The master plan developed at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst MLA program seeks to create an effective self-organizing system. It does so through integration with urban ecological flows (people, water, time, economics and other urban inputs). This vision works on multiple scales from local to regional and beyond. The approach implies a great sensitivity to sites and the willingness to engage in design as a continual conversation and experiment rather than a mandated solution that will remain forever static. The strategy is rooted in site fundamentals and the embrace of the transformative nature of landscape to continually meet the needs of human and earth systems processes.
