The Center for Cultural Landscapes advocates for a cultural landscapes approach that examines the relationship between a physical environment and the culture of the people who shape and use that environment. 

Cultural landscape thinking brings together the human and the non-human, the built and the bio-physical, the vernacular and the designed, all as part of a culturally constructed system. It is as concerned with people and the contested meanings they attach to landscapes as with the physical territory itself. This transdisciplinary research method acknowledges the cultures of all people connected to a place, including laborers, the enslaved, and the dispossessed. It understands the importance of a place both historically and in the present, recognizing a continuum of landscape change over time.

A cultural landscapes approach is increasingly embraced by preservation practice, for example in the National Park Service, UNESCO, and UNESCO’s Historic Urban Landscapes (HUL) recommendations. It addresses the need for new theories and innovative practices that situate places within contemporary debates about the proper form and meaning of sustainable communities, from the peri-urban condition to the shrinking, post-industrial city. This is happening on other continents, such as Europe and Australia, while theory and practice in the United States is hampered by professional standards that are in dire need of updating.