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I am an Associate Professor of Practice, with a degree from Utah State University Department of Landscape Architecture and Environmental Planning conferred in the spring of 1976. I have been employed by several design practices, co-founded Civitas/Denver, and acted as Partner and Chief Design Office at Design Workshop/ Denver for seventeen years. As of this writing I have spent eight years teaching at USU, returning in 2014 to where it all started here in Logan, Utah. Over the course of this time, I/we have been taught, practiced, and continue to teach that teaching and practice must rely on research asking and answering questions that influence the value of planning and design.

The field of Landscape Architecture and Environmental Planning along with allied design disciplines have ranged in opinions and emphasis on art and science, subjective and objective decision-making and the methods employed to create meaningful designs. Our department has kept pace with the emerging emphasis on research and technology that began in the 1970’s, yet we now face increasing pressure and emphasis on science and research. Without question, as a department, we must accelerate our pursuit of teaching research and technology embedded in our lasting commitment to critical thinking, to solve the world’s most challenging problems.

Research in Landscape Architecture and Environmental Planning is increasingly central to the existence and sustainability of our department, with professors being required to hold PhD credentials to qualify for available teaching positions. A main reason for this is the securing of research grants that are required to support our membership in the College of Agriculture and Applied Sciences. In academic settings across the nation this shift and emphasis has become the new normal. We might safely say that in the past couple decades practices have also shifted their emphasis and methods, both producing and justifying the merits of their work using metric standards. An obvious conclusion is that research is both an economic engine for academia and a differentiator for critical practices seeking to work on the most interesting and relevant projects in the world. Can anyone see the need for more bridges?

Many shifts have occurred since the founding of LAEP in 1939, often disrupting the focus of academicians, practitioners, and students. These shifts and disruptions have stimulated investigations, yielding improvements to the scope and quality of our work. Consider the shifts from Warren Manning’s crude national overlays to McHarg’s systematized overlay analysis, morphing to Steinitz’s computer assisted methods, and Dangerman’s ESRI. Less sustaining disruptions are also memorable, remember Martha Schwartz and Peter Walker building NECCO and Bagel Gardens in the 1970’s. Is it any wonder that students like me were baffled by the scope and emphasis of the profession?

So, in the next decade we need to consider what demands will be put on us to secure competitive grants and, most importantly, to prepare students to meet the hiring criteria of major firms and agencies. To try and give shape to the future of our program I provide a few observations, shared with our faculty in order that they might weigh in on the question.

First, I believe that research, science, and art are all part of a family of problem-solving endeavors, they all involve creativity.

Second, the design professions provide us with the ability to solve complex problems using methodologies that are team and collaboration based.

Third, true to most fields of endeavor, technologies and methodologies constantly evolve as the result of academic research, professional competition, and journalism. Therefore, research combined with teaching combined with practice looks like a good relationship.

Fourth, the motivating force in design is the possibility of unique and powerful solutions which might be considered to be either serendipitous or calculated. These unique and powerful solutions will continue to embrace technologies and methods that are new to us and that help us find both serendipity and calculated benefits.

Fifth, the latest technology, artificial intelligence (A.I.), may be the most profound disruption to the way we practice since the advent of computers, the source tool.

The logical conclusion from these five observations is that the profession and the Department of Landscape Architecture and Environmental Planning needs to increasingly embrace research and A.I. in ways that sustain and reinforce our historic commitments, connecting civilizations to natural systems.

I turn to the words of Dr. Geoffrey Hinton, often cited as the Godfather of A.I. quoting from a recent article in the New York Times; He (Hinton) is also worried that A.I. technologies will in time upsend the job market. Today, chatbots like ChatGPT tend to complement human workers, but they could replace paralegals, personal assistants, translators, and others who handle rote tasks. “It takes away the drudge work,” he said. “It might take away more than that.” I feel strongly that we are teaching good fundamental values, methods, and technology skills and that these must remain the foundation of a great program. This is our departmental legacy.

