Landscape Experience Research Articles

Ernst HanischLandschaft und Identität: Versuch einer österreichischen Erfahrungsgeschichte

Reviews 173 as an occasion for the contributors to study other problems that interest them, with a, sometimes very slight, connection to the novel by, perhaps, Salten. Quite a few of these contributions are nevertheless well worth reading. Sigurd Paul Scheichl University of Innsbruck Ernst Hanisch, Landschaft und Identität: Versuch einer österreichischen Erfahrungsgeschichte. Vienna: Böhlau Verlag, 2019. 401 pp. €35. ISBN 978–3205 –20860–0. Landscape and nature are a core facet of Austrian identity and self-stylization. This finding is underpinned not only by surveys in which its landscape, and the Alpine mountainscape in particular, are perceived as ‘typically Austrian’ or by the imagery of tourism marketing or political campaigns; it is also the subject of research in a variety of disciplines. Cultural historian Anthony Bushell and historian Oliver Rathkolb are among those who recognize its key role in the construction of Austrian identity. Landschaft und Identität by historian Ernst Hanisch is a valuable addition to the body of work examining the close links between Austria’s landscape and the identity of the nation and its inhabitants. Hanisch expands the ongoing discourse centred on the interconnection of identities and landscapes by approaching the issue from an unusual angle. Writing what he refers to in the volume’s title as an attempt at ‘Erfahrungsgeschichte’, he collects documents from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries encapsulating the landscape experiences of a variety of protagonists. These sources are then brought into conversation with each other and with prominent narratives surrounding the perception of landscapes in the Alpine republic, from its positive portrayal in tourism marketing to the negative connotations prominent in discourses of nature conservation. Grouped according to the characteristics of specific landscapes — in chapters focusing on the mountains, the river (i.e. the Danube), the forest, industrial landscapes, and the plains (‘das flache Land’ p. 297) respectively — the material is presented in a topical structure that brings the properties and impact of specific types of landscape to the fore and that includes landscapes often overlooked or deliberately omitted when discussing Austria. These glimpses into the multifaceted reactions, perceptions and experiences evoked by different facets of the Austrian landscape follow an insightful introduction to Hanisch’s methodology and his understanding of landscapes, identities and mentalities. The relevance of his particular source material, which he terms ‘Ego-Dokumente’ (p. 12), to an approach that puts human experience centre stage is also set out in more detail, and core concerns that shape the discourse of landscapes in the Austrian context are acknowledged. Here Hanisch addresses, among other issues, the irresolvable tension between the demands of tourism on the one hand and those of nature conservation on the other, thus touching on a controversy that is both long-standing and, in an era of climate crisis, increasingly urgent. Reviews 174 Hanisch’s book, however, does not only prove to be timely in the context of domestic debates. Many of the core questions he is concerned with, be they political, economic or ecological, place his work in the nexus of wider discourses of the twenty-first century, such as the Anthropocene and eco-criticism. In understanding landscape as a form of nature that has been shaped by the humans inhabiting it, and by examining the close interconnectedness of human experience with diverse landscapes, the author broaches issues at the heart of these discourses from an Austrian angle. He explores individual experiences of the impact humans can have on nature and vice versa, approaching questions regarding the myth of pristine nature and similarly romanticized perceptions, and revealing how strongly the identities conveyed in his source material are influenced and shaped by the landscapes perambulated by its authors. Through a skilful selection of sources Hanisch is able to draw a picture of experiences and identities emerging from the context of the Austrian landscape in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries that is, although not exhaustive, multifarious, detailed and well substantiated. This is where a strength of his methodology comes into focus: its transferability and value for other disciplines and areas of research. The findings presented in Landschaft und Identität and the methodology upon which they rely could be fruitfully extended by examining further source material. This...

Designing Aesthetic Experiences for the Cultural Sustainability of Ecological Health

Ensuring human wellbeing and promoting ecological health are two central objectives in contemporary landscape architecture practice and adaption to climate change. Cognitive sciences recognize that affect and emotion play a critical role in human decision-making. This article describes how aesthetic experiences could affect decisions that support or undermine ecological health. While the wellbeing benefits of pleasant landscape experiences have been demonstrated empirically, aesthetic experiences may or may not promote ecological health. The question of how to better align the two remains under debate and investigation. Building on the concept of cultural sustainability, this article elucidates how aesthetic experiences can be used in design tactics to encourage societal acceptance for highly functioning ecosystems that otherwise may be destroyed or resisted for their unappealing or unfamiliar appearance. With examples from China and the United States, this article illuminates how fine-scale, immediately noticeable landscape characteristics, such as “cues to care,” can change perceptual and affective responses to promote ecological health. This article invites readers to reflect on what role aesthetic experiences may play in conserving, restoring, and creating ecologically sound landscapes as we face new challenges in the urban era of climate change, and how design can help construct aesthetic experiences with immediately noticeable landscape characteristics.

