Landscape Economics : The Road Ahead

Abstract

The aims of this paper are to delineate some important topics in landscape economics, and also to take stock of the works and debates presented during the life of the CEEP project (from the first meeting in Angers (2006) , to the present one in Vienna). The objective of the research progamm initiated by the MEEDAT was to put landscape policy in the perspective of the sustainable development. The research issue is about the relationships between the development paths and landscape changes, paved with examples of consensus, controversies, and conflicts. This perspective was challenging for economists, due to the two gaps observed between the development of landscape research in geography, ecology or sociology and the absence of a corresponding corpus in economics, on one hand, and the development of landscape policies compared to the development of research in economics, on the other one. Precursors in landscape economics are certainly Von Thünen, who created the first model explaining the role of dispersing forces in the landscape making up, and C. Price, for the analysis of landscape preferences and the evaluation of landscape projects.[...]