Ian McHarg

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Ian McHarg

Ian L. McHarg ( November 20, 1920 - March 5, 2001 ) was born in Glasgow, Scotland and became a landscape architect and a renowned writer on regional planning using natural systems. He was the founder of the department of landscape architecture at the University of Pennsylvania in the United States. His 1969 book Design with Nature pioneered the concept of ecological planning. It continues to be one of the most widely celebrated books on landscape architecture and land-use planning. In this book, he set forth the basic concepts that were to develop later in Geographic Information Systems.

His father was a local minister in the industrial city of Glasgow. McHarg showed an early talent for drawing and was advised to consider a career in landscape architecture. In Glasgow he gained an appreciation of the need for cities to accommodate the qualities of the natural environment better, which had been greatly lacking in the city (Corbett, 1^{[citation needed]}).

It was not until after his term in the British Parachute Brigade, serving in war-stricken Italy during World War II, however, that he was able to explore this idea further. After working with the Royal Engineers during World War II, he traveled to America. He was admitted to the school of architecture at Harvard University where he received professional degrees in both landscape architecture and city planning.

Afterward, McHarg began teaching at the University of Pennsylvania, where he developed the department of landscape architecture, as well as offering a new course entitled, Man and Environment (Pennsylvania Gazette, 1^{[citation needed]}). In 1960, he hosted his own television show on CBS, The House We Live In.

Ian McHarg was the original co-developer of The Woodlands, Texas, an unincorporated community in Montgomery County, Texas. This community was developed from timberland located thirty miles north of Houston, by George P. Mitchell, who hired McHarg to consult on the project and, as a result, the original plans featured many of his unique designs.

In 1966 he was involved with several other projects; the Plan for the Valleys in Baltimore County, Maryland begun in 1962; the Inner Harbor in Baltimore; the Woodlands in Houston, Texas; and regional plans for the Twin Cities of Minnesota, Washington, D.C., and Denver, Colorado (Pennsylvania Gazette,1).

In 1969, he published, Design with Nature, which was essentially, a book of step-by-step instructions on how to break down a region into its appropriate uses (Wenz, 2). McHarg also was interested in garden design and believed that homes should be planned and designed with good private garden space.

McHarg said his book, Design with Nature is sharply critical of the French style of garden design, which he saw as a subjugation of nature, and is full of praise for the English style of garden design, which he saw as a precursor of his 'design with nature' philosophy.

McHarg's own plans for urban expansion projects also were more 'English' than 'French' in their geometry. He favored what became known as 'cluster development' with relatively dense housing set in a larger natural environment.

Throughout his life, McHarg sought a new union between humans and nature,^{[citation needed]} perhaps as a reaction against his childhood experience in the industrial city of Glasgow.

Ian McHarg died on March 5, 2001 at age eighty from pulmonary disease.