Anna Jorgensen

Woodland spaces and edges: their impact on perception of safety and preference

The interaction between spatial arrangement and vegetation structure was systematically examined in the context of an urban park in an impoverished area of Sheffield, UK. Local residents rated digitally manipulated photographs depicting different spatial arrangements of mature trees and edge treatments for safety and preference. Spatial arrangement was the most important factor in determining sense of safety but not preference. Perception of edge treatment varied significantly according to variation in spatial arrangement in ratings for both safety and preference. The results of this study suggest that more naturalistic vegetation can be introduced into parks and green spaces without necessarily making the parks appear unsafe.

Ambivalent landscapes—wilderness in the urban interstices

Abstract This paper explores the origins and development of ambivalent responses to particular contemporary urban landscapes in historical ideas about human relationships with nature and wilderness, and suggests that post-modern wilderness may be found in the urban interstices: in woodland, abandoned allotments, river corridors, derelict or brownfield sites and especially areas in which the spontaneous growth of vegetation through natural succession suggests that nature is in control. We propose that these interstitial wilderness landscapes have numerous important functions as well as being rich repositories of meaning with implications both for theorizing nature–human relationships and for urban landscape planning and design.

Relationships between Environmental Values and the Acceptability of Mobile Telecommunications Development in a Protected Area

Abstract This paper seeks to enhance understandings of underlying reasons for attitudes towards a recent landscape phenomenon— mobile telecommunications development— in a protected area. A public questionnaire survey was conducted, using photographs of mobile telecommunications development installed in the Peak District National Park, England. Building on existing theories about landscape perceptions and environmental values, the study examined the factors influencing the acceptability of such development: a) the degree of human influence in landscape; b) the purpose of development; and c) environmental values. The study highlights the fundamental influence of environmental values on peoples attitudes towards incremental landscape change. The paper discusses the implications of peoples generally high level of sensitivity to landscape change in a protected area and the predominance of ecocentric values for landscape planning and management.

Editorial: 2016: Landscape Justice in an Anniversary Year

Forty years ago, in 1976, the Landscape Research Group (LRG) changed the name of its newsletter, Landscape Research News, to Landscape Research, signalling an intention to upgrade it from what was primarily a members’ communication tool for news and reflection, to a medium for the publication and dissemination of landscape research in an accepted academic format. For the next 20 years, the LRG continued to publish the journal independently, but in 1996 they entered into an agreement with a commercial publisher (Carfax, who later became Taylor & Francis). 2016 therefore marks the 40th anniversary of Landscape Research as a research journal, and the 20th anniversary of its publication under the auspices of Taylor & Francis. To celebrate this double anniversary we are devoting a whole issue later this year —‘The Editors’ Issue’—to a retrospective of the past 40 years, combined with a series of papers on current and future developments in landscape research. Guest edited by Mattias Qviström and Vera Vicenzotti, the Editors’ Issue will start with a review of the papers published over the past 40 years by Vera Vicenzotti, Anna Jorgensen, Mattias Qviström and Simon Swaffield. The remaining papers are the result of a Call we issued in 2014 to past and current editors of the journal, and members of the International Editorial Advisory Board, inviting submissions addressing the methodologies, epistemologies and scope of landscape research; the relevance of landscape as a concept; and the most pressing concerns, critiques, limitations and challenges facing landscape disciplines. The resulting contributions consist of: Matthew Gandy on wastelands and terrain vague, Susan Herrington on landscape aesthetics, Hanna Macpherson on walking methods in landscape research, Jala Makhzoumi on the discourse of landscape in the Arab Middle East, Tom Mels on environmental justice, Bas Pedroli et al. on the changing European ex-urban landscape, Ken Taylor on cities as cultural landscapes and conclude with John Wylie’s challenge to the idea of landscape as dwelling or cultural identity. I would like to thank the authors for their contributions, and Mattias Qviström and Vera Vicenzotti for their hard work as guest editors. I would also like to thank all the contributors (authors, editors, editorial assistants, board members and reviewers) to the 40 years’ worth of Landscape Research that we celebrate this year. The journal is its contributors, and we rely on you for your continued support and input. More widely, the journal has always been and remains a key aspect of the activities of the LRG. Wittingly or not, contributors to the journal therefore play a major role in helping the Group to deliver its charitable objectives, for which the Group is very grateful.

Forty years of Landscape Research

Abstract Papers of four decades published in Landscape Research are reviewed in order to chronicle the journal’s development and to assess the academic performance of the journal relative to its own aims. Landscape Research intends to reach a wide audience, to have a broad thematic coverage and to publish different types of papers with various methodological orientations. Cutting across these first aims are the interdisciplinary ambition of the journal, and its overall focus on landscape. These aims are evaluated based upon categorisation of article content, authorship and methodology, using data derived through interpretative inquiry and quantitative analyses. The results tell the story of how Landscape Research has developed from a newsletter of the Landscape Research Group, mainly aimed at practitioners, into an interdisciplinary, international journal with academic researchers as its primary community of interest. The final section discusses the current profile of the journal and identifies issues for its future direction and development.

