Over the last couple of decades the traditional orientation in landscape architecture as a field of professional practice has gradually been complemented by a growing focus on research. Academics and professionals are now recognising how good practice and training depend on excellent education and that all benefit from top quality research. To develop the connections between research on the one hand and teaching and practice on the other, and to be able to define landscape architecture as a discipline that relies on its own body of knowledge, it is important to build a common framework of theory and research methods. Bringing together contributions from researchers across the world, a broad range of research strategies, approaches, examples and methods are covered. Additionally the editors put forward the results from a specially commissioned study into what practitioners and scholars feel are the most important priorities for the next 5-10 years of landscape research.
Adri van den Brink is professor of landscape architecture at Wageningen University, the Netherlands.Diedrich Bruns is professor of landscape planning and land use at Kassel University, Germany.Hilde Tobi is associate professor of research methodology at Wageningen University, the Netherlands.Simon Bell is professor of landscape architecture at the Estonian University of Life Sciences and associate director of the OPENspace Research Centre at the University of Edinburgh, United Kingdom.