Values in Space and Time: A Framework for Understanding and Linking Multiple Cultural Values in Landscapes

Abstract

When new development threatens a valued landscape it is not just the physical landscape that is being affected, but the collective memories, meanings and identities that the landscape holds. Planning theory and practice currently offer relatively little guidance as to how to address meaning and value, particularly at a landscape scale.

Recent literature from a variety of disciplines has stressed the need to develop holistic models of understanding landscape. Particular emphasis has been laid on the absence of integration of disciplinary approaches, and the need to involve communities in defining what is important and distinctive about their own landscapes.

The thesis sets out to develop a conceptual framework to assist in understanding multiple cultural values in landscapes. Although the primary focus of the research is to address the perceived shortcomings in planning theory and practice, its potential relevance to inter-disciplinary work also forms a major component of the research approach.

Values in landscapes include those expressed by associated communities and those identified through a variety of disciplinary approaches. Using case studies, the research explores the nature and range of landscape values as expressed by those with special associations with particular landscapes. It also examines the nature of the meanings and values ascribed by disciplines with an interest in landscape, and how various disciplines model landscape so as to convey these values.

Analysis of these findings generates a landscape framework consisting of two related models. The Cultural Values Model offers a conceptual structure with which to consider the surface and embedded values of landscapes in terms of forms, practices and relationships. The Dimensional Landscape Model provides a structured way of linking expressed values to the landscape, using dimensional concepts of nodes, networks, spaces, webs and layers.

The landscape framework is found to be useful not only for generating a comprehensive picture of key landscape values, but also in offering an integrated approach that has utility both for planners and for other landscape-related disciplines.