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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- Research article
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1Islamic Azad University of Ramsar
- Volume 114 Issue 2
- Pages: 66
- - 79
- https://doi.org/10.70517/la20241142-05
In urban gardens, shade, culture, recreation, biodiversity and many other positive attributes are provided; yet, in addition to providing these positive traits, plants found in gardens could contribute towards increasing allergies through the release of allergenic pollen. The current paper uses DBALM in the assessment of two urban public gardens located in Funchal, Madeira: Municipal Garden and Santa Catarina Park. In particular, a direct analysis of the Index of Urban Green Zone Allergenicity (\(IUGZA\)), along with the use of threshold position, Shannon-evenness buffering, green-surface normalisation, latent biological activation, contribution concentration and replacement leverage is used. In the first place, \(IUGZA\) is 0.39 for Municipal Garden and 0.16 for Santa Catarina Park, implying that only the former exceeds the concern threshold of 0.30. In addition, the use of diversity buffering helped preserve this differentiation, since \(DBP\) is 0.257 and 0.070, correspondingly. This differentiation could not be explained through the comparison of the gardens’ areas and numbers of plant species, yet differences in trees’ evenness, contribution concentration and pressure in planted surfaces were evident. There are four plants that account for 72.54% of contribution signal, namely Ginkgo biloba, Cinnamomum camphora, Celtis australis and Araucaria columnaris. Their functional replacement would lead to decreasing \(IUGZA\) from 0.39 to 0.107, while their partial replacement would decrease this value to 0.249. Overall, Santa Catarina Park shows less realised pressure, although it has higher latent biological activation, indicating surveillance needs there, rather than broad interventions.
- Research article
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1College of Architecture and Landscape Architecture, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China
- Volume 114 Issue 2
- Pages: 52
- - 65
- https://doi.org/10.70517/la20241142-04
Green roofs with large areas can contribute towards reducing roof level temperatures, although their effectiveness in densely populated urban environments is conditional upon the extent to which this cooling is experienced at pedestrian height and influenced by nearby high-rises. This study evaluates the impact of the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center green roof and the adjacent Hudson Yards area in New York City for 2014, 2018, and 2021 urban geometries. The numerical framework consists of a 27316 m2 extensive green roof, a horizontal grid of 6 m by 6 m, vertical grid spacing of 2 m, building heights of 82 m and 740.08 m, and typical weather conditions. The maximum roof-level cooling decreases from 0.75 K in 2014 to 0.65 K in 2018 and 0.64 K in 2021, whereas the maximum pedestrian-level cooling reduces from 0.52 K to 0.45 K and 0.44 K. The transfer fraction of roof to street cooling stays almost the same at roughly 0.69, implying reduced cooling capacity without the disruption of vertical transport of thermal energy. Maximum median sky view factor is 0.184 for 2018 and 0.194 for 2021. For the 2021 form, the mean radiant temperature reduction during the day is estimated to be 1.65 °C, while the increase.
- Research article
by
1Harbin Inst Technol, Sch Civil Engn, Harbin 150090, Peoples R China
- Volume 114 Issue 2
- Pages: 34
- - 51
- https://doi.org/10.70517/la20241142-03
Urban green infrastructure controls heat, stormwater, air quality, biodiversity, energy use, and human well-being via vegetation, soil, water, and interconnectivity. This paper constructs IMPACT-GI, an approach to scale-resolved weightage for climate-smart green infrastructure design. The data comprise 290 instances of indicators concerning air quality, biodiversity and ecological sustainability, energy performance, human well-being, heat-island mitigation, and water management; 66 instances of objective-scale and 60 instances of model-use. The balance of the indicators is evaluated based on normalised entropy of green-infrastructure indicators, specific to objectives and geospatial factors. Scale dispersion is calculated with respect to building scale, street scale, district scale, and urban scale. In heat-island mitigation, the indicator balance (0.987), scale dispersion (0.953), and transfer caution (0.040) values indicate high cross-scales. Energy efficiency has maximum transfer caution value of 0.607 because all scale observations are at building scale only. These weights help in replicable indicator selection, algorithm choice, and scale interpretation for urban green infrastructure planning.
