Public Preferences Towards Landscape Identity - A Case Study of Riparian Landscapes in Croatia
Public Preferences Towards Landscape Identity - A Case Study of Riparian Landscapes in Croatia

Summary/Abstract: The paper is premised on the idea that since environmental decisions are concerned with establishing rules over the sustainable use of land, water and air, such decisions should embrace substantial input from the general public: participatory environmental decision-making can improve the quality of decisions made. The paper therefore draws on the importance of perceiving the relationship between conservational requests (expressed as the social goals) and the search for the possibilities to fulfil these requests (as the professional task to be solved). The study is intended as an inquiry into possible differences in opinion or perception between three different social groups defined in relation to the tested landscape – the area of the Mura and Drava rivers confluence: the space users, people professionally connected to the area and the potential users. The public survey was employed to gain a new insight into the issues of possible differences in public preferences towards landscape identity, and the perception these groups have of the Croatian participatory spatial decision-making process. The results have shown that it is necessary to deploy the value system people attach to landscape in the evaluation phase of environmental planning and that there is room for such a need within the spatial decision-making process based on the sustainability paradigm.

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