Landscape Research

This article investigates the case of Karla Lake in Central Greece, analysing the effects of landscape loss and the subsequent restoration after its recent overflow, following a long period of environmental rehabilitation. Through a spatial landscape-based approach, it examines historical and contemporary challenges associated with rural development, assesses the environmental and spatial consequences of the Karla restoration project, and highlights the need for robust landscape policies in an integrated recovery strategy, in line with the European Landscape Convention (ELC). The methodology relies on secondary data analysis. The study proposes a strategic recovery plan focused on integrated landscape management, participative governance, and sustainable practices to restore the landscape and bolster community resilience, offering actionable insights for policymakers and stakeholders.

Public open spaces (POSs) are essential for human well-being because they provide opportunities for a variety of experiences. This study pro-poses the concept of the ‘capability of experiences’ as a framework to evaluate the service level of POSs in reference to Sen’s Capability Approach and presents an index of POS experiences. The framework is then applied to two neighbourhoods and seven separate POSs in Machida City, Japan, to grasp their characteristics through residents’ perceptions. The approach adopted in this study extends the evaluation scope from active users to beneficiaries, including potential users. In addition, the proposed method can be applied at different scales, from a single POS site to the entire open space system of a neighbourhood,and is therefore helpful for assessing the service level of POSs for neighbourhood-scale planning.

Domestic gardens are spaces imbued with meaning, expression, and identity. This paper seeks to explore garden identities across their lifespan in the Netherlands by investigating older people's personal histories through thematic analysis. Oral history interviews (n = 20) were conducted in 2019 with residents living in Breda and Tilburg, two medium-sized cities in the south of the Netherlands. The findings suggest that garden identities change over time and are likely to be developed during childhood. Gardening, garden trends, and socioeconomic factors can influence and change garden identities. This paper addresses a gap in existing literature and explores garden identities, underscoring the importance of gardens across the lifespan to liveability and sense of self. It argues that valuing everyday objects like gardens helps to plan and design green, liveable, and inclusive neighbourhoods in cities.

This paper outlines the concept of ‘peatscapes’: hybrid assemblages of human and more-than-human, formed from past exploitation, present policies, identities and perceptions, and future plans for Irish peatlands. Following centuries of drainage and peat extraction, peatlands are now targeted for rehabilitation/restoration for biodiversity and ‘ecosystem services’, including net carbon sequestration. However, there are significant economic and cultural consequences for communities long reliant on the peat extraction industry, despite new policies to permit a ‘Just Transition’. Bound up in these issues are the various hybrid elements of the peatscape: artefacts of the peat industry, new digital and ‘green energy’ infrastructure, novel ecosystems and archaeological remains largely destroyed through peat extraction. We reflect on the tensions and contradictions intrinsic to the peatscape as a ‘wicked problem’, with no straightforward solutions. Finally, we suggest that articulations of the peatscape framed through concepts of ecocultural value, might be one way to approach reconciliation.

With urbanisation moving at a faster pace than ever before, discussions on Urban Agriculture (UA) and its role in sustainable development have taken centre stage. The implementation of UA has its challenges, one of them being how urban development frameworks view it. This paper examines the disappearance of a historic UA landscape in Bangalore, India between the 1950s and the 1970s, a period of post-independence urban planning. Using historical records including urban planning documents, government files, and oral histories that I recorded with a traditional community of UA practitioners—the Vahnikula Kshatriya—in Bangalore on their memories of the 1950s–1970s, I argue that colonial frameworks in post-independence urban development plans not only displaced UA but also continues to affect it. This paper highlights the urgent need to change how urban planning in formerly colonised places approaches UA.

While the relations between landscapes and sustainability have been investigated from various perspectives, the link between landscapes and sustainability transitions is still under-researched. Biosphere reserves are a promising object of study in this regard as they can be viewed as model regions and laboratories for sustainable development. Here we develop the concept of landscape laboratories as a landscape-centred form of real-world laboratory. Based on a qualitative analysis of strategy documents and interviews with management staff, we elucidate how the notions of experimenting, learning and scaling are understood by those involved in Germany's biosphere reserves. In particular, we discuss what kind of landscape laboratories these biosphere reserves represent and which challenges and dilemmas they face. In our conclusion, we propose ways of strengthening the effectiveness of biosphere reserves as landscape laboratories as well as lines of further in-depth research, for example regarding the mediation of planetary and local discourses.

There are suggestions of how to integrate biodiversity-friendly measures into both architecture and landscape architecture, however it is unclear how to systematically include the needs of other organisms such as animals. One particular challenge is the conflict between amenity and biodiversity, as the human designer aims for good design, which often appears to be incompatible with biodiversity-friendly measures. Here we describe ‘Animal-Aided Design’ (AAD) as a methodology to systematically include animals into the planning cycle of project-based planning. The basic idea of AAD is to make animals an integral part of the design and define their needs at the beginning of the planning process. The requirements of target species then set boundary conditions for the planning process, but also serve as an inspiration for the design itself. We illustrate our methodology using theoretical examples, mostly from Western Europe, in particular Germany.

