Of landscape quality and landscape character

The evolution of landscape assessment in the UK and it's potential application in Austria

Authors

  • Julia Michlmayr-Gomenyuk Vienna University of Technology Department of Landscape Architecture
  • Prof. Dr. Richard Stiles Vienna University of Technology Department of Landscape Architecture

Keywords:

landscape quality, landscape character, European Landscape Convention, landscape, naturpark, nature conservation

Abstract

Landscape, as the European Landscape Convention defines it, is “an area as perceived by people”. But it is not just people as individuals who perceive landscape. People also create institutions and organisations and they in turn have their own perceptions, especially of something as complex and multi-dimensional as landscape. This paper will, amongst other things consider the way in which the perceptions embodied in the terms of reference of institutions and organisations influence the way in which they approach landscape.

Author Biographies

  • Julia Michlmayr-Gomenyuk, Vienna University of Technology Department of Landscape Architecture

    assistent

    e-mail: julia.michlmayrgomenyuk@tuwien.ac.at

  • Prof. Dr. Richard Stiles, Vienna University of Technology Department of Landscape Architecture

    professor

    e-mail: richard.stiles@tuwien.ac.at

References

Burke, 2008

It should also be noted that British National Parks correspond only to Category 5 of the IUCN’s classification of landscape protection areas, and are thus equivalent in their protection category, if not scale, to the Austrian Naturparks.

“What’s in a name?” asks Shakespeare’s Romeo - but he found out to his cost that whether you were called ‘Montague’ of ‘Capulet’ was indeed a matter of life and death for ‘star-crossed lovers’.

Fines, 1968

Linton, 1968

Note: Here too the term used was ‘scenic resources’ and not landscape.

Robinson et al, 1976

Countryside Commission 1987, CCD 18 p. 3

See: http://countryscape.org/node/296

Rodwell et. Al. 1991 p. 3

Since the beginning of the 1990s conservation organisations in Great Britain had been undergoing considerable reorganisation, to a large extent in relation to efforts towards devolution. The Countryside Commission was originally responsible for England and Wales was split into two, with the Welsh arm merging with the part of the nature conservation body responsible for Wales to form the ‘Countryside Council for Wales’. In Scotland a new joint authority ‘Scottish Natural Heritage’ was also formed. In England the fields of rural conservation, including landscape, and nature conservation initially remained the responsibility of separate authorities, the Countryside Commission and English Nature.

Tilzey, 2000

Countryside Commission, 1993

King & Clifford, 1985

Jessel and Tobias, 2002, 218

Becker, 1998, 56ff

Becker, 1998

cf. Wille, 2008, 40

Brands, 2006, 15

Swanwick’s 2002

Published

2014-11-01

Issue

Section

Articles

How to Cite

Of landscape quality and landscape character: The evolution of landscape assessment in the UK and it’s potential application in Austria. (2014). 4D Journal of Landscape Architecture and Garden Art, 36, 2-15. https://journal.uni-mate.hu/index.php/4D/article/view/5700

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