SPOKANE, Wash. — An award-winning Washington State University Spokane professor of landscape architecture has recently written a work recognized by reviewers as an important contribution to the field.
Author Forster Ndubisi’s “Ecological Planning: A Historical and Comparative Synthesis” has just been released by Johns Hopkins University Press. It is the first work to bring together both a historical perspective and a comparative analysis of the many approaches to ecological planning.
Ecological planning is the process of understanding, evaluating and providing options for the use of landscape to ensure a better fit with human habitation. In his analysis, Ndubisi provides a succinct historical and comparative account of the various approaches to this process. He then reveals how each of these approaches offers different and useful perspectives for understanding the dialogue between human and environmental processes.
“The author’s goals are on target, for no other book sets the ideas of landscape planning into a set of developing concepts within a historical context,” writes Sally Schauman of Duke University in her review of the book. “There are few books on landscape planning in general and none to my knowledge that attempt both a complete overview and a comparative analysis. Ndubisi’s approach is sound in every way. This book is long overdue.”
Ndubisi has received numerous awards, including the American Society of Landscape Architects Merit Award for research (1988) and the Council of Educators in Landscape Architecture President’s Award for Contributions to Education in Landscape Architecture (1993), and he was a co-recipient of the Georgia ASLA President’s Award for Excellence in Professional Achievement (1994). His research on ecological planning won the only ASLA Honor Award for Research in 1999.
Ndubisi is the author of numerous articles and book chapters, as well as the books “Public Policy and Land Use in Georgia” (1996) and “Planning Implementation Tools and Techniques: A Resource Book” (1992). A former president of CELA, he recently served on the Landscape Architecture Foundation Board. He holds degrees in zoology, landscape architecture, and city and regional planning from the Universities of Ibadan in Nigeria and Guelph and Waterloo in Ontario, Canada, and he has served as a consultant in community design, environmental land-use planning, and growth management. He serves as the director of the Interdisciplinary Design Institute at WSU Spokane.
The Interdisciplinary Design Institute at WSU Spokane advances knowledge to enhance the quality of people’s lives in the built and natural environment through interdisciplinary instruction, research, and community service in design and construction. Students in architecture, interior design, landscape architecture, construction management, and design-build management study at the Institute. See more information online: idi.spokane.wsu.edu.
