Landscape Planning

1986 Green England: National Parks and Protected Areas

The British system to protect nature and the landscape in general is characterized by the fact that is strictly linked to British history and to a culture in this field widespread among people.

The environment is considered more as a result between human activities and natural elements rather than as a mere “wild ecosystem”. This is due to the fact that Great Britain is a very crowded country where, moreover, the past industrial revolution and a very advanced agriculture have changed greatly all the natural elements. For that reason, a multiple land use system has patterned the whole landscape, in which very often the human “signs” are predominant over the natural ones. For the British it is important to conserve, for example, the “dry-stone walls” that divide the grazing fields, as well as a “bog” to protect specific species of flora and fauna. The main aim is to conserve, through careful planning and management, the landscape characters of the countryside, considered as an integrate ecosystem. This research has been done at the Department of Landscape Architecture of the University of Sheffield in collaboration with some English landscape architects.

WHERE

Sheffield, England, Great Britain

WHEN

1983-1984 Research scholarship by the C.N.R. Italian National Research Council and Visiting Lecturer at the Department of Landscape Architecture of the University of Sheffield (GB)

WHO

Research and Work group

Vallerini Lorenzo, Landscape planning and management in England and Wales with the contribute of the Professor Ian Brotherton, Department of Landscape Architecture University of Sheffield and the planner Vic Brown, Lake District National Park Special Planning Board.

WHAT

The landscape planning system implemented during the last fifty years, the pragmatism and concreteness of the interventions, the involvement of numerous environmental associations and the culture of “landscape” so widespread among the people, make the English system a case characterized by an advanced degree of theoretical and practical elaboration. The protection of nature and landscape is a system composed of many types of areas, depending on the degree of protection, the level of use, the type of recreational activities and managed by many public bodies and private organizations: this composite network of large, medium, small and very small areas overlaps and intertwines, connecting directly to other types of land use such as agriculture, forestry, water, industrial, residential or for transports.

In 1949 the “National Park and Access to the Countryside Act” was launched, the first step towards the establishment of the system for landscape protection, recreation and nature conservation, amended by the “Countryside Act” of 1968 to extend to the entire extra-urban territory, and not only to protected areas, a policy of active protection and management. The Countryside Commission was established for this purpose.

Depending on the level of protection and use there are the National Parks, the National Nature Reserves, the Sites of Special Scientific Interest, the Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty, the Heritage Coasts, the Forest Parks, the Country Parks and the network of the Long-distance routes and Recreational paths.

To further explore the planning and management methods of these different types of protected areas, the research also examined and explored some case studies in England and Wales (Scotland and Northern Ireland have their own landscape and nature conservation systems): the Lake District National Park, the first National Park in England (1930-1940), the Lathkill Dale National Nature Reserve, which well represents the philosophy of nature conservation, the Country Parks of Elvaston Castle and Rother Valley in Derbyshire and the Lee Valley Regional Park in London as examples of areas mainly intended for outdoor recreational activities.

PUBBLICATIONS

1996 | Vallerini Lorenzo. Planning and management of the European protected areas, in Vol. 2 Atti del “33rd International Federation of Landscape Architects – IFLA World Congress”, Centro Congressi di Firenze, 12-15 of October 1996, Litografia I.P., Firenze: pp.746-755 (IFLA-AIAPP).

1996 | Vallerini Lorenzo (a cura di/editor in collab. Ferrara G.). Pianificazione e gestione delle aree protette in Europa, (Vol.1 pp. 341), Maggioli Ed., Rimini (EAN 9788838707162 -ISBN 8838707162).

1993 | Vallerini Lorenzo. Parchi Nazionali ed altre aree protette in Inghilterra e Galles, in rivista “Parchi” n.10, November 1993, Pisa: pp.19-44 (Registrazione Tribunale Pisa n.4 del 16/02/91) (online version https://www.parks.it/federparchi/rivista/P10/num10.html ).

1986 | Vallerini Lorenzo, Landscape planning and management in England and Wales, in Rivista “Parametro” n.152–153 November-December 1986 (special issue), Faenza Editrice SpA, Faenza: pp.13-53 (EAN 2560907023390)