these changes have been the direct conse-
quence of reinterpreting McHarg’s work. Without doubt
he sustained a devout following, particularly among his
past students. The landscape architecture offi ce An-
dropogon Associates, founded by Carol Franklin, Colin
Franklin, Leslie Sauer, and Rolf Sauer (McHarg’s former
students), has produced award- winning landscapes in
the name of “designing with nature.” On the teaching
front, Ecology and Design: Frameworks for Learning
(Johnson and Hill 2001) has revamped the role of eco-
logical thinking in design education; some consider it
the postscript of Design with Nature (Pittari 2003, 115).
Former students have also challenged McHarg’s
autocratic views, expanding the scope and intent of his
ecological message. Whereas McHarg viewed the city
as the antithesis of nature, his former students, Anne
Whiston Spirn and Michael Hough, found the urban
environment brimming with natural systems worthy
of our attention (Spirn 1984; Hough 1995). McHarg’s
colleagues also countered some of his positions on the
future of landscape architecture, bringing a humanist
dimension to his ecological method. McHarg sought
to make landscape design and planning a hard sci-
ence (Olin 1999, 16). Laurie Olin, in both his practice
with Robert Hanna and his teaching at the University of
Pennsylvania, however, combined ecological concerns
with artistic expression. When James Corner joined the
University of Pennsylvania in 1988, he intentionally ex-
ploited the subjective beauty of maps. With Anu Mathur,
Corner argued that maps were part of the repertoire of
representational strategies used to generate “a catalytic
trajectory of evolution. He anchored his theory of fi t in
the Darwin / Henderson combination, stating, “All sys-
tems are required to seek out the environment that is
most fi t, to adapt these and themselves, continuously . . .
Systems which are fi t are evolutionary successes; they
are maximum success solutions to fi tness” (2006b; 1978,
87). McHarg’s explanations of the Darwin / Henderson-
inspired theory of creative fi tting stressed that evolu-
tionary progress, left to nature, moves towards some
optimal point of success—that best evolutionary suc-
cess is best defi ned by maximum fi t solutions (McHarg
1969, 120; 1996, 245; 2007, 23).
This may be why the living and nonliving things,
that were in McHarg’s view ‘unfi t,’ drew his criticism.
They did not fulfi ll what he deemed the optimizing
directionality of adaptation. In defi ning what is unfi t,
McHarg (1969, 170) noted:
Our language conforms to this notion of the un-
fi t as the unhealthy, crippled, deformed, although
there may well be excellences that overcome this.
Beethoven transcended deafness. So unfi tness would
include not only the broken piano, but also the de-
faced painting . . . the house in shade or the glaring
street, the anarchic city; these are all unfi t.
Stability. Another dimension concerning the outcomes
of evolution and adaptation is the idea of stability as a
benchmark of ecological health. McHarg argued that
“stable and healthy forests, marshes, deserts, streams
can be defi ned, that succession and retrogression can
be identifi ed” (2006a; 1966, 39). He further asserted:
“Complexity, diversity, stability (steady state), with a
high number of species and low entropy are indicators
of health and systems moving in this direction are evolv-
ing” (1967, 107), and again attested that an increase
in the number of species correlates with an increase in
stability (2006g; 1968, 57). He concluded that ecologi-
cal fi tness must meet the evolutionary side (trending
towards complexity and diversity) of the simplicity-
complexity, uniformity- diversity, instability- stability,
independence- interdependence criteria (2006g; 1968,
Herrington 7
cause (a mandate for moral action), and ecology as an
aesthetic (a norm for beauty). It is important to dis-
tinguish the insights ecology yields as a description of
the world, on the one hand, from how these insights
have served as a source of prescriptive principles and
aesthetic values, on the other (2000, 112).
The following is an attempt to begin unraveling
McHarg’s appropriation of science.
The Ecological Superiority of English Landscape
Gardens?
As is evident in McHarg’s writings and lectures, the En-
glish landscape garden, compared with other histori-
cal gardens, served as a representational analogy for
designing with nature. Analogies may be useful com-
munication tools, but they have a history of represent-
ing wrong theories in science. For example, during the
majority of the 20th century, paleontologists believed
that duckbilled dinosaurs inhabited aquatic environ-
ments. The dinosaurs had bills and webbed feet like the
ducks we see today, so it was postulated that they lived
like ducks (Figure 4). As a result, professional publica-
tions, educational dioramas, and popular books dis-
played duckbilled dinosaurs, such as Corythosaurus,
swimming in water or emerging from a murky swamp.
Later examination of their fossilized remains, however,
indicated that despite their ducklike appearance, these
dinosaurs were not aquatic creatures but lived on land
(Turner 2000).
McHarg’s analogy between designing with nature
and English landscape gardens from the 18th century
suffers in this way. The paleontologist sees the webbed
feet and ducklike bill of the dinosaur. She thinks it looks
like a duck and so concludes it was an aquatic animal.
