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Sustainable Landscapes

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Sustainable Built Environments

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Definition of the Subject and Its Importance

The subject of sustainable landscapes is a complex one because landscape as a concept includes not only the physical structure of the environment but also human perception [1]. This latter, being subjective, means that values of landscape change from person to person, cultural to culture, and over time. Thus, compared with a simpler subject such as air quality where there are objective measures of levels of pollutants, for example, what may be a sustainable landscape in one circumstance may not be in another or at one time when compared to another time frame. This makes the future prediction or modeling of sustainable landscapes particularly challenging.

Landscapes should be of great concern to most people and they may have many diverse values. For example, using the common approach of sustainability with the three “pillars,” landscape may have an economic value as scenery for tourism; a social value as the place where people live; and an...

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Abbreviations

Aesthetics:

The study of the nature, appreciation and meaning of beauty in the arts, architecture, and landscape.

Beauty:

The attractive properties of a landscape which occur when a diversity of elements are found together yet are in a harmonious association; the viewer moved emotionally by a scene of beauty.

Ecological aesthetics:

An approach to aesthetic theory based on the idea that nature is inherently beautiful and that the understandings of the dynamics of nature lead to a richer aesthetic experience.

Landscape:

A prospect of scenery that can be taken in at a glance from one point of view; an area of land as perceived by people whose character is the result of the action and interaction of natural and/or human factors.

Landscape assessment:

The process of describing, classifying, and evaluating landscapes.

Landscape character:

A distinct and recognizable pattern of elements that occur consistently in a particular type of landscape.

Landscape capacity:

The ability of a landscape to cope with increasing degrees of change without this leading to a change of its essential character.

Landscape design:

The process of creating a new landscape or modifying an existing one for a combination of practical and aesthetic purposes.

Landscape perception and preference:

The study of the way people see different landscapes and the reactions they have to them.

Landscape sensitivity:

The degree to which a given landscape could potentially be affected by possible changes, such as development, which may negatively affect its character.

Landscape value:

A measure of the different benefits obtained from a landscape. These may be future or potential values as well as those obtained in the present.

Personal construct theory:

An attempt to explain how people take information about their environment and construct a personal view of this, which becomes normative for them and thus a lens through which they see the world around them.

Place:

A way of looking at landscape as a location or behavior setting composed of the physical environment, activities, and perceptions.

Place attachment:

The way people feel connected to a specific location which may arise as a result of many factors, some concerned with the landscape. This may help to give people a sense of identity.

Quality of life:

The consideration of factors which affect various dimensions of our life and the way people feel. Environmental and aesthetic factors can increase or decrease quality of life.

The sublime:

An aesthetic sensation which arises when a viewer’s senses are swamped by the magnitude of the scale of a landscape that is difficult to comprehend and which seems limitless.

Visual capacity:

The degree to which a landscape can absorb additional new elements without appearing overloaded.

Visual sensitivity:

The degree to which different people are likely to be affected by changes in the visual environment as a result of development or landscape change.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. OPENspace Research Centre, Edinburgh College of Art, Lauriston Place, Edinburgh, UK

    Simon Bell

  2. Estonian University of Life Sciences, Kreutzwaldi 5, Tartu, Estonia

    Simon Bell

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  1. Simon Bell
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Correspondence to Simon Bell .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Center for Building Performance and Diagnostics Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA, USA

    Vivian Loftness

  2. Department of Geography Humboldt University Berlin, Berlin, Germany

    Dagmar Haase

  3. Department of Computational Landscape Ecology, Helmholtz Center for Environmental Research – UFZ, Leipzig, Germany

    Dagmar Haase

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Bell, S. (2013). Sustainable Landscapes . In: Loftness, V., Haase, D. (eds) Sustainable Built Environments. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-5828-9_217

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