A Discussion on the Landscape Architecture Research Trends in the USA Based on the Analysis of the ASLA Annual Meeting Topics

Urban Farm DB summary

Motivated by the need for developing Chinese landscape architecture to draw on foreign experience, this paper analyzed the number, content, and trends of topics at the American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA) annual meetings from 2009 to 2012, with an in-depth discussion of the hotspots. The results show that the planning and design category had the highest proportion of topics, and that American landscape architecture focused on sustainable development, parks and gardening, rainwater harvesting, ecological theory, digital technology, urban plants, public open space, and urban agriculture. The pursuit of sustainable development and multidisciplinary integration emerged as a distinctive feature of American landscape architecture, and the paper uses these results to outline prospects for Chinese landscape architecture.