Science-Based Landscape Planning in Urban Watersheds - Urban Watersheds: Geology, Contamination, and Sustainable Development - page 491

15
Science-BasedLandscapePlanning
in Urban Watersheds
15.1 Introduction
Science and planning have much in common. Science is the process allowing us to link
isolated facts into coherent and comprehensive understandings of the natural world.
Planning is the process of developing a sequence of action steps to achieve a specific goal
or set of goals. Besides the common ground they share as processes, there is overlap in
their approach to achieving outcomes. Science attempts to predict outcomes by under-
standing natural processes, which requires observation, data collection, experimentation,
measurement, and validation. After scientific inquiry has validated the outcome of a pro-
cess, humans can design technology to take advantage of the properties that might benefit
our needs to provide shelter, travel, and create. For example, through the efforts of sci-
ence, we know water will boil at 100°C and generate steam, which occupies a much larger
volume than liquid water. Steam turbines were then designed to take advantage of this
property of fluid expansion to generate electricity.
The practice of planning tries to influence outcomes by minimizing undesired events,
and in doing so often involves some of the same actions used by science: observation, data
collection, measurement, and the consideration of alternatives—a form of experimenta-
tion. Consider a busy intersection without traffic lights, where the undesired event is the
occurrence of accidents. Observing the traffic at the intersection, collecting traffic count
data, and analyzing their patterns would start the planning process to develop a new
outcome. Two of the alternatives for minimizing the undesirable events and producing a
better outcome might include traffic lights or stop signs.
The relationship between science and planning goes even deeper, because science can-
not be performed without some measure of planning. In fact, science embodies planning,
by using a sequence of action steps to achieve a specific goal. Does planning embody sci-
ence? To answer this, we need to move beyond the rhetorical and get specific.
Our concern is with contaminated urban watersheds and the sequence of actions needed
to return them to sustainability. The planning concepts most relevant to this effort are
urban planning/land use planning, watershed planning/management, and landscape/
environmental planning. As noted in Chapter 12, there is a growing trend in the litera-
ture to treat urban areas as ecosystems, and a well-established linkage between planning
and science exists in the literature of watershed management (Viessman and Welty 1985;
Naiman 1992; NRC 1999; Loucks and van Beek 2005), and landscape/environmental plan-
ning (Ortolano 1984; Lein 2003; Marsh 2010). Literature demonstrating the relationships
between geology and land use planning has also developed (Rogers 1992, 1996, 1997, 2002;
Rogers and Murray 1997; Murray and Rogers 1999; Gerber and Howard 2002; Kaufman
et al. 2003; Lerner 2003; Murray et al. 2004; Lamelas et al. 2007; Rogers et al. 2007).