Why landscape architects should embrace landscape performance evaluation—The “market” perspective of landscape development

Abstract

This paper explores the necessity for landscape architects to adopt landscape performance evaluation through the lens of George Akerlof’s “market for lemons” theory. The “market for lemons” theory, which addresses the degradation of product quality due to information asymmetry and a lack of information, is applied to landscape architecture to highlight similar underlying challenges in the discipline and the industry. The lack of practices assessing the actual performance of built landscape projects prevents landscape architects from explicitly and persuasively communicating their true value to clients, resulting in a “market” saturated with low-investment projects that focus on low-value aspects of landscape architects’ work, or "lemons". This paper argues that implementing performance evaluation can mitigate these issues by providing empirical evidence of project benefits, thereby reducing information asymmetry and the lack of information, and fostering a market for high-quality landscape projects, or "peaches." We argue that by embracing performance evaluation, landscape architects can enhance the transparency of their projects’ performance and contribute to the disciplinary rigour. This shift is crucial for the profession’s growth and its ability to address contemporary environmental and socio-cultural challenges effectively.