- Research article
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1Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, University of Missouri–Rolla, 1870 Miner Circle, Rolla, MO 65409, USA
- Volume 114 Issue 1
- Pages: 18
- - 33
- https://doi.org/10.70517/la20241141-02
Nearby natural settings are often used for psychological recovery, yet their restorative value may change when specific animals are expected along paths, woodland edges, or rural walking routes. This paper examines species-specific changes in perceived restorative potential for roe deer, squirrel, wild boar, and wolf in Swedish local natural settings. The material includes 223 adults from J”onk”oping, Falun, and “Ostersund, with residence, gender, age, outdoor experience, domination orientation, and mutualism orientation included as respondent characteristics. Restorative change was measured as the difference between frequent expected encounter and no expected encounter. Roe deer and squirrel increased restorative potential by 0.94 and 0.96, respectively, while wild boar and wolf reduced it by -0.82 and -0.80. Mutualism orientation contributed most to roe-deer and squirrel responses, gender to wild boar responses, and domination orientation to wolf responses. The findings show that wildlife presence has no single restorative meaning: familiar low-threat animals can strengthen restorative appraisal, whereas conflict-associated animals may reduce relaxed use through vigilance, perceived loss of control, and value-based disagreement.
- Research article
by
1The University of Sheffield
- Volume 114 Issue 1
- Pages: 1
- - 17
- https://doi.org/10.70517/la20241141-01
Green infrastructure assessment in an urban context should make clear whether the problem in the vicinity of buildings concerns vegetation quality, accessibility to any relevant public green space or urban parks that foster daily activity. Such distinct problems imply separate meanings for green infrastructure planning when the distribution of extensive green areas in the periphery, neighbourhood vegetation, and amenity-rich parks in the urban fabric is unbalanced. The present article looks at Bratislava in Slovakia using five classes of values for close-neighbourhood green quality, wider-neighbourhood green quality, public green-space accessibility, urban-park accessibility, and vegetation-temperature association. The study investigates which of these green-service qualities constitutes the constraint in the vicinity of buildings, and whether Forest Index–land surface temperature connection influences interpretation of neighbourhood vegetation. The shares of ordinal classes are transformed to the service means, residual deficit, lower tail, share of high services, grid-building displacement measure, public green space/park separation measure, and heat-induced vegetation pressure. Public green-space accessibility scores the highest mean value of 0.473 in relation to buildings while urban-park accessibility receives the lowest mean value of 0.226. In turn, the share of low and very-low-value categories of urban-park accessibility constitutes the largest lower-tail proportion with 81.5%. Close-neighbourhood green quality and wider-neighbourhood green quality reveal service means of 0.358 and 0.380, respectively, together with corresponding proportions of lower tails of 64.8% and 62.6%, respectively. Forest Index possesses the mean Spearman absolute association coefficient with land surface temperature of 0.762, indicating strong association between vegetation deficit and thermal environment. In conclusion, Bratislava faces major problems concerning lack of urban park access and poor vegetation quality in the close vicinity of buildings.
- Research article
by
1Department of Real Estate Management, HungKuo Delin University of Technology, No. 1, Lane 380, Qingyun Road, Tucheng District, New Taipei City
- Volume 113 Issue 4
- Pages: 160
- - 173
- https://doi.org/10.70517/la20231134-10
Urban greenspace access measures are often based on residential walking distance despite the fact that children and teenagers interact with their urban environment in school, college, university, and via travel routes. This paper analyzes whether residential reach to public greenspace amenities in Amsterdam, Rotterdam, and The Hague is translated into educational and travel-related contacts for youth. The analysis is based on access quantities for 848 publicly accessible greenspaces including 398 in Amsterdam, 281 in Rotterdam and 169 in The Hague. The data source differentiates children between the ages of 0 and 14 years old and adolescents between the ages of 15 and 24 years old and includes the following categories: residence-based walksheds, education-based walksheds, modeled commute entry, commute-distance exposure, dispersion values, and Spearman rank associations. To investigate the degree to which residential access is translated into contact with greenspaces, we compare three approaches, namely residence proximity, nearby educational institutions, and travel through greenspaces to access educational institutions. The increase of the walking distance from 300 m to 800 m leads to approximately a five-fold increase of mean residential access for residents, children, and adolescents. However, this larger distance does not translate into similar levels of exposure. An 800 m walking distance results in the average greenspace being accessible for 1203.6 children and 937.3 adolescents. On the other hand, there is an average of only 2.0 child-oriented and 1.1 adolescent-oriented educational institutions within 800 m. The modeled commute entry drops to 68.7 children and 34.6 adolescents per greenspace. Adjusting for resident-accessible youth, the commute entry rate for adolescents is 35.33% less than for children. Commute entries of adolescents are also extremely concentrated. Their coefficient of variation is 4.36 and maximum to mean is 66.10. These findings show that residential reach can be successfully applied for the identification of young residents near greenspace amenities, but not for youth exposure, particularly in adolescent learning routes. Monitoring of municipal exposure to greenspaces should separate residential, educational, and route-based exposures.
