TAZmuse7250: LANDliteracy

LANDliteracy’ succinctly describes the ability to read the land for the purpose of assessing its abilty to offer susteance and shelter.

Clearly, if more people could detect the early signs of land degradation this would foster more affective holistic approaches to designing LANDliteracy and LANDuse strategies in both urban and rural areas.

Likewise, social and political responses to land custodianship and land stewardship would be enhanced if there were a higher levels of LANDliteracy – particularly so in urban areas.

LANDliteracy can be understood as one's ability to read and appreciate the signs of health in a landscape. By implication, this definition also implies the ability to read the signs of ill-health in a landscape. Being 'land literate' is a reason for including ‘art’ in the 'LANDliteracy equation'.

LANDuse is invariably dominated by humanity's ability to read a landscapes' capacity to fulfil the needs of individuals and groups and ultimately a network of groups. What is looked for in a 'place' is its capacity to meet humanity's four imperatives and the extent to which a CULTURALlandscape to sustain life and a cultural reality within a network of interdependent cultural realities.

LANDuse cannot afford to be anything that depletes a landscape compromises any lifeform's capacity sustain itself within it. What is true for any one is true of all including humanity despite the myth that humans are the apex predator.

Humans are considered to be the ultimate, apex predator due to advanced intelligence, tool-making, and adaptability, allowing them to dominate all ecosystems. Unlike specialised predators, humans utilisbeste technology to override environmental limits, influencing food webs, causing extinctions, and functioning as hyper-apex predators.

Thus knowing about a place's resources is fundamental and it turns out that it is those who know this best are those who are directly seeking the sustenance and shelter within a place. Moreover, in order to 'know' a place's occupants need to be literate and LANDliterate.

Ideally LANDliteracy involves a community's collaborative and cooperative effort to read a place's 'placedness' albeit that some individuals and groups will have specialist knowledge – and indeed ancillary 'readers' may well be enlisted from outside.