Social Evaluation Approaches in Landscape Projects

Landscape is a crucial component of world heritage and, in the last few years, landscape projects have played a vital role in the development of sustainable scenarios. As reported in the European Landscape Convention, landscape means an area, as perceived by people, of which the character is the result of the action and interaction of natural and/or human factors. Therefore, in landscape planning and assessment, the community is necessarily involved. In order to improve the effectiveness of a project for landscape enhancement, this study suggests strategies for an integrated project, taking into account the numerous, heterogeneous variables involved. A landscape project, therefore, is a complex project that requires structured valuation stages, open to the community dimension. The qualitative, intergenerational, and inclusive characteristics of landscapes suggest that the limits of traditional economic analysis should be exceeded by adopting new assessment methods. With this aim in mind, this paper proposes social evaluation approaches, which operate by combining deliberative processes with total economic and multidimensional approaches. In this paper, we present: (1) a brief overview of the main features and issues concerning landscape projects; (2) strategies for integrated projects in landscape enhancement; and (3) social approaches in landscape assessment that account for complexity and social inclusion. OPEN ACCESS Sustainability 2014, 6 7907