Sonic environmental aesthetics and landscape research

The environmental aesthetics literature has primarily focused on the aesthetic qualities and values of landscapes. Within this scholarship, there has been a modest but steady advancement towards explicitly attending to the aesthetic experience of landscape sounds. In this paper, I review the theoretical and applied sonic aesthetics literature pertinent to landscape research, and identify some existing weaknesses. In particular, I demonstrate that there is an ongoing tendency to limit discussions to what is sonically pleasing or displeasing within a given landscape, which, I argue, provides a limited point of entry through which to consider the full scope of landscape sounds. I then turn to offer some ways to address these weaknesses—notably through what I term the development of a ‘sensitive ear’, and through field recording strategies—in the hope that this will allow scholars to better enfold sonic environmental aesthetics within future theoretical and applied landscape research.     

Traditional irrigation and its importance to the tourist landscape of Valais, Switzerland

The contemporary landscape of the Central and Haut Valais, Switzerland, is partially a product of the ancient but extant bisse irrigation system. The current principal conduit network extends for approximately 760 kilometres, whilst the distribution network stretches for over 25 000 kilometres. Both systems have had a major impact on the Valaisan landscape. Besides this, traditional distribution techniques (ruissellement) have also altered dramatically the landscape of specific locations in the Valais. The contribution of bisses to the local milieu has been recognized by the federal, cantonal and communal governments. All three levels of government have provided incentives to farmers and local irrigation institutions to conserve traditional farming practices where appropriate and protect traditional methods of irrigation. This paper describes the landscape impact of traditional and modern irrigation practices and the instruments available for protecting these practices. It also appraises the success of these interventions and examines what future role bisses might play in protecting the current agricultural landscape, which has become so crucial to the success of summer tourism.     

Introduction to a special issue: the future of landscape characterisation,and the future character of landscape – between space,time, history,place and nature

Abstract

In any discussion of landscape characterisation the elephant in the room is the question of just what is landscape? Another way of putting this question is to simply ask: ‘How would you characterise landscape?’ What this implies is that there is a certain circularity in landscape characterisation because, through the very act of characterising landscape, one is also defining what one means by landscape. The European Landscape Convention’s definition of landscape as ‘an area, as perceived by people, whose character is the result of the action and interaction of natural and/or human factors’ suggests a similar circularity because the character of an area, as it results from the action of natural and/or human factors, is dependent upon human perception, which is presumably also, in addition, one of the human factors acting upon the landscape. This circularity, or ‘circulating reference’, to use Bruno Latour’s term, is fundamental to Denis Cosgrove’s analysis of the origin of the modern concept of landscape as scenic space, and his analysis, we would suggest, helps explain some of the questions raised in this special issue concerning landscape characterisation and the future character of landscape .     

土著的前卫——大地艺术视野中的乡土聚落

大地艺术本是20世纪60年代源于西方的一个艺术流派,它的源头是杜尚的观念艺术,杜尚认为世界和生活的本身就是艺术。在此基础上深入发展就产生了以广阔的自然元素为基本创作材料的大地艺术。然而,这个一贯以“后现代”艺术流派自居的艺术形式却被笔者与“乡土”这个“土著”的词联系了起来,是不是有点风马牛不相及?原因是这样的:前不久在安徽湖北一带的民居调研中,在去往目的地的山路上,我们看到夕阳下沿着山腰层层跌落的梯田和远处隐约可见的村落,突然有一种不可名状的激动——这不就是一个出色的大地艺术作品么!于是回来后,笔者翻阅了有关书籍,并结合调研相关材料,希望能够探索乡土聚落中体现出的大地艺术的内容与特征,以此为契机,深入剖析乡土景观的艺术根源与社会根源,进而为我国现代景观设计和乡土聚落研究提供一个新的视野。     

On the unrecognized significance of the ephemeral landscape

This paper argues that the ephemeral components of the landscape have a significant, but hitherto unrecognized, effect upon the way in which it is perceived and evaluated. These ephemeral components, or landscape ephemera, are those which change with the weather, the seasons, the growth and decay of plants, the choice of farm crop, and so on. Their nature is explored, and they are contrasted with the more permanent components of the landscape, such as hedges, trees, buildings, etc. The importance of these changes is discussed in relation to landscape preference theories and the work of artists in various media. It is argued that landscape regulation and the landscape literature have largely ignored such changes, and it is tentatively suggested that further research and discussion on the topic might have some interesting results for landscape evaluation and planning.     

