Offering expert advice on how people – farmers, communities, families – live in, with and from their landscapes.
This expertise area uses a range of techniques to evaluate the relationships between people and their places and landscapes. We combine work with stakeholders with quantitative – sometimes geo-spatial – approaches, to evaluate current system states and identify pathways and trajectories for future development.
Our work in this area can include:
- 'food-scapes' – research applying a land-use (planning) perspective to agriculture and food
- 'energy-scapes'– research into bioenergy, opportunities and threats for renewable energy/under the renewable energy transition
- research that employs metropolitan landscape approaches to evaluate peri-urban conflict and opportunities for resolving them
- regional development, where we harness landscape/place approaches for regional transitions, as well as companies’ and government agencies’ ‘social license to operate’.
Our methods range from quantitative (spatial analysis, remote sensing, mapping; econometrics) to social research focused on industry and community engagement.
PROJECT | 2021
A sustainable future for burials and cremations
A look into the current and emerging practices for the interment industry and how sustainability factors into body disposal options.
PROJECT | 2018-2020
Community perceptions of hybrid solar biomass: the potential for social license and social acceptance
Finding out communities' attitudes towards biomass will help to plan renewable energy innovations in the Riverina and Hunter Valley regions.
PROJECT | 2014-2018
The politics of place identity in peri-urban environments
What role for productive farming landscapes? A case study of Wollondilly Shire, NSW, Australia.
IMPACT STORY
Saving the systems: enabling regional adaptation to climate change
ISF researchers use systems thinking to help guide regional New South Wales to identify and plan for the flow-on effects of climate change.
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IMPACT STORY
Saving the systems: enabling regional adaptation to climate change
ISF researchers use systems thinking to help guide regional New South Wales to identify and plan for the flow-on effects of climate change.
PROJECT | 2019-2021
Planning innovation: a collaboration between ISF and the UTS Landscape Architecture group
This pilot project used Metropolitan Sydney as an empirical lens to examine the complexities that emerge when a neoliberal economic paradigm and an authoritarian urban planning and governance regime meet catastrophic anthropogenic climate change. The project built on recent critical scholarship in resilience theory, ecology, planning and design. Case studies revealed how creative planners and designers in Sydney have found ways forward in the current planning systems. Based on findings from these case studies, the project aimed to offer guidance on how, in an existing planning system and in the absence of any triggers for radical change, planners and designers might operate in creative and adaptive ways to achieve outcomes more in tune with what the future might have in store for cities like Sydney.
Location: Greater Metropolitan Sydney
Client: UTS-internal collaboration
Partner: UTS:DAB
PROJECT | 2016-2020
Environmental governance in a post-conflict setting for the indigenous peoples of the Colombian amazon
The Colombian Amazon is home to indigenous peoples in critical danger. This is because the region is currently under pressure from complex drivers: climate change, development policies driven by global markets, and, recently, the implications of the peace accord between the national government and the guerrilla group FARC–EP, after 52 years of armed conflict. These drivers will require indigenous groups to adapt to new social, political and ecological circumstances.
This research analyses the impacts of the peace accord on the regional governance in the Colombian Amazon. Using a social-ecological systems perspective, it explores elements such as regime shift, resilience, and institutions, for indigenous peoples to navigate in this new scenario. This research was a PhD project of ISF student Paloma Vejarano Alvez.
Location: Colombian Amazon
Client: PhD Scholarship (COLCIENCIAS)
Partner: National University of Colombia
Researcher: Paloma Vejarano
PROJECT | 2014-2016
Mapping Sydney’s foodsheds
Capturing the flow of food to ensure Sydney's food production is resilient and secure into the future.
PROJECT | 2009
Australian Cotton Futures: Building Capacity for Resilient and Adaptive Communities
ISF was asked by the Cotton Catchment Communities CRC to explore how cotton industry representatives and members of the community see the future of cotton in Australia.
The project sought to: develop baseline knowledge to support a visioning process with the industry and community representatives; identify key drivers for cotton's future; compare the industry and community visions; explore at what scale (local, regional, national) a visioning process would be most appropriate; and design and conduct community forums where community members can feed their ideas, concerns and beliefs into a shared industry/community vision for cotton in Australia.
The research found that community members feel cotton has a strong place in the social, environmental and economic life of their communities. It also revealed that the cotton industry’s vision of 2029 was out of step with future challenges highlighted by the community. The research recommended that the industry include community visions in future planning to remain a mainstay in cotton communities.
Location: Regional NSW
Client: Cotton CRC
Researcher: Roel Plant
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