Landscape Research Projects: UK
Our research within the UK is detailed on our individual web pages. However we have carried out some particularly significant work in a number of areas, particularly in relation to the development of landscape and sustainability theory and research:
- Maggie Roe has led two important pieces of policy research related to the implementation of the European Landscape Convention (ELC). The first project (completed in 2008) for Natural England examined how existing environmental policy in England was performing in relation to the ELC. The most recent work for Defra (completed July 2009) examined policy in the whole of the UK and provided a baseline on which future policy change in response to the ELC can be monitored. The research also devised and proposed a monitoring framework and examined issues of monitoring landscape change generally.
- Ian Thompson has recently moved his focus from the cultural landscapes of Europe to those nearer home, to the Lake District. His forthcoming book The English Lakes: A History (London: Bloomsbury, Spring 2010) explains how this mountainous district was opened up for tourism and was elaborated as a cultural construction, as well as providing critique and commentary on the planning and management of cultural landscapes in general.
- Ian Thompson’s seminal book Community, Ecology, Delight published by Spon in 2000 was the first serious piece of research examining the aesthetic and ethical values underlying landscape architectural practice in the UK. This book has become a key student text on landscape architecture programmes in the UK and also on courses in North America, Asia, Europe and Australia. Ian was a philosopher before he became a landscape architect and he is keen to broaden the theoretical basis of the profession by drawing upon relevant thinking in areas such as environmental ethics, psychology, phenomenology, political theory and philosophical aesthetics. Many of these ideas are followed up in his recent book Rethinking Landscape: A Critical Reader (2008), now available from Routledge.
- In the past few years we have had two UK research students with ESRC funding, Dr Hannah MacPherson (completed 2007) and Ian Mell (due to complete shortly) who has an ESRC/CASE studentship and is working closely with the North East Community Forests on Green Infrastructure planning. His studentship was the result of collaboration over a number of years between the Landscape Group and North East Community Forests on projects such as Green Infrastructure Planning Guide (2006). A recent ESRC funded seminar was held by the group that brought academics and practitioners together to examine Green Infrastructure, Environmental Perception and Spatial Behaviour.
- Other recent UK research projects funded by outside bodies carried out by the Group include an Open Space and Recreational Needs Assessment (2007) for Durham City Council, and Public Space Vitality (2006) project for One North East.