One difference between doctors and stagecoach drivers is that the latter have a clearer view of where they are going. Staging posts can be defined but health is a nebulous concept. Doctors must use the relative notion of "improvement', instead of any absolute measures of fitness, obesity, blood pressure or whatever. Yet without a vision of what constitutes "a healthy person' a doctor would have as much difficulty as an environmental designer without a concept of "a good place'. To recommend a course of action, doctors must have ideas about human behaviour, about the environment, about the look of a healthy person and about the archetypal patterns of treatment. Environmental designers must have comparable knowledge of places. Diagnosis comes before treatment.
A landscape requiring treatment.