Editorial: Looking Backwards, Looking Forwards

This is my first editorial as Managing Editor of Landscape Research, having taken over from Maggie Roe on 1 January 2014, and I would like to take this opportunity to thank her on behalf of the journal, its readership, the International Editorial Advisory Board and the editorial team, for her work over the years, which has ensured that the journal has continued to develop, and grow from strength to strength. I would also like to thank her for her willingness to move into the role of Consulting Editor, enabling us to benefit from her guidance and advice into the future. Thank you Maggie! It is good to be able to take over a strong, successful and well-established journal. 2016 will be the 20th anniversary of the first publication of Landscape Research by Taylor and Francis; but actually the journal has a much longer history, in the sense that August 2018 will be the 50th anniversary of the first edition of Landscape Research News, the newsletter that evolved into the first issue of Landscape Research. Furthermore, 2017 will also be the 50th anniversary of the founding of Landscape Research Group (LRG), which of course is the ‘parent organisation’ behind the journal. Signs of the current journal’s success include a steady year-on-year growth in online sales and downloads, as well as a strategy for expansion to eight issues per year in 2015, with further expansion in the pipeline. The journal (five-year) impact factor of 0.95, though modest by some standards, is a significant achievement bearing in mind that the journal currently consists of only six issues (around 36 papers) per year, and has a cross-disciplinary focus, which naturally attracts fewer citations compared with single discipline journals, and journals publishing papers based mainly in the natural sciences. Landscape Research is one of only three journals (the others being Landscape and Urban Planning and Urban Forestry and Urban Greening) with landscape in their scope that are ranked in the SSCI (Social and Science Citation Information). Furthermore, in terms of measures of excellence, many would agree that impact factors and rankings do not tell the full story, and that other measures of quality, such as independence and originality, are at least as important. Important too is the fact that Landscape Research is part of a wider network of activity undertaken by Landscape Research Group, the interactions between them being of benefit to all readers and participants. For example, the ideas underpinning the European Landscape Convention (ELC), referred to in more detail below, arose during a major international conference co-sponsored by LRG, and LRG played an important role in its subsequent adoption. Taking over the editorship of this journal therefore presents a responsibility to consolidate and build on previous achievements, and a great opportunity to develop the

Editorial: Is landscape an oxymoron? Understanding the focus of Landscape Research

In last year’s opening editorial, published in volume 39, issue 1, I set out my editorial aims for the journal (Jorgensen, 2014). These included widening ‘the scope of the journal, whilst strengthening its overall focus’. Widening the scope was interpreted to include extending geographical range and scale (small as well as large landscapes) as well as multi/interdisciplinarity. The overall focus is, of course, landscape. Is claiming landscape as a focus an oxymoron? On one hand, when one considers the enormous range of sciences, and disciplines from the social sciences and arts and humanities, that deal with landscape in some form or other, it seems that it might be. Other journals are perhaps not so general in their scope, restricting themselves to landscape planning, specifically urban or rural domains, particular disciplinary fields such as landscape architecture or even specialised forms of discourse such as theoretical development. Last year, I wrote that, in order to fall within the ambit of Landscape Research, papers should be ‘conceptually founded in landscape’, and invoked the European Landscape Convention’s (Council of Europe, 2000) broad definition to explain what landscape was. But what does being ‘conceptually founded in landscape’ mean? It means, I think, that authors have to demonstrate that they subscribe to a holistic definition of landscape, and that they are able to explain how their topic relates to this broader and more integrated idea of landscape. Some papers may explore this holism through their subject matter; for example, conservation biology has radically changed over the last 10 years or so in recognising that species and habitat conservation are essentially a social problem. Thus, conservation biology papers are increasingly concerned with the social mechanisms that promote or inhibit conservation. Implicit in this recognition is an understanding that social, biotic and abiotic environmental processes are all interconnected through landscape. Other papers focus more narrowly on one aspect, but are able to show how this aspect impacts on the wider landscape. For example, a paper exploring the mechanics of sand dune erosion might contextualise this issue by looking at the geographical extent of erosion, and the extent to which erosion is a problem at a landscape scale. Landscape is a paradoxical phenomenon. Landscape is everywhere. It surrounds us. Everything we do in our lives is done in landscape, be it urban, rural or something in between. All that we eat, drink and breathe derive from a landscape. Our relationship with landscape is reciprocal and ongoing: everything we do affects the

Balancing landscape and development: A case study of mobile telecommunications development in the Peak District National Park, England