Likewise, McHarg saw an English landscape garden, its
valley fl ooded with curvy lakes, its undulating meadows
with sheep, its clumps of trees; he thought it looked like
nature and concluded the garden was designed with
nature. Despite appearances, duckbilled dinosaurs
lived on land and the designers of English landscape
locale of inventive subterfuges for the making of poetic
landscapes” (Corner 1992, 275).
Even the latest trend in landscape architecture—
landscape urbanism—has ties to McHarg’s work. Rich-
ard Weller (2006) has posited that landscape urbanism
must conjoin the rigor and conviction characterizing
McHarg’s ecological method with the exquisite imag-
ery and theoretical sophistication that defi nes Corner’s
work. For Weller, “We are aptly reminded that landscape
architecture is at best an art of instrumentality, or bet-
ter still, an ecological art of instrumentality” (2006, 77).
Indeed landscape urbanism shares commonalities with
McHarg’s work, particularly its emphasis on graphic
and analytic techniques, and its dependency on sys-
tems and strategy over form and design.
Critics of McHarg have frequently observed his dis-
interest in social issues. As early as 1971, Michael Lau-
rie cautioned: “By his own admission McHarg barely
touches upon social issues beyond the realm of sur-
vival” (206, 248). And yet some of the most serious criti-
cism leveled at McHarg concerns his disdain for art and
his low regard for site design, particularly at a garden
scale. In Recovering Landscape, Marc Treib stated:
[McHarg] mixed science with evangelism—a sort of
ecofundamentalism . . . McHarg’s method insinuated
that if the process were correct, the consequent form
would be good, almost as if objective study automati-
cally gave rise to an appropriate aesthetic. In response
to his strong personality and ideas, landscape archi-
tects jumped aboard the ecological train, becoming
analysts rather than creators, and the conscious mak-
ing of form and space in the landscape subsequently
came to a screeching halt (1999, 31).
Given that Treib’s essay is the fi rst chapter of Recov-
ering Landscape, readers might wonder whether land-
scape architecture is recovering from McHarg. Spirn
also noted:
When McHarg calls ecology “not only an explana-
tion, but also a command,” he confl ates ecology as a
science (a way of describing the world), ecology as a
8Landscape Journal 29:1–10
In his Design with Nature (1969) chapter “On Val-
ues,” McHarg included a photograph of Blenheim Pal-
ace showing John Vanbrugh’s Grand Bridge crossing
over Lancelot Brown’s fl ooded Glyme Valley (Figure 5).
McHarg seems to have been unaware of the human
labor that produced and maintained this landscape in
noting that English landscape designers “used native
plant materials to create new communities that so well
refl ected natural processes that their creations have en-
dured and are self- perpetuating” (1969, 72). On the page
with a photograph of the Blenheim Palace landscape,
McHarg continued his promotion of English landscape
gardens, noting the “water courses graced with willow,
alder and osier, while the meadow supported grasses
and meadow fl owers” (1969, 73).
In actuality, Lancelot Brown made sweeping
changes to the existing hydrology and terrain of the
Blenheim Palace site. He did far more than plant trees
and meadows at Blenheim. Starting in 1763, he redi-
rected a major waterway, damned it, fl ooded the fi rst
fl oors of the Grand Bridge, wiped out Lady Sarah’s wa-
terfall and canal, and after a succession of cascades
redirected this water into the Thames River, “which he
boasted would never forgive him” (Green 2000, 53). Ac-
cording to Clemens Steenbergen and Wouter Reh’s anal-
yses of Brown’s work at Blenheim, “Its landscape seems
to have been forged with a sledgehammer; it is a visual
tour de force” (1996, 321). This certainly is a description
correlative to dominating nature rather than designing
with it. Moreover, Brown radically changed the hydrol-
ogy and terrain on numerous other sites he designed.
This fl awed view of certain historical landscapes
representing designing with or without nature pre-
vailed in McHarg’s lectures and writings. In 1997, in an
essay for the American Society of Landscape Architects,
McHarg surmised that Baroque gardens like Versailles
sought to demonstrate man’s dominion over nature.
This constitutes the worst possible admonition to the
explorers who were then about to discover and colonize
the earth. Anthropomorphism, dominion, and subjuga-
tion are better suited to suicide, genocide, and biocide
than survival and success (1997, 105) More problematic,
gardens often radically changed the natural systems of
their sites.
This zeal for the superiority of English landscape
gardens glosses over both the human and site subjuga-
tion resulting from their creation, placing in question
their benefi t to existing human populations and the
natural systems of the site. For example, in his promo-
tion of English landscape gardens, McHarg obliquely
referred to the enclosure acts that made many of these
gardens possible. He noted that, before the 18th century,
agricultural patterns were awkward and unproductive:
“Starting with a denuded landscape, a backward agri-
culture, and medieval pattern of attenuated land hold-
ings, this tradition rehabilitated an entire countryside”
(McHarg 1969, 72).
