Abbott, Michael R.2018-02-012015Abbott, M. (2015). Practices of the wild: A rewilding of landscape architecture. LA+ Interdisciplinary Journal of Landscape Architecture, 1, 34-39.2376-4171https://hdl.handle.net/10182/8987The wild, in the discipline of landscape architecture, has been on the outer. What is it about the wild – despite the deep landscape-centric dimensions found in its forms, ecologies, meanings, and cultural attachments – that causes landscape architecture to find scant opportunity and appeal in it? This question is especially relevant, given the scale of the world's wilderness areas and their social and commercial value in terms of cultural identity, recreation and tourism, and what is now commonly referred to as ecosystem services. A more proactive and intentional practice of landscape is possible. Yet the question as to what behaviors provide the most benefit to both landscape and people, and then the design of the prompts that could enable such a dialogue, remains very much our "landscopic" frontier. For landscape architecture there is significant scope to expand its generative and creative relationship with landscape beyond the understanding of a landscape's system and the shaping of specific sites. Given landscape architecture's intimate knowledge of the value of landscape, and the ways it enables people and ecology to interact, there are opportunities to design behaviors, tools, technologies, devices, and strategies where endemic biodiversity and ecological resilience are nurtured. This "new wild" demands a design of landscape-centric behaviors in which landscape is produced rather than shaped. Investigating this can also open landscape architecture to the potential of designing innovative actions in other contexts: to foster activities, for example, founded in practices of carbon reduction, waste elimination, water use, mobility, and food production.34-39en© 2015 University of Pennsylvania School of Designlandscape architecturecultural studiesdesigntechnologyJournal ArticleANZSRC::120107 Landscape ArchitectureANZSRC::050202 Conservation and BiodiversityANZSRC::050104 Landscape EcologyANZSRC::120101 Architectural Design