Identifying Shan‐Shui characteristics for national landscape heritage: Reconciling western and Chinese landscape characterisation from a trans‐cultural perspective

Abstract

The recognition of landscape as cultural heritage has increasingly brought together work on landscape and heritage in recent years. In a practical sense, this has been recognised through effective landscape management strategies that have sought to encompass wider information on the historic environment and its associated values. Across Europe in recent years, effective assessment and management of the historic environment have developed through a conversation around such schemes as landscape character assessment (LCA) and historic landscape characterisation (HLC). Further work is required, however, in order to extend this conversation further in trans‐cultural contexts. This paper explores the possibilities of developing such a conversation through geographic information system (GIS) modelling that draws on both western LCA/HLC perspectives and Chinese Shan‐Shui philosophies. We believe that a creative conversation between western and Chinese landscape heritage philosophies might be able to allow landscape characterisation approaches that use GIS methodologies to attain a greater depth of heritage understanding within their operation. Through trans‐cultural exchange, therefore, this research explores how a novel and indigenous language (of Shan‐Shui characterisation) might enliven western LCA, thus providing a productive conversation between different disciplines, philosophies, and culture cognitions.