Composition

Urban landscapes should be composed at each scale.

• At the large scale, there should be citywide policies for landform, vegetation, water, buildings and pavements.
• At the medium scale, of site planning, open space should be composed with buildings and existing landscapes – so that cities do not have SLOAP (Space Left Over After Planning)
• At the small scale of designing beautiful outdoor space for people to use, plants should be composed with water, landform, paving and buildings

Because capital cities, like London, tend to be large they have a particular need for landscape architecture and planning at the large scale.

The 5 primary compositional elements of landscape architecture are landform, water, vegetation, buildings and paving: