The scholarship of transdisciplinary action research: Toward a new paradigm for the planning and design professions

Abstract

This article draws on recent literature to articulate the challenge of framing research and practice in landscape architecture and planning in the face of the complexities and multiplicity of scales that characterize sustainability. It posits a framework for a scholarship of transdisciplinary action research (TDAR) as an emerging paradigm that propels landscape architectural and planning research into those complexities and scales. This framework informs a meta-analysis of the eight plural design case studies composing the bulk of this special issue. The conclusions posit a unified research paradigm responding to the complexities and multiplicity of scales of sustainability. © 2011 by the Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System.