Landscape Perspectives

Climb a mountain and experience the landscape. Try to grasp its holistic nature. Do not climb alone, but with others and share your experience. Be sure the ways of seeing the landscape will be very different. We experience the landscape with all senses as a complex, dynamic and hierarchically structured whole. The landscape is tangible out there and simultaneously a mental reality. Several perspectives are obvious because of language, culture and background. Many disciplines developed to study the landscape focussing on specific interest groups and applications. Gradually the holistic way of seeing became lost. 

This book explores the different perspectives on the landscape in relation to its holistic nature. We start from its multiple linguistic meanings and a comprehensive overview of the development of landscape research from its geographical origins to the wide variety of today's specialised disciplines and interest groups. Understanding the different perspectives on the landscapes and bringing them together is essential in transdisciplinary approaches where the landscape is the integrating concept.

Marc Antrop is emeritus professor at the Department of Geography, research unit Landscape Research, University of Ghent (Belgium). He is a geographer and his research focuses on a holistic approach of the landscape, integrating a variety of perspectives, combining landscape ecology, historical geography, landscape perception and landscape visualisation and design. 

Veerle Van Eetvelde is associate professor in the Department of Geography research unit Landscape Research, Ghent University (Belgium). She is geographer and spatial planner and her research range from landscape ecology, landscape preference, historical geography, landscape and heritage management and planning. She is active in the European chapter of the Association of Landscape Ecology (IALE-Europe), UNISCAPE and European projects related with landscape and cultural heritage.