Landscape Character Assessment as an Approach to Understanding Public Interests within the European Landscape Convention

The European Landscape Convention's (ELC) definition of landscape, “an area, as perceived by people…”, places the public central to any understanding of landscape. This paper argues for ‘just’ involvement of the public and looks at how the focus of landscape as a perceived entity has been taken up within Landscape Character Assessment (LCA), an approach applied in England and Scotland for implementing the ELC. Based on a conceptual framework grounded in perception as a phenomenological experience of landscape and informed by principles of participation, LCAs from 2007 to 2011 have been assessed as to how public involvement has been considered. The results show that only a quarter of all assessments accessed involved the public, and that among these there is great disparity in the degree to which the public is engaged.