In this contribution, I explore compensation landscapes as a concept through which we can question the nature of ecological urbanism today, as an alliance of environmental degradation, urban development and landscape design. In urbanism and landscape studies, there is currently almost no debate on the spatial dynamics created by the compensation of environmental harm. This is remarkable, as green urban landscapes are increasingly developed through biodiversity offsetting, i.e. the process where open space assets that have been destroyed through urban development are replaced elsewhere. While the literature on these topics is booming in critical geography and political ecology, I explore three scopes in which biodiversity offsetting can be studied as part of urbanism and landscape studies. Through the spatialisation of compensation, the linking of offsetting to planning research, and by giving attention to landscape design, this paper frames compensation as a socio-spatial urbanisation project.

The creation of protected areas is the main mechanism for biodiversity conservation in Brazil. The Mata do Pau-Ferro State Park, located in the Brejo Paraibano region, protects an important fragment of the Atlantic Forest and in its surroundings there are activities that damage ecosystems , such as livestock farming. The aim was therefore to assess forest fragmentation in the park's buffer zone and analyse its influence on the park. We found 516 fragments, totalling 2102.20 ha, of which 98.64% are smaller than 50 ha. There is a predominance of rounded shapes and expressive areas affected by edge effects. Finally, the Distance to the Nearest Neighbour was an average of 39.43 m. In the context observed integration systems between livestock and forest can reduce impacts on biodiversity. Similar results have been found for arbitrary delimitations, but have not yet been reported for a buffer zone delimited through the Management Plan in Brazil.

Digital agriculture (DA) is considered a new farming revolution that has various benefits and is being promoted in policy making. This raises the question of whether the current digital revolution in agriculture will cause landscape change, as technology has always been an important driving force behind this change. Existing research has mainly focused on the socio-economic and environmental impacts of DA, rather than its impact on the landscape. This article investigates if and how the nexus between landscape and DA is addressed in scientific journals through a systematic literature review. The review concludes that DA does influence all landscape dimensions at multiple scales. However, due to the limited evidence-based research on this issue, we propose two hypothetical scenarios to help planners and policymakers to better understand the plausible consequences of digitalisation and, give some suggestions to scholars to further develop research on this issue.

In the heart of southern Iran’s arid expanse lies Siraf, a testament to the enduring bond between water and civilisation. This port city flourished in the 9th and 10th centuries, sustained by ingenious water management. Exploring Siraf’s water heritage reveals a cultural landscape shaped by the symbiotic relationship between water and human innovation. Through meticulous analysis of technical reports, excavation records, interviews, and historical accounts, this research aims to understand Siraf’s water heritage landscape using an interdisciplinary landscape-based approach. This approach integrates insights from archaeology, geology, geohydrology, and agriculture to provide a holistic view of the interconnectedness of natural and cultural elements. These dynamic systems inspire sustainable practices through landscape-based solutions considering natural and cultural landscape features to address urban challenges. As we face climate change and urbanisation, understanding and preserving Siraf’s water heritage landscapes through an interdisciplinary approach provide a roadmap for a more resilient future.

The research project discussed here used artist-led workshops to enable people from marginalised groups to explore and communicate their relationships with nature and landscapes. Aligning with multisensory and multispecies methodologies, five workshops took place in England’s north-west, in which participants from marginalised and excluded communities co-produced creative works representing their sensorial responses to those environments. Drawing on participants’ experiences of these workshops, and the resulting creative works, the affordances of location-specific creative activities as a means of facilitating connection with local landscapes are examined, as are the opportunities that creative methodologies offer in enabling marginalised and disadvantaged groups to engage in debates about nature and landscape use. Participants benefitted greatly from the project, which enabled small steps towards involving marginalised groups in debates about nature and landscape use. However, challenges remain for decision-making and a more equal distribution of power amongst humans and other species whose interests may be overlooked.

This article examines the concept of ‘heritage’ in the context of ‘landscapes of care’, which approaches care as a means of fostering connections between humans and non-humans. Heritage care involves communities actively engaging with and benefiting from cultural heritage in various ways. Establishing a caring landscape for heritage involves empowerment, participation, and collaboration, as demonstrated by two community-driven heritage projects in Pionta’s cultural landscape. The first project aims to create a community that strengthens the emotional bonds between individuals and their cultural legacy by promoting acts of care. The second introduces diverse participatory and art-based methods that cater to the needs of the involved groups and foster a shared sense of care for their heritage. By using heritage education and serious games as empowerment tools, the projects show how collective heritage caring can change the visual, verbal, and mental representations of a marginal heritage landscape from the community’s perspective.