Planning for the landscape idea

Abstract

'Landscape' is a complex and varied Idea: and because of this variety and richness it represents a potentially powerful, yet challenging planning entity. This thesis explores the Landscape Idea on the occasion of its legislative introduction to Ontario's planning environment, through the 1995 and 1996 Planning Acts. Included as part of the Provincial Policies for both these Acts, this Landscape Idea obviously holds some value for the public. It is value that translates into a sustained, albeit somewhat altered conviction over the course of the two Acts, that landscapes should be conserved in this Province.

The emergence of these provincial policies was an excellent opportunity to examine the landscape understanding of the authors of these conservation provisions. Further a comparison was made between this provincial understanding and the understanding held within selected local areas in the Grand River watershed. The advantages to this juxtaposition are the ability to see the genesis of the Idea; to examine how the Idea has been translated into potentially powerful planning policies; and to see the effects of a difference in understanding between Provincial and Local Levels might have on the implementation of the Idea - thus reflecting basic power relationships in land use decision-making.

Landscape also reflects a larger movement occurring in the planning field - a movement towards a more integrated and inclusive process. Landscape has the potential to unite both cultural and natural perspectives that have been traditionally divided; and it can also serve as a planning entity to which all members of a society can relate and thus encouraged to get involved. We all experience landscape, and we all have a vested interest in it as a common, yet variously understood reality. Landscape could represent a more concrete foundation for many planning theorists who currently argue for important yet more ethereal concepts of pluralistic, dynamic and integrated planning. Landscape could be the vehicle to achieve those ends. This study therefore gives insights beyond the immediacy of the Landscape Idea - insights into the larger issues now facing the planning profession.

Through a largely qualitative Grounded Theory approach, this 'Promise of Landscape' as a common, pluralistic and integrated planning concept is explored. The difficulties in attaining the Promise are clearly articulated in the comparison between the Provincial vision of landscape conservation in the land use planning process, and the local response that anticipates the real life implementation of this landscape vision. A metaphor of this Promise and its challenges is presented in the form of a multi-faceted construct, called the Countryside Ideal. It represents the deep divide that characterizes landscape - the polarity that exists between nature and culture; economic and environmental valuing in the decision-making process; centralized power structures and more communal societies; local, regional and provincial government agencies; and finally to the most essential separation between self and object.

It is a considerate task to question the strong bias and long-entrenched mind set of seeing the world in separate and often unrelated parts. A civil society is essential to the success of landscape protection, in order that landscape planning has a strong foundation in local knowledge, participation and action. However, in this localization of power with civic planning, a regional perspective must be preserved so that administrative duplication can be avoided, environmental protection is better managed, and social justice is monitored and fostered. This thesis concludes that this kind of civil society will only come about through a critique of power, knowledge and subjectivity - all of which is reflected in the Landscape Idea.

Decision-makers clearly have to reach well beyond the Planning Act in this pursuit of a civil society. It is an act that may only serve to perpetuate a slanted approach to landscape conservation and planning actions - best serving the pretty, the posh and the privileged. The status quo approach would undermine what landscape could represent for planners as a common ground for more equitable and integrated planning solutions. With a clearer understanding of the Landscape Idea and how it has been received to date the thesis speculates on the likelihood of the Idea's success within the current planning milieu of the Province of Ontario.