Applications of Landscape Evaluation: A Planner's View

Techniques of landscape evaluation have evolved in three broad categories: measurement techniques, preference techniques and consensus approaches, and consist in varying degrees of a mixture of classificatory description, usually fairly objective, and evaluative analysis, inevitably subjective. A major difficulty has been to develop techniques which can be easily replicated when used for the same purposes in different topographical circumstances. A further problem is that the skills required to adopt highly sophisticated techniques may not exist within the organizations of all but the best equipped planning agencies. It is therefore important to develop methods which can be readily understood and easily and widely applied. Are the objectives which have been cited for landscape evaluation realistic ? If one looks at current planning legislation and practice, the prospects are not good, either for existing designations or for the potential of new approaches in the planning systems now being introduced. ONE of the more remarkable features of the aftermath of the 'Countryside in I970' conferences and the vastly increased interest in our surroundings, which they and European Conservation Year stimulated, has been a plethora of new techniques for landscape evaluation. Perhaps this is not so apparent in America, where techniques have been developed and explored by social psychologists or behavioural scientists, but it is particularly evident in Britain where the development of these techniques has been linked with the preparation of development plans, a reflection perhaps of our relatively deep-rooted commitment to a more sophisticated land-use planning system.