Landscape Evaluation in Practice: The Case of South-East Devon

Abstract

Landscape evaluation has been a statutory duty for both local and central government since the 1947 Town and Country Planning Act and the 1949 National Parks and Access to the Countryside Act came into force, yet there are few agreed procedures for making such evaluations. Although many techniques have been devised, in the main they have not been subjected to sufficiently rigorous and repeated testing for them to be considered truly reliable. In this study, a much discussed technique, developed for the Coventry-Solihull-Warwickshire Sub-Regional Study, is applied to a new area, south-east Devon, and the results are compared with those derived from Warwickshire. THIS paper examines some of the requirements for an effective and widely applicable technique of landscape evaluation. In the context of local and central governmental responsibilities for landscape protection, it considers the need for evaluation techniques and describes how a much discussed technique, developed for the Coventry-Solihull-Warwickshire Sub-Regional Study,1 was applied to the landscape of south-east Devon, explaining why it was chosen and comparing the results derived from rural Devon with those from Warwickshire. In recent years, the potential value of techniques of landscape evaluation to land-use planning has awakened much interest, both among academics and professional planners. More recently, however, the wide variation between available techniques, and an apparent lack of appreciation of what they can and cannot achieve, has produced a situation where widespread doubts have arisen concerning the ultimate utility of the whole exercise. In a general review of the subject, Dunn summed up the 'art' of landscape evaluation as being in a state of confusion.2 One of the chief difficulties stems from the intangible nature of the concept of landscape beauty; inevitably there is much dispute, both over what it is and what its essential components are. Techniques have tended either to be discarded or to be radically changed, so that they fit more closely to the particular concept of landscape held by each individual researcher.3 This is a pity, since it has effectively prevented the majority of techniques from being applied in more than a very few landscapes, thus making it almost impossible to judge their wider effectiveness. Dating from the Town and Country Planning Act 1947 and the National Parks and Access to the Countryside Act I949, central and local government have had a statutory duty to evaluate the aesthetic quality of different landscapes for the purposes of protection and enhancement. The result is a patchwork of National Parks, Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty and Areas of Great Landscape Value, covering more than 40 per cent of England and Wales.4 In these areas 'development control' is supposed to be more strictly applied, so that the beauty of the landscape may be protected. Although there is general agreement on the need to protect such landscapes, there is considerable disagreement about the details of their boundaries. It has been suggested that the boundaries of, for example, the National Parks should be reviewed,5 but only the vaguest indication of the criteria to be employed has been provided. A nationally agreed technique of landscape evaluation would enable the boundaries for such protected landscapes to be drawn more rationally. What is also required is an agreed method for defining