- Research article
Annual Conversion of Green-Space Expansion into Socioeconomic and Ecological Benefit in Xi’an, China
by
1School of Environmental Planning and Design Continental Research University France
- Volume 113 Issue 4
- Pages: 142
- - 159
- https://doi.org/10.70517/la20231134-09
Green space statistics in the annual unit may overestimate the effectiveness of planning efforts if the two are not correlated in their movement. This study applies the ERC analysis to Xi’an, China, based on the 2009–2019 series of annual statistics on per capita green space area, built-up land, socioeconomic benefit, ecological benefit, overall benefit, and four ecological processes, namely cooling, humidification, oxygen release, and carbon fixation. Each increase/decrease in green space area is matched with changes in socioeconomic and ecological performance, in a way that the annual information is transformed to ten successive intervals. Based on this transformation, this analysis computes conversion yield, productive conversion, expansion lag, contraction stress, recovery without expansion, and ecological coordination as the minimum of four ecological process scores. Xi’an had five productive conversion intervals, three expansion lag intervals, one contraction stress interval, and one recovery interval without any scale increase. The best interval was 2016–2017: the increment in per capita green space area was 1.70 m2 person−1, and that of socioeconomic, ecological, and overall benefit was 0.21, 0.18, and 0.20, respectively, leading to a highest conversion yield of 0.118 score units for each m2 person−1 of new green space area. The intervals of 2011–2012, 2012–2013, and 2015–2016 indicated that additional green space area does not correlate well with benefit response. In particular, ecological coordination was best in 2017, in which four ecological process scores were at or above 0.69, while the 2015 combination of good ecological score and low humidification floor (0.03) revealed ecological imbalance. It appears that annual green space performance in Xi’an relied heavily on conversion yield and ecological process balance rather than on per capita green space area. The target of 28.5–29.0 m2 person−1 can be justifiable if coupled with monitoring of conversion yield and minimum ecological process score.
- 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 113 Issue 4
- Pages: 121
- - 141
- https://doi.org/10.70517/la20231134-08
The evaluation of park conditions provides a mean condition score in urban park-quality assessment, while the city authorities need to address a more practical question: which parks demonstrate contextual vulnerability along with low domain floors, poor balance between domains, and sufficient park-user exposure? This study elaborates a method called Exposure-Sensitive Contextual Fragility Profiling (ECFP), a straightforward approach to interpret compact park-audit results that prevents the dominance of spatial aspects in concealing safety support, cleanliness, physical order, sensory richness, proper illumination, and acoustic conditions problems. Data for analysis comprise twelve urban parks in Tenerife (Canary Islands, Spain), observed based on eleven subcategories of the Public Space Characteristics Observation Questionnaire along with user-count statistics obtained from 155 frequent park users. The calculation procedure uses four components: contextual vulnerability, the deficit in the weakest domain floor, spatial, functional, and contextual balance, and the percentage of contextual subcategories scoring below the half-point on the 0–10 audit scale. Logarithmic exposure adjustment uses user counts without permitting the domination of high-sample parks in assessing environmental conditions. Order produced by ECFP assigned Polideportivo El Casco and Parque El Quijote to the top two places followed by Parque Primero de Mayo, Parque Punta Larga, and Parque de Guadamojete. In terms of park fragility, Parque Primero de Mayo outranks all other parks since it ranks well above average due to low levels of lighting, safety support, acoustics, sensory stimuli alongside excellent physical order. The sensitivity tests revealed high Spearman rank correlations in the range of 0.923 to 1.000 depending on the omission of each component and critical value adjustments. The research findings suggest that urban park repairs should start with ensuring the contextual aspects underlying accessibility, visual appeal, legibility, and usability of a park.
