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Assessing Visual and Social Perceptions of Landscape

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Landscape Indicators

Abstract

The perceptual dimension is distinctive of landscape, if compared to the territory. “Measuring perception” is difficult and involves many critical assumptions. Investigating social perception means, first and foremost, establishing the public significance of various landscape values: historicity, naturalness, beauty, recreational usability, and so forth. Secondly, we must associate public preferences with the biophysical structures to which they refer. This study proposes a comprehensive list of references and possible indicators, ranging from scenic assessment to studies on visual preferences to more recently developed studies on landscape values in social perception . The scope of the chapter is to offer a fil-rouge in a developing field of study.

Indicator tables drawn up with the collaboration of Luigi La Riccia.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    One of the most recent and ambitious is the Qualitative Visual Assessment of the City of London (Mayor of London 2007), which was not however expressed in the form of indicators. See also CABE methods. In the USA, we can refer to a review of experiences in the City of Cincinnati (2007), on methods and regulations for the protection of views in various locations, including regulations based on parameters and indexes.

  2. 2.

    “Sensitivity levels are a measure of public concern for scenic quality” (USDI, BLM); Sensitivity on the other hand has another meaning in England: “the extent to which a landscape can accept change of a particular type and scale without unacceptable adverse effects to its character” (Landscape Institute 2002).

  3. 3.

    This is not the opinion of all the researchers involved in these studies: some studies have the aim of verifying the predictors in relation to groups of people from different cultural groups, to reach a conclusion on the universal nature of the same (Yang and Brown 1992).

  4. 4.

    In particular, the authors’ argument is that the most dangerous phenomena is landscape cluttering, in other words fragmentation, which limits the horizon and encloses it in urban-type backdrops, and the introduction in rural contexts of alien and industrial type elements.

  5. 5.

    There is significant reference to the concept of visual variety-complexity in the works of Kaplan (1979), Nohl (2001) and Roth (2006): In particular, the more complex the scene, the more complex the possibility of interpreting the same, with the resulting implicit uncertainty in the difficulty of “dominating” the surrounding landscape.

  6. 6.

    In Italy, an indicator on the existence of verified unauthorized building was proposed (Municipality of Caivano, in Malcevschi and Poli 2008). This does not necessarily indicate the existence of damage to the landscape, but may indicate scarce social sensitivity for the protection of heritage and community interest. Nevertheless, this indicator could paradoxically penalize the regional or municipal authorities who are most committed to fighting and reporting such phenomena. Another proposal is the “number of authorizations requested for intervention in protected areas” (Franceschetti and Pagan 2007).

  7. 7.

    In Italy, the visibility of the sky at night has been declared an “identity asset” by the Sardinian Regional Authority; as such it is protected.

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  1. Dipartimento Interateneo Territorio, Politecnico ed Università di Torino, Viale Pier Andrea Mattioli 39, 10125, Torino, Italy

    Claudia Cassatella

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    Claudia Cassatella  & Attilia Peano  & 

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Cassatella, C. (2011). Assessing Visual and Social Perceptions of Landscape. In: Cassatella, C., Peano, A. (eds) Landscape Indicators. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-0366-7_6

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