Learning about sustainable land use planning in an increasingly faster changing world reflections of

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Learning about sustainable land use planning in
an increasingly faster changing world-
reflections of an educator lecturing practice
The ATLAS Final ConferenceCAPACITY BUILDING IN
LAND USE AND SUSTAINABILITYThursday 25 January
2007, Amsterdam, Beurs van Berlage

• Prof. dr. Marc Antrop
• Department of Geography
• Ghent University, Belgium
• Marc.antrop_at_ugent.be

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Education training difficulties

• Difficult to comprehend are
• the holistic nature of landscape
• dynamics as continuous change
• multi-issues scales, functionality, times
• basic understanding and skills of natural and
  human sciences and worlds of thinking
• necessary for interdisciplinary integration
• It is difficult to speak different languages at
  the same time

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Different worlds of thinking,differentlanguages
Ecology
Planning
Landscape ecology (ecologists, geographers,
agronomists, foresters, nature conservationists,
planners,)
Archaeology
Landscape architecture
Historical geography
Humanistic cultural geography
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Landscape (ELC)
Landschaft ist der Totalcharakter einer Erdgegend
an area, as perceived by people, whose
character is the result of the action and
interaction of natural and/or human factors
Von Humboldt 1769-1859
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Landscape (ELC)
an area, as perceived by people, whose
character is the result of the action and
interaction of natural and/or human factors
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Land cover ? land use
Land cover forest
Land use wood recreation
nature production protection
or combined
?

• Data refer mainly to land cover, decisions refer
  to land use
• Land cover is often also the only cultural
  feature of the landscape mapped systematically
  and widely
• Beware of false interpretations
• Changes are faster than surveying and monitoring
  systems
• Land use changes are faster than land cover
  changes
• Data may not reflect reality

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Diversity of cultural landscapes
SPESP 2000
Source CORINE diversity number of land use
types in a circular neighbourhood of 2 km
Land use is only one of many landscape components
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Sustainability 2 perspectives

• Conservation of certain landscape types
• qualities and potentials of remnants of
  traditional landscapes or contemporary new
  landscapes
• preservation of practices for maintenance and
  organization
• As a general policy and planning principle
• the capabilities landscapes have to enhance
  sustainability
• for local communities, economies in the scope of
  an irreversibly globalization

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Sustainability

• Of what?
• For what?
• For whom?
• How long?

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Keys to success

• Broad interdisciplinary training in basics
• natural and human sciences in balance
• understand the meaning of words you use
• learn from other disciplines, do not try to take
  them over
• Keep in touch with reality
• field work and excursions
• speak and listen to people living there
• Be aware of lying with maps, statistics and
  indicators
• check data sources critically
• numbers do not mean objectivity

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The database

• The ATLAS-eu database can still be extended a lot
• The Bologna-implementation just started
• More descriptive keywords of real content
• Criteria for selection
• Evaluation with difficult
• Link with Socrates

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The supply and the output efficiency?
Did education and training in landscape sciences,
land use planning result in better landscapes and
more sustainable land use?
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Profit - non-profit groups
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How to become an expert?