Applications of Landscape Evaluation: A Planner\textquoterights 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.