Alister Scott

Assessing Public Perception of Landscape: The LANDMAP experience

Assessing public perception of landscape continues to be both an academic and a policy challenge. The involvement of the public in landscape matters has been and continues to be both controversial and problematic. Constraints of time and resources, together with a reluctance to delegate responsibility to the public, have generally limited the scope and influence of much participation to conventional reactive strategies. The potential of a new methodology to identify public perception of landscape in Denbighshire is assessed. Forming part of a wider initiative known as LANDMAP, a technique adopted by the Countryside Council for Wales for identifying distinctive landscape areas, household questionnaires and focus groups have been used to evaluate public perception in response to carefully selected photographic media. The results afford important insights into public perception and allow particular landscape types to be evaluated in both quantitative and qualitative terms. Analysis of the results for two selected areas shows that the public has strong attachments to managed rural landscapes in general, and wishes to see more integrative and participative strategies for landscape protection and management. Such attitudes challenge planners and policy makers to rethink their approaches towards conventional landscape management strategies and planning.

Impact of the 2001 foot-and-mouth disease outbreak in Britain: implications for rural studies

Abstract This paper assesses the impact of the 2001 foot-and-mouth disease outbreak in terms of its implications for the discipline of rural studies. In particular, it focuses on the position of agriculture in rural economy and society, the standing of the government after its management of the outbreak, and the performance of the new devolved regional tiers of government. After a brief review of the history and aggregate impact of the outbreak, the general themes of the paper are explored from a range of Welsh case-study evidence, showing the impact on farm structures and the environment, rural communities and their social life. The major conclusions are that the unanticipated magnitude of effect of the outbreak should direct more attention to the nature of the space shared as a public good by agriculture and rural tourism; that the loss of trust in administrations as a result of the specific management of the outbreak reveals scope for new approaches in the study of governance and partnership at a rural level; and the opportunity for the devolved administrations to emphasise a difference in perspective, on both the outbreak and rural issues in general, highlights potentially widening fault-lines in the constitutional reform process, especially as discussion over the future of European rural policies proceed.

‘Seeing is Not Everything’: Exploring the Landscape Experiences of Different Publics

Abstract This paper develops a multi-sensory and multiple-perspective framework for assessing public perception of landscapes. Proceeding from a viewpoint that landscape research and policy have been pre-occupied with expert-led and visual approaches, our method elevates the experiences and range of responses of different publics to centre stage. Set within phenomenological and experiential epistemologies, our piloted technique captured the real time responses of walkers, mountain bikers, planners, councillors and land managers on pre-planned trips in Aberdeenshire. Subsequent analysis of audio recordings and field notes elicited detailed data revealing a complex appreciation of landscape set within dynamic and multiple socio-economic identities and sensory experiences of individuals. The paper concludes with a plea for policy-makers and researchers to recognise the importance of different publics who may experience and respond to landscape in different ways and the significance of incorporating both visual and non-visual components into emergent landscape assessment and policy approaches.

Beyond the conventional: meeting the challenges of landscape governance within the European Landscape Convention?

Academics and policy makers seeking to deconstruct landscape face major challenges conceptually, methodologically and institutionally. The meaning(s), identity(ies) and management of landscape are controversial and contested. The European Landscape Convention provides an opportunity for action and change set within new governance agendas addressing interdisciplinarity and spatial planning. This paper critically reviews the complex web of conceptual and methodological frameworks that characterise landscape planning and management and then focuses on emerging landscape governance in Scotland within a mixed method approach involving policy analyses, semi-structured interviews and best practice case studies. Using Dowers (2008) criteria from the Articles of the European Landscape Convention, the results show that whilst some progress has been made in landscape policy and practice, largely through the actions of key individuals and champions, there are significant institutional hurdles and resource limitations to overcome. The need to mainstream positive landscape outcomes requires a significant culture change where a one-size-fits-all approach does not work.

Whose Futures? A Comparative Study of Local Agenda 21 in Mid Wales

By signing the Agenda 21 declaration from the Earth Summit in Rio in 1992, theUK government committed itself to the preparation of a national sustainabledevelopment plan. To facilitate this process, Chapter 28 of Agenda 21 envisagessigni® cant local-authority-led action for sustainable development at the locallevel (United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED),1992). Termed Local Agenda 21 (LA21) plans, these rely heavily on activecitizen participation and empowerment, thereby challenging the establishedorthodoxy of top-down down models of citizen participation and planning. Thetheory and the rhetoric suggest that LA21 has the potential to bring aboutsubstantive change to current environmental, economic and social systems.However, does LA21 deliver in practice, and what kind of change, if any, iseffected to attain the elusive goal of sustainable development?This paper addresses these concerns with reference to recent research carriedout in Powys and Ceredigion County Councils in rural Wales (Figure 1). Bothare unitary authorities following local government reorganisation in Wales in1996. By examining survey data, minutes of meetings and reports, as well asemploying participant observation techniques, this research documents andcontrasts the philosophy, approach and potential of the LA21 programmes.

