55
in it. […] Characterisation is a shorthand word. What underlies it is a desire to
capture our overall feeling for the totality of a place – not just to collect facts
about who built that building, what style it is, whether it is rare, what an archae-
ological site can tell us about our predecessors or how a designed park reflects
18th-century taste, but about what the place as a whole means to us.
See: Char-
acter of England Landscape, Wildlife and Cultural Features Map edited in 2005
by Natural England with support from English Heritage.
Evaluation of Sensitivity and definition of Landscape Quality Objectives
During this phase of the research, in order to define specific Landscape Quality
Objectives within given areas and landscape units, as required by the Euro-
pean Landscape Convention, all partners were able to make use of different
approaches anyhow related to concepts such as “Vulnerability” and “Sensitivi-
ty”. Sensitivity is a crucial concept within the Characterization approach. Land-
scapes that are highly sensitive are at risk of having their key characteristics
fundamentally altered by development: according to English Heritage, the “In-
herent Landscape Sensitivity” is regarded as “the potential for and the probable
magnitude of change within a physical system in response to external effects and
the ability of this system to resist the change”.
Landscape Quality Objectives would consequently be settled in order to main-
tain the characters and functional performances of a given area, for instance by
introducing thresholds to soil and water exploitation following environmental
requirements or limits to land consumption closely related to more specific mor-
phological and ecological issues.
Fig.3
province
of Vercelli,
cultural
landscape
values.