A phenomenology of intra-play for sustainability research within heritage landscapes

In this article, we explore a phenomenology of intra-play for sustainability research, integral to the processes of transforming both cultural and natural heritage landscapes. Such processes are studied as active - always underway and in flux - across space and time, and through the intra-play between the human and more-than-human world. The authors have developed the exploration of intra-play within the fields of phenomenology and heritage studies with empirical examples of the processes of becoming, especially in experiential landscapes of post-industrial heritage sites. The article presents a phenomenology of intra-play as a haptic and ontogenetic philosophy of landscape studies, inspired by the anthropologist Tim Ingold, and a process methodology, inspired in part by the art of what Rita Irwin calls “a/r/tography”. Our approach animates the different forms, both human and non-human, that co-form heritage landscapes. The article traces these playful ways and discusses possible consequences for sustainability research and change within heritage landscapes.

The Picturesque, the Sublime, and the Authentic: Leonardo and Richter

Abstract How can artists respond to the pressures generated by an age of photography and of ubiquitous imagery accredited almost no material value, an age in which craft has nearly vanished? I argue that Gerhard Richter and Norman Ackroyd each in his own way generate a particular freedom with respect to history (including the history of art) by negotiating an artworld in which abstraction and representation have no stable mutual hierarchy, in which the sublime and the picturesque may coexist. Leonardo long before discovered elements of both in his experience of landscape. Different as they might appear (painting versus aquatint; luxury versus affordable), Richter’s and Ackroyd’s works each establish a kind of art object that is not only postaura but also disdains the claims of uniqueness and of the immediately, thoroughly autograph: authentic, not self-expressive works of art that involve handwork even as they invoke mechanisms of replication. They renew the sublime via varieties of blankness adjusted for a world of dauntingly vast information resources.

Malaria and Victorian Fictions of Empire, by Jessica Howell and Malarial Subjects: Empire, Medicine and Nonhumans in British India, 1820-1909, by Rohan Deb Roy

Reviewed by: Malaria and Victorian Fictions of Empire by Jessica Howell, and: Malarial Subjects: Empire, Medicine and Nonhumans in British India, 1820–1909 by Rohan Deb Roy Pamela K. Gilbert (bio) Malaria and Victorian Fictions of Empire, by Jessica Howell; pp. x + 238. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2018, £75.00, £29.99 paper, $105.00, $44.99 paper. Malarial Subjects: Empire, Medicine and Nonhumans in British India, 1820–1909, by Rohan Deb Roy; pp. xv + 332. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2017, £78.99, £24.99 paper, $105.00, $32.99 paper. Malaria, a disease which remains one of the top ten killers globally, is of particular interest to scholars of nineteenth-century Britain because it was seen as a principal obstacle to imperial ambitions. As the century wore on, malaria moved from being a general category of febrile disease, often with a recurring element, to being something increasingly specific, treatable with a particular kind of plant product. Finally it came to be associated with mosquitoes and a certain disease agent, a member of a subgenus of the protozoa plasmodium. The two books discussed here focus on malaria in the British imperial context in this transformational period. Rohan Deb Roy’s Malarial Subjects: Empire, Medicine and Nonhumans in British India, 1820–1909 is a detailed, valuable reading of the history of the period and especially the cultivation of cinchona and development of quinine, brimming with footnotes to primary materials and material from Bengali vernacular texts. Jessica Howell’s Malaria and Victorian Fictions of Empire also provides historical context, but focuses primarily on reading fever in novels of the period. Howell [End Page 705] offers an intriguing understanding of authors’ use of malaria to signal a salutary openness to experience of the colonial landscape and to create opportunities for self-knowledge. Deb Roy organizes his book mostly around quinine, between its discovery and the first imperial conference on malaria in British India. His is not a triumphalist narrative about a cure, and he shows that malaria as a category is in part coproduced with the emerging narrative around quinine, especially from the 1850s on. Deb Roy traces the large-scale production of the drug by the Howard family in Britain, which began synthesizing quinine starting in the late 1850s. Later, as government-run factories began to set up in India to produce the drug more cheaply, metropolitan makers insisted on the inferior quality of the colonial product. Deb Roy details a complex set of conflicts in which the labelling of the drugs was “contingent upon the shifting configurations of authority in the overlapping worlds of pharmaceutical business, colonial government and scientific knowledge” (211). Locally made quinine became possible with the transplantation of cinchona from Peru to India in the 1850s and 1860s. Deb Roy shows that the plants quickly became valuable commodities: not only as objects of medical, chemical, and botanical knowledge but also of commercial rivalry and anxious imperial administration. Deb Roy focuses on Clements Robert Markham, who established cinchona plantations in India and hoped they would provide a lasting benefit to the people, comparing cinchona to the melons supposedly left by the Mughal Empire that survived as a part of daily life. This was envisioned in part as a reparative gesture after the mayhem of 1857, a demonstration of benevolence that, for some, helped to justify empire. It was also profitable. The apparent fragility and new world origins of cinchona gave it added mystery and value. Malaria was a diagnostic category that, by mid-century, was understood as responsive to quinine. Of course, since quinine was also given prophylactically, the claims for its impact on malaria were limitless. If you did not have malaria, quinine had prevented it; if you did, well, quinine would treat it! And if quinine did not work, it probably was not malaria. The typical association in this period of fever with particular landscapes across the globe shifted slowly to a demonization of the colonial landscape by the 1850s; malaria came to be associated not only with marshes but also rocks and soils—“marsh poison, granite poison, sandstone poison”—and Black and brown bodies (99). A brief chapter considers the...

