New Issue Published: Landscape Architecture, Volume 2026, Issue 1
Landscape Architecture is pleased to announce the publication of Volume 2026, Issue 3. The new issue is now available online
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2026
- Research article
by
1The University of Sheffield
- Volume 116 (Issue 1)
- Pages: 90
- - 103
- https://doi.org/10.70517/la20261161-06
In the case of nature-based vitality, there can be metrics such as quantity of green areas, park availability, or temporary increase in outdoor activities. All of the above approaches have some merit. Yet, they can conflate the temporary impact on visual attention with sustainable changes that will become visible after new routines have been formed. This paper introduces SARSE and applies it to Vancouver data from 2018 to 2023 in order to distinguish between temporary disruption-related reactions and persistent activity patterns as well as environmental and perceptual factors associated with both of them and with meaningful spatial structure. There is an extensive record of annually counted numbers of observations per each image-derived activity category, Moran’s \(I\), variance inflation values, and visitation correlations for Vancouver. The temporal component takes into account pre-disruption 2018-2019 state, 2020 shock effect ratio, persistent 2022-2023 period, terminal memory of 2023 year and volatility. The spatial readiness component encompasses spatial autocorrelation, multicollinearity handling and positive correlation with visitation counts. Urban Elements and Artistic Expression achieved the largest persistently observed expansion from \(B_g=269.5\) up to 4427 observations in 2023 years and attained \(A_g=2.54\) as well. Life and Cultural Activities, Street Landscapes and Life Scenes, Natural Landscapes and Greenery, Urban Built Form and Public Realm and Traffic categories have remained above the pre-disruption level. Flowers and Plants showed the largest 2020 shock ratio (\(S_g=8.50\)) but maintained rather weak 2023 memory (\(M_g=0.18\)). Sentiment Score and Red Maple provided the highest visitation-weighted spatial-readiness score, followed by Number of Parks, Pyramidal European Hornbeam, Tree Height 40-50 and Park Area factors.
- Research article
by
1Department of Landscape Architecture, Stuart Weitzman School of Design, University of Pennsylvania, 119 Meyerson Hall, 210 South 34th Street, Philadelphia, PA19104-6311, USA
2Department of Real Estate Management, HungKuo Delin University of Technology, No. 1, Lane 380, Qingyun Road, Tucheng District, New Taipei City
- Volume 116 (Issue 1)
- Pages: 74
- - 89
- https://doi.org/10.70517/la20261161-05
The analysis of urban soil health should facilitate decision-making concerning park management, de-sealing, urban forestry, stormwater management, carbon sequestration, and restoration of disturbed soil. Therefore, any analysis of urban soil health requires measurements that reflect chemical, physical, biological aspects, sampling depth, and ecological services associated with urban soils. In this regard, we performed the analysis of urban soil health based on a calculation of a Depth–Function Coupling Portfolio of selected 63 out of 217 papers. The dataset used in this work included data about 61 geographical samples, 59 samples characterized by land use and 51 samples described in terms of their sampling depths. Chemical aspects were reported in 76% of the publications, physical – in 60%, biological – in 44%, soil health indexes – in 37%, and ecosystem services – in 33%. Among land use categories, the greatest number of cases refers to open space (32), park (26), and residential land use (23). Among vegetation types, grass has the largest frequency (48), followed by trees (23) and shrubs (15). Moreover, vertical sampling is limited in more than 70% of samples, where sampling was made not deeper than 20 cm. Only two studies considered soil samples obtained deeper than 120 cm. Soil function coverage index equals 0.507, depth awareness index equals 0.457, the score reflecting the disjunction between soil functions and depth equals 0.469, while the portfolio stress equals 0.500. Ecosystem service proxies have the highest contribution into total measurement deficit (26.8%), followed by soil health indexes (25.2%) and biological measurements (22.4%). Raising the proportion of biological and ecological services covered by urban soil research to 0.60 would increase the soil function coverage index to 0.637. Combined with the depth adequacy value of 0.50, this value will increase depth-awareness index to 0.607 and portfolio stress to 0.284.
- Research article
by
1College of Architecture and Landscape Architecture, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China
- Volume 116 (Issue 1)
- Pages: 52
- - 73
- https://doi.org/10.70517/la20261161-04
The problem of urban green-space mapping in a highly concentrated metropolitan region involves consideration of the reliability of the decision itself rather than just the separation of vegetation from non-vegetation evidence. The Greater Bay Area of Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao features high-rise neighborhoods, complex impervious surfaces, coastal towns, peri-urban vegetation, and an imbalanced amount of VGI data, indicating that the mere aggregation of accuracy measures will be inadequate for urban planning purposes. In this paper, it was examined whether reliability-weighted conformal graph calibration applied to the Sentinel-2 urban green-space evidence in combination with OpenStreetMap would be capable of discriminating among reliable mapped vegetation, city-level omission, and limitations imposed by structural connectivity. The reliability-weighted conformal graph calibration analysis used such inputs as the OpenStreetMap semantics for vegetation evidence, weight-sensitivity reliability scores, classifier confusion matrix numbers, city-level precision and recall scores, UGS area estimates, landscape metrics, and multi-scale partition analysis. The weighted reliability resulted in 0.8372 of mean accuracy and 0.8267 of mean F1 score, whereas unweighted setting decreased accuracy to 0.818 and F1 to 0.812. The best planning-oriented results of errors were observed for W-SVM with 355 false positives, 0.104 false positive rate, 0.896 specificity, and 0.785 utility. The detectability varied from 97.60 percent in Shenzhen to 67.42 percent in Kaiping, thus clearly showing a distinction between high-confidence cities and fragmentation-sensitive cities with considerable pressure on omission. Finally, the 10 m UGS estimation of 139,427.06 ha appeared to lie between ALCC, ESA WorldCover, and CLCD estimations, indicating substantial disagreements among urban green-space products. The MSPA analysis demonstrated that core and edge classes prevail in the foreground of vegetation evidence, whereas bridge, branch, and loop connectors combined account only for 3.11%.
