Visible Space: A Visual Analysis in the Landscape Planning and Designing by Urszula Forczek-Brataniec (review)

This is a monograph (as opposed to a commercially published book) by Urszula Forczek-Brataniec and is a research project on visibility analysis applied to landscape assessment and visual impact assessment in a European landscape management context. The book has six chapters: an introduction, research (review of visual landscape methods), schematic visual study of visibility elements, visual analysis of landscape with case study applications, research synthesis, and summary.

For this reviewer, there are really three major parts to the monograph. Chapter 2 is a review of landscape analysis methods developed in the United States, United Kingdom, and Poland. Chapter 3 is the author’s specific research leading to the construction of a landscape visibility model. Chapter 4 (the largest one) tests various components of the visibility model and then a number of case study applications of the model.

As the author states in the preface, “The aim of this paper is to highlight the complexity of these visual relationships, to stress the existence and meaning of scenic values that are still awaiting the day they are granted their adequate position in our country” (5–6). Thus, the author advocates for a more rigorous and recognized use of visual assessment for Poland using the EU landscape convention.

In chapter 1 the author outlines the book’s structure, including key landscape definitions, the meaning of visual space, and general framing of visual analysis. Chapter 2 is a historical summary of development of visual landscape analysis—heavily drawing on the work of US landscape research, federal agency landscape management, UK landscape character assessment, and landscape and visual impact assessment. The author presents the landscape assessment work that has been done in Poland, but bemoans the fact that this is not mandated. Last in chapter 2, the author presents a construct for assessing landscape visibility and the importance of such work.

Chapter 3 includes a basic landscape assessment methodological framework for data acquisition fieldwork, viewshed assessment, and digital analysis that heavily draws from the author’s project experience. This framework generally follows the European visual landscape analysis guidance (Landscape Institute and Environmental Management and Assessment 2002). The graphic project examples are very useful.

Chapter 4 is the largest chapter and includes the author’s specific approach to visibility analysis of landscape form, composition, and axis. Specific sections cover visibility of points, line, and plane. The author presents construction of the landscape visibility model and runs through a number of schematic visual tests of the model. A critical aspect is the author’s definition of the degree of visibility expressed as “contour of visible space” plus “the proportion of the seen space to the length of the route in the form of exposure intensity” (92). The last part of the chapter includes examples of the visibility model in realworld applications. These applications include a point object in the landscape (national park and wind turbine tower), a linear object in the landscape (existing road and proposed road), and a plane object in the landscape (wind farm adjacent to national park).

Chapter 5 serves as a synthesis of the previous chapters. The key is the diagrams, which serve as step-by-step guides for assessing landscape visibility from or toward an object in the landscape. The author also provides generic landscape visibility guidance.

The final chapter summarizes and presents ways the landscape visibility analysis model can be used as a design tool, visual resource management, and visual impact assessment plus directions for future research. This chapter is followed by a glossary of terms.

Critique

One major critique is the lack of comparison of the visibility methodology to more recent landscape visibility books and literature (Erwin 2001; Lange and Bishop 2001; Weitkamp 2011; Bishop 2003; Erwin and Steinitz 2003;Bishop and Lange 2005). This would enhance the relevance of the work in comparison to other visibility methods and place the monograph in context with visibility method development (Felleman 1986; Erwin and Steinitz 2003). Churchward et...