Landscape-Based Visions as Powerful Boundary Objects in Spatial Planning: Lessons from Three Dutch Projects

Abstract

In a context of a rapidly changing livability of towns and countryside, climate change and biodiversity decrease, this paper introduces a landscape-based planning approach to regional spatial policy challenges allowing a regime shift towards a future land system resilient to external pressures. The concept of nature-based solutions and transition theory are combined in this approach, in which co-created normative future visions serve as boundary concepts. Rather than as an object in itself, the landscape is considered as a comprehensive principle, to which all spatial processes are inherently related. We illustrate this approach with three projects in the Netherlands in which landscape-based visions were used to guide the land transition, going beyond the traditional nature-based solutions. The projects studied show that a shared long-term future landscape vision is a powerful boundary concept and a crucial source of inspiration for a coherent design approach to solve today’s spatial planning problems. Further, they show that cherishing abiotic differences in the landscape enhances sustainable and resilient landscapes, that co-creation in the social network is a prerequisite for shared solutions, and that a landscape-based approach enhances future-proof land-use transitions to adaptive, circular, and biodiverse landscapes.

Planning in Times of Uncertainty

“…Conclusions have shown that this case-study was an "extreme/deviant case" (Flyvbjerg 2006), and it cannot be generalized due to its specific political context. Despite this, in the literature, it can be find other authors and case-studies (van Rooij et al 2021) that also argue that the landscape approaches and the landscape scale must be mainstreaming on spatial planning and coastal planning literature and practice.…”

The role of soils in regulation and provision of blue and green water

“…In addition, when drip irrigation is installed on formerly terraced landscapes, the bunds or terrace structures are generally removed to rationalize farming operations, which leads to severe erosion events owing to the long slope lengths created. Thus, it is important to keep the sustainability of the landscape in mind during the planning of land-use and agricultural investments [60,61]. Nature-based solutions are needed to avoid land degradation and to help achieve sustainability in the use of natural resources and the livelihoods of farmers [24,25].…”

Exploring desirable nature futures for National Park Hollandse Duinen

“…The process helped participants discuss how not everything is possible, but a lot might be, especially when underpinned by a joint sense of what the overall direction should be. Collaboratively created visions serve as a boundary objective to have constructive conversations about what that direction should be (van Rooij et al 2021). Such visions can, and even should, be pluralistic (McPhearson et al 2016); they do not have to be fully shared among actors to provide a target space for collaboration.…”