- Research article
by
1Faculty of Architecture and Urban Studies Capital Design University Canada
2Department of Environmental Planning Pacific Research University Canada
3Department of Environmental Design Coastal Research University United States
- Volume 116 (Issue 1)
- Pages: 35
- - 51
- https://doi.org/10.70517/la20261161-03
The heat adaptation strategy of the compact mid-rise districts must reduce pedestrian heat load without affecting the poor air exchange which still persists in such narrow streets and courtyards. In this study, the cooling pathway scores for compact districts are determined based on radiation–ventilation-gated district-level heat adaptation intervention allocation. This case study involves the Volksgartenviertel district, an 16 ha compact district in Cologne, Germany. The scores are assigned based on district characteristics including the land cover, vegetation, 2022 July meteorology, and the air-temperature–physiological equivalent temperature response relationship. The district consists of traffic area, parks, buildings, and inner courtyards covering approximately 25 %, 20 %, 25 %, and 30 % of the district, respectively. Present greening within the district is unbalanced; there are 285 street trees belonging to 18 different species and two green roof areas. There is also one completely covered facade greening and 11 tree–shrub–grass front yards out of 221 front yards surveyed. The intervention set consists of 158 Acer platanoides street trees, 146 facade and roof greening interventions, and 2410 grass grid pavers which correspond to 9640 m2 or 0.964 ha permeable grounds. For the hottest days during 18–20 July 2022, the district maximum air temperature is 40.2 °C, and mean air temperature and wind speed are approximately 28.7 °C and 0.29 m s−1, respectively. The mean air-temperature reduction over 72 h is −0.49 K, which is accompanied by −0.91 K of PET reduction. The maximum reduction of both air temperature and PET locally is −5.28 K and −7.66 K, respectively. While PET reduction over 72 h is 3.13 times of air-temperature reduction, locally maximum PET reduction reaches −26.10 K during the hottest hour.
- Research article
by
1Department of Urban Design and Landscape Planning Greenfield State University United States
- Volume 116 (Issue 1)
- Pages: 18
- - 34
- https://doi.org/10.70517/la20261161-02
The closeness of a neighborhood may be measured by the quantity of services present within easy reach by foot, even though services close at hand do not create a thriving public domain. In metropolitan Rome, such differences may be observed in the public realm outside the periphery, wherein services may be found close by, including schools, stations, shops, pharmacies, cafes, and green space, while the ordinary use of the site remains minimal. The current study measures this phenomenon using Civic Hold, a four-variable approach to retaining public space. The metric integrates walking orientation, routine use, dwelling probability, and perceived centrality, and has been used to analyze a representative Roman sample of urban fabric including historical compactness, consolidated twentieth-century development, linear planning form, irregular residential planning, and isolated low density. The principal contrast is drawn between Largo Niccolo Cannella in Spinaceto and Piazza Erasmo Piaggio in Villaggio Breda, both sites containing six categories of services within proximity, while district density ratios remain very close. The Civic Hold for Piazza E. Piaggio is found to be 77.50, while that of Largo N. Cannella is 32.75, despite a density differential of just 2.91%. The ratio of their Civic Hold results is 2.37. It is clear that neighborhood proximity is only socialized through connectivity between services through legible paths, appealing edges, regular use, and localized importance.
- Research article
by
1College of Architecture and Landscape Architecture, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China
2Turenscape Urban Planning and Design Co., Ltd., Beijing 100080, China
- Volume 116 (Issue 1)
- Pages: 1
- - 17
- https://doi.org/10.70517/la20261161-01
Green-space assessments commonly document aspects like proximity, physical access, maintenance, ecological quality, and recreation provision. However, this list does not exhaust all factors that need consideration when determining whether or not a park can be used by autists reliant on sensory predictability, navigable routes, reliable services and limited social contact. This paper will apply Constraint–Affordance Prioritisation analysis to Bulltofta Park in Malm”o, Sweden to identify factors that foster or hinder neuro-inclusive use of this site. For this purpose, both the documented place-quality record and Peaceful Path actions will be examined in relation to the use channels of sensory regulation, route confidence, bodily access and services, ecological engagement, and co-use predictability. What qualities of Bulltofta Park affect the reliability of neuro-inclusive use and which Peaceful Path actions most strongly help preserve its peaceful atmosphere and ecology? Nature is the most positive domain, scoring +85.7 for balance, with 6.5 supportive points against 0.5 pressure points. In addition, management is positively rated at +50.0. Accessibility is still positive (+16.7) and facilities show some support (+7.7). While the presence of benches, bins, barbecue places, spaciousness, and relatively low visitor density are positive, lack of toilets, lighting, winter restrictions for some narrow paths, off-lead dogs, and school-related crowd formation during certain hours weaken facilities’ overall contribution to neuro-inclusivity. Scores within channels confirm this conclusion, indicating the dominance of ecological engagement (+100.0) and sensory regulation (+53.8), while bodily access and services score poorly (-20.0). Peaceful Path actions improve route confidence (+14.3 to +55.6) and bodily access and services (-20.0 to +6.7). Thus, Bulltofta Park’s contribution to neuro-inclusion relies more on consistent maintenance, clear route description, moderate social engagement, sensory gradients, and availability of services than any special facilities.
Call for Papers
Landscape Architecture invites submissions for Volume 2026, Issue 3, scheduled for publication in September 2026. The journal welcomes high-quality scholarly contributions that advance research, theory, criticism, and applied knowledge in landscape architecture and related fields.