A landscape cannot be a homeland

What is the problem for which landscape is the answer? In this paper, I offer a response to this question, first posed at a meeting of landscape researchers in Brussels in 2011. I argue that the problem can be defined as ontopology, or what I call here homeland thinking, and I propose that a landscape cannot be a homeland. The salience of landscape as a critical term instead involves modes of thinking and feeling that chafe against invocations of homeland as a site of existential inhabitation, as a locus of sentiment and attachment, and a wellspring of identity. The paper explores the connections between ideas of landscape and homeland through discussions of the European Landscape Convention, phenomenology and the term homeland itself. I conclude by arguing that a landscape must be understood as a kind of dislocation or distancing from itself. There are, after all, no original inhabitants.     

What is western about western regional science?

After defining regional science as social science with a sense of place, I examine alternative speculations about the meaning of a western sense of place, concluding that it is about a relationship with a unique landscape, one characterized by extremes in climate and geology, great distances between places, and a colorful past of commodity extraction. But visions of this relationship with the landscape are in conflict. I then search for the western in western regional science by examining the residential location of members of the Western Regional Science Association (WRSA), and the place names (or lack thereof) in titles of conference papers, and conclude that the most western aspect of western regional science is the field trip or landscape tourism nature of the annual meeting. The paper ends with an appeal to expand the western sense of place in the WRSA.Based on a presidential address to the 35th annual meeting of the Western Regional Science Association, February 25–29, 1996, in Napa, California     

Residents’ sense of place and landscape perceptions at the rural-urban interface

Rural residents have different expectations concerning what the rural landscape should be like and what it should be used for. This is especially the case at the rural-urban interface, where the characteristics of rural and urban landscapes have become blurred. In this article, the concept of sense of place is used to explore the relationship between humans and landscape at the rural-urban fringe. Based on a quantitative survey data set, this article examines how the landscape perceptions of local residents can be understood from the basis of their sense of place in Nurmijärvi, a municipality located close to the Helsinki Metropolitan Area in southern Finland. A factor analysis revealed four clusters: Socially connected, Weak bonds, Roots and resources and Committed to place. The clusters differed by their socio-economic profiles as well as their sense of place. The Roots and resources cluster differed most of the other clusters, but in general the differences between the clusters in general landscape perceptions were relatively small. Although a strong sense of place is often assumed to lead to care of place, the willingness to contribute to the landscape did not differ significantly between the clusters. In addition the study revealed the existence of two different approaches to landscape in the rural-urban interface: landscape as a scenery and landscape as a dwelling place.     

Making sense of environmental issues and landscape representations in the media

In my brief for the state-of-the-art review, 1 was asked to provide a summary of research which addressed the question of what role the mass media were playing in influencing people's attitudes and values towards landscapes and nature. This paper is not, however, an edited version of my original submission. There are two reasons why I have taken the opportunity to write a new essay. First, much of the work I reviewed formed a substantial part of my paper in the edition of Landscape Research which focused on Landscapes as television and popular culture(Burgess, 1987). Second, in the last eighteen months there has been new work I would like to discuss.     