But there are some nagging fears about the words of Dr. Hinton and the diminishment of practice professionals in our faculty or PhD’s with little practice experience to bridge the ever-increasing gap. How will we provide our students with the necessary practice and research skills to meet the dynamically changing world of planning and design in the A.I. Era?

In the spirit of making this a collaborative piece I asked a group of faculty colleagues for their opinions and responses to the challenge. Dr. Keith Christensen is our department chair and brings considerable research capability and commitment to the underserved populations of our world. Dr. Huaqing Wang is an Assistant Professor with emphasis on data driven decision making and the morphology of parks. Dr. Daniella Hirschfeld is an Assistant Professor with emphasis on climate adaptation, planning, urban ecology, and environmental justice. Dr. Carlos Licon is an Associate Professor with academic and professional experience ranging from Architecture to BioRegional Planning. He draws to create and knows how to seek, analyze, and use data to design. Dr. Benjamin George is an Associate Professor with emphasis on virtual reality and online design teaching. Caroline Lavoie is a Professor and longest-tenured faculty member. With an emphasis on design theory and urban design, she draws beautifully. David Evans is an Associate Professor of Professional Practice with over four decades of experience in planning, landscape architecture and urban design. Jake Powell is an Associate Professor with specific responsibilities to CAAS Extension and outreach. Dave Anderson is an Associate Professor of Professional Practice in support of community outreach and vital to departmental recruiting. Dr. Ole Sleipness is an Associate Professor whose experience spans the gamut from large scale planning to public lands to site design, from digital data to drawing. Dr. Brent Chamberlain is an Associate Professor of Professional Practice with emphasis on geovisualization and information visualization to solve complex planning and design problems using digital means. Here are their opinions.

Keith Christensen: As A.I. technologies become more visible they evoke both wonderment and fear, as have many past technologies which brought major changes in society. Past disruptive technologies have increased information availability, brought about savings in time, and increased productivity (think calculators, CAD/GIS, smart phones, etc.). Planners and designers have bene- fited greatly from the adoption of these technologies, and will continue to do so with A.I. LAEP plays an outsized role in this process by helping planners and designers understand that A.I. is a powerful tool of assemblage, and how it can best support their creative and analytical skills to introduce new approaches to consequential problems. The impact of A.I. technologies on our disciplines will be best influenced proactively rather than adapted to afterwards.

Huaqing Wang: A.I. technology has been increasingly adopted in many industries, and landscape architecture is no exception. A.I.-powered tools can help landscape architects create more accurate and efficient designs by automating tasks such as mapping terrain, analyzing environmental data, and generating plant palettes.

While A.I. technology has the potential to enhance the work of landscape architects, it’s unlikely that it will completely replace them. Landscape architecture involves a combination of technical skills, creativity, and critical thinking that require human expertise. Additionally, the field often involves interacting with clients and other stakeholders, which requires communication skills and an understanding of human needs and preferences.

Overall, A.I. technology can support landscape architects in their work, but it’s unlikely to replace them entirely. Instead, it’s more likely that A.I. will become a valuable tool that landscape architects can use to improve their work processes and deliver better results.

Daniella Hirshcfeld: Everyone is talking about A.I. as a major new disruptor that will replace people in short order. However, I see A.I. as a tool that responds to human prompts, reflects back to people things we ask to see, and recirculates our ideas in both innovative and repetitive ways. Our job as educators is to train the next generation of students to use this tool and leverage its power. By pointing the tool in the right directions, we can focus on solving the pressing challenges of our society today and achieve sustainable and resilient futures. The power we have is in the direction we point this resource. Research, the systematic study of information can help us understand the best and most strategic ways to point this new tool.

Carlos Licon: Through time, design professionals have always been excited and interested in applying new tools, not only to make the task convenient or more efficient but mainly to elevate the professional output. Creative and well-supported processes allow designers to address complex issues and facilitate involvement and participation in the design process. The right tools combined with the best information will, in turn, help design professionals develop sensitive and meaningful proposals for an increasingly diverse cultural social mix and with a long-term understanding of the impacts this profession outputs have at both local and global scales. As artificial tools to increase our intelligence merge with our discipline, it will be essential to maintain the vision of our ultimate goals and not get distracted by the fascination and contemplation of the tool.

