One fundamental question for 'digital landscape architecture' is: “What are the roles (and pros and cons) of digital approaches in design?” In this paper I describe a simple six-part cyclical framework which may help to locate instrumental digital aspects of design processes in a slightly larger conceptual and cybernetic view. The cycle is represented on a simple circle, with six nodes: (1) inhabitation; (2) perception/measurement; (3) analysis/needs; (4) design; (5) representation/communication; and (6) implementation/construction. The cycle starts with inhabitation, which leads to perception, needs analysis and design, which is communicated and then built, which changes the world and we continue to inhabit, perceive, analyze, design, represent, and build a new … It is the circular causal relationship that makes this view ‘cybernetic’: having to do with feedback loops in which some action causes some change which causes some action, and so on. Each of the steps in this cycle, from inhabitation to construction, is colored by and increasingly dependent upon digital technologies, including computation, simulation, visualization, fabrication and algorithmic processes. In the body of this paper I examine each step and its technological needs and opportunities in more detail.