Landschap: troefkaart van Europa; verslag van een discussiedag over de Europese Landschapsconventie

9 June 2005 brought together more than 130 experts from the Netherlands and other European countries to discuss the European Landscape Convention (elc). The parliament of the Netherlands was at the point of ratifying the elc at that moment. Through plenary sessions and discussion in workshops many topics have been dealt with. Central theme was the challenging that the elc is posing to the Netherlands. Both the public authorities and the non-governmental organizations consider the Convention as a moral incentive to pay more attention to landscape, especially to the every-day landscape as constituent of everybody’s quality of life. Further, the landscape approach characterized by much emphasis on development, redesign and a ‘culture of making the landscape’ appeared to be typically Dutch. Also special is the decentralization of landscape policy, transferring large responsibilities to non-governmental organizations and regional authorities. The central authorities view themselves as ‘director’ rather than ‘maker’ of the landscape. A second theme was the European perspective. Driving force behind the elc is the Council of Europe, more specifically its Congress of Regional and Local Authorities. With this Convention the Council profiles itself as a counterpart of the eu, emphasizing consciously ‘soft’ values like culture, aesthetics and ethics as against ‘hard’ economy and engineering. The third theme was the experience with landscape policy in other countries, reported by invited speakers. The Netherlands can learn from Catalunya and Germany about regulations and developing landscape plans. England and Flanders have experience with integration of natural and cultural heritage. Catalunya and England are ahead in designing and realizing urban landscapes and parks in and around large towns. Finally in workshops a number of actual topics has been elaborated. Because of the presence of foreign guests, generally also the international dimension of topics and foreign experiences have been discussed: • Definitions of landscape and perception of landscape quality. • Diversity of cultures and policy traditions related to landscape. • Public awareness and environmental education related to landscape and landscape architecture. • Survey, mapping and comparison of landscapes. • Transfrontier and European research. • Generic landscape policy (valid everywhere), protected landscapes and regulations. • Citizens participation and actions of non-governmental organizations (working plan for the Landscape Manifesto of Dutch organizations)