Original scientific paper
PUBLIC PREFERENCES TOWARDS LANDSCAPE IDENTITY – A CASE STUDY OF RIPARIAN LANDSCAPES IN CROATIA
Sonja BUTULA
orcid.org/0000-0002-1868-3888
; Faculty of Agriculture, Zagreb
Abstract
The paper is premised on the idea that since environmental
decisions are concerned with establishing rules over the
sustainable use of land, water and air, such decisions should
embrace substantial input from the general public: participatory
environmental decision-making can improve the quality of
decisions made. The paper therefore draws on the importance
of perceiving the relationship between conservational requests
(expressed as the social goals) and the search for the
possibilities to fulfil these requests (as the professional task to
be solved). The study is intended as an inquiry into possible
differences in opinion or perception between three different
social groups defined in relation to the tested landscape – the
area of the Mura and Drava rivers confluence: the space users,
people professionally connected to the area and the potential
users. The public survey was employed to gain a new insight
into the issues of possible differences in public preferences
towards landscape identity, and the perception these groups
have of the Croatian participatory spatial decision-making
process. The results have shown that it is necessary to deploy
the value system people attach to landscape in the evaluation
phase of environmental planning and that there is room for
such a need within the spatial decision-making process based
on the sustainability paradigm.
Keywords
landscape; values; public preferences
Hrčak ID:
38997
URI
Publication date:
30.6.2009.
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