Episode 4: Interdisciplinary perspectives on how we can research landscapes for sustainability

The 12 October 2022, Co-produced by Teachers synergy forum and Human land podcast, SLU-landscape

This episode is the fourth and last one in a series about how green and natural spaces can support resilient societies. We apply an Environmental Psychology perspective to understand current issues and what actions can be taken by talking to specialists and practitioners in the relevant fields. In this final episode for the first series of Human land, we are optimistic and we want to imagine research in landscape supporting a dream society.

In this episode, entitled ‘Interdisciplinary perspectives on how we can research landscapes for sustainability?’  Amanda Gabriel and Hannah Arnett discuss with four brilliant researchers from SLU Landscape, Anna Bengtsson (Landscape architecture with evidence based and Health Promoting Design, Department of People and Society), Burcu Yigit Turan (Planning in cultural environments, Department of Urban and Rural Development), Elizabeth Marcheschi (Environmental psychology and Health Architecture, Department of People and Society), Ishi Buffam (Ecosystem ecology, Department of Landscape Architecture, Planning and Management).

This podcast explores:

• We learned about different ways to frame sustainable projects, valuing different disciplines and definitions, by talking about practical examples of research. Every researcher presented a dream projects of landscape dream research ideas, some real and some utopic, illustrated with an object that is described in the podcast.
• Research on landscape entail a complex and diverse social context of varied human and ecological needs that changes over time. We discuss how landscape research, and the niches within as environmental psychology and evidence based design should work creatively to understand changes within time and the varied socio-economic spaces in society.
• To tackle the sustainability goals frames tacked by the UN, we need to go beyond the sylos and need to explore new paths into thinking and working in an integrated way, combining the approach of different perspectives and discussing transdisciplinary. There is a need for curiosity, openness and will only come from collaboration. The metaphor of research as a rock’n roll band that Ishi, one of our invitees presented: all the members and instruments are important, as well as the composer and technicians and finally they need to play in harmony. 
• Social and emotional place connections are always individual, contextual based and important for community development. We discussed the importance to create participative opportunities for civil persons in research and in urban development.

We hope you enjoy exploring this topic with us and hearing the product of this live event, and we hope this is an opportunity to inspire urban planners and researchers!

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