纪念场所

纪念场所是一种看似矛盾的存在,因为它展现了人类灵魂中一种最本质、也最难以捉摸的挣扎心理：一方面要铭记那些曾经属于人类的事物和人类曾经的样子,一方面又试图将这些记忆全部抹去。但总的看来,我们明显倾向于前者。我们有责任去铭记,同时也需要（有权利和义务）与逝去的人建立联系,一种比主观意识到的联系更为恒久的联系。我们试图寻找一处比他们在世时的居所更恒久的场所,并试图保存记忆;而保存记忆的地方也应该是具体而真实存在的,能够成为景观上的印记。     

Upland landscapes: values and prospects

Upland scenery has been particularly valued by the British since the time of the Picturesque landscape movement and the Romantic literary movement. More recent active mountain and moorland recreation has increased interest in upland landscapes without diminishing the value attached to their beauty.

The key elements of upland scenery are open moorland, fell or mountain on high ground; pastoral land; and deep ravines along which streams flow. The variety of each place arises from the variations of these elements and the relation between them.

The wild bareness of open moorland vegetation covering skylines is a key characteristic of British uplands. Coniferous forestry is being established across large areas of moorland; whether some areas should be kept free of forestry does not at present seem to be a definite part of land strategy.

New agricultural grass intakes are enclosing and fragmenting some moors, for instance Exmoor, the North Yorks Moors and parts of mid Wales. The impact of such intakes on scenery is greatest where the junction between moorland and pastoral land is hard-edged or where land forms are simple.

A strong pattern of stone walls or hedgebanks encloses fields in some regions. In some areas field sizes are increasing without breaking up the network of boundaries. Elsewhere traditional field patterns are being replaced by a less defined spread of grassland enclosed by fences. This reduces the humanised appearance of the landscape and is a change that is all but irreversible. Vernacular buildings too are slowly becoming fewer. And many small deciduous woods, often originally features of designed picturesque landscapes, are declining or being converted into coniferous woodland of geometric outline.

The impact of such changes varies from place to place. Sometimes change which could be beautiful detracts from a landscape only because it is initiated without sensibility to the appearance of that landscape. Sometimes a place is so appealing that maintenance of its present character may be valid.     

Landscapes of defence

This paper introduces a set of four papers that deal with aspects of 'landscapes of defence'—landscapes shaped or otherwise materially affected by formal or informal defensive strategies to achieve recognizable social, political or cultural goals. It comprises three main sections. The first surveys various ways in which strategies to achieve defence against other people or against nature have shaped the landscape. The second section surveys research on human territoriality, a kindred area of inquiry, to see what lessons can be learned about the nature of defended spaces and places in human affairs. The final section introduces the four papers in this theme issue. These deal respectively with the landscapes associated with four 'nuclear oases' (Blowers), current planning and urban design approaches to security in the urban environment (Oc and Tiesdell), children's fears and concerns about places in the city centre (Woolley et al.), and the spatial significance of military defence landscapes in the UK (Tivers).     

沈阳市铁西区卫工河沿岸景观更新策略

简要描述了卫工河的历史沿革,分析了卫工河景观更新面临的问题,进而提出了生态水系景观、工业文化景观、人文场所景观三个更新策略,以及在景观要素、景观空间、景观组织等方面的更新方法。     

Reasserting the importance of qualitative methods in planning

The goals of this paper are to suggest what is lost by ignoring field research and to reassert the significance of qualitative research methods to the field of urban and regional planning. I assume that methodological choices between quantitative and qualitative methods are a matter of determining which research method is best suited to capture a particular ‘data slice’. Research methods are techniques to retrieve data and carry no theoretical baggage to bias their data set. To illustrate the significance of field research I discuss three points. First, I illustrate some of the technical strengths and weaknesses associated with qualitative research approaches, and highlight three important issues that are lost without field research methods: a link between planning researchers and the people they plan for, quality of life issues, and informal/illegal activity. Second, I propose that by pursuing a mixed-method research methodology, some of the issues lost by ignoring field research methods can be recaptured. Finally, I give an example of how I researched informal street vendors as part of the urban landscape through a mixed-method approach. This paper argues that until planning research re-evaluate what is being lost by their pursuit of quantitative methods, critical problems in the social realm will continue to lack the attention they need from urban and regional planners.Why all that obsession with Method? Because it was through Method that you arrived at the solution... (Umberto Eco, Foucault's Pendulum, 1989, p. 384)     

