From synthesis to analysis and back again

Journal o1 Environmental Psychology(1987) 7, 425-433

FROM SYNTHESIS

TO ANALYSIS A N D BACK AGAIN

E R V I N H. ZUBE School of Renewable Natural Resources, 325 Biological Sciences East Building, The UniversiO' of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona 85721, U.S.A.

Abstract This is a retrospective view of experiences and events centered around participation in the geography Ph.D program at Clark University in the early 1970s. It traces my career from that of a landscape architect practitioner-teacher to involvement as a graduate student with the Clark resources management group and to current research interests and activities. Two themes are highlighted, the effects of the Clark experience and the continuity of my interest in values, issues and problems related to landscapes.

Introduction The general task of environmental designers and planners is to gather information from diverse sources and, together with knowledge acquired through professional training and experience, apply it to the solution of problems involving change in the physical environment. These professionals attempt to integrate and synthesize information for specific planning and design purposes. In contrast, as Altman (1975) notes, behavioral scientists pursue an analytical process, frequently attempting to isolate individual variables in order to understand their relationships to specific behaviors. While the ultimate objective of the behavioral scientist may be generalization, the primary emphasis tends to be analytical rather than synthetic.

From Synthesis To Analysis My enrolment in the Graduate School of Geography (GSG) at Clark University followed study for a Master of Landscape Architecture degree in the Graduate School of Design at Harvard University, two years in Rome as a Fellow of the American Academy, and 10 years in the joint roles of university teacher-department head, and professional practitioner. It followed nearly a decade and a half of active involvement in the academic and professional practice of landscape architecture and planning. With 20/20 hindsight, one can speculate about those experiences and events, both planned and serendipitous, which suggest a path from the past to the present. It was N o r m a n Newton at Harvard who started me thinking about relationships between human perceptions and landscape design. Courses with Newton and Edward Seckler whetted my appetite for environmental design history, an appetite enhanced by two years of study at the American Academy in Rome. Later, contact with J. B. Jackson, which started while I was on the faculty at Berkeley, expanded my interests to encompass the vernacular landscape. Two edited volumes of Jackson's and other authors' contributions to Landscape resulted from this contact (Zube, 1970a; Zube and Zube, 1977) as did a continuing research interest (Zube, 1982). 0272 4944/87/040425 + 09 $03.00/0

c 1987 Academic Press Limited

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The Harvard experience also paved the way for involvement in natural resource/landscape planning. My first research project i n 1961 as an assistant professor at the University of Wisconsin, Madison was an analysis of the potentials for landscape restoration and future land use potentials following open-pit taconite mining on the Gogebic Range in Northern Wisconsin. General impetus for graduate study in geography and, in particular, environmental perception, came from a growing awareness o f my lack of knowledge about values, perceptions, and behaviors of those for whom plans and designs are prepared. Final impetus came from my participation in a major water resources planning project in northeastern United States during the late 1960s. This multi-million dollar planning project encompassed an area of 167 000 square miles, an area that included 25% of the U.S. population. As project manager for the visual and cultural environmental planning component in this multi-agency, multi-disciplinary project, I quickly became aware of the tenuousness of available literature for even the most elementary synthesis. My sensitivity to this shortcoming was enhanced when we realized that the development of planning recommendations would have to rely heavily on professional myths and assumptions, and would require substantial leaps beyond the bounds of available research-myths and assumptions about visual and cultural values representative of the population of the region. Sensitivity was heightened further as our group developed an approach for the study that was enthusiastically endorsed by colleagues from other professions and disciplines, and again later when our planning recommendations received similar endorsements from a number o f the participating agencies and states. Subsequently, these recommendations were used as basic building blocks for the development of plans oriented to enhancing environmental quality in specific river basins within the planning region (Zube, 1970b). Obviously this was our hoped-for outcome. Nevertheless, playing the role o f definer of visual and cultural values for 50 million people, no matter how general those values were construed to be, was a heady, somewhat intimidating and very sobering experience. While developing a plan of study for the water resources project, I came across the Kates and Wohlwill edited issue of The Journal of Social Issues (1966) and a paper on environmental beauty by Robert Kates in Landscape (1966-67). As the idea of going back to school for a Ph.D. became increasingly more compelling, it also became clear where I should go, Clark University. Subsequent meetings with Bob Kates and Saul Cohen confirmed that conclusion. There was a receptivity to someone like me who was something of a closet geographer and there was an openness to designing a course of study to fit my objectives. My contacts with faculty and students at Clark were probably more limited than most other students because of initial part-time enrollment and later commuting weekly between Amherst and Worcester. I was fortunate that the one year I was enrolled full-time was the year Kenneth Craik was a Senior Post-Doctorate in Psychology. Bob Kates's resource management courses, Ken Craik's environmental psychology seminars and Roger Kaspenson's course on the politics of environmental management were instrumental for me. After a hiatus of 10 years from the role of a student, kindred spirits were sought to share the process of studying. Dan Dworkin and I must have been the two 'old men' among the graduate students. We shared many evenings forcing ourselves to adapt to the role of students rather than businessman and professional practitioner-

