Andreas Aagaard Christensen

Landscape practise and key concepts for landscape sustainability

Conceptual frameworks which have seen man and nature as being an integrated whole were widespread before they became suppressed by developments within both capitalism and socialism. Therefore an idealistic use of such concepts in scientific work has often had limited practical value. At the same time, the practice behind such conceptual frameworks has survived in many land use systems, being a fundamental source of inspiration for the modern challenge of landscape sustainability. Here, the concept and practice of carrying capacity is used as an example. We provide a modern interpretation and relate it to an empirical study of sustainable tourism in eight protected areas and their regions in the Baltic. They are subject to large differences in human pressure. The political commitment to the related EU Natura 2000 networks has been taken as our point of departure for a more detailed analysis of accessibility and its related conflicts, and opportunities for a sustainable development of tourism in and around the protected areas. It is concluded that the concept of carrying capacity cannot meaningfully be used for sustainability studies at an abstract conceptual level, but proves its relevance through a detailed context specific analyses of visitor related conflicts.

New multifunctional hunting landscapes in Denmark

Between 1992 and 2008 subsidization of mandatory set aside land under the EU Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) gave rise to the establishment of a characteristic type of multifunctional hunting landscapes in Denmark, primarily located on fallow land in tilled valley bottoms. A national survey of these landscapes in 2006 has been carried out and 1061 hunting areas have been identified nationwide. Subsidies relating to set aside land acted as a supplementary type of income, which supported the development of multifunctional land use on marginal soils where the income from hunting and subsidies in combination was a viable alternative to monofunctional rotational agriculture. Hunting landscapes developed as the consequence of landscape management strategies designed to comply with the requirements of the CAP while improving habitat conditions for wildlife and increasing income from hunting rental activities. Forty-seven percent of the hunting landscapes in 2006 were in rotational production in 2010 while 19% were used for other agricultural purposes and 34% were taken out of the subsidy regime and removed from the general agricultural register. In 2012, a total of 431 such areas ‒ 41% of the areas identified in 2006 ‒ were still used for hunting. The number and geographical distribution of the hunting landscapes seems closely related to the potential average hunting rent, the level of urbanisation and the occurrence of manorial estates with traditions for multifunctional land use as part of their economic strategy. Implications for the ongoing discussion on land use policy concerning land sharing vs. land sparing is discussed.

Emerging digital plan data – new research perspectives on planning practice and evaluation

ABSTRACT Profound digitalization of public administration is gaining momentum and spatial planning is no exception. To increase the transparency of planning and its usefulness for public and private actors, planning authorities have integrated production and online distribution of digital plan data within existing planning practices and workflows. Many European countries have established public spatial planning databases. Denmark is one of the forerunners in that digitalization. Since 2006, all legal plans are registered in an open geodatabase including over 34,000 currently effective local development plans. Despite the obvious potential of such data to inform about planning practice and associated outcomes, research using these new data is rare, mainly focusing on technical or judicial aspects. Questions related to planning practice, efficiency, evaluation and design have hardly been looked into. In this paper, we provide a short overview of digital plan data in the Danish database as well as similar data in Nordic countries. We then discuss research perspectives regarding plan evaluation and planning practice and we argue that digital plans represent a new transdisciplinary type of intentionally explicit data source for analysis of land change processes.