Suchergebnisse

This article brings together the concepts of land and landscape, tightly linked in urban transformative situations, but rarely used for the purpose to strengthen strategic planning for sustainability. They are investigated as a combined base for land use deliberations, in early phases of planning processes, in practices of different scale, especially in a European context, drawing on planning and landscape policies generally agreed upon, as well as the UN Sustainable Development Goals. This article argues for taking into consideration the landscape as experienced human habitat, in relation to the understanding of land as both a common resource, and as pieces of property. This is motivated partly by the more or less global political trend and the turn from state interventions to individualistic capitalism (calling for new methods to solve common challenges), but also by a changing planning profession, increased collaborative planning processes, increased significance of public space as a scarce resource in densified cities, the need for holistic perspectives in sustainable urban development and the need for unifying concepts for urban and rural land at a local and regional scale. A new concept "around-scape" is suggested, in order to make visible the subjective binding between available perceived resources and spatial transformation.

In spite of the frequent use of landscape representations in planning, 'the urban landscape' is rarely the focus in discussions within planning practice or planning theory, be it in terms of representations or as a socio-material framework for planning actions. Instead it appears to be taken for granted and in this way affects planning theory and practice, leaving planning activities (professional as well as participatory) as rather haphazard events, hard to contextualize and to foresee any consequences of. Taking the landscape for granted excludes the possibility of discussing the differences between understanding the changing urban landscape from representations and understanding it in relation to experienced realities. This text argues for increased interdisciplinary elaborations on the meaning and content of urban landscape, by linking it to discourses in planning theory, urban theory and landscape theory.

Two groups of schoolyards for junior- and intermediate-level schools were studied. A previous study had shown that teachers considered these groups of schoolyards to be "good" and bad, respectively. It was found that the good schoolyards had woods either in or near them, whereas the bad schoolyards did not. It also was seen that children in the good schoolyards took-part In a greater number of activities than children in the bad ones. The schoolyards' different places were used with different frequency and for different activities in the two groups. The results indicate that when the place is included in the activity concept, it is possible to point out general differences, regarding place as well as activity, between schoolyards that were perceived as good or bad.