Evaluating Landscape for Shared Values: Tools, Principles, and Methods

Abstract

The aim of the paper is to discuss the need for innovation in the landscape policies that were proclaimed by the European Landscape Convention (ELC), which promotes a change from policies stressing conservation to policies stressing a management approach to planning new landscapes. This change focuses on the need to define a new methodological approach to evaluate and promote landscape values as well as to define a process leading to shared values in reference to landscape. This article begins its research with the recent implementation of the ELC in some European Countries. On this basis, it presents an alternative definition of landscape, discusses the role of landscape evaluation, and identifies the different types of values involved in landscape.

Key Words:

• Landscape evaluation
• landscape policy
• European Landscape Convention
• spatial planning
• sustainable development

Acknowledgements

An earlier version of this paper was discussed at the AESOP Congress, The Dream of the Greater Europe, Vienna, 13 – 17 July 2005. Although this paper is the result of collective reflection, sections under the headings: ‘Landscape: Evolution in European Strategies; Experimentation in Europe: Innovations and Weaknesses; Evaluating Landscapes: European Experiences' are mainly the work of Angioletta Voghera, and sections under the headings: ‘The Role of Landscape Assessment; What Values, What Assessment?; Towards a Governance of European Landscapes' are mainly the work of Grazia Brunetta.

Notes

1 Some excellent examples are the Regional Territorial Plans of the Emilia Romagna, Liguria and Valle d'Aosta regions. The New Italian Code for Heritage and Landscape (2004, 2006) innovates the traditional approach including the entire dimension of the territory's landscape (natural, rural, urban, and suburban spaces).

2 For a critical review of some attempts to justify conservation policies based on cultural resources, see Moroni (2002, 2006).

3 See Lichfield (1996, 1998) that proposes Community Impact Evaluation, which allows people to handle assessment issues both from a technical and a communicative perspective. It allows people to manage such complex values in planning as use values, non-use values, existence values, intrinsic values and also market and cost values.