Landscape Evaluation in Spatial Decision-Making: A Methodological Proposal

The article proposes a new landscape-evaluation methodology that consists in a technical learning process to be undertaken as an essential component of spatial decision-making. This methodology aims to make explicit the values and the criteria adopted for decision-making on territorial issues and for initiating improvement projects. It does this by seeking to make landscape values and their meanings explicit in the minds of policy-makers and the local community while promoting sustainability. We deem a proposal like ours as a response to the innovation of landscape strategies in the European Landscape Convention (2000), which promotes a radical shift in perspective, an innovation that calls for distancing ourselves from well-entrenched practices and drawing nearer to landscape conservation, planning and management.