'Landscape' in the Japanese language: Conceptual differences and implications for landscape research

Increasing emphasis on discussing environmental issues at a global level and a rising number of international research projects make it necessary to locate key concepts of international discourses in their cultural context and to pay attention to possible cultural differences. The aim of this paper is to analyse the concepts behind different terms used in Japanese to describe 'landscape' in order to provide an example of the equivalence problem, which is a crucial issue in inter-cultural discourses. The results of ten interviews with theoretically sampled participants suggest that the two terms Fukei and Keikan coexisting in Japanese usage, represent two distinguishable landscape concepts with different meanings and images of landscape as well as different discursive contexts. This indicates a lack of equivalence in two ways. First, the two landscape concepts in contemporary Japanese differ and are not interchangeable. Second, this situation raises the question, whether it is possible to identify terms in other languages that are comparable to the differentiations found in the Japanese language. The implications for landscape research resulting from the different concepts of landscape in Japanese found in this study are discussed.     

有效、清晰地传递信息——园林表现技法的教学思考

将园林表现技法看作是一种绘画技法的教学方式使园林表现图偏离了其本质,误导了学生的学习方向,是该课程教与学的一个严重误区.结合园林规划设计流程对园林表现图的特性进行解析,界定了“表现”的定义,揭示了园林表现图的本质是一种用于交流的技术语言,提出了绘制园林表现图的基本原则:有效、清晰地传递信息,并以其为核心重新设定园林表现技法课的教学形式和内容,从根本上纠正教学方法,使园林表现技法与园林专业紧密结合.     

Hardscrabble Heritage: The Ruined Blackhouse and Crofting Landscape as Heritage from below

Abstract

This article explores a particular materialisation of the relationship between landscape, heritage and identity. Understood as heritage from below, the emphasis is on the role of non-elites in the constitutive processes of landscape and the place/space of the past in the present. The landscape at the heart of this study is that of the ruined blackhouse, an intrinsic part and mnemonic of crofting identity in the Scottish Highlands. These quotidian and mundane spaces are constituted by routine habits which, together with the material ‘left-behinds’ of a past way of life, comprise landmarks to place making from below and within. For members of the crofting community, the blackhouse is understood and experienced as inheritance from the past and source of everyday affectual and sensual entanglements. This rural ruin is thus an intrinsic part of the crofting taskscape, the past drawn into the present as a form of cultural heritage from below.     

曲水以水胜闻 # ——徽州丰南曲水园复原与理水造境探析

曲水园是明中期徽州丰南吴氏的私家园林,以曲水胜闻,是徽州私家园林理水造境的典范。探究曲水园理水造境方式,先通过释读《曲水园记》和《曲水园杂咏》,考证复原曲水园面貌;再从造园源流出发分析选址特点,探究理水造景的具体实施路径,阐明曲水园的造园思想。研究发现,曲水园通过借引活水、山水相依的构景以及随曲合方、以景悟道的造境手法营造园林山水环境,以其独特的理水方式构成了因地制宜、以水见长的造园风格。这对于了解徽州园林理水手法和造园思想,传承古典园林艺术价值具有重要的意义。     

BEYOND MOBILITY:THE LIMITS OF LIBERAL URBAN POLICY

ABSTRACT: Liberalism remains the dominant philosophical perspective underlying the development of urban public policy in the United States. At the heart of Liberal Urban Policy lies a Mobility Paradigm, which is marked by a strong emphasis on facilitating population movement as a means of addressing urban social problems. In this paper, I explicate the nature of this Mobility Paradigm across four key urban policy goals and then develop a critique of it. In its place, I offer one alternative—a Placemaking Paradigm—and discuss its contrasting conceptual attributes and policy implications. The Placemaking Paradigm points toward the nascent development of a Critical Urban Policy, which stands as an insurgent normative and empirical challenge to hitherto liberal dominance.