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educator. Others from the resource management group who occasionally participated in these sessions were Steve Wilson and Tom Hawkins. The GSG provided opportunity for me, an older than average graduate student, to begin questioning and exploring the validity of some of the myths and assumptions that I had embraced for over a decade arid a half of study, teaching and professional practice as a landscape architect and planner. It provided opportunity to don the mantle of a student and analyst rather than that of a practitioner and synthesizer. Research topics of immediate interest were: the public's perceptions of landscape amenity values; relationships of public policies with perceptions of environmental quality; and the validity of professional practices and procedures by which environmental values were assessed. Several assumptions that had been developed earlier for the North Atlantic Regional Water Resources Study became the focus of my dissertation research and served to launch a research program that has been followed continuously, but by no means exclusively, since then, and which has ranged from the practical and applied to the theoretical.

Landscape Perception

My initial research explored assumptions about physical indicators of scenic landscape quality and about landscape assessment procedures. I explored the potential of developing physical indicators of perceived landscape beauty from two-dimensional data sources such as topographic maps and aerial photographs (Zube, 1974); and the validity of landscape simulations for assessing perceived amenity values (Zube, Pitt and Anderson, 1975). While the results of this research were encouraging from a professional viewpoint, it was clear that generalizability was constrained because of limited landscape and subject samples. Nevertheless, selected aspects of the research were replicated in England (Shuttleworth, 1976) and Australia (Williamson and Chalmers, 1982), providing some support for the validity of the procedures and findings in different landscapes. Overall, our findings indicated impressive degrees of agreement among the various opportunity samples used in the studies. However, several between-group differences raised questions that led to research of a less applied nature. These differences stimulated several cross-cultural studies that explored in greater detail possible differences in perceived landscape beauty among different cultures. Working with graduate students at the University of Massachusetts, several comparative studies were undertaken (Zube and Pitt, 1981) including white middle-class Americans, immigrant and first-generation Italian-Americans, Australians, Slovenians, and West lndians. Findings suggested that differences were at least partially attributable to different environmental experiences and cultural milieus in which white, middleclass environmental values did not prevail. Subsequent research investigated relationships of lifespan development with landscape perceptions, including age-groups ranging from 7-year-olds to over 70-yearolds. Differences were found across the lifespan with the youngest and the oldest age-groups differing from those in middle-age groups ranging from young teenagers tO 65-year-olds (Zube, Pitt and Evans, 1983). Current research is exploring and comparing the landscape perceptions of Japanese and Americans.