While enclosure generally was an economic success
for landowners, it provided little appreciable benefi t for
the landless tenant farmers. Moreover, this success was
largely due to technological advances in farming, and it
came at the expense of people’s common rights. Enclo-
sure acts disenfranchised the poor by forcing them to
work as tenant farmers on the enclosed land or leave to
fi nd work elsewhere. As early as the 18th century, critics
such as Mary Wollstonecraft condemned the enclosure
acts. She argued that the exploitation of poor people
for the sake of maximizing agricultural production and
creating landscape gardens was inhumane (Bohls 2005,
145–146).
In the 20th century, Denis Cosgrove analyzed the
impact of enclosure on farmers, noting:“ [A] majority
saw their position eroded and their land slipping from
their grasp as enclosure acts forced them to bear the
costs of fencing and hedging while depriving them of
crucial traditional sources of communal livelihood”
(1998, 192). Cosgrove also stressed the division of space
and labor in these enclosed lands. The tenants hired to
maintain the plantings, statuary, and water features in
landscape gardens were prohibited from using them.
They could enter these spaces only as laborers. Accord-
ing to Cosgrove, “The 60 persons, for example, perma-
nently employed to cater for Blenheim’s 2,500 acres, are
entirely excluded from its ‘landscape’” (1998, 215).
Herrington 9
exert a social infl uence through their omissions as much
as by the features they depict and emphasize” (1989b,
290). For example, describing 17th- century maps of En-
glish estates in Ireland, surveyors often excluded the
cabins of Irish families in their otherwise “accurate”
maps. These omissions revealed not only religious ten-
sion but also the power of English landholders to ex-
punge the Irish from their conceptualizations of the
landscape. For Harley, “Silences on maps thus come to
enshrine self- fulfi lling prophecies about the geography
of power” (292). What you see is what you get.
While Harley used historical maps to make his
point, contemporary maps, including those created
with computers, may further increase the disconnect
between maps and the realities of a site.10 Contempo-
rary maps “foster the notion of a socially empty space,”
and computer generated maps lessen “the burden of
conscience about people in the landscape” (Harley
1989b, 303).11 Critics wonder, “Are we really designing
with nature, or are we simply addicted to our maps and
the technology behind them?” (Dunstan 1983, 61)
Given that maps are not objective, this opens
their creation to partiality. A latent bias in McHarg’s
ecological method was his preference for low- density
development as a desired outcome. WMRT’s Plan for
the Valleys in Maryland; for Medford Township in New
Jersey; and for The Woodlands in Texas endorsed low-
density housing. In the plan for Medford, for example,
single- family residences on lots bigger than one acre
are weighted the highest and considered the best type
of new development in comparison to all other densi-
ties. Throughout Design with Nature, McHarg advo-
cated the spacious countryside and its scenic qualities
over denser, urban living.
To legitimatize his preference for low density,
McHarg referred to John Calhoun and Jack Christian’s
work on crowding in rat populations and the theory
of pathological togetherness. In Design with Nature,
McHarg warned of the direct relationship between high
density and a decline in the size of litters, deformed
young, and ultimately the “failure of the mothers to
provide milk, and cannibalism” (1969, 193). McHarg
some landscape architects persist in upholding these
faulty representational analogies. John Dixon Hunt has
noted that the profession continues to attribute rectilin-
ear gardens with badness and serpentine gardens with
goodness (2000, 212). This is due to the supposition that
gardens that look like 18th- century English gardens are
designing with nature and so are good, and that gardens
that similar to Baroque or Renaissance gardens are not
designing with nature and so are bad.
The Map-Overlay Process Is Like a Scientific
Method?
The objectivity of maps. The mapping process so fun-
damental to McHarg’s method is also strangely at odds
with his emphasis on nature as a dynamic process.9 The
act of plotting static features as a way of designing with
nature is inconsistent with the idea that nature is a phe-
nomenon marked by gradual changes through a series
of states. As Spirn has observed, the confl ict between
preservation and change is McHarg’s most persistent
inconsistency (2000, 102).
Yet another problem with McHarg’s mapping pro-
cess is his persistent claims to its objectivity. Although
McHarg promoted the map- overlay method as an ob-
jective approach to design, the compilation of facts is
not bias- free, and maps can be as subjective as other
forms of depiction (Harley 1989a, 1989b, 1990; Wood
1992; Cosgrove 2008). In the classic text The Iconogra-
phy of Landscape, J. B. Harley introduced maps as “part
of the broader family of value- laden images” (1989b,
279). Tracing a history of mapmaking from the decora-
tive maps of the 16th century to the “scientifi c phase” of
mapping in the 20th century, Harley posited that maps
are far from value- free. Moreover, 20th- century maps
created under the guise of scientifi c disinterestedness—
while free from heraldic banners, jewel encrusted com-
passes, or dueling Minotaurs—serve to legitimatize
power relations.
