By Laura Marett, Chingwen Cheng, José Juan Terrasa-Soler, and Deb Guenther
With contributions from Marc Miller and Tasneem Tariq
Significant research has shown that climate change is linked to more frequent and intense extreme events. These impacts have worsened systemic inequities and contributed to greater water, energy, and food insecurity.
Landscape architects have a responsibility to both the people and places affected by climate change. Our work in the built environment shapes more than just physical spaces; it also influences social and cultural conditions. As the impacts of climate change grow, our role must include not only designing for resilience but also advancing climate justice.
This means acknowledging and addressing the unequal burdens of climate change on historically marginalized communities, many of which are low-income and communities of color. We have a responsibility to ensure that our work supports equity, promotes care, and builds long-term accountability. A commitment to climate justice requires that we carry these values through every stage of the design process.
What Does Justice Mean?
To design with justice in mind, it’s important to understand the difference between equality, equity, and justice.
Equality means treating everyone the same and offering the same resources or opportunities to every community. While this may sound fair, it overlooks the fact that many communities do not need equal support in the first place; some need more than others in order to achieve the same outcome.
Equity means recognizing those gaps and directing more resources and care to the communities that have been historically underserved. Equity efforts prioritize support for people who are socially and economically disadvantaged, including many communities impacted by redlining and immigration-related barriers. These efforts help ensure everyone has what they need to thrive. But equity alone does not fix the systems that created inequality in the first place.
Justice goes deeper. It looks at how the systems and decisions behind our built environment operate. Justice asks not only who gets what, but how decisions are made, whose voices are included, and how past harm can be acknowledged and repaired. It also asks how decisions today shape equity for future generations.
According to recent work on justice in design by Cheng and collaborators, there are four key dimensions of justice that landscape architects and the clients and communities they partner with can apply:
- Distributive justice focuses on fair outcomes, such as who benefits from a project or receives protection from harm.
- Procedural justice focuses on fair processes, ensuring that decision-making includes and respects all voices, especially those who are most affected.
- Restorative justice includes recognizing past harms and working to repair them. This involves acknowledging historical injustice and taking steps to heal and empower communities.
- Generational justice ensures that today’s decisions honor the past, meet present needs, and protect the rights of future generations.
Climate justice brings all four of these ideas together. It asks us to design in a way that responds to the climate crisis while also addressing inequality and promoting fairness. Co-designing with communities throughout every stage of a project is one way to make sure justice is built into both the process and the outcome.
Approaches for Advancing Climate Justice in Landscape Architecture Projects
Landscape architects and their clients and the communities they partner with can ask themselves key questions and apply important strategies throughout the phases of a landscape architecture project.
- Guiding questions can enable a continuous and collective learning journey. This helps us reflect on our roles and contribute meaningfully to a more just future.
- Strategies aren’t comprehensive and need to be adapted to cultures, communities, and ecosystems.
We hope these approaches provoke interest in advancing climate justice through the process of envisioning, designing, building, and stewarding projects.
Organization-wide Practice and Accountability
Organizations, design practices, and institutions can establish community relationships long before design begins and continue long after.
Questions to Ask:
- Who are the communities in the places we live and work who are experiencing disproportionate impacts of climate change?
- How can we commit to ongoing relationships with communities experiencing climate injustices?
Strategies:
- Partner with community-based organizations led by people from the local community.
Show up for community priorities not just during the project timeline, but in broader advocacy and policy work. - Commit to continuous learning from local leaders and initiatives that are already underway.
Pre-Design and Project Visioning
The foundation of an equitable project begins with understanding the deeper context. This phase is an opportunity to build relationships, listen, and learn from community members about their histories, traumas, healing practices, and visions for the future.
Questions to Ask:
- What past injustices or systemic harms have shaped this place? What climate impacts are exacerbating these inequities? How can design make a difference in addressing these challenges?
- What are the barriers to trust between the community and the project’s client (city, developer, institution)?
- How can the project process help to rebuild trust from the start?
- What are the community needs and priorities for landscape spaces (recreational, programmatic) that could be incorporated into future climate infrastructure projects?
Strategies:
- Form bonds with community champions to foster relationships and establish trust within the community.
- Create an engagement plan that defines how you identify and collaborate with community partners. Tailor outreach tactics to seek out the voices that may not always be heard in the design process.
- Conduct a community assessment that goes beyond demographics and needs. Include a review of racial history, land-use policies, and patterns of investment and disinvestment.
- At a minimum, review the past few years of public feedback on similar projects to understand community concerns.
- Recognize that trust must be earned over time and grounded in transparency and humility.
Design Phases
This is where the core of relationship-building takes place. Rather than presenting a finished vision, co-create one together.
Questions to Ask:
- How can the design process acknowledge past harms and put local knowledge at the center?
- Are we creating enough space for people to be heard and to shape the outcome?
- What are the barriers for underrepresented groups engaging with the project? How can we tailor outreach tactics to seek them out and meet them where they are?
- How can we honor indigenous and vernacular knowledge in responding to climate change and biodiversity loss?
Strategies:
- Begin engagement and co-design by listening, not presenting. Engage, listen, and learn.
- Co-develop understandings of climate risk and risk tolerance. Identify which design solutions and trade-offs are acceptable and which are not, putting the experiences of the most affected community members at the center.
- Facilitate multiple forms of engagement that are accessible and responsive. Consider and make accommodations that make it easier for community members to engage – providing translation services, child care, or family-friendly activities, transportation, and events at different times of the day and week to accommodate different schedules and life circumstances.
- Build feedback loops that show how community input is shaping the design.
- Consider how biodiversity loss is related to climate justice, and design with biodiversity in mind.
- Approach design as a reciprocal and iterative process that honors both technical expertise and lived experience.
Implementation
Justice does not stop at design. It must also be embedded in construction practices and implementation.
Questions to Ask:
- What can we include in specifications that will support local workers and community members to be involved in building the project?
- What can we include in specifications that will support fair practices in material sourcing, procurement, and construction?
Strategies:
- Work with clients or project partners to connect the project to workforce development programs and local hiring.
- Collaborate with clients or project partners to offer paid roles in the construction or stewardship phases to community members.
- Include requirements in specifications to ensure contractors follow fair labor practices.
- Advocate for continued community agency and presence in the implementation process.
Post-Implementation
Designs should support ongoing care and resilience, not just for the current generation, but for those that follow.
Questions to Ask:
- Who will care for this space after it is built?
- How will we measure the project’s impacts on the community?
Strategies:
- Partner with community stewards to maintain and program the space over time.
- Establish systems for monitoring the social and environmental impacts of the project.
- Design with future adaptability in mind, ensuring that the space can evolve as community needs change.
A longer look
With a climate justice approach, landscape architecture is not just a service, but a practice of solidarity and collaboration. At each phase of a project – from early partnerships to long-term stewardship – these overarching questions should guide our partnerships with communities:
- Whose voices are shaping this work?
- Who benefits from this space?
- And who will carry it forward?
By rooting landscape architecture projects in relationships, we create places that respond to climate change and the people impacted by it.
Laura Marrett, ASLA, PLA, is principal at SCAPE Landscape Architecture. Chingwen Cheng, ASLA, PLA, is director and professor, Stuckeman School, Penn State University and past president, Council of Educators on Landscape Architecture (CELA). José Juan Terrasa-Soler, ASLA, PLA, is a partner at MARVEL. Deb Guenther, FASLA, is a partner at Mithun. Marc Miller is associate professor of landscape architecture and associate director for access, wellbeing, and equity at Stuckeman School, Penn State University. Tasneen Tariq is an assistant professor and PhD student at Stuckeman School, Penn State University.