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E.H. Zube Back to Synthesis: Environmental Design Evaluation

In 1972, I accepted the position of Director of the Institute for Man and Environment at the University of Massachusetts which included responsibility for several research centers involved in natural resource policy, community development, coastal resources assessment and evaluation, and environment and behavior studies. In 1974, Ken Craik joined the research staff in the Institute while on sabbatical leave from Berkeley. This new responsibility also directed part of my research effort to the built environment and led to a number of studies that involved going beyond analysis and included synthesizing data with design and planning objectives and programs. In these studies, we attempted to identify relationships between behavioral data and design and planning decision making. They represented a form of evaluation research in which environments were assessed in terms of the congruence of use patterns and user satisfactions with design assumptions (Friedman, Zimring and Zube, 1978; Zube, 1979, 1980).

Perception of Environmental Quality Building upon an association that first developed at Clark, I collaborated with Ken Craik on a series of research workshops designed to assess the state of the art in environmental perception research (Craik and Zube, 1976) and to assess the feasibility of developing perceived environmental quality indicators (PEQIs) to accompany physical indicators of environmental quality (EQ), topics that had been first approached at Clark. The workshops identified knowledge gaps requiring attention for the development of PEQIs and suggested a framework for the development and implementation of operational PEQI system. Subsequently the concept was directed to consideration of a PEQ! system for coastal zone planning (Zube and Craik, 1978) and to desert and temperate forest environments (Craik and Zube, NSF proposal 1980). The concept was also adopted as an official project of the U.S. Man and the Biosphere Program (MAB), Directorate 13 on Perception of Environmental Quality. However, the vicissitudes of changing research priorities in agencies such as NSF have halted work in this area.

Landscape Values My current research in landscape values builds upon past work in aesthetics and also extends in new directions that encompass a broadened array of values. Directly related to the early work are recent and continuing efforts to synthesize the substantial body of research that has been published in this field over the last 15 years or more. Analysis of the literature indicates substantial diversity in approaches to landscape assessment, ranging from traditional methods of professional landscape architects and other environmental professionals, to techniques drawn from research in perception, cognition, and personality, and to methods used in humanistic and phenomenological studies (Zube, Sell and Taylor, 1982). Analysis of the literature also suggests that the field employs a diversity of theoretical and conceptual orientations which I have categorized as: (1) normative values--the concept of broad agreement among person and across groups; (2) genetic heritage--theories that

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suggest aesthetic responses to landscape are in part genetically determined and are a product of early hominid development in specific kinds of landscapes; and (3) cultural influence---concepts that suggest aesthetic values are related to education, environmental experience, and other culturally based experiences (Zube, 1984). This analysis led to the adoption of a transactional perspective, patterned directly on Ittelsons' (1973) work, for defining future research directions and, hopefully, to facilitate more effectively comparisons among studies that share a common reference base. One of my new directions in environmental values research reflects the interests of our School of Renewable Natural Resources located in an arid, desert environment where landscape management issues are a generally pervasive concern. Work in the area of landscape management started with broad-based interviews and was followed with a mail-survey of Arizonans' perceptions of the quality of their environment, resource management priorities, and adequacy of public planning activities within the state (Zube, Law and Carpenter, 1984). Current research focuses on perceived values and attitudes towards alternative management strategies for desert riparian ecosystems. In a desert environment riparian areas are literally lifelines of survival: they are the areas where whatever water exists will most likely be found. Hence, they are the areas where conflict and competition among users has been historically, and is today, the greatest. Another direction ! am pursuing is study of perceptions and responses to humaninduced environmental change. In the arid Southwest, rapid environmental change is a common phenomenon, but appears to be a stress-inducing factor among those subjected to it (Zube and Sell, 1986). Furthermore, data from our landscape perception survey in Arizona, a state which, according to the 1980 U.S. Census Report, has the second fastest growth rate in the nation, indicate the majority of the residents of the state are anti-growth. Thus, the stage may be set for a continuing series of conflicts and confrontations concerning policies and plans for continued growth and development. Looking Backward

