Urban Residents’ Vision of Nearby Riparian Landscapes

Parker, Corey

Riparian landscapes continue to disappear from urban environments even when protected by buffers and corridor plans. The common causes of urban riparian degradation include non-point-source pollution, alteration of natural flow regimes, and clearing and/or alterations by residents living adjacent to these corridors. The least understood of these causes is manipulation of the riparian landscape by residents. To preserve existing riparian landscapes it is important to understand and predict human behaviors that adversely affect these landscapes.

Bourassa (1990) suggests that human behavior in the landscape results from biological traits, cultural perspectives, and individual experiences. The biological traits seem to explain the agreed-upon general human preferences for natural landscapes over urban landscapes (Ulrich 1986). Yet some homeowners persist in clearing and altering the riparian landscapes in their backyard to make them appear more orderly and less natural. These behaviors fit the results by Nassauer (1995) that show that homeowners preferred orderly, neat landscapes rather than "messy" natural-appearing landscapes for home landscapes. This preference may be a result of wishing to conform to cultural norms or a desire for individual control of the landscape. However in the only published study of an urban riparian corridor, Kaplan (1977) found mixed results as to human preference for order or messiness.

Why do some homeowners harm riparian landscapes? Cooper-Marcus (1995) suggests that the home environment is mainly a personal expression of the homeowner, and thus the backyard may be also. Perhaps people clear, clean-up and "landscape" adjacent riparian landscapes to bring them into conformity with their personal envisioned landscape. While the personal expressions of envisioned landscapes are as varied as the individuals, this study proposes that people express their individuality four common ways: territorial behavior, cultivation, control and order, and an attempt to keep natural landscape elements at a distance.

Residents living adjacent to an urban riparian corridor were asked to describe what would be their ideal appearance for their backyard by arranging pre-configured landscape elements on a base map of their property. These "vision" maps and their comments were analyzed to determine if any relationships between residents' behavior in the riparian corridor and the idealized home landscape could be identified.

The diversity in the styles of the vision maps, the comments supporting the processes of cultivation and control, and the actual physical landscapes suggest that individual expression may play a large role in the motivation of human behavior in riparian landscapes. While a significant number of the comments were similar, the style, design layout and landscape elements chosen of the vision maps were radically different. Participants expressed themselves primarily through cultivation and control of the backyard. These processes of control and cultivation usually influence the riparian landscape adversely. The character of the riparian edge in the urban residents' backyards did not correspond to healthy riparian ecosystems.