LIVELAND - Liveable Landscapes: a Key Value for Sustainable Territorial Development

Theme

Landscapes reflect variations in the uses of land, which often compete for the same resource. But they also reflect the coexistence of multiple territorial functions such as ecological, economic, cultural, historical and aesthetic. This coexistence constitutes an important challenge for the regional policies. First conceptual question will be to explore how “landscape” has been considered in the participant regions. This will lead to the identification of good practices of landscape and spatial planning. Their impact on the regional development will be analysed. Therefore, the project will particularly focus on areas where socio-economic development has gone hand in hand with successful landscape protection and management.

Thematic scope

European and regional policies on territorial development all address the importance of harmonious development, cohesion, sustainability and the protection of cultural and natural heritage. During recent years most European countries have signed the European Landscape Convention (ELC), focusing on landscape planning and on an integration of landscape and spatial planning. This project aims to explore good practices of landscape planning and regional territorial strategies and to benchmark the content and procedures. The aim is also to identify successful measures in combining landscape management and socio-economic development and to give concrete recommendations. The project seeks to identify how ESPON evidence could be used for integrating landscape and spatial planning and to provide new impetus for future research.

Main results address

• Guidelines for elaborating and implementing landscape plans in their socio-economic context.
• Insight into how landscape planning relates to economic development and land use pressure.
• Overview of ‘good practices’ of landscape planning and how they relate to regional territorial planning and development.
• Options for incorporating landscape into territorial and cohesion policies.
• Recommendations for the integration of the landscape into territorial planning and development.
• Identification of knowledge gaps that could be covered by future ESPON research projects.

Stakeholders

• Government of the Basque Country, Regional Ministry of Environment, Spatial Planning, Agriculture and Fisheries – ES
• Municipality of Offenburg, Department of Planning, Building and Environment – DE
• Municipality of Midden-Delfland – NL
• Government of Navarra. Housing and Spatial Planning Department – ES
• Thy National Park, Independent foundation under the Ministry of Environment – DK
• City of Ljubljana – SI

Main stakeholder interests

• Defining criteria for the integration of landscape and regional spatial strategies.
• Identifying measures which have proven success in combining landscape protection and socio-economic development.
• Analysing available ESPON data and results that could be used to reinforce the integration of landscape and spatial planning.
• Developing a definition of landscape as an asset for regional economic development.
• Identifying a balance between landscape protection and social and economic development.
• Assessing how to consider landscape planning in the framework of territorial cohesion policies.Lead Partner

Lead Partner

Fundación Tecnalia Research and Innovation – ES.

Detailed information on the contracted project team can be found under Transnational Project Group.

Budget: € 378 676,14

Project’s lifetime: February 2012 – March 2014

Delivery of Reports

Inception Report: 30 June 2012

Interim Report: 31 December 2012

Draft Final Report: 11 November 2013

Final Report: 15 March 2015

Publishing

Reports will be published once they are approved by the ESPON Monitoring Committee

More information

Please contact the Project Expert at the ESPON Coordination Unit: Sara FERRARA, e-mail: [email protected]