RURAL landscape You make [landscape assessments] robust and reliable through consistency. If each practitioner is using methodologies and definitions that are consistent then we’re going to get robust assessments. We get wild readings, wild findings when people are using inconsistent methods between landscape architects. The more the profession can work towards that the better I think. This sentiment was echoed repeatedly throughout the interview data (Rowan, Jamie, Quinn, Bailey, Jessie). Jessie went so far as to say: I’ve heard of some lawyers whose perception is that you get two or three landscape architects coming in on a case on different sides of the case. Their approaches to assessment and their decision are just so wildly different that the Court just says, ‘Oh we’ll ignore those and make our own decision’. It would seem then, that there is a shared concern among a number of practitioners, and a desire to see an improvement in the quality and consistency of work within the profession. Lee, on the other hand, felt there was much more agreement than was given credit for. The interview data indicates that levels of agreement between these key practitioners regarding process, or at least regarding the veracity of their processes, was actually limited. While a certain level of consistency might be achieved through the common application of the Pigeon Bay Criteria to the determination of outstanding natural landscapes this was effectively enforced by the Court rather than the product of agreement from within the profession. The analysis of the briefs of evidence raised several interesting features. All bar one of the statements of evidence presented assessments that were either exclusively or predominantly expert in approach in the terms of the typology of landscape assessment methodologies developed by Uzzel (1991) and more recently modified by Swaffield and Foster (2000). That is, they were based on the expert’s evaluation of the visual and physical attributes of the site and proposal based largely on aesthetic, but also ecological and other biophysical, principles. One, based on a comprehensive district wide assessment, entailed the characterisation of the landscapes by expert analysis but the evaluations of landscape significance were based upon ‘expert specialist assessment (albeit informed by wider stakeholder involvement) and public preference testing to illuminate the values (Riley). Rowan took a different approach using the conclusions of Fairweather and Swaffield’s (2007, 2008; 1999; 2001; 2000; 2003) empirical research on landscape preferences within New Zealand to create a framework upon which to undertake his own expert analysis focusing on popular, rather than formal, aesthetics. As there is a discernible thread in contemporary landscape research which is critical of the use of the expert approach to landscape assessment the overwhelming dependence on it is of concern. Read (2005), Stephenson (2008, 2010) and Collier and Scott (2009), for example, all identify the application of the expert approach as privileging the assessment of landscape as a visual resource over landscape as lived experience. Vouligny et al (2009) confirmed this, comparing an expert assessment of a landscape with an experiential assessment of the same landscape by its residents. They found that the criteria used by the expert were more like those of a tourist passing through than the criteria of the residents which were more related to the landscape as place. Wolsink (2010) compared public and expert assessments of a wind farm proposal and found that the lack of consideration of public preferences and reliance on the expert assessment in the development of the proposal resulted in its abandonment under public pressure. Swaffield and Foster noted that ‘The most defensible approach, where possible, is to combine two or more approaches.’ (2000, p. 43) but, with the exception noted, this recommendation does not seem to have been adopted. All briefs of evidence referred to external references to support their analyses. The reference to previous Environment Court decisions was the most common and has been discussed above. The next most common external reference was to published and unpublished reports and these were used, in the main, to provide empirical material but also to provide support for assessment processes in one case, and for the interpretation of concepts in two other instances. Previous landscape assessments were the next most common external reference. Six landscape assessment reports were referred to a total of nine times by eight respondents, but only two of these references were made by practitioners apparently uninvolved in their original production. Five references were made to academic papers by three respondents, although one of these was to a body of work, rather than a single paper (the Fairweather & Swaffield research reports referred to above). Given the rich and reasonably extensive academic literature on landscape assessment it is of concern that so little use is made of this work to form and guide professional practice. Conference papers, published guidelines, books and other references (the ICOMOS charter, the Quality Planning website and an undergraduate paper) were the next most common external references, followed by literature. It can be seen, then, that there is a tension between the Environment Court and the Landscape Architecture profession in terms of process but that while there is resistance evident amongst practitioners to having the Court tell them what to do, there is a simultaneous deferral to its perceived authority. An examination of some of the key concepts at play suggests that an underlying lack of consensus and clarity within the profession may underlie this paradox. The term ‘landscape’ is one which is both open to varied interpretations and is so widely and commonly used as to be
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