Functions of Landscape in Games—A Theoretical Approach with Case Examples

The significance of play in the construction of landscape involving the feedback relationships between social conventions and the individual and between the individual and physical space, contrastingly, has so far received only little scientific attention. Games, however, take on great significance in the process of socialization in order to introduce the socializing person into the interpretations, valuations, and practices of the social world, which applies correspondingly to landscape. Play is an essential element of comprehending the concept “landscape”. Accordingly, this present essay deals with conceptual considerations of the function of games in relation to the social and individual construction of landscape. The theoretical framing of landscape will be carried out within the theory of the three landscapes, following Karl Popper’s three worlds. This theoretical framing also involves fundamental considerations on the connection between games and landscapes, which will be illustrated in more detail by means of two case examples, i.e., model railroads and pinball landscapes. It is shown that the playful engagement with landscape takes place in two dimensions: On the one hand, role expectations, norms, and values associated with landscape are conveyed, thus providing guidance for individual construction and individual experience of landscape. On the other hand, landscape contingencies can be tested. They address norms of interpretation and evaluation of landscape that are considered as bound together. Moreover, innovations can be tested, which may have been established in the social understanding of landscape.

Overlapping Layers: a representation and learning landscape code for Dropull

This research paper provides a base for drawing up the development of a general strategy and “acupunctural” experiences to identify and record liminal landscape potentialities of the Municipality of Dropull, located in the South-eastern cross border area between Albania and Greece. According to this key objective, the study looks at the liminal characteristics and potentials of Sofratikë, one of the four villages of the valley of the Drinos River, in order to achieve the knowledge and understanding of many positive features related to the liminal dimensions of landscape, metaphysical landscapes, and landscape experience. The analysis moves from two main driver-topics - “Landscape” and “History”, to a general strategy that defines acupunctural interventions at a later stage. The acupunctural systems – water, roads, mountains, valley, archaeological area, and Sofratikë village - are those landscape and design strategies aimed at identifying specific sub-areas of intervention in the macro landscape unit. In fact, they are independent parts of the landscape, which - if interconnected - allow an overview of the macro landscape unit. Therefore, the acupunctural interventions become actions of modification and sustainable development of the territory, because of levels of the same landscape unit, or rather of the same milieu. In the order to achieve these aims, the research identifies a specific methodology, by focusing on Sofratikë’s landscape’ layers, classifying different stratification layers of the area: archaeological area, historic-settlement, rural and agricultural landscape. A first approach to analyze Sofratikë's landscape is aimed at mapping and – at a later stage - overlapping the main physical layers, which have been defined and distinguished as the following stratification levels: the mountains, Sofratikë city, the quarry, the agricultural fields, Hadrianopoli. Starting from this investigation and after an overall photo screening, a first, possible general strategy has been outlined, focusing on the identification of two main liminal development directions. Within the first direction, the longitudinal liminality has been analysed, connecting Sofratikë’s historical and rural city with the archaeological area of Hadrianopoli, through the main physical infrastructure - the national road - and natural systems – agriculture landscape and Drinos River. The second direction highlights the transversal liminality developing the connection between the SofratiKë system (just embedded the historic city, Hadrianopoli, natural, rural and infrastructure systems) with other archaeological sites like Antigonea and Melan. Once this framework has been established, the main acupunctural strategy to achieve the revitalization of this site has been investigated. Four principal clusters have been identified as driver-systems to plan the punctual redevelopment strategy and related following acupunctural activities

