The thin mosaic, the tissue of the planet, is in upheaval. An urgent need exists for new tools and new language to understand how to live without losing nature. The solutions will be at the landscape scale - working with the larger pattern, understanding how it works, and designing in harmony with the structure of the natural system that sustains us all. Each landscape has its own signature.
Places are uniquely different and each possesses an intrinsic potential for change.
This book will also help landscape architects and planners to work with communities that are inventing and formulating the new civics of sustainability. What encourages me most about this book is how its principles are both simple and holistic in the way they tie together land, water, wildlife, and people. As designers and planners we must weave together this mosaic of patches and corridor networks, like a quilt held together with threads, to hold the landscape from falling apart. Understanding this mosaic will be our greatest challenge. We need more succinct books like this one, with its simple tools and language, to couple the usually opposing forces of government regulations, economic self-interest, and the land ethic to run parallel.