Landscape research in Greece: an overview

Though both academics and practitioners have been showing increasing interest in the Greek landscape, so far progress in related fields has been minimal and slow. Specifically, in the 1990s, landscape science in Greece underwent a shift from the fragmentary, peripheral and haphazard preoccupation of the design sciences with practical landscape issues as they developed out of physical interventions in urban space to a more concerted, focused and systematic landscape approach by several more disciplines and practitioners. This has, so far at least, remained mainly a qualitative shift characterized by its very limited extent and impact on actual landscape problems and issues in Greece, largely suffering from disciplinary limits and from the lack of communication and cooperation between academics, practitioners and administrators as well as from effective application in landscape policy. Clearly, what is required in the case of the Greek landscape is much further interdisciplinary engagement in landscape theory, methodology and development of techniques, as well as practical application and implementation of theoretical and research findings.En dépit de l’intérêt croissant des scientifiques et des aménageurs pour le paysage grec, les progrès réalisés jusqu’ici dans des domaines relatifs à cette matière ont été minimes. Ainsi, au cours des années 1990, la science du paysage en Grèce a évolué, mais lentement. Initialement perçue comme une préoccupation fragmentaire, périphérique et peu méthodique des concepteurs pour les problèmes pratiques liés aux aménagements de l’espace urbain, cette science est passée à une approche plus concertée et plus systématique du paysage dans le chef de plusieurs autres disciplines ou de certains praticiens. Ce changement qualitatif est resté, jusqu’ici du moins, principalement caractérisé par une ampleur restreinte et par son impact extrêmement faible sur les problèmes posés par les paysages en Grèce, largement accentués par les limites des différentes disciplines et le manque de communication et de coopération entre l’université, le terrain et l’administration, ainsi que par la non-application des politiques en matière de paysages. De toute évidence, l’étude des paysages en Grèce souffre avant tout d’un défaut d’engagement interdisciplinaire sur la théorie, la méthodologie et le développement de techniques, mais aussi du manque d’application pratique et de mise en œuvre des résultats théoriques et des découvertes de la recherche

Research Advances in Tourism-Landscape Interrelations: An Editorial

The significance of the landscape to a variety of experiences that are sought or unfold at a visited destination is well established and considered paramount to the study of tourism [...

Landscape Notions among Greek Engineering Students: Exploring Landscape Perceptions, Knowledge and Participation

The objective of this paper is to explore and critically analyze the basic notions of landscape and their change through time, among Greek engineering students, from all academically formative years of their undergraduate studies, at the Technical University of Crete. Specifically, it probes into their perspectives vis-à-vis the landscape at large and their everyday-life landscapes in particular, regarding their landscape perceptions, behavior, and education. This study takes place in two stages (2012 and 2017) and is placed in the context of continued scientific investigation into the interrelationships of various “publics” with various types of landscapes and landscape development ideas, perceptions, and preferences—and specifically those professionals-in-the-making who are bound to become key future agents in Greek landscape stewardship. Our aims serve the European Landscape Convention’s purposes of landscape research, education, and awareness-raising; they also cater to the need for geographically targeted place-specific application of the European Landscape Convention (ELC). Our findings reaffirm widely and long-held landscape notions, emphasizing the natural, the visual, and the aesthetic in landscape perception and conceptualization, but also point to landscape education deficiencies in the Greek educational system. These constitute significant findings in the context of the country’s efforts to lay out the blueprints for its future landscapes, by contributing to Greek lay landscape awareness and conscience building, but especially by informing future landscape-related professionals

Toward understanding tourist landscape. A comparative study of locals’ and visitors’ perception in selected destinations in Poland and Greece

This paper critically negotiates the concept of the tourist landscape and proceeds, through a comparative cross-cultural empirical study, to test its basic conceptual premises in one upland and one seaside tourist destination, in Central Europe and in the Mediterranean. The conceptualization and employment of the term ‘tourist landscape’, in the social sciences and beyond, has been mostly intuitive and lacking a rigorous and broad-based conceptualization and empirical verification, incorporating its viewers’/users’ perceptions. On the basis of a conceptual model of the tourist landscape, the paper assesses conceptions and perceptions of the ‘tourist landscape’ and its constituent elements by tourists, locals, and tourism stakeholders in Zwierzyniec, Poland and Chios Island, Greece

Landscapes in the Eastern Mediterranean between the Future and the Past

Landscapes have long been viewed as ‘multifunctional’, integrating ecological, economic, sociocultural, historical, and aesthetic dimensions. Landscape science and public awareness in Europe have been progressing in leaps and bounds. The challenges involved in landscape-related issues and fields, however, are multiple and refer to landscape stewardship and protection, as well as to the development of comprehensive theoretical and methodological approaches, in tandem with public sensitization and participatory governance and in coordination with appropriate top-down planning and policy instruments. Landscape-scale approaches are fundamental to the understanding of past and present cultural evolution, and are now considered to be an appropriate spatial framework for the analysis of sustainability. Methods and tools of landscape analysis and intervention have also gone a long way since their early development in Europe and the United States. Although significant progress has been made, there remain many issues which are understudied or not investigated at all—at least in a Mediterranean context. This Special Issue addresses the application of landscape theory and practice in the Eastern Mediterranean and mainly, but not exclusively, reports on the outcomes of an international conference held in Jordan, in December 2015, with the title “Landscapes of Eastern Mediterranean: Challenges, Opportunities, Prospects and Accomplishments”. The focus of this Special Issue, landscapes of the Eastern Mediterranean region, thus constitutes a timely area of research interest, not only because these landscapes have so far been understudied, but also as a rich site of strikingly variegated, long-standing multicultural human–environmental interactions. These interactions, resting on and taking shape through millennia of continuity in tradition, have been striving to adapt to technological advances, while currently juggling with manifold and multilayered socioeconomic and climate–environmental crises