These power relations are legitimized not only by
what maps contain but also by what they omit—the si-
lences of maps. According to Harley, “It is asserted here
that maps—just as much as examples of literature—
10 Landscape Journal 29:1–10
Monmonier, “Floodplains defi ned locally by a single
elevation tend to include either too much or too little
of the real fl ood plain” (1996, 76). Cosgrove also scru-
tinized the confl ation of knowledge and mapmaking,
noting that the graphic power of McHarg’s maps lies
in their ability to calculate claims about phenomena
that escape normal bodily experiences (2008, 168). For
example, it’s not always possible to experience the in-
tersection of bedrock geology and residential values on
a site. This situation, however, often forces mapmakers
to use secondary sources subject to the types of inaccu-
racies cited by Monmonier. Inaccurate data hinders the
type of scientifi c rigor that McHarg aspired to achieve
with his overlay method.
Another problem with the map- overlay method
is the notion that physical values, such as information
gleaned from a soil boring, may be operationalized the
same way that cultural values, such as historical sig-
nifi cance, may be. McHarg’s method was attacked for
giving too much weight to science instead of intuition
(Spirn 2000). Critics, wrote Spirn, “lose sight of the most
important aspects of the ecological inventor—its sys-
tematic comprehensiveness and the relation of different
aspects of the environment” (2000, 108). The breadth of
issues and values that the map- overlay method could
address was unprecedented. But the ability to integrate
biophysical features as well as cultural factors through
the Cartesian sieve of the overlay method overlooked the
complexity of cultural issues.
In Design with Nature, the location of a highway
provides the fi rst example of the map- overlay method at
work. Information like bedrock conditions, slopes, and
soils conditions are rated—low suitability (Zone 1), me-
dium suitability (Zone 2), or high suitability (Zone 3) for
road construction. Soil values, for example, ranks silts
and clay soils areas low, and these areas are portrayed
in darker tones. Sandy loams are ranked medium, and
these areas are of a mid- range tone. Gravelly sand or silt
loams and gravelly to stony sandy loams are rated high
and given the lightest tone because these soils are good
for roadway construction.
applied the fi ndings of Calhoun and Christian, whose
rats were living in conditions of extreme crowding, in
his ecological model of Philadelphia. Mapping a range
of factors from ethnic distribution, density and eco-
nomic factors to various social diseases, he conjoined
high density with pathology, noting, “It’s premature
to predict correlations. The single obvious one is pov-
erty, but density—indeed the adjacent population map
bears a remarkable correspondence to the pattern of
pathology” (193). With the rise of cluster housing and
later new urbanism, low- density housing has been as-
sociated with increased dependence on cars, a diffusion
of single- function infrastructure, and greater ecological
disturbances. Yet, even in his 25th anniversary edition of
Design with Nature, McHarg did not change his stance
on dense living and the city.
McHarg was aware of the cultural biases of map-
making. In his biography, Quest for Life, he revealed how
race played a role in the Washington Metropolitan Tran-
sit Authority project. He noted: “[A] covert value system
was being utilized in conjunction with an overt ecologi-
cal inventory” (1996, 340). While how he avoided this
covert value system is unclear, he claimed that for this
project, like others, the “process was overt, explicit, and
replicable, just like a scientifi c experiment” (1996, 341).
McHarg’s belief in the objectivity of maps was
deeply entrenched in culture. As Monmonier noted:
“Map users are generally a trusting lot . . . they readily
entrust map- making to a priesthood of technically com-
petent designers and drafters” (Monmonier 1996, 1).
Developers deploy the presumed objectiveness of map
analyses purposely to lie in ways that do not benefi t the
environment or the local people (Monmonier 1996).
Inaccurate and diverse data. Monmonier has posited
that all maps contain lies. These lies are not always in-
tentional but can be attributed to the inaccuracies of
|the data, particularly with imprecise resource- related
data. Data sources commonly used in landscape plan-
ning and design (for example the Unites States Geo-
logical Survey) are often fl awed, as are procedures
for compiling these data. For example, according to
Herrington 11
1. ecosystem inventory
2. description of natural processes
3. identifi cation of limiting factors
4. attribution of value
5. determination of prohibitions and permissiveness
to change
6. identifi cation of stability or instability (2006a;
1966, 24)
By 1967 McHarg expanded the last step to a set of
binary ecological criteria by which design outcomes
could be affi rmed as positive or negative, bringing his
methodology into complete alignment with positivist
thinking.
