ABSTRACT
The study of regionalism in environmental design concerns the properties of cultural landscapes of regions rather than buildings. Natural regions have been defined on the basis of climate, vegetation, and soils, and their landscapes have been related to geomorphology and regional geology. The cultural landscape of regions is the result of the interaction of physiographic regions, resources, populations and their cultures, and history. The persistence of strong cultural orders depends on conservatism, that is, tradition-oriented people unwilling to alter that which has worked and is time-honored. Interest in regionalism and its use to organize knowledge have had ups and downs generally, in geography, in environmental design, and so on. The future of regionalism generally, and of environmental design specifically, depends not only on unpredictable broad social and cultural developments but also on economic and political aspects of implementation.
