What is Land-Based?

In our third installment of Questions & Answers, we look into the meaning of land-based.

Question: I am wondering what it means to be place-based. How does resilience grow out of it?

[CT] Place-based and land-based, from a designer’s point of view, are interchangeable.

These terms simply define the constituents which must be considered in the design and planning process. For me they also describe the foundations of my ethical compass and how I see myself relating to the world around me ...

[AH] And I would say, place-based and land-based are almost interchangeable.

A land-base includes all the individuals and their interactions that reside in a place (People); all the understandings, ideas, beliefs, and values that form the culture of a community (Knowledge); and all of the physical things - from the strata under our feet to the thin skies above us - that defines the character and composition of a space (Place).

PEOPLE : KNOWLEDGE : PLACE

manifesto, questions & answersJenniey TallmanFebruary 12, 2018local knowledges, resilience, land-based ethic, land-based, place-based, aliveness, people-knowledge-place, adaptive, stochastic interlude, inertia

On Plan-Making

In this second installment of Questions & Answers, we delve into plan-making.

Question: Why is it important to make plans even without knowing the exact reasons and/or outcomes? What is the value/necessity in this curiosity or exploration?

The act of preparation makes us stronger. Awareness of the complexities and challenges of life empowers us. It allows us to gain a full picture, but this can only happen if we stop ignoring the hard parts of human development, the things we usually just write off as externalities.

Right now, we need the whole picture. We’ve ignored too much for too long and it has come back to us directly (like climate change) and indirectly (like cultural shifts due to technological changes).

When we acknowledge the uncertainty of our collective future under rapid environmental change, we are forced to be flexible—to supplicate ourselves to powers greater than ourselves, things which I believe will always exist and form the encounters that lead to feelings of meaning or value in human experience.

manifesto, questions & answersJenniey TallmanJanuary 29, 2018plans, uncertainty, capacity, disrupt, persist, adaptability, local knowledges, human exceptionalism, resilience, land-based ethic