Re:bodying the virtual

This visual essay is composed of an associative thread of images that are sourced from several collaborative projects we (A + R) have conducted over the past six years. The context in which these collaborations took place include a symposium, exhibitions, various video works, and the teaching of a semi-virtual interior design studio in Melbourne. A crucial aspect within these situations was a shared spatial and didactical praxis that was located on opposite sides of the planet?—?Belgium and Australia. The collaboration was thus largely determined by the gaps between A + R: the geographical separation, the physicality or virtuality of site, and the millisecond delay of the video feed. The virtual screen that speared through each interaction meant that the technologies and processes employed were often undulating attempts to minimise these gaps. To compose this visual essay, the image archive of each collaborative project was examined through a peripheral lens, in order to create relations that interrogate the spatial and conceptual implications of bridging this physical distance. The anachronistic approach to the images allowed new forms of configurations to arise, emphasising the specific spatial situations over any previous context or anecdotal chronology. As a consequence, elaborating on the precise details of each project seems to be somewhat beside the point. In fact, prosaic descriptions detract from what is actually important about these interactions. The textual interspersions throughout the essay are attempts to develop a syntax for pointing out what is conceptually relevant. They try to unpack?—?or make more accessible?—?the visual argumentation that the essay is constructed from, without ever claiming or providing unisonal clarity. The words do not function as explanations, but instead as musings that attempt to mark?—?and disclose?—?the various typologies, as well as to narrate the transition between them. They are attempts to describe both the experience of the digital landscape and the terrain itself. In these thematic paragraphs, we have attempted to find language that resonates with the configurations of site that come together through the juxtapositions within the visual sequence. The collected imagery has been curated to lay bare the constituting components of this shared experience within digital space. In this way, the essay as a whole can be read as a subjective taxonomy of our digital communication of place as well as a truly digital simultaneous compression of it into one singular entity. Ultimately, the resulting transmedial constellation of images, text, places, objects, and projects aims to interrogate the kind of interiorities that are generated when two bodies interact from distant locations through predominantly digital platforms. It describes an exchange between the virtual spaces that we occupy and the physicality of the bodies and objects that remain essential for this virtual occupation.

The past in the past and the present: a study of deep time and the city

Cities have an immortal quality in the minds of their inhabitants, enduring over the span of their lifetimes, ever changing yet familiar as every new stratigraphic relationship in the city's fabric is thrust, hacked or crammed into the centuries and millennia of anthropogenic stratum that shaped the place to that point. What role does this deep time play in the lives of the shoppers, commuters, dwellers, and workers who interact with the largely invisible urban prehistoric landscape? This paper reports on experiential landscape research focused on a possible prehistoric site in Glasgow, the Camphill enclosure, in Queen's Park. An account of the site has been provided detailing the academic histories from antiquarian rediscovery to the present, current interactions, and a phenomenology-based interpretative narrative of past. The paper concludes with a critique of the research undertaken highlighting the limitations of both the methods and practices and some thoughts on deep time in urban places.

