"Twentieth century advances in physics, chemistry and biology have occasioned a shift in thinking about nature, which is now seen as complex and adaptive, and these advances have been carried over into the human sciences. Social processes – political, economic, urbanistic - are also conceived as nonlinear and dynamic, in short as emergent complex systems. Landscape architecture is uniquely positioned to contribute to this new paradigm, drawing both on ecological theory and on the implicit tradition of emergence and difference that has always featured in verbal and visual discourses with respect to gardens and cities."