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Landscape Narratives: Design Practices for Telling Stories

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Landscape Narratives consider the landscape as a nonverbal text to be read as a story of place. The reader is cautioned about developing a too-literal "one-liner" version of the story of the landscape. Instead, one should find ways to look at process and multiple readings to help the stakeholders derived a diversity of stories from the landscape itself.

The book is divided into three parts.

Part 1 "Theory" is concerned with describing just what a landscape narrative is, how meaning is drawn from the landscape and how to interpret the elements of a landscape. "Drawing from contemporary theory in literary criticism, anthropology, geography, and art, as well as significant landscape examples, [this section establishes] a theoretical framework for understanding the elements, processes, and forms of landscape narratives" (p. xi).

Part 2 "Practices" describes a set of narrative practices that can applied to projects from vernacular sites and historic preservation to public art, public participation, and sustainable design:
1. naming: identity, possession, memorial, place names (toponymy), the palimpsest of names, renaming/reclaiming places, indigenous names
2. sequencing: ordering, chronologies, period, process, spirals/mazes, stories
3. revealing and concealing: embedded/hidden meanings, secrets, suspense, transparency, process and integration, infrastructure, masking and unmasking
4. gathering: garden as allegory, fantasy/miniature landscapes, framing/controlling the narrative, condensing time, the souvenir, the collection, seasonal rounds
5. opening: "places with multiple stories shaped by a plurality of voices" as opposed to closed narratives which define a landscape (such as a themed landscape), exchanging stories, asking questions, loosening control, opening discourses, counter narratives, leaving space for the constant change of narratives (such as evolving works)

Part 3 "Stories" then shows how to apply what has been learned in Parts 1 and 2, using three examples from real life that examine the relationship between culture and nature, differences in the landscape narratives, and maintaining community traditions, and how application leads to further elaborations and process:
-"The Wasteland and Restorative Narrative" - the Arthur Kill wasteland of New Jersey and its restoration/healing through narrative process
-"Writing Home" - the preservation of Cazenovia (central New York), the designed neotraditionalism of Kentlands (Maryland), and integration of Puerto Rican community concerns in the face of a development project at Nos Quedemos in the South Bronx
-"Road Stories" - whereas the two previous chapters looked at community landscapes, this chapter looks at immense linear landscapes -roads, highways, trails- in this case the Natchez Trace Parkway and Highway 61: The Blues Highway (the Delta country of Mississippi)

Although the target audience is mostly that of educators and designers, _Landscape Narratives_ can inspire, enlighten, and teach many others (artists, writers, activists, preservationists, community members, video producers, folklorists, storytellers, etc.) how to engage with the sense of place and preserve the stories of one's own landscape. Highly recommended!

"Landscape Narratives" is a source book for screenwriters searching for thematic ideas. As writer and director, it helps me to decode places as textual landscape of my stories. Inspired by the readings I have written several short films, mostly dealing with the way fictional characters react to landscapes. Chapter 4 discusses time-altering devices found in landscape: jump cut, flashback, fade etc. plot structuring techniques also used in film. It is a joy to reread this classic book as would a traveller journeying home.

Potteiger and Purinton team up in what in essence is a cultural geographic survey of the American Landscape. The anthropologic influence of nature is explored. Chapters deal with broad topics such as restoration ecology and urban renewal, and each is seen through the an intensely personal lens. This is a bit of a breath of fresh air, given that similar books in this genre are more about the author's personal philosophy than the true impacts of man's manipulation of nature. Fortunately the Potteiger and Purinton's lens is filtered through the eyes of real characters, characters rich in personality and chalked full of lore.

The book targets the academic but is quite readable to the layman.