During the early 1990s landscape architects criti-
cized McHarg’s unequivocal endorsement of map-
overlays and GIS as a positivist method. Some argued
that these approaches to design were incapable of
considering the rich array of cultural aspects compris-
ing landscapes. In 1991, James Corner identifi ed posi-
tivism as a tyranny in landscape architecture. Corner
described the positivist tyranny as one grounded in sci-
ence, based on descriptions and explanation of design
processes, and overly methodological. For Corner, “one
only has to plow through the complex matrices of Chris-
topher Alexander’s Notes on the Synthesis of Form (1964)
or to look at the exhaustive collection of data involved
in McHarg’s suitability analyses to see the laborious na-
ture of such an enterprise” (1991, 117). The tyranny for
Corner, however, was not the voluminous amount of
work but the notion that the data itself would automati-
cally guide designers to a credible solution.
The problem raised here concerns the lack of proof
substantiating the ecological superiority of McHarg’s
method. While McHarg championed that the outcomes
of his method could be verifi ed, there have been few
systematic assessments of his built projects. In the
1970s the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban De-
velopment hailed The Woodlands, WMRT’s award win-
ning project in Texas, as a great success (Morgan and
In the same study, but on different layers, the rating
approach is applied to cultural criteria such as residen-
tial, institutional, and scenic values. Residential values,
for example, are marked low for road construction suit-
ability where the market value of housing is more than
$50,000, medium for houses valued between $25,000
and $50,000, and high for road- construction suitability
in areas with houses under $25,000. This ranking raises
concerns about social inequities in the map- analysis
procedure. Why are the wealthier homeowners permit-
ted to hide in the shadows of the darker tones? Moreover,
when people living in inexpensive housing exist on the
same tonal plane as gravelly sand, how is this designing
with nature? McHarg admitted that this example privi-
leges the wealthy but surmised that it nevertheless is a
success because the method is explicit (1969, 40).
Scientific proof. McHarg consistently referred to the
map- overlay method as an ecological model that was
scientifi cally defensible. Scientifi c approaches to un-
derstanding the world are based on the following four
elements:
1. observation of specifi c facts or phenomena
2. formulation of generalizations about such
phenomena
3. production of causal hypotheses relating different
phenomena
4. testing of the causal hypotheses by means of further
observation and experimentation (Pigliucci 2002,
128–129).
McHarg argued for this positivist conception of
landscape architecture. He thought that design and
planning solutions, like those in science, should be ver-
ifi ed for their ecological integrity. As early as 1965, he
outlined the data collection and mapping for his new
ecological model in his lecture “Ecological Determin-
ism.” According to McHarg, these procedures included
six steps:
12 Landscape Journal 29:1–10
by Henderson’s recounting of how the world became
fi t for life. Henderson’s The Fitness of the Environment
(1958) is a classic text explaining how hydrogen and
oxygen and their particular characteristics make pos-
sible the production of living protoplasm, and thus, a fi t
condition for life. Be that as it may, scientists seriously
questioned Henderson’s foray into the metaphysical im-
plications of his work—an explanation of who or what
was designing this earth for life (Mendelsohn 2008).
Some readers of The Fitness of the Environment,
like McHarg, found that Henderson’s theories validated
the idea that there was a design for earth, which made it
fi t for “every form of life that has existed, does now exist,
and all imaginable forms” (McHarg 2007, 23).13 Accord-
ing to historian Everett Mendelsohn, Henderson did not
believe there was a grand designer for earth’s natural
systems, and he spent a signifi cant portion of his career
defending and explaining his metaphysical claims. In a
letter cited by Mendelsohn, Henderson contended:
What I maintain is that there is a pattern in the ulti-
mate properties of the chemical elements and in the
ultimate physiochemical properties of all phenomena
considered in relation to each other. I do not mean
to say that this pattern is exactly of the same nature
as the pattern of a watch or an organism. Still less do
I mean to say or to imply anything about design of
mind. The only minds that I know are the minds of
the individual organisms that I encounter upon the
earth (Mendelsohn 2008, 10).
In this letter Henderson argued against an inter-
pretation of his work claiming that natural organisms
are designed by some God- like mind. Richard Dawkins
has called this misinterpretation “the illusion of design”
(1996, 3–4). Since some things in the world —the beauti-
ful symmetry of a butterfl y for example—appear to have
been designed, some argue that they must have been
intentionally designed by an intelligent being. Accord-
ing to Dawkins, “Natural selection is the blind watch-
maker, blind because it does not see ahead, does not
plan consequences, has no purpose in view” (1996, 21).
Since Henderson proposed that the earth was designed
King 1987, 142–143). Other awards followed, but the
project gained its fame as an application of McHarg’s
ecological approach conjoined with The Woodlands’
status as a Housing and Urban Development New Town
(Morgan and King 1987, 149), not through the replica-
tion and testing of the design solution.
