Abstract
In a context of a rapidly changing livability of towns and countryside, climate change and biodiversity decrease, this paper introduces a landscape-based planning approach to regional spatial policy challenges allowing a regime shift towards a future land system resilient to external pressures. The concept of nature-based solutions and transition theory are combined in this approach, in which co-created normative future visions serve as boundary concepts. Rather than as an object in itself, the landscape is considered as a comprehensive principle, to which all spatial processes are inherently related. We illustrate this approach with three projects in the Netherlands in which landscape-based visions were used to guide the land transition, going beyond the traditional nature-based solutions. The projects studied show that a shared long-term future landscape vision is a powerful boundary concept and a crucial source of inspiration for a coherent design approach to solve today’s spatial planning problems. Further, they show that cherishing abiotic differences in the landscape enhances sustainable and resilient landscapes, that co-creation in the social network is a prerequisite for shared solutions, and that a landscape-based approach enhances future-proof land-use transitions to adaptive, circular, and biodiverse landscapes.
Highlights
Received: 19 November 2020 Accepted: 23 December 2020 Published: 28 December 2020Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.The livability of the city and the countryside is under great pressure all over the world
In order to strive for an integral solution in a spatial context and incorporating the social environment [14], this paper introduces a landscape-based planning approach aiming at regional spatial policies allowing for a community-based transition in a relatively urbanized countryside resilient to various external pressures
The evaluation of the cases shows that the landscape-based planning approach stands for land-use transitions based on a landscape-based spatial development, that is, an approach to spatial processes that takes into account all the relationships in the landscape: both the physical landscape with its layers and functions and the socio-ecological landscape with its different scales and actors
Summary
Received: 19 November 2020 Accepted: 23 December 2020 Published: 28 December 2020. Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Given the complex character of the current landscape planning issues, climate-robust biodiversity and circularity are key principles for responsible landscape adaptation in such spatial processes [7] In this context, it is crucial that all actors take part in the spatial planning process and that they can contribute their local knowledge and opinions so that the emerging strategies are tailored to the biophysical, and to the social landscape [8]. It is crucial that all actors take part in the spatial planning process and that they can contribute their local knowledge and opinions so that the emerging strategies are tailored to the biophysical, and to the social landscape [8] Finding solutions for this ill-defined Gordian knot of challenges spatial planning is facing means that actions of different sectors and actors need to be aligned. Starting from the basic abiotic differentiation underlying all landscape processes, a landscape-based approach to spatial planning should make use of the opportunities offered by the landscapes further differentiated by societal expectations and cultural norms, instead of designing the landscape according to the economic ambitions of today’s users only as, at the end of the day, is still often the dominant practice [16,17,18]
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