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
by
1HuanTian Wisdom Technology Co., Ltd., Meishan, Sichuan, 620564, China
- Volume 112 Issue 2
- Pages: 37
- - 57
- https://doi.org/10.70517/la20221122-03
The potential for urban green space as climate-adaptive assets is well established. However, what designers and other practitioners need from evidence about outdoor urban green spaces are findings that (a) identify manipulable variables, (b) are relevant at a relevant scale, (c) state the form of any transferable guidance, and (d) make clear how a finding can guide the practice of urban streets, squares, parks, and residential open spaces. The purpose of this study is to construct a Design-Translation Completeness Audit (DTCA) capable of identifying where there are losses in usability within a 76-case record of studies on outdoor urban green spaces and climate adaptation. The audit consists of organizing the evidence into the Design Translation Record, DTR-76, consisting of six layers of information, which are connected and nested: adaptation target, scale, research method, practitioner-facing output, design relevance, and transferability. The key test is whether the usability of the knowledge base is impaired primarily by the problem of coverage (topic), proximity, methods used, output conversion (how relevant knowledge is communicated), relevance, or transferability. Findings are that there is greater usability loss in the output-conversion layer than in the scale and relevance layers. Of the 76 studies, 49 address thermal comfort; 22 address urban heat-island mitigation or urban cooling; and 5 address stormwater management. Site-, street- and multiscale research account for 52 cases; controlled field studies account for 2. For 72 practitioner-focused outputs, 41 give insight, 17 give recommendation, 4 give guideline, 2 give design proposal, and 8 other types of structured outputs. Among 72 outputs, 64 are design-relevant, but only 23 are direct outputs. The Design Translation Completeness Index is 0.761; the operational conversion value is 0.345. The main finding is the specific finding of a loss in usability of evidence. Four quantitative targets arise from the audit: 13 more design insights need to be converted to guidance; 13 more stormwater studies are needed for one-fifth representation; 7 more controlled field studies are needed for one-tenth representation; and 5 medium transfer outputs should be upgraded to high transfer guidance.
- Research article
by No authors found.
- Volume 112 Issue 1
- Pages: 20
- - 36
- https://doi.org/10.70517/la20221121-02
Adaptation to urban heat requires scientific knowledge about the magnitude of the impact of existing vegetation-induced cooling on a certain thermal threshold and the resilience of such benefits in face of uncertainty. This article introduces a tree canopy cooling attainment calculation across 601 European FUAs in the EU-27 region. The methodological computation is based on July-August 2018 Landsat 8 OLI/TIRS land surface temperature, Copernicus tree cover density, PML V2 canopy transpiration-interception evaporation rates, Global Human Settlements population density in 2015, and model evaluation against 463 NOAA weather stations as in Marando et al. [16]. The computation translates FUA cooling into target attainment, reserves, tree cover shortage equivalent and population concordance. The average cooling attained in Europe is 1.07 ∘C, while the range of cooling per FUA is approximately −0.4 to 2.9 ∘C. Out of the total number of FUAs, 281 are still below 1 ∘C, 208 reach 1 ∘C cooling, and 112 reach 1.5 ∘C and above, the reliable one-degree mark following the application of a 0.5 ∘C allowance. The cooling target attainment thresholds using canopy as reference measure are: 16%, 32% and 48% tree canopy cover respectively for 1, 2 and 3 ∘C cooling. Results from the model comparison showed that country-conditioned structural forms offer a better forecasting capability compared to universal models and the complete mixed effects form has the smallest RMSE and a relative improvement of 32.1% from the null model. On the population dimension, in 63% of the cases, more than half of the population live in positive-cooling FUAs while in 37% the opposite holds. These results suggest that European greening policy should differentiate between positive cooling, one-degree attainment, reliable reserves and population alignment.
- 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 112 Issue 1
- Pages: 1
- - 19
- https://doi.org/10.70517/la20221121-01
Urban green infrastructure provides local municipalities a way to speak about parks, rivers, wetlands, coastal areas, street trees, and urban forest systems as public resources rather than incidental spaces. Green infrastructure is, however, not an equal concept throughout cities. While some cities are endowed with significant ecological assets, yet tend to speak using adjacent terminologies like “ecological infrastructure,” “climate adaptation” or “ecosystem services”; others possess less of green cover but are equipped with stronger policy languages that define green infrastructure in terms of planning and infrastructure. The purpose of this paper is to assess the legibility of administrative language in relation to the concept of green infrastructure in five cities—Cape Town, Durban, Johannesburg, Birmingham and London—using the Civic-Ecological Translation Index (CETI). The CETI assessment uses the five parameters of population pressure, ecological endowment, direct green-infrastructure language, balance of stakeholder sectors, and local narrative alignment. Five cities possess the data points of population size, administrative area, green-cover endowment, reference to policy documents and distribution of stakeholder sectors. London leads the pack with CETI of 0.923 due to significant direct language, high pressure from density, wide distribution of stakeholder sectors and National Park City narrative. Johannesburg and Birmingham are at an intermediate stage with CETI scores of 0.663 and 0.646 respectively, though Johannesburg tends to favor use of green resource and provision of services while Birmingham uses natural capital and ecosystem-services language. Cape Town scores 0.524 by use of ecological infrastructure and blue-green service language. Although Durban has 60 percent green cover, its low CETI score of 0.438 indicates that it uses language of adaptation and ecosystem services as a means of environmental management without direct green-infrastructure language in key policy documents.
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.