Aesthetic Value in Landscape Character Protection
Abstract: The aesthetic value of the landscape has become an invaluable and often key aspect of landscape character assessment (a statutory criterion). On the other hand, it is the impact on ‘aesthetic value’ that is one of the most contentious aspects of landscape assessment, which can easily be used (misused) to question the objectivity of landscape assessment as such. On the one hand, there are voices calling for the removal of the notion of aesthetic value from the law, as it is seen as a concept associated with a purely subjective approach and therefore methodologically difficult to grasp, while on the other hand there is an attempt (more theoretical than real) to bring aesthetics as a philosophical discipline into the assessment. Both approaches must be rejected. The aesthetic value embodied in the text of the law is not a philosophical concept but a vague legal concept, just as the question of whether a particular project is capable of reducing or altering the landscape is a legal question which is for the administrative authorities and the courts alone to answer. Many years of practice in the assessment of landscape character have led to the conclusion that aesthetic value can be approached as the visual attractiveness of the landscape scene, which is determined by the harmony of scale and relationships in the landscape, and which works through the methods of architectural, landscape and urban composition. Based on experience with different types of assessment, it even appears that it is possible to define a certain set of indicators referring to the potential possibility of perceiving aesthetic value in a given landscape, and thus to put the whole assessment on a relatively objective basis. This paper presents this conception of aesthetic value as it has gradually evolved and proven itself through practice.