Clark and the GSG provided me with much more than an opportunity to earn a doctorate degree; it provided an intellectual environment in which problems and questions were more important than disciplines. It provided an atmosphere of intellectual inquiry in which human-environment relations were the focus and in which humanistic and social-behavioral approaches to the study of those relationships were accepted as equally valid. It was an exciting place and atmosphere in which to get introduced to and involved in environment and behavior research. Certainly, from my perspective it set the foundation for what has now been over a decade of research. It didn't change my primary areas of interest or the kinds of landscape and environmental problems that I study, but the absence of parochial disciplinary boundaries broadened, substantively and geographically, my conceptualization of those interest areas and problems. The Clark experience also provided for several longlasting friendships as well as professional and scientific relationships. One has already been noted, the relationship with Craik on the PEQI project. Another with Gary Moore is underway, as we are co-editors for the forthcoming series of edited volumes Advances in Environment,

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Behavior and Design to be published by Plenum Press over the next four years. Another link with colleagues from the 1970-72 period has been through the U.S. Man and the Biosphere Program. Kates and Joachim Wohlwill were early members of the Directorate on the perception of environmental quality and Wapner, Craik, Kirsten Johnson and the author were more recent members with Clark ties. Looking to the Future

Looking to the future is always risky business, and perhaps more so, when the vision is focused on a relatively new field such as environment and behavior research. My comments are based primarily on my perceptions of indicators of current status in the fields of environmental design, geography and natural resources. Current levels of activity in each of these fields give me a cautiously optimistic viewpoint. Environment and behavior instructional and research activities in design programs, departments and schools in the United States have certainly fluctuated during the past decade. A number of programs related to architecture which showed early signs of leadership, such as at Harvard, have disappeared. However, others, such as at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee and Georgia Institute of Technology have emerged to take their place. It also appears from papers presented at the annual meetings of the Environmental Design Research Association that in the absence of formal programs, the field has been somewhat institutionalized and incorporated into the structure of a considerable number of architectural programs. This is certainly the case with landscape architecture. A majority of the graduate programs have behavioral scientists directly affiliated with their faculties, including geographers, anthropologists and psychologists, or they have landscape architects with advanced training and experience in one of the related fields. A review of the journal literature in landscape assessment from 1965 to 1980 gives further support for my cautiously optimistic viewpoint. My colleagues and I (Zube, Sell and Taylor, 1982) found papers in the area of landscape perception were being published at an ever-increasing rate over the period of review. It is noteworthy, however, that the publications represented efforts of other disciplines and professions in addition to landscape architects. The current status and future of the field in natural resources seems less clear to me at this time. The change in political climate and the apparent retreat of United States public land management agencies from multiple-use management principles has sharply tempered one of the major sources of support for environment and behavior research. Research areas such as perceived air quality and outdoor recreation are no longer high priority topics. Under present adminstrative and economic conditions, the future is uncertain, at least as it relates to federal programs and support. Saarinen (1984) has recently assessed the state of the field in geography. Following an analysis of dissertation and masters' degree thesis topics for 1980-81, and three consecutive reviews of the literature for Progress in Human Geography (Saarinen and Sell, 1980, 1981; Saarinen, Sell and Husband, 1982), he concluded that the future for environmental perception research was indeed optimistic. In summary, from a personal perspective and with reference to personal research interests, I view the future with cautious optimism. Expanding historical and scientific values continue to present interesting and challenging research opportunities. My own work in this area has taken on international dimensions and encompassed

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c r o s s - c u l t u r a l research in the areas o f e n v i r o n m e n t a l values a n d perceived conflicts between p r e s e r v a t i o n a n d d e v e l o p m e n t . In a similar vein, the r a p i d g r o w t h o f the S o u t h w e s t presents c o n t i n u i n g o p p o r t u n i t i e s for research on e n v i r o n m e n t a l values a n d p e r c e p t i o n s o f change. These are areas o f i n q u i r y t h a t were first n u r t u r e d at Clark U n i v e r s i t y well over a d e c a d e a n d o n e - h a l f ago, and they are areas that p r o v i d e me with o p p o r t u n i t i e s b o t h to engage in a p p l i e d p r o b l e m s a n d to w o r k t o w a r d s b e t t e r c o n c e p t u a l u n d e r s t a n d i n g s o f related h u m a n processes.