Landscape architects have studied the project as
well. In the 1990s, Cynthia Girling and Kenneth Hel-
phand found that subsequent developments in The
Woodlands did not McHarg’s signature open- swale
system. Instead, by 1985, development there used the
conventional curb- and- gutter system (Girling and Hel-
phand 1994, 166–167). Urban designer Ann Forsyth
found that residents complained about the wild look
of the open swales and that some thought the focus on
hydrology diminished the importance of maintaining
corridors for wildlife (Forsyth 2003, 13). These studies,
however informative, probably are not the rigorous sci-
entifi c testing McHarg envisioned.12
Evaluations of McHarg’s design solutions com-
pared with those of ecological health could help deter-
mine whether his model is scientifi cally credible. We
learn from mistakes—the identifi cation of ecological
failures in his solutions would suggest adjustments to
his method. This certainly was not lost on McHarg. He
noted in Design with Nature: “We can accept that sci-
entifi c knowledge is incomplete and will forever be so,
but it is the best we have and it has that great merit,
which religions lack, of being self- correcting” (1969,
29). Nonetheless, even if we used McHarg’s ecological
criteria to self- correct—to check whether his method
produced landscapes of great ecological integrity com-
pared to other methods—there are problems with some
of his ecological theories. These ideas are noteworthy
because they have permeated both professional and
academic thinking in landscape architecture.
Creative Fitting or Religious Fitting?
The illusion of design. While Darwin- and Henderson-
inspired theory occupy McHarg’s ecological thought
for more than 30 years, his interpretations of their work
were not entirely accurate. McHarg was clearly captivated
Herrington 13
Like his interpretation of Henderson’s work,
McHarg’s ideas about adaptation may have been more
infl uenced by religious ideas. According to Stephen Jay
Gould, “[A] popular impression regards Darwin’s prin-
ciple of natural selection as an optimizing force, leading
to the same end of local perfection that God had sup-
plied directly in older views of natural theology” (1997,
5). In Western cultures, where scientifi c ideas have re-
placed natural theology with Darwin as the mainstay,
evolutionary theories have been frequently misinter-
preted as attaining theology’s end game. This certainly
explains McHarg’s misinterpretation of Darwin, but how
did it affect the profession he so profoundly changed?
Landscape architects continue to suffer from this
misreading of Darwin with regard to native plants. The
argument follows that since native plants lived in North
America before Western settlement, they existed in a
natural state and thus must have naturally evolved as
the best- adapted plants for their given location. Biolo-
gists have pointed out that natural selection is only a
“better than” principle, not an optimizing device (Gould
1997, 6). Nonetheless, students of landscape architec-
ture often claim that native plants are the best- adapted
plants for a landscape. One can hardly blame them. Not
only did McHarg roll out a version of adaptation opti-
mization but advocacy groups and nurseries also began
selling native plants, “confi rming” the theory.
Natural balance. According to McHarg, another crite-
rion for creative fi tting is a stable ecosystem. Stability,
however, has been one of the most contested criteri-
ons for describing a healthy ecosystem. The idea of a
stable, balanced natural state may be traced back to
natural philosophy in the 18th and 19th centuries. By
the 1930s, however, numerous ecologists found “there
was no evidence of ecological stability in unexploited
natural populations or communities” (McCoy and
Shrader- Frechette 1992, 188). Healthy ecosystems did
not necessarily exhibit stability or balance. In the 1950s,
stability was replaced by dynamic balance, and is some-
times used by present- day interpreters of McHarg’s
work (Sagan 2006, 82). This proved to be as diffi cult
for life, for some people this suggested a grand designer
in the wings. Unfortunately for the atheist Henderson,
Intelligent Design enthusiasts cite his metaphysical ac-
counts more often than scientists do (Denton 1998).
McHarg was not an Intelligent Design advocate, but
God held a spectral presence in his thinking on nature
and science. His writings and lectures are laced with re-
ligious overtones of heresy, good, evil, and a perpetual
guilt that our brains make humans a planetary disease.
McHarg (1996) implied that God praises the ecological
designer over others. Even his fi lm Multiply and Sub-
due the Earth suggests his disillusionment with the fre-
quently cited line from Genesis: “So God created man
in his own image . . . and God said to them, ‘Be fruitful
and multiply, and fi ll the earth and subdue it’” (Bible
2007). In an interview in 1976, McHarg remarked, “So
far as I’m concerned, ecology is a kind of heavy- footed
religion. It’s a religious quest, this idea about something
that unites all rocks, plants, animals and men” (MY
1976, 109).
Through history, scientists have been theists or
atheists, but McHarg’s desire to fi nd a purpose and
unity in nature’s design muddles the science in his
theory of creative fi tting. On one hand he promoted a
scientist’s view of adaptation regarding evolution. On
the other, he was unwilling to accept the remorseless
Darwinian prognosis that the world had evolved with
no grand design. Even if we choose to believe that na-
ture has a design, with creative fi tting as its proof, there
are problems with the outcome of its plan, particularly
with regard to optimization and balance.
