Landscape planning approaches: a comparative review

Univerza v Ljubljani Biotehniška fakulteta Oddelek za krajinsko arhitekturo

Landscape planning approaches: A comparative review
Seminar work for the subjects of Landscape planning year 2011/12

Abstract
In this seminar work I will briefly address the concept of landscape ecology as a field of landscape planning, by introducing some relevant data and researches. I will also discuss five different approaches in landscape planning. With my seminar work I hope I will achieve for the reader to understand what should still be taken in considerations regarding each approach – what are their strong and also weak points. I will discuss this theme from a research standpoint.

Introduction
Ecological or landscape planning is a sub field within landscape architecture. It emphasizes spatial planning, organization and relationships of land uses in order to obtain diverse objectives such as habitat improvement, and sustainability, it considers human activities social and economic factors (Hersperger 1994). Promoting sustainability has become an overarching principle of land-use planning (Forman 1995).

It is increasing public interest on the negative consequences of human interventions in landscape. As a consequence have appeared several approaches to understand and evaluate interactions between human actions and natural processes. These approaches are used a in different scales and in a wide variety of rural and urban configurations to protect and restore natural and atrophic landscapes.

Regarding different landscape planning approaches, this research seeks to discover which of them represents the major theoretical-methodological planning innovation, common aspects, and why and in which circumstance should one be used over other.

Sustained design, planning and management of landscapes depend largely on how we understand, evaluate and interpretate landscapes (Ndubisi 2002). The knowledge of interactions between people and land is the basis for the framework of