Ben George: I believe that A.I. will be a disruptor in world markets at the level of the Industrial Revolution, resulting in major upheavals in the way we function, but ultimately resulting in positive improvements for the majority of people. In landscape architecture the use of AI will touch nearly every aspect of the design process. Broadly through an ability to analyze large data sets and provide insights into complex design problems, and more narrowly in areas such as plant selection and placement, water usage, and other critical aspects of landscape design. Ultimately it will enable landscape architects to work more effectively and efficiently, impacting a greater number of landscapes and penetrating new markets. At the same time, the future is fraught, with A.I. potentially providing the opportunity for a myriad number of allied fields, and even amateurs, to compete for traditional landscape a rchitecture projects and erode market share and professional prestige.

Caroline Lavoie: I teach design fundamentals and urban design. The use of data and technologies can really help in complex fields such as urban design to inform on the complex problems related to large scale issues and create relationships that could not be possible to see.

For design fundamentals, the most important gift to students is the confidence to rely on their perception, emotions, values, intuition, and a set of design tools that allow them to explore and communicate their ideas. To design is a physical action, not just narrative impulses nor a series of equations. Starting with drawing helps bring the body and mind in sync for creative outputs. Those are rich in discovery, which is crucial in a designer development.

Dave Evans: Reading this piece caused me to consider the many ways that technology has driven my work for 40 years. I am cautiously optimistic that landscape architects will rely on our creative and analytical skills to use A.I. for the better. Hinton’s concerns give me pause, while Huaqing’s insights and optimism give me hope.

Ole Sleipness: Technological advancement has brought vast improvements in capacity to our profession and world over the past two decades. It also has made our society kinder, more generous, joyful, gracious, balanced, and especially self-controlled. Just kidding. However beneficial, technological proliferation may have a role in its dependents’ compulsiveness, anxiousness, social disconnection, and other detriments to human health and well-being. While A.I. has an air of inevitability, I am skeptical of its purported unadulterated goodness, particularly as it relates to the creative design process.

When muscles are not exercised, they become weak, underdeveloped, and eventually atrophy. So it is with the mind, including its capacity for creativity. While A.I. is often touted for its capacity to generate design products—images, renderings, and visuals—its biggest impact may well be on the process of creativity. The design process and its inherent struggle is akin to resistance training in the gym. It’s not always fun. Sometimes, it’s painful. But it builds our capacity to think creatively, to challenge preconceptions, and ultimately discern the quality of design ideas, however fearfully or wonderfully rendered. A.I.’s possibility of easing this process, reducing the struggle, and lessening the resistance experienced in the design process is a double-edged sword. Those of us who were fortunate to experience that struggle will be able to maintain some strength and creative capacity—if we continue to exercise it. But future generations who don’t experience a creative process of struggle and resistance may be confined to a future design process of doom-scrolling through A.I.-generated images of bad design, while lacking the discernment needed to recognize them as such. And that task would be perfect for A.I. anyway. It’s imperative that design education exercises the mind’s creative capacity, building strong and capable designers who possess discernment, so our profession might use this powerful technology rather than be ruled by it.

Brent Chamberlain: If there is some kind of algebra or calculus that can connect our legacy to the future, we should find it. Put in an algebraic sentence it might look like this: Historic Values>Background Knowledge>Methods of Art and Science (including Research/ Funding)>Technologies (including drawing and A.I.) = Critical Contemporary Curriculum and Practice. We look forward to current and future disruptions with an eye to preparing students to embrace the most complex problems facing us. We respect the foundations of the program as set out by Laval Morris in 1939 and all who have contributed since. For the foreseeable future thinking, drawing, and creating will be directed by us humans and greatly assisted by current and advancing technologies embodied in the notion of artificial intelligence (A.I.).

Support Images: Huaqing’s CELA Poster, Caroline’s Model (from 1350), Licon’s Water Meter