Go to the forest! Exploring the orderings of Swedish Nature-Based Integration

‘Nature-Based Integration’ (NBI) has been proposed as a solution to two prominent issues in contemporary Nordic societies: increasing separation from nature among ‘modern’ societies; and the need to ‘integrate’ groups of diverse newcomers. This article examines NBI activities in Örebro County, central Sweden, exploring how these practices seek to bring immigrants into a shared Swedish experiential landscape that forms part of the work of ordering Sweden as a community. These activities form part of an ordering project, within which ‘Swedes’ and ‘newcomers’ are situated, drawing on extant nationalist orderings. Likewise, it represents part of an effort to enact a sustainable Sweden in an international world. Drawing on research on environmental racism and (in)justice, this article homes in on the norms implicit and explicit to this ordering. It then discusses the implications of this, highlighting (arguably unavoidable) coercive elements. Furthermore, the long history of outdoor lifestyle as a pillar of Swedish nationalism and the embracing of such activities by the Swedish far right highlight that nature may also become a site of conflict as much as conciliation. Finally, the article considers the types of environmental action arising from the NBI orderings and the likelihood of meaningful environmental change.

Coastal tourism, market segmentation and contested landscapes

Governments are increasingly adopting Blue Growth strategies as a means of promoting economic development. Although Blue Growth offers development opportunities, from a local perspective it is often concentrated in inaccessible sectors or has negative impacts on coastal communities and landscapes. We argue that to be of use to local communities, tourist experiences of coastal landscapes need to be understood from a community-led, rather than market-led, perspective. Tourist market segmentation can help reveal such experiences but has predominately been used in a narrow, econometric way by the tourism industry, market researchers and policymakers. These approaches often fail to capture the innate experiential nature of coastal tourism and often result in the production of coastal tourism that is unsympathetic to community landscape perspectives and values. To address this gap, this paper adopts an experiential tourist segmentation approach based on community experiences of coastal landscapes. Applied to data collected from a tourist survey on the west coast of Ireland, we identify five landscape experiences: well-being experiences; conscientious travel experiences; nature experiences; coastal change experiences; and cultural experiences. Based on these experiences, four alternative tourist segments were identified, with significant alignment to communities around sustainable, ethical and locally sensitised forms of tourism, as follows: Blue Health Seekers; Nature Escapers; Pristine Seekers; and Heritage Explorers. The paper concludes by arguing that adopting more experiential and dialogical approaches to market segmentation will identify tourist and communities’ perspectives in ways that are compatible and will reveal opportunities for more inclusive and locally accessible forms of Blue Growth.

Experimental Heritage as Practice: Approaching the Past through the Present at the Intersection of Art and Archaeology

This article presents the emerging transdisciplinary practice of Experimental Heritage as performed within an ongoing Irish-Swedish research project involving artists and archaeologists. The project is undertaken simultaneously in western Ireland and south-eastern Sweden. It explores the chosen Irish and Swedish landscapes of Clare and Öland, their similarities and differences, with the aid of combined and integrated artistic and archaeological practices. The starting points for common explorations are: stone and water, movement and time/the multitemporal, and the tangible and intangible aspects of landscape experience. In a transdisciplinary process we explore new ways of combining art, archaeology and heritage within and between these landscapes. One path towards fulfilling the aims is to explore art, archaeology and heritage through the senses. A phenomenological landscape perspective and an eco-cultural approach is combined with Performance Studies and movement-based practice. These perspectives and methodologies are paired with artistic and archaeological approaches to research such as those conducted through poetry, music, performance, visual arts, physical surveys, mapping and excavations. Methods of working have developed from walking in the landscape to sketching, through visuals, sound and movement, group dialogue, team building and exploring the materiality of making. Group movement-based workshops are used to support receptivity and inner listening for decision making through somatic principles and the senses. The project encourages transdisciplinary as well as translocal practice to arrive at new approaches and perspectives on how the past matters to us in the present and how it might have an impact on the future. To achieve both transdisciplinary and translocal ways of working through art and archaeology/heritage, we need to expand beyond conventional art and archaeology/heritage research, communication and presentation within the well-known framework of universities, cultural history museums and art institutions. The constraints of these conventions are substituted by alternative settings in the landscape. This landscape-based practice includes method development across disciplines, times and geographic distances. It also includes collaborations with people from local communities that can contribute their perspectives, experiences and stories to the explorations. The advantage of Experimental Heritage as practice in the landscape is its ability to challenge our current worldview to better understand other times and cultures as well as our own. This in turn provides us with new tools to create alternative futures resting on care and respect for the need for diversity and breaking not only with boundaries set up between nature and culture but also hierarchies of central and peripheral. We intend to find out more about the multitemporal layers in the landscapes surrounding us and how they relate to our inner landscapes of multitemporal perception. The combination and equal roles of artists and archaeologists as well as the contributions of researchers and members of the local communities in this work is crucial. Equality and diversity encourage transdisciplinary knowledge development.