References

Ahlnan, 1., 1975. The Eilvironntent and Social Behavior. Monterey, CA: Brooks/Cole. Craik, K. H. and Zube, E. H., 1976 (eds). Perceivhlg Envh'onnlental Qua#ty." Research and Appliccltions. New York: Plenum Press. Fliedman, A.. Zimring, C. and Zube, E. H. (1978). Environmental Design Evaluation. New York: Plenum Press. Kates. R.W. (1966 67). The pursuit of beauty in the environment. Landscape, 16(2): 21 24. Kates, R. W. and Wohlwill, J. F. (eds)(1966). The Journal o[Social Issues, 22(4). Ittclson, W. (1973). Environment and Cognition. New York: Seminal" Press. Saal-il~en, T. (1984). Some reasons for optimism about environnaental perception studies. In T. F. Saarinen, D. Seamen and J. L. SeN (eds). Environnlental Perception and Behavior. Research Paper No. 209, University of Chicago, Department of Geography. pp. 13 24. Saarinen, T. and Sell, J. (1980). Environmental perception. Progress in Huntan Geography, 4, 535 548. - - - (1981). Environmental perception. Progress in Human Geography, 5, 525-547. Saalinen, T., Sell, J. and Husband, L. (1982). Environmental perception: international efforts. Progress in Hunlan Geograph.l', 6, 515-546. Shuttleworth, S. (1976). The Evohttion ~?/ Landscape Quality. Norwich: University of East Anglia, School of Environmental Sciences. Williamson, D. and Chalmers, J. A. (1982). PerccTtion el'Forest Scenic Quality hi Northeast Victoria. Victoria: Forests Commission. Zubc. E. H. (1970a). Landscapes. Amherst: University of Arizona Press. p. 160. (1970b). Evaluation of the visual and cultural environment. Journal qfSoil and Water Conservation, 25(4): 137-141. (1974). Cross-disciplinary and inter-mode agreelnent on the description and evaluation of landscape resources. Environnlent and Behavior, 6, 69-89. - (1976). Perceptions of landscape and land use. In I. Airman and J. Wohlwill (eds), Hunum Behavior and the Environment: Advances in Theory and Research. New York, Pien unl Press, pp. 87-121. ( 1 9 8 0 ) . Environmental Evaluation." Perception and Public' Po#o'. Monterey, CA.: Brooks/ Cole. -(1982). An exploration of southwestern landscape images. Landscape Journal, 1(1): 3140. - (1984). Themes in landscape assessment theory. Landscape Journal 3, 104-110. Zube, E. H. and Craik, K. H. (1978). Indices of perceived coastal quality. In Coastal Zone 78, Vol. H. New York: American Society of Civil Engineers, pp. 1008-1018. Zube, E. H, and Pitt, D. W, (1981). Issues in cross-cultural landscape perception. Landscape Planning, 8, 65-83. Zube, E. H. and Sell, J. L. (1986). Human dimensions of environmental change. Journal of Planning Literature, 1(2): 162-176. Zube, E. H. and Zube M. J. (1977). Changing Rural Landscapes. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press. Zube, E. H. Law ~ S. and Carpenter, E. H. (1984). Arizona survey reveals anti-development attitude. Landscape Architecture 74(6), 97-100.

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Zubc, E. H., Pitt, D. G., and Anderson, T. W. (1975). Perception and prediction of scenic resource values of the northeast. In Zube et al. (eds), Landscape Assessment, Vahws, Perceptions and Resources, pp. 151-167. Zube, E. H., Pitt, D. G. and Evans, G. W. (1983). A lifespan developmental study of landscape assessment. Journal q/' Environmental Psychology 3, I 15-128. Zube, E, H., Sell, J. L. and Taylor, J. G. (1982). Landscape perception: research, application and theory. Landscape Planning, 9, 1-33.