ELICITING LANDSCAPE VALUES THROUGH PARTICIPATORY
MAPPING AND ORAL HISTORIES
Nora FAGERHOLM, Tobias PLIENINGER, Claudia BIELING, Matthias BÜRGI &
María Garcia MARTIN
University of Copenhagen, Denmark, ncf@ign.ku.dk & tobias.plieninger@ign.ku.dk
University of Freiburg, Germany, claudia.bieling@uni-hohenheim.de & maria.garcia@landespflege.uni-freiburg.de
Swiss Federal Research Institute WSL, Switzerland,matthias.buergi@wsl.ch
This paper highlights the contribution of subjective place meanings and landscape
values to understanding landscape identity, sense of place and, eventually, cultural
sustainability. We address participatory mapping of subjective place-based
landscape practices and experiences as a practical planning and management
approach and tool for cultural landscapes. With an internet survey applying public
participation GIS (PPGIS) methods, local actors in the landscape are invited to create
place-based knowledge on landscape practices, perceptions, values and meanings.
As participatory mapping is successful in bringing the subjective human practice in
and experience of the landscape into spatial presentations, the advantage is to
understand the landscape values rising from the individual experience as collective
presentations. However, oral histories may play an important role in creating in-depth
understanding on the role of culture, heritage, history and perceptions of landscape
change in shaping these mapped values, and communicates a complimentary
perspective to the values assigned to specific places in the landscape. Hence, in this
paper we discuss eliciting landscape values through two different approaches,
participatory mapping and oral histories, complementing each other with examples
from European cultural landscapes addressed in the EU FP 7 project HERCULES.
Potential implications of the presented approaches to landscape planning and
management in terms of cultural sustainability will also be discussed.