How do people react to the visual character of their surroundings? What can planners do to improve the aesthetic quality of these surroundings? Too often in environmental design, visual quality--aesthetics--is misunderstood as only a minor concern, dependent on volatile taste and thus undefinable. Yet a substantial body of research indicates the importance of visual quality in the environment to the public and has uncovered systematic patterns of human response to visual attributes of the built environment. Efforts to understand environmental aesthetics have been undertaken by investigators from such diverse fields as landscape architecture, environmental psychology, geography, philosophy, architecture, and city planning. As a result the relevant information is scattered and not readily available to professionals and policy makers. The book brings together classic and new contributions by distinguished workers in different disciplines. It explores theory and data on preferences in the visual environment, and also addresses the practical application of aesthetic criteria in design, planning and public policy. Promising directions for future research are identified.

Consists of papers previously published in the Journal of environmental psychology.

Providing a fresh approach to the theory of design, Landscape: Pattern, Perception and Process synthesizes planning, design and ecology and shows a new view of where design can develop. The book brings together the work and subject areas of a range of disciplines including psychologists, philosophers, geologists, ecologists, cultural geographers, foresters, urban planners and landscape architects and synthesizes all these together. Since many landscape and environmental problems require multi-disciplinary approaches for their solution, this book demonstrates how the best integration can be achieved. Highly illustrated, it contains examples from North America, Canada, Europe and Australasia. Glossary, references and further reading provide the reader with guidance and back-up resources.

This book explores the relationship between the sciences of representation and the strategy of landscape valorisation. The topic is connected to the theme of the image of the city, which is extended to the territory scale and applied to case studies in Italy’s Umbria region, where the goal is to strike a dynamic balance between cultural heritage and nature. The studies demonstrate how landscape represents an interpretive process of finding meaning, a product of the relationships between mankind and the places in which it lives. The work proceeds from the assumption that it is possible to describe these connections between environment, territory and landscape by applying the Vitruvian triad, composed of Firmitas (solidity), Utilitas (utility) and Venustas(beauty). The environment, the sum of the conditions that influence all life, represents the place’s solidity, because it guarantees its survival. In turn, territory is connected to utility, and through its etymological meaning is linked to possession, to a domain; while landscape, as an “area perceived by people”, expresses the search for beauty in a given place, the process of critically interpreting a vision.

This book provides guidelines for those pursuing landscape projects based on integrative concepts – interdisciplinarity and transdisciplinarity – whether they are members of an integrative research team or individuals working on a problem that demands integration. They must define terminology, choose appropriate methodologies, overcome epistemological barriers and cope with the high expectations of some stakeholders while encouraging others to participate at all.

Landscape is a vital, synergistic concept which opens up ways of thinking about many of the problems which beset our contemporary world, such as climate change, social alienation, environmental degradation, loss of biodiversity and destruction of heritage. As a concept, landscape does not respect disciplinary boundaries. Indeed, many academic disciplines have found the concept so important, it has been used as a qualifier that delineates whole sub-disciplines: landscape ecology, landscape planning, landscape archaeology, and so forth. In other cases, landscape studies progress under a broader banner, such as heritage studies or cultural geography. Yet it does not always mean the same thing in all of these contexts. The Routledge Companion to Landscape Studies offers the first comprehensive attempt to explore research directions into the many uses and meanings of ‘landscape’. The Companion contains thirty-nine original contributions from leading scholars within the field, which have been divided into four parts: Experiencing Landscape; Landscape Culture and Heritage; Landscape, Society and Justice; and Design and Planning for Landscape. Topics covered range from phenomenological approaches to landscape, to the consideration of landscape as a repository of human culture; from ideas of identity and belonging, to issues of power and hegemony; and from discussions of participatory planning and design to the call for new imaginaries in a time of global and environmental crisis. Each contribution explores the future development of different conceptual and theoretical approaches, as well as recent empirical contributions to knowledge and understanding. Collectively, they encourage dialogue across disciplinary barriers and reflection upon the implications of research findings for local, national and international policy in relation to landscape. This Companion provides up-to-date critical reviews of state of the art perspectives across this multifaceted field, embracing disciplines such as anthropology, archaeology, cultural studies, geography, landscape planning, landscape architecture, countryside management, forestry, heritage studies, ecology, and fine art. It serves as an invaluable point of reference for scholars, researchers and graduate students alike, engaging in the field of landscape studies.