The Imagined Landscape | Illumination

The Imagined Landscape. Story by Bob Thomas.

Nevertheless, Urban found that most farmers did acknowledge that environmental concerns were becoming more important. They understood too that, if the agricultural community did not learn to self-regulate chemical usage, farmers would probably be forced to deal with further government and industry regulations. "Adoption of conservation practices, in this sense, is not due to a high value placed on water quality and the integrity of the ecosystem," Urban says, "but rather on a farmer's independence."

William Graf, professor and chair of geography at the University of South Carolina, says such insights are becoming increasingly important to geographers. By investigating the way in which an environmental system changes over time, scholars are learning that human influences are so important that it is not possible to get a clear picture of the system by simply studying natural processes.

"One has to have a clear picture of both working together, and I think Professor Urban demonstrates the way to do that. His ability to combine two approaches, one from the social science side and one from the natural side, is really effective," Graf says.

In this regard, Urban represents a new generation of geographers, he adds.

"Researchers in the 1960s and 1970s were trained to be analytic. In other words, take the system apart piece by piece and explain how each individual piece works. The newer generation of researchers is schooled in approaching things from a much more systematic standpoint," he says. "Frankly, the environmental and social issues we face globally and here at home are so complex that I'm afraid we can't take them apart piece by piece. The whole-cloth picture is the way we are going to come to some understanding of the costs and benefits of decisions we make."

For his part, Urban has taken this global perspective to heart. Recently, for example, he accepted a Fulbright grant to lecture for a year at Northeastern University in Shenyang, China, where he is teaching three courses -- environmental ethics, sustainable environmental management and environmental philosophy.

At Northeastern, Urban says, he's addressing a new generation, a modernizing cohort looking to reverse China's environmental status quo. He is confident the Communist government will give him a free hand in his lectures, although he may touch on some delicate issues. Urban says he's also enjoying a loosening up in student-teacher dialogue, saying China has come a long way in the last 20 years in allowing more open discussions. "I do not think there are significant government restrictions in the classroom," Urban says. "Because of this, interactions with students -- in the safe environment of the classroom -- can be an ideal way to have difficult discussions about thorny environmental issues."

Published by the Office of Research.