Everyday People Evaluating Everyday Landscapes: A Participatory Application of Landscape Character Assessment to Peri-urban Countryside

Abstract

This work concerns an application of the Landscape Character Assessment (LChA) method to peri-urban countryside in the metropolitan area of Bari, Italy. Motivations are rooted in an interest for participatory approaches to ordinary landscape research and policy making. Following the principles laid down in the European Landscape Convention, the research design included, beyond desk studies and field surveys, also semi-structured interviews and focus groups to involve local stakeholders. Findings point to a clear potential for LChA to help address issues of scale (despite peri-urbanity being an elusive subject), for interactive action-research methods to harness the growing interest in landscape policy among a diversity of social actors, and for photography to assist the development of alternative approaches to landscape quality. Finally, neo-rural practices emerge as a possible means to reconcile rural development programmes and landscape policy, with a view to coping with the in-betweenness of peri-urban landscapes.