ABSTRACT

This chapter examines the practice of landscape ‘conventions’ as a means to understanding the perception and meaning of landscape in relation to law and justice. It is concerned with the concept of convention in relation to the concept of landscape in general and the European Landscape Convention in particular. The chapter also examines the meaning of landscape in ‘conventional’ practice and analyses this understanding of landscape to the meaning of landscape as perceived by many scientists, technicians and planners. It argues that the ‘conventional’ meaning of landscape does not lie in the establishment of a fixed, theoretically founded, definition from which planning is to proceed. The perception of landscape is therefore largely the outcome of public discursive practice, rather than scientific reasoning. The European Landscape Convention therefore provides a useful entry to understanding the idea of convention itself in relation to the practices that shape landscape.