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Landscape Institute's Statement on ASC Mind the Skills Gap Report

14th September 2007

The Landscape Institute today welcomed the Academy for Sustainable Communities’ ‘Mind the Skills Gap’ report but warned that the call for generic skills should be secondary to the need to ensure more people enter the landscape architecture profession.

The report states that by 2012 the shortage of architects, urban designers and landscape architects could grow to 91 percent and calls for an improvement in generic skills to deliver economic, social and environmental sustainability.

Landscape Institute Director General Marion Bowman said: “The Landscape Institute welcomes the report and in particular the strong call for a major national effort in tackling the skills crisis and for the training of more landscape architects. However the recommendations appear to be at odds with the evidence. Landscape architecture is already the most collaborative of all the built environment professions.

“The profession is entirely concerned with place-making and creating sustainable communities and is already doing much of the work the report calls for by way of cross professional working. Indeed the basis for all work in the public realm is the ability to work with communities, understand their needs and implement the findings of these consultations. We need to recruit, train and keep more landscape architects, so it is essential that a national effort to support sustainable communities prioritises creating more landscape architects. Without that, many public policy objectives cannot be achieved.”

“With government support, we must encourage a new generation of talented and creative young people to make landscape architecture their first career choice.”

Ms Bowman said that landscape architecture combined many of the cross cutting skills which were required for the challenges facing the country now – climate change, housing and sustainability – to create the best possible landscapes at minimal environmental cost. Without better design and management of landscapes at every scale in urban and rural settings, sustainable communities cannot be achieved.

She added: “Landscapes are the context for development. They are where people live, work and play and because they are living entities, they are part of the dynamic of how social, cultural, environmental and economic assets are created.”