- Research article
by
1School of English Language and culture, Xi’an Fanyi University, Xi’an, Shaanxi, 710105, China
- Volume 113 Issue 3
- Pages: 107
- - 120
- https://doi.org/10.70517/la20231133-07
Hot-desert deck parks need thermal evidence of whether occupied spaces reach comfort-relevant end states, not whether the design reduces some calculated heat load. In this paper, a novel Residual Thermal Sufficiency Analysis (RTSA) is formulated based on COMFA, an approach used to quantify distances between final temperatures and comfort intervals for adults and children. The application of RTSA is demonstrated for a 31,700 m2 freeway deck park in downtown El Paso, Texas, considering the documented local climate, ENVI-met simulation validation, COMFA sensation limits, changes in site-scale microclimatology, and four occupied-place level COMFA transitions. RTSA helps answer questions about which spaces reach thermal sufficiency after the design, which do not and remain either warm or cool, and what physical control measures need to be applied to close the rest of the distance. The response to intervention at the site scale was relatively modest, involving a 0.67 ∘C drop in air temperature and a 0.30% increase in relative humidity, while substantial reductions were achieved for solar radiation (−25.2%) and wind speed (−17.2%). At the place scale, however, a different ranking emerged. Water plaza had the greatest reduction in COMFA value (from 247 to 69 W m−2), yet it retained significant adult and child heat residual (19 and 29 W m−2 according to Brown and Gillespie thresholds). Amphitheater and pedestrian street had similar performance, falling from 147 and 149 to 46 and 42 W m−2, achieving adult sufficiency under the Brown and Gillespie limits, respectively. Pedestrian street had just 2 W m−2 exceeding the child upper limit. Winter green patch was adjusted from −101 to −55 W m−2. The findings highlight the necessity of focusing thermal design decisions on residual distance, occupant category, season, and activity zones. RTSA can show designers in which spaces further canopy, misting, surface cooling, or permeable shelter from wind needs to be considered.
- Research article
by
1Department of Urban Design and Landscape Planning Greenfield State University United States
- Volume 113 Issue 3
- Pages: 91
- - 106
- https://doi.org/10.70517/la20231133-06
Urban green infrastructure planning initiatives are becoming increasing likely to include promises related to climate change, stormwater management, urban heat mitigation, ecological restoration, and enhanced quality of public space. The question of the equity effectiveness of these plans hinges upon whether promises translate into institution-building around definition, recognition of disparate vulnerability, transfer of community control into design and implementation, impact assessment, anti-displacement, and just allocation of green jobs. This paper investigates 122 green infrastructure plans across 20 American cities in relation to ten categories of equity practice, namely definition, framing, justice, planning, design, implementation, evaluation, hazard, value, and labor. The research includes development of Ordinal Sufficiency Partitioning as a method of reading five-state plan quality ratings as ordered distributions rather than interval-scale scores. Results show an institutional discontinuity. Value, planning, and hazard practices exhibit the greatest development, characterized by sufficiency ratios of 45.0%, 43.4%, and 41.2%, respectively. Definition and justice exhibit least sufficiency, scoring at 8.8% and 11.9% with non-operative drag above 86%. Design and labor categories have been minimally developed with functional sufficiency at 2.0% and 4.0%, respectively. With respect to life-cycle practice, value has lower sufficiency compared to procedure and distribution; that is, plans often articulate potential benefits while failing to specify a definition of equitable benefit, identify decision makers and provide oversight thereafter. In terms of addressing the fundamental questions asked, the findings speak to themselves, revealing that officially-sanctioned green infrastructure plans lack a cohesive and effective process of building equity-operability.
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.