Optimization. The process of adaptation involves the
mutation of genes, which is random, so there is no bias
towards improvement. Dawkins asked, “How on earth
is mutation supposed to ‘know’ what will be good . . . by
what mysterious built- in wisdom does the body choose
to mutate in the direction of getting better, rather than
worse? (1996, 305–306). The desire to believe that adap-
tation is moving towards greater improvement is simply
that, a belief, and has never been verifi ed.
14 Landscape Journal 29:1–10
MCHARG’S LEGACY
The contradictions and inaccuracies do not detract from
the spectacular advancements McHarg made in land-
scape architecture and society in general. Rather, they
suggest his work be contextualized historically. Recent
books on McHarg are unwavering in their admiration
of him. Frederick Steiner has suggested: “Ian McHarg’s
ideas about ecologically based design, human ecology,
and national and global inventories remain crucial to
our futures” (2006, xiv). David Orr has noted: “McHarg’s
vision of humankind and nature in harmony . . . may
help a generate wisdom and foresight amongst your
peers” (2007, 14). McHarg certainly deserves this rec-
ognition, but without a historical critique of McHarg’s
ideas, we lose the opportunity to understand Mc-
Harg’s place in history. We also fail to learn from the
other fi elds that he relied upon in his work.
This is true of the sciences as well as of history. Ac-
cording to Michael Graham and Paul Dayton, scientifi c
knowledge is a dynamic process; they caution that when
ecologists loose touch with their historical roots, they
“face a greater likelihood of recycling ideas and imped-
ing scientifi c momentum” (2002, 1481). This caution ap-
plies to landscape architecture, too. For example, if we
continue to maintain that maps are an objective form
of depiction, we too risk repeating the past and hinder-
ing knowledge about landscapes. This is not to say we
should abandon GIS or the map- overlay method. Maps
are extremely useful and effi cient forms of communica-
tion, but they must be presented to students with this
awareness that they are not bias free. Like a perspective
sketch, they illustrate a point of view, and in doing so
they leave things out.
Why did McHarg not keep up with current research
on evolution and ecology? Despite 25 years of changes
in science and landscape architecture, the 1992 edition
of Design with Nature is virtually identical to the 1969
edition. Perhaps, as with MacArthur, whom McHarg so
admired, people liked what they heard. The environ-
ment was in crisis, and he had a solution that felt right.
Likewise, why was McHarg’s ecology more like a “heavy-
to substantiate as balance, stability, and steady- state
(McCoy and Shrader- Frechette 1992, 185). According to
McNaughton, “Continued assertions of the validity of
one or another conclusion about diversity- stability, in
the absence of empirical tests, are acts of faith, not sci-
ence” (1977, 515). Notions of balanced nature and sta-
bility principles have misrepresented the foundations
of resource management, nature conservation, and en-
vironmental protection (Wu and Loucks 1995, 439).
McHarg attributed his defi nition of stability to
Robert MacArthur (1967, 107), a frequent guest in his
classes (McHarg 1996, 137). In a retrospective of Mac-
Arthur’s contributions to ecology, Stephen Fretwell has
speculated on why this respected scientist upheld the
idea of stability as a benchmark for healthy ecosystems,
surmising that his “work surrounding stability and di-
versity was what everyone wanted to hear in the then-
budding ecology movement” (1975, 7). Perhaps McHarg
faced a similar situation.
Like optimization, religious thought rather than
science may have infl uenced McHarg’s views on natu-
ral balance. Frederick Turner has posited that many
environmental concepts about nature are still infused
with religious beliefs, noting: “Very often the environ-
mentalist’s ideas of nature retains these characteristics
of the transcendent God . . . The basic feature of nature
is homeostasis . . . nature in this view has an ideal state,
which is perfect and should not be tampered with”
(1993, 38–39).
This belief in natural balance and evolutionary
stability continues to permeate landscape architecture
and its educational institutions. Consider the 2005 In-
ternational Federation of Landscape Architects Charter
For Landscape Architectural Education. It states that
landscape architects will engage in “the conservation
and enhancement of the built heritage, the protection
of the natural balance and rational land use planning
for the utilization of available resources.”14 Or think of
the numerous concept statements by landscape archi-
tecture students explaining how their designs will re-
store nature’s balance.
Herrington 15
5. This self- description is from Margulis, Corner, and Haw-
thorne 2006, an edited transcription of McHarg’s conver-
sations with students. For the complete recordings, see
Margulis, MacConnell, and MacAllister 2006.
6. In Design with Nature McHarg attempted to reconcile the
Le Nôtre- inspired plan of Washington, DC. He noted, “It is
something of a paradox that the image of the city, most ap-
propriate of kings, became the expression for that confeder-
acy, which was to become a great democracy” (McHarg 1969,
181). He was even more surprised that L’Enfant’s plan used
the geomorphology of the site to locate major structures and
align them with other major landscape features (1969, 183).
