The course is an applied research that explores the complexity and interaction between urban environments and their communities, as well as the role of agency in design practice. Though a series of themes which explore key agents of the anthropogenic landscape, the course seeks to define the terms of the course’s title, as well as a contemporary role for landscape and the landscape architect in our rapidly transforming, often conflated local-global context. They includes local and international research and case studies that examine the influence of human constructs such as politics, culture and economics on typologies of landscape formation, process and meaning. The course also includes a theoretical review and ‘real world’ practice of methods of community engagement, both formal and informal, in a Hong Kong community that is faced with the possibility major environmental transformation due to changes in policy and the development and construction of significant infrastructure.