ABSTRACT
The European Landscape Convention (ELC) defines landscape as ‘an area, as perceived by people, whose character is the result of the action and interaction of natural and/or human factors’ and landscape planning as ‘strong forward-looking action to enhance, restore or create landscapes’ (Council of Europe, 2000, Article 1). Signed in Florence in October 2000, the Convention reflects the now internationally recognised view that landscape is to be found and planned for everywhere and that given the accelerating pace of landscape change (associated with for example rising human population, growing levels of urbanisation, increasing resource demands and human induced climate change) proactive, future orientated and democratically informed landscape planning is urgently required. Although landscape design and landscape planning have been regarded as being part of the same continuum informed by common understandings, perhaps a key distinction that needs to be noted at the outset relates to matters of scale. While the former tends to be focussed on the detailed delivery of landscape intervention on a particular site, landscape planning is more strategic in its view and application and may relate to whole neighbourhoods, cities or regions and increasingly to national and transnational scales. Distinctions are also evident in terms of the types of intervention involved and methods used, and in the types of client and their motivations (Stiles, 1994). This chapter aims to provide a critical review of current landscape planning theory and
practice and to offer a reference point for future interdisciplinary research and research/practice exchange in this field. The account is inevitably rather partial and personal. It comes from a European spatial planning viewpoint and draws upon the author’s research and practice experience of integrating landscape planning perspectives into the theory and practice of spatial planning and vice versa. In order to set the context for the discussion, the chapter starts with a sketch of the evolution
of landscape planning from the early twentieth century to the present day, highlighting shifts in understanding and approaches over time. A key message here is that landscape planning has evolved from being a fragmented and at times schizophrenic field of activity to one which now can integrate a diversity of theoretical and methodological perspectives. This is followed by an exploration of the opportunities and challenges presented by integrated landscape planning approaches and associated research priorities with reference to protected area planning, urban landscape planning and landscape governance.
