ABSTRACT
Whole landscape planning is increasingly emerging as a significant idea in the literature on sustainable rural environments. Aesthetic, ecological and amenity perspectives on landscapes often place an emphasis on values and characteristics such as cohesiveness, connectivity and integration between land uses. In reality, however, a fragmented pattern of landholding may exist, across which different landowners and occupiers may pursue very different and often conflicting land management strategies. This often results in discontinuous and degraded ecological and amenity networks and highly discordant features in the landscape. This chapter critically evaluates how recent changes in the policy environment for agriculture and forestry, and emergent initiatives for more integrated landscape management, may contribute to a climate within which whole landscape management may be implemented across increasingly large tracts of land. Such an outcome is by no means a foregone conclusion, and the significance of initiatives that attempt to vision such future landscapes is an important complement to the contributions of the scientific and design disciplines to the whole debate over the feasibility, look, function and accessibility of sustainable rural landscapes.
