Our planet is 4.6 billion years old. It went through violent geological alterations, meteoroid strikes, violent volcanic eruptions and tectonic plate formation until 2.5 billion years ago, when it grew to its current size. Life on the planet dates back 3.8 billion years with the formation of single-celled organisms that evolved into multicellular organisms. Land forms were slowly engulfed by life in the form of plants and trees 475 million years ago, transforming the planet into the blue-green orb we recognize as Earth today. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay Homo sapiens has walked this planet for 200,000 years, which works out to just 0.004% of Earth's lifespan. In this insignificant period of time, our species has become the most dominant super species, surpassing the entire globe defining it with our activities. From small settlements along river valleys, our species leapt forward, evolving into the new type of species we have become today: Urban sapiens. With 7.4 billion humans living in cities, we are completely cut off from our natural habitat. On our relentless journey to global dominance, we have managed to force 2 to 3 million other species to change their livelihoods to adapt to our new habitat. However, not all species of the plant and animal kingdom have managed to cope with this drastic change and are slowly becoming extinct over time. Entire ecosystems are collapsing with this mass conversion, from forests to farms, from farms to suburban sprawls of overpopulated cities, transforming the biosphere into barren lands with piles of concrete towering over the once biodiverse habitat. Today, humanity laments the maddening loss of these natural systems, but as an urban species adapted to its new habitat of concrete jungles and modern technology, it finds it nearly impossible to reverse this wave of global urbanization, leaving behind the question of what will happen to non-adaptive natural ecosystems? Can we let them die in silence? Their death will give rise to another, more hostile natural system, with arid lands and inedible invasive species which is their response to our grand design. The emergence of these new systems has awakened our species to take a stand to protect the dying ecosystems that have fostered our survival, giving rise to environmental awareness movements by government bodies. The first step taken was the conservation of existing forest cover and the preservation of unaltered ecosystems. Laws have been enacted to protect against encroachment on these reservations. However, these solutions maintained the gap between nature and humans, increasing the gap between cities and forests. Humanity needed to give nature a chance to regain lost territory. Bringing nature back into urban spaces but at the same time allowing man to readjust to it was the solution. In the late 1970s, these problems gave prominence to the field of Landscape Architecture as it had the tool to integrate the needs of urban spaces with the needs of natural ecosystems. The previous perspective of landscapes as a mere foreground for houses, buildings and monuments seemed to transform into a new idea: landscape architecture, hand in hand with disciplines such as ecology and environmental sciences, became responsible for designing more thoughtful cities to the environment. In the name of aesthetics, landscape design was slowly being integrated into systems.