Ulla Berglund

Landscape Character Assessment as an Approach to Understanding Public Interests within the European Landscape Convention

Abstract The European Landscape Conventions (ELC) definition of landscape, “an area, as perceived by people…”, places the public central to any understanding of landscape. This paper argues for ‘just’ involvement of the public and looks at how the focus of landscape as a perceived entity has been taken up within Landscape Character Assessment (LCA), an approach applied in England and Scotland for implementing the ELC. Based on a conceptual framework grounded in perception as a phenomenological experience of landscape and informed by principles of participation, LCAs from 2007 to 2011 have been assessed as to how public involvement has been considered. The results show that only a quarter of all assessments accessed involved the public, and that among these there is great disparity in the degree to which the public is engaged.

Children’s Maps in GIS: A Tool for Communicating Outdoor Experiences in Urban Planning

Since 2002 the authors have successively developed “Children’s Maps in GIS†, a method for children’s participation in spatial planning. Their studies show that 10-15 year-olds are capable of reading maps and using a GIS-application for communicating their interests in a stable and useful manner. The purpose of this article is to discuss the first stages of implementation in a real world project, in relation to ICT. The authors report experiences from a Swedish municipality using Children’s Maps in GIS in a survey with over 600 children as part of a comprehensive planning process and give examples of how data can be visualized. A significant digital divide between different parts of the administration is noted. In the ongoing development into an Internet version of the method the authors aim to increase the access to the GIS-application and develop standard procedures for categorizing and analyzing data.