Development of Island Leisure Sports Tourism Based on SWOT

Fu, W. and Liang, L., 2020. Development of island leisure sports tourism based on SWOT. In: Qiu, Y.; Zhu, H., and Fang, X. (eds.), Current Advancements in Marine and Coastal Research for Technological and Sociological Applications. Journal of Coastal Research, Special Issue No. 107, pp. 197-200. Coconut Creek (Florida), ISSN 0749-0208.With the increasingly rich material and cultural needs of human beings, tourism activities have gradually become a way for human beings to relax and enjoy life. The island leisure tourism has a good development prospect. The island leisure tourism, with its unique Marine landscape and unique tourism experience, has attracted thousands of tourists. There are a large number of islands in the world, most of which are uninhabited. Reasonable development and utilization of islands can greatly promote the development of island leisure tourism. Therefore, the word “island” is also an important image of island leisure tourism. However, island leisure tourism is also mysterious. The author tries to use SWOT theory to summarize and analyze the image of island leisure tourism, so as to explore the real image of island leisure tourism.

Pratiche e progettualità di rigenerazione e welfare: il “Premio triennale Giulio Andreolli – Fare paesaggio”

The “Premio Triennale Giulio Andreolli – Fare Paesaggio” was born in 2016 with the aim of en-hancing landscape experiences in the European Alpine area. It is divided into three sections: plan-ning and programming initiatives, architectural and landscape interventions and education and par-ticipation actions. The success of the award shows the growing and transversal interest in landscape issues, both at in-stitutional and professional level, in the context of spontaneous and “bottom-up” initiatives. One emergent aspect of interest during the various editions is the birth of a large number of activi-ties related to the management of traditional rural landscape, and oriented to the knowledge of terri-tories and to the involvement of the inhabitants. These local communities are often engaged in new organizational methods, driven by sincere enthusiasm and civic sense. That is the reason why one of the most interesting elements emerging from the award experience must be sought in this intertwining between popular initiatives and both professional and institu-tional approaches. Bounding this reflection to the regeneration-driven production, which is the main topic of this issue, it is possible to isolate, among the many cases nominated for the award, some interesting experienc-es in which, with different outcomes, designers and clients have dealt with contemporary architec-ture, touching important themes related to the transformation of alpine landscapes.

The Sustainable Development of Urban Cultural Heritage Gardens Based on Tourists’ Perception: A Case Study of Tokyo’s Cultural Heritage Gardens

For the cultural heritage gardens in the urban environment, modern high-rise buildings inevitably change their original landscape and form a new landscape experience with visual impact. Whether cultural heritage gardens and modern cities can coexist harmoniously is one of the critical issues to achieve their sustainable development. This research aimed to find an indicator of landscape morphology, which can predict the visitor’s cognition for such cultural landscape forms. This study surveyed tourists’ preferences in six selected cultural heritage gardens in Tokyo. We used hemispheric panoramas to calculate the view factors of certain elements of the landscape at the observation points. The results showed that Sky View Factor was a positive predictor of tourists’ preference, and this predictability did not change significantly with the attributes of tourists. We also found that tourists’ attitudes towards the high-rise buildings outside the gardens have become more tolerant and diverse. These findings could be applied to predict visitors’ perception preference of cultural heritage landscape in the context of urban renewal, contributing to the sustainable development of cultural heritage landscape and urbanization.

Autoethnographic journeys through contested spaces

Stemming from a frustration with the rigidity of categories within tourism studies and their associated violence of finalization and narrative entrapment, this paper sets out to trouble the formation of tourist/m categories within the context of contested space. Using an evocative collaborative autoethnographic approach, three personal narratives are provided by three different tourists whose positionality attaches them to the contested space of Bethlehem, Palestine, in different ways. These narratives highlight the problems associated with trying to categorise tourist experiences in landscapes that speak very differently to different people. Furthermore, the paper demonstrates how the process of bringing together competing narratives of space through collaborative autoethnography can serve as a valid exercise in transformative dialogue.