Guerrilla warfare in the planning system: revolutionary progress towards sustainability?

Abstract This article extends Qviströms (2007; Geografiska Annaler: Series B, Human Geography 89 (3): 269–282) ideas concerning “landscapes out of order” within a re‐discovering and re‐imagining of spatial planning theory and practice. Taking the viewpoint that planners and decision‐makers order and manage space in prescribed and constrained ways, the article argues that this can hinder innovative practices which have the potential to deliver significant societal and environmental benefits. Using case studies from permaculture and guerrilla gardening, we illustrate how planning practice can be rooted in confrontation and legal challenge rather than with more positive and inclusive approaches, as is envisaged within spatial planning theory. Clearly, the ways in which such initiatives intersect with the planning system raise important questions about joined‐up policy across scales and sectors, and the ability of planning to be a proactive vehicle of environmental and social change. Our findings confirm that spatial planning theory is largely “disintegrated” (Scott et al. 2013; Progress in Planning 83: 1–52) from much contemporary planning and environmental practice and wider discourses of sustainability. This suggests an urgent re‐examination of the spirit and purpose of planning to embrace and promote the new even where they challenge established orthodoxy and planning order.

Visitor payback: panacea or pandora's box for conservation in the UK?

This paper assesses the efficacy and relevance of visitor payback as a tool for recreation management in the UK. Visitor payback is essentially a voluntary payment made by visitors towards conservation, differing significantly from the compulsory tourist or bed tax practised in other countries. Attention has recently focused on this technique as a means to supplement the limited funds available for conservation work. However, whilst there are several schemes operating in the UK, there is a dearth of published research that has critically reviewed the concept and operationalization of visitor payback. The research reported here utilizes primary and secondary data to include case studies, semi-structured interviews and focus groups. The findings reveal that visitor payback is a complex concept to evaluate, both in theory and practice, involving a range of benefits and disbenefits. Financial benefits appear less prevalent than the more esoteric ‘feel good’ factor, increased awareness about conservation and partnerships that are evident in payback schemes. Support for visitor payback varies considerably with visitors strongly receptive, whilst the tourism business interests are more cautious. It is concluded that visitor payback needs to be re-conceptualized in more positive terms as a ‘visitor investment scheme’ where conservation takes precedence over financial considerations. Further research is required to try and demystify the tourism business resistance to visitor payback as its potential seems somewhat constrained in the present climate.

Contesting sustainable development: low‐impact development in Pembrokeshire Coast National Park

This paper assesses the credentials of the planning system in dealing with low-impact developments in the countryside. Forming part of the wider debate on sustainable development in the UK, low-impact developments challenge contemporary rural planning orthodoxy. A detailed case study of Brithdir Mawr in Pembrokeshire Coast National Park reveals the complexities and sensitivities inherent in operationalizing sustainability in this context. The results reveal a planning system reluctant to embrace unconventional lifestyles and methods claiming to be sustainable. It is concluded that the planning system and low-impact developments both need to demonstrate their sustainability credentials in a more direct and empirical manner. Ultimately this could be built into revised criteria for allowing dwellings in the open countryside. Copyright

Demystifying academics to enhance university–business collaborations in environmental science

In countries globally there is intense political interest in fostering effective university–business collaborations, but there has been scant attention devoted to exactly how an individual scientist’s workload (i.e. specified tasks) and incentive structures (i.e. assessment criteria) may act as a key barrier to this. To investigate this an original, empirical dataset is derived from UK job specifications and promotion criteria, which distil universities’ varied drivers into requirements upon academics. This work reveals the nature of the severe challenge posed by a heavily time-constrained culture; specifically, tension exists between opportunities presented by working with business and non-optional duties (e.g. administration and teaching). Thus, to justify the time to work with business, such work must inspire curiosity and facilitate future novel science in order to mitigate its conflict with the overriding imperative for academics to publish. It must also provide evidence of real-world changes (i.e. impact), and ideally other reportable outcomes (e.g. official status as a business’ advisor), to feed back into the scientist’s performance appraisals. Indicatively, amid 20–50 key duties, typical fullPublished by Copernicus Publications on behalf of the European Geosciences Union. 2 J. K. Hillier et al.: Demystifying academics to enhance university–business collaborations time scientists may be able to free up to 0.5 day per week for work with business. Thus specific, pragmatic actions, including short-term and time-efficient steps, are proposed in a “user guide” to help initiate and nurture a long-term collaboration between an earlyto mid-career environmental scientist and a practitioner in the insurance sector. These actions are mapped back to a tailored typology of impact and a newly created representative set of appraisal criteria to explain how they may be effective, mutually beneficial and overcome barriers. Throughout, the focus is on environmental science, with illustrative detail provided through the example of natural hazard risk modelling in the insurance sector. However, a new conceptual model of academics’ behaviour is developed, fusing perspectives from literature on academics’ motivations and performance assessment, which we propose is internationally applicable and transferable between sectors. Sector-specific details (e.g. list of relevant impacts and user guide) may serve as templates for how people may act differently to work more effectively together.