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.