ABSTRACT
Who benefits from landscape architecture? To move beyond the simple,
aspirational answer – everyone – raises further questions. Who do we think the
beneficiaries ought to be, and what is their place in the texture of society as a
whole? Planning and designing our future landscapes takes place in a cultural
context, and culture is not monolithic. So whose culture, whose landscapes, are
we conserving, enhancing or developing anew? The challenge in these terms
reflects the condition of the western world as we enter a new millennium. Do
we properly recognise the value of cultural landscapes, should we make explicit
the cultural assumptions implicit in the way we manage landscapes, and how
do we weigh the importance of developing new cultural expressions against
that of conserving the old? The European Landscape Convention, promulgated in
2000, lays emphasis on the contribution made by the landscape to the formation
of local cultures, stating that it is “a basic component of the European natural and
cultural heritage, contributing to human well-being and consolidation of the
European identity”. Yet recent approaches to heritage studies have highlighted
the contested histories of places, recognising that there may be multiple views
on the importance of a place’s heritage and those who have contributed to it.