New technologies create challenges for planners, especially where they require prominent structures to be situated in protected landscapes. In such situations, the pace of innovation can outstrip the capacity of central and local government to respond with rapid and consistent spatial policies. One such field has been mobile telecommunications development, which has posed dilemmas for planners by virtue of its rapid rate of technological evolution, combined with wide territorial coverage. The issues surrounding mobile telecommunications development are further compounded by its marginal relationship to the development control system (with installations often comprising permitted development), its generally incremental and cumulative impact, conflation of health and environmental concerns, its frequent association with landscapes or buildings of special value and the relative balance between private profit and public safety in extending network coverage across remoter countryside. This study examines the issues raised by mobile telecommunications development in a protected landscape, in particular the balance between landscape and socioeconomic need. Mobile telecommunications development tends to generate relatively minor and incremental change in the landscape, but it is an incongruent element which could cause the loss of naturalness (Nohl, 2001) and promote urbanization (Antrop, 2004). Previous research has addressed Government planning policy and regulations (Walton, 2002) and the operation and effectiveness of the Code of Best Practice on Mobile Phone Network Development (ARUP & University of Reading, 2006), whilst public health concerns have led to a Government

What is happening to landscape

As the banner on the front cover indicates, 2017 marks another important anniversary for Landscape Research, in the sense that the learned society that set up the journal—the Landscape Research Group (LRG)—was founded 50 years ago in 1967. The LRG held its first symposium on 3 May 1967, followed by a formal meeting at which a constitution and a committee were formed, and the first AGM was held one year later in May 1968. We will be marking this anniversary in a number of ways throughout the year. Firstly, we will be publishing a paper by Steven Shuttleworth, the current company secretary and treasurer of the LRG, who has been involved in the organisation since 1976, setting out the history of the setting up, development, and achievements of the Group. Quite apart from marking an important anniversary in the history of the Group and the journal it is also important to record the story of a learned society and its relationship with its publishing arm—a common model in academic publishing over the last 50 years—at a time of considerable change and transition in the field. Arguably the two factors that have brought about the greatest changes are the invention of the internet and the advent of open access academic publishing. Change is accelerating and it will be fascinating to see how both the LRG and its relationship with the journal develop and change over the coming years. Secondly, we will be publishing a commissioned review of research entitled ‘Defining Landscape Justice: A Review of the Interface Between Migration and Landscape’ by Professor Shelley Egoz of the Centre for Landscape Democracy (CLaD), Department of Landscape Architecture and Spatial Planning, Norwegian University of Life Sciences. The review will address the interface between landscape justice and migration, and marks a first for the journal: the first of a series of reviews that we are commissioning on key topics in landscape research. This year we decided to focus on the broad theme of landscape justice and launched a competition for proposals in which CLaD was successful. We chose landscape justice for our first call as this is one of the main themes running through the LRG’s Research Strategy (LRG, 2014). Landscape Justice is a broad field but the focus on migration is timely given the current European migration crisis. We will be launching another Call for commissioned reviews later this year—watch this space! Whilst on the topic of landscape justice it is also worth mentioning our cover image, kindly provided by Scott Jennings Melbourne, Assistant Professor of Landscape Architecture, Faculty of Architecture, University of Hong Kong (melbourne@hku.hk), who, together with many others, kindly responded to our call for cover images on the theme of landscape justice. He writes of the image: ‘Yangon, Myanmar (Rangoon, Burma) is a place in transition, as decades of authoritarian rule give way to representative governance and the country attracts a new found level of international engagement. This photograph was taken at the base of a large bridge that spans Pazundaung Creek to link the city’s historic core with Thaketa Township to the east. The kinds of tensions represented in the image, especially between this human figure appropriating a work of infrastructure in the face of larger industrial forces, will continue as planning schemes are implemented in coming years and the city experiences urban change’. Thirdly, we look forward to publishing our HERCULES special issue later in the year, guest edited by Hannes Palang and Steven Shuttleworth. The publication of this issue marks a significant coming of age for the LRG. HERCULES (http://www.hercules-landscapes.eu/project.php) is a major European Union funded research project: ‘The “Sustainable Futures for Europe’s Heritage in Cultural Landscapes” project (HERCULES) seeks to empower public and private actors to protect and sustainably manage cultural landscapes that possess significant cultural, socio-economic, historical, natural and archaeological value, at a local, national and Pan-European level’. The LRG’s involvement as a working partner in the

Parkwood Springs – A fringe in time: Temporality and heritage in an urban fringe landscape:

This paper aims to advance the theory and practice of landscape heritage planning, design and management, focusing especially on the question: what are the relationships between landscape narratives – the ways in which we tell the story of a landscape – and landscape heritage outcomes (landscape practice – planning, design, management – based on particular readings of the past)? The paper explores this question through a critical examination of three different narrative accounts of Parkwood Springs, an urban waste site in the city of Sheffield, UK: a conventional history, a personal experiential account, and an analysis based on the Sheffield Historic Landscape Characterisation. The critique is informed by a cross-disciplinary theoretical discussion of the ways time is conceptualized and presented in narrative, and how these conceptualizations influence future landscapes.