Landscapes of Retreat, a book by Rosetta S. Elkin, is informed by land-based practice, observation, and paying close attention to the multifaceted changes occurring in landscapes and their impact on communities. The second edition of this award-winning book (originally published in 2022), which gained considerable attention within the landscape architecture community, has been released this year by K. Verlag. The research was supported by the Harvard Climate Solutions Fund and the Harvard Asia Center. Rosetta S. Elkin is an influential contributor—her notable publications include Plant Life: The Entangled Politics of Afforestation and Tiny Taxonomy: Individual Plants in Landscape Architecture. She is the Principal and Founder of Practice Landscape, a Director of the Landscape Architecture Program at Pratt Institute, and a Research Associate at the Harvard Arnold Arboretum. The motto, “thinking little instead of thinking big,” reflects Elkin’s practice of paying attention to the small, attending to plants and weaving stories that fuse nature and culture. This approach, explored in the book, shows how focusing on the seemingly small can enlarge a landscape by magnitude.
The main objective of the book is to challenge top-down responses to climate crises—responses that, more often than not, rush to restore the status quo without amending the current practices based on an informed situation. One of the uncomfortable questions Elkin raises in Landscapes of Retreat is: why do we insist on returning to “normal” after calamity, overriding the experience calling for adaptation? Why not face the issue with humility and allowing to learn by feedback, as in the practice of gardening?
Nijinomatsubara black pine coastal protection forest from the Edo era, Kyushu, Japan.
Retreat, Elkin argues, is not a failure—it’s a chance to grow with the landscape. It’s an act of respect for land left behind by climate-driven processes, and a way to engage meaningfully with its vulnerability. Letting go of one fixed approach opens the possibility for another, more responsive way in. While retreat can carry hope for the future, the push to return to the same old routines can feed fear, rooted in an experience we never really processed or negotiated.
Two key points Elkin makes: first, that the open-ended meaning of landscape helps avoid rigid, one-sided definitions—ambiguous and malleable, landscape is not an object but a lived experience, a relational space shaped by many forces and agents, “the earth animated by multispecies activity.” Second, retreat is an amendatory practice, a shift in patterns of inhabiting that responds to the process of the landscape—from climate dynamics to coastal erosion. Crucially, retreat is not the same as relocation. Relocation is a bureaucratic exercise in shifting bodies as objects, a landless manoeuvre that breaks ties with place, rituals, and cycles. Retreat, by contrast, carries the potential to reconnect, even if that means accepting risk.
Thawing permafrost in Niugtaq Village, Alaska, USA.
In the book, Elkin presents case studies from across the globe, embracing change and drawing out conditions of retreat. These conditions rely on a deeply rooted connection to place and its dynamics, resulting in a responsive approach. Community engagement in forms of ceremonial practices, effective management of local political organisations, facing risk and environmental degradation, and fostering a relationship with the past — all interact in a creative, intelligent, and empowered way of living with the environment.
New methodologies for design are needed for an evolving environment. Landscape studies is a design (by) practice, linked to “activity and consequence rather than formal products”. Creative research accepts “non-material influences to inspire material outcomes, a feature of landscape thinking”. The knowledge assembled to access the case studies includes interviews with local residents and Indigenous peoples, stories gathered from archives and oral histories, the study of geological and ecological conditions, non-human communities, and immersive enquiry into landscapes shaped by earthquake, avalanche, tsunami, thawing permafrost, and coastal erosion — all to explore alternative approaches to change.
Earthquake induced avalanche, Langtang Park, Central Himalaya, Nepal.
Each case study concludes with a reflection from Elkin, shaped by experience, asking more than knowing. More questions arise in frustration with each turn of the page. What can these complex dynamics, connected by disastrous events, offer to society at large? What role can a designer play? These distant places and their communities provide insights into harsh conditions, relationships, and our vulnerability, obscured in urbanised environments. How can a city-born, landless person forge a connection to land? What kind of experience is lost when one lives in a seemingly controlled, predictable, and sheltered environment? By turning toward the invisible yet most affected communities of climate change, relating with compassion, we can begin to feel the void in our understanding of the reciprocity between living and conditions. Where do we retreat to when there’s no land to embrace us?
While tending to the garden is one way of rekindling a relationship with the land, it doesn’t settle the fears surrounding our climate futures. Landscapes of Retreat speaks of the land left behind as settlements shift, adapting to the changing climate, but throughout the book, there’s an unmistakable call for a political shift in response to a shared climate, giving voice to the unheard. The book subtly raises the urgent issue of climate migration, which we are all part of. Retreat is an approach to building new communities that transcend national boundaries, founded on mutual respect and care.