WORKING COMMUNITIES’ SIGNIFICANT HERITAGE URBAN RIVER CORRIDOR LANDSCAPE OF MELAKA CITY

The existing landscape characters of urban river corridor of Melaka City have eroded due to unsustainable design outcomes due to inadequate policies and guidelines, indiscriminate decision in design and it lacks of community consultation. In addition, political intervention and climate change have made it worse to the present urban river corridor of the city. These issues have raised concerns among the local community, particularly those workers whose livelihood depend on resources in that area. This paper reveals the distribution patterns and landscape settings of the urban river corridor of Melaka City which are significant among working communities. It also describes each landscape setting within the identified territory. The findings are determined via thematic coding analysis and overlay mapping technique based on the experiential landscape theory established by Thwaites and Simkins (2007). The combination of experiential landscapes from different individuals via overlay mapping analysis also provides insight into the communities’ urban river corridor boundary of the city, which is important in heritage-related policy

Cycling through the Landscape of Advertising in Amsterdam: A Commuters Perspective

This paper examines how outdoor advertising shapes the perception and meaning of commuting for cyclists in Amsterdam (The Netherlands), and how individualised constructions of place arise during the journey. New insights are developed for a sustainable urban policy, whilst challenging consumer research methodologies through an emphasis on urban rhythm. Interviews were enhanced through the use of video cameras, capturing the visual attention of advertisements and recording bodily engagement with the road. In contrast to much academic and industry research, it is found that the reception of advertising landscapes differs significantly between transportation types, with socio-cultural differences specific to Amsterdam also determining distinctions for cyclists. The use of data by advertisers to track the movement of cyclists is a contentious issue, with wider consequences for privacy and consent in urban daily life. This paper breaks new ground for sustainability in cycling, re-evaluating the daily-embodied experience of commercial landscapes for commuter-cyclists.

The Multi-Method Tool ‘PAST’ for Evaluating Cultural Routes in Historical Cities: Evidence from Cagliari, Italy

Thematic paths are a central aspect of urban policies for cultural heritage valorization. In fact, thematic paths are central spatial features for structuring the image of a historical landscape. Hence, this study proposes the cultural paths assessment tool (PAST) as a methodological framework for individuating a network of routes connecting cultural heritage components and for assessing their usefulness. Usefulness is herein defined as the potential of a street network to support the meaningful experience of a historical urban landscape. PAST combines space syntax techniques, a geographic information system, and a qualitative analysis within a multi-criteria analysis framework for addressing four aspects of connecting cultural heritage components, including: (i) the individuation of relevant assets; (ii) the identification of the sub-network of most central street segments; (iii) the definition of the street network of thematic routes; (iv) the assessment of the usefulness of thematic paths, according to the criteria of usability, imageability, and accessibility. The proposed methodology, applied to the historical district of Marina in the city of Cagliari in Italy, supports planning and design processes in two ways: (1) by identifying street segments and squares comprising a network of thematic routes; (2) by individuating high-leverage interventions for improving the usefulness of thematic routes. Consequently, the proposed study addresses the need to establish methodologies and analytic tools that support decision making processes for conserving, managing, and valorizing historic urban landscapes.

Diffractive Dramaturgy

This article explores how aspects of posthuman theory, and in particular diffraction as theorised by Haraway and then Barad, can be used by theatre makers to develop the practice of being and making in company at this current moment in time. I begin with an analysis of the ways stories (including stories within plays) are shared in the rehearsal room. When framed as a diffractive practice that allows for the 'iterative (re)configuring', difference can be foregrounded both as a radical dramaturgy, and a process tool for collaborating, creating and developing performance material—new ways of being together. Donna Haraway, in Staying with the Trouble, references an essay by Ursula K. Le Guin, who calls for the need for new kinds of stories, that gather many strands together by a process of exploring the potential connections between all things: explorations of multiples and difference rather than egos and individualism. Here, I consider diffraction in the context of the work of Flute Theatre where Kelly Hunter MBE has developed a dramaturgical process for using Shakespeare's later plays when working with children with severe autism and their families. This diffractive dramaturgy explores the way we audience / perform work for each other. Subjectivity and objectivity for example, are experienced differently when explored from the point of view that all matter is entangled. There is the potential for a dramaturgy of agential cuts that manifest as a kaleidoscope of intra-actions and material manifestations: a myriad of entwined textures diffracted through and with the participants own experience and context. This is a new experimental, experiential landscape, where we feel for and towards (in a tentacular way) a collaborative making process that tilts the optic away from traditional expectations. It is a multi-perspective way of working; a posthuman process that finds form in difference.