Landscape Values: Predefined or Extrinsic?

The paper addresses the issue of the source of landscape value attributed to protection. Besides the usual exception to the rule, it is believed that intrinsic or predefined values are still firmly entrenched in landscape planning practice, whereas at the pedagogic level of the discipline there is a shift towards extrinsic values. The underlying premise of the paper is that evaluation of natural systems based on predefined values makes consent between developmental and conservational interests impossible. Consent is perceived as the mechanism to fulfil a key principle “as least as reasonably achievable”, ALARA, in both aspects of landscape planning. The research focuses on the stage of planning process that enables spatial data transformation into suitability maps that represent or externalise extrinsic landscape values. The paper will begin by brief outline of two fundamentally different value categories. The results of suitability analyses i.e. value systems detected and a reflections or consequences in land use decisions concerning some past and present policies in Croatia will be discussed next. By extension, the “extrinsic vs. predefined landscape value” dispute will be argued especially concerning those elements that invoke difficulties while generating and/or linking the concepts of evaluation models. The paper will finally acknowledge an optimization planning instrument as a mode to cope with two value systems