Public welfare and the economics of landscape aesthetics

Abstract

This article explores the relevance of welfare and public economics for landscape aesthetics. Both the theory of landscape aesthetics and the practice of landscape and urban planning demonstrate an increasing recognition that aesthetics is a legitimate concern of government. As the branches of economics concerned with social welfare and the role of government in correcting the failures of private markets, welfare and public economics provide a rationale for government action on aesthetic grounds. The relevant market failures are aesthetic externalities and public goods as well as aesthetic injustices. Aesthetic externalities and public goods are types of inefficiencies in the allocation of resources, while aesthetic injustices are kinds of inequities in the distribution of resources. Although public economics provides neither a precise means for assessing the value of externalities and public goods nor a means for choosing among the various concepts of distributive justice, it does frame some important issues. Also, an understanding of the public economics of landscape aesthetics helps to suggest ways of financing aesthetic improvements in the landscape.