A newly posted review essay for the Chronicle of Higher Education by Jon Christensen, Robert McDonald, and Carrie Denning is a must-read for every urbanist or designer interested in landscape, ecologies, and the intellectual armature of both New Urbanism and Landscape Urbanism. A pull quote to whet your appetite: 

We've come a long way from the Roosevelt commission's concern with the "deficiencies" of country life, although the Obama administration recently created a White House Rural Council to "address challenges in rural America." To be sure, we still hear plenty of paeans to that "real America," though only one out of five Americans lives there now, as well as to "wild nature," though most ecologists have come to accept that virtually nothing about nature is untouched by humanity.

The dominant discourse these days, however, unabashedly celebrates the city as the future, in books with titles such as David Owen's Green Metropolis: Why Living Smaller, Living Closer, and Driving Less Are the Keys to Sustainability (Riverhead, 2009) and Edward Glaeser's Triumph of the City: How Our Greatest Invention Makes Us Richer, Smarter, Greener, Healthier, and Happier (Penguin Press, 2011).

We share much of their excitement and optimism, but we are wary of this urban triumphalism. We worry that it is blinding us to problems as well as to opportunities for understanding the vital relationship between the country and the city, and right at a time ripe for innovation in the academic fields most concerned with this relationship, particularly urban planning and ecology.

Find it at http://chronicle.com/article/Ecological-Urbanism-for-the/130384/

If you can't get access to the essay (I'm not sure if it's behind an academic paywall), contact Jon, aka @westcenter on Twitter.

[illustration: Dave Plunkert for The Chronicle Review]