Planning future pasts: using historic landscape characterisation in strategic and spatial planning.

Abstract

Historic Landscape Characterisation (HLC) began with the desire to create a tool for the management of the historic landscape, with specific goals of informing strategic and spatial planning decisions. However, in the years since its initial development, HLC has changed its focus away from planning applications and towards its development as a research tool promoting a greater understanding of the historic landscape. Whereas there is no dispute regarding the need to increase our knowledge and understanding of the historic landscape, this shift has left planners and heritage managers without the tool they were promised. Government policy and guidance promoting sustainability, the instrumental benefits of planning and a focus on local distinctiveness requires better integration of the historic environment into strategic and spatial planning systems. The research presented here puts HLC at the base of a model for incorporating the historic landscape into spatial and strategic planning systems. By combining the methods and theories of both archaeology and planning, an approach is developed whereby HLC is used to identify distinctiveness, significance and value within the historic landscape. By addressing concerns over value-neutrality and going beyond description, this Character-to-Value (CTV) model moves HLC from being a descriptive informational base for archaeological research to a usable method for evaluating proposed change and for active, positive management.