7. Ernst Haeckel coined the term ecology or oekologie in 1876,
and ecological science emerged as a branch of biology de-
voted to the study of organisms’ relationship to each other
and to the physical environment in which they live.
8. For a brief history of the map- overlay method in landscape
architecture, see Steinitz, Parker, and Jordan 1976.
9. I thank a Landscape Journal reviewer for pointing this out.
10. Critiques of the maps produced through GIS appear exten-
sively in geography literature. See Harvey 2000, Taylor 1991,
Taylor and Johnston 1995, and Openshaw 1991 and 1992.
11. Denis Wood has posited that since maps bring out contested
issues, they can provide a discursive territory that also pro-
vides an opportunity to debate what they dispute (1992, 19).
12. The Woodlands Corporation funded a hydrological study to
determine whether WMRT’s unique design mitigated fl ood-
ing. Using the 1978 plan and a mathematical model (HEC-
1), it found that ”the hydrological impacts were minimized”
(Bedient et al. 1985, 550).
13. Admitting he may have overstepped the boundaries of
science, Henderson wrote: “It is evident that a perfect
mechanistic description of the building of a house may be
conceived. Yet such design and purpose, whether or not in
themselves of mechanistic origin, are at one and the same
time determining factors in the result” (1958, 307). One can
imagine this line appealing to McHarg, the combining of
design and purpose perhaps foreshadowing his television
series The House We Live In.
14. The complete August 15, 2005, version reads: “It is in the
public interest to ensure that landscape architects are able to
understand and to give practical expression to the needs of
individuals, communities, and the private sector regarding
spatial planning, design organization, construction of land-
scapes, as well as conservation and enhancement of the built
heritage, the protection of the natural balance, and rational
footed” religion? The son of a minister, McHarg perhaps
was inclined to measure the relations between organ-
isms and their environment in terms of divine sources
of truth and goodness. But May have been due to the
scale of the questions he asked. McHarg wanted to
know how we are part of a larger, God- like scheme and
how the values and commitments we share might be
garnered to maintain this it. The answers to this ques-
tion are surely most suited to religious speculation.
Spirn has remarked: “It is diffi cult to imagine what
landscape architecture would be like today without the
presence of Ian McHarg, his publications, teaching,
and professional projects.” (2000, 114). Indeed he was a
powerful and complex fi gure in the history of landscape
architecture. McHarg seized some of the most the cru-
cial issues of his times and unearthed them in a power-
ful method for landscape architects. He challenged us
to take a stand in protecting the natural environment.
In short, he asked us to care, which is surely a substance
not only of science and religion but also of reason.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I thank Judith Major, Thaisa Way, and the Landscape Journal
reviewers and editors for their helpful comments on this paper.
NOTES
1. Portions of this article were presented on April 25, 2008, in
a session on landscape architecture and science (chaired by
Judith Major and Joy Stocke) at the Society of Architectural
Historians Annual Conference in Cincinnati.
2. See Spirn 2000. According to Steiner in The Essential Ian
McHarg (an excellent collection of McHarg’s writings and
lectures prefaced by Steiner’s introductions), “The dictum
‘design with nature’ not only changed design and planning
but also infl uenced fi elds as diverse as geography, engineer-
ing, forestry, and environmental ethics, soil science, and
ecology” (Steiner 2006, xiii).
3. McHarg also produced a fi lm, Multiply and Subdue the
Earth (Hoyt, Blau, and McHarg 1969). See also Walker and
Simo 1996.
4. Where two publication dates are referenced, republication
date is followed by the original publication date.
16 Landscape Journal 29:1–10
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AUTHOR SUSAN HERRINGTON is a Professor in the School of Ar-
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Herrington 19
Figure 1. Ian McHarg (Architectural
Archives of the University of
Pennsylvania).
Figure 2. Ian McHarg inter viewing psychologist Erich Fromm on the set
of The House We Live In, October 1960 (Architectural Archives of the
University of Pennsylvania).
20 Landscape Journal 29:1–10
Figure 3. Snowfl akes are examples of nature’s design (From Wilson Bentley, Studies among the Snow Crystals in Monthly Weather Review. 1902.
Plate XIX).
Herrington 21
Figure 4. Illustration by Richard
Deckert shows the Cor ythosaurus
Casuarius, genus of the Duckbill
Dinosaur, swimming and the other
dinosaurs on land. This drawing was
frequently used by paleontologists in
their publications (From Barnum Brown,
Corythosaurus Casuarius: Skelton,
Musculate and Epidermis in Bulletin
of The American Museum of Natural
History 35. 1916. Plate XXII).
Figure 5. Blenheim Palace Grand
Bridge (Photo by Nick Thompson).
