Cultural Landscape Planning in Rural Contexts: A Comparative Appraisal of GIS-based and other Participatory Methods

The European Landscape Convention (2000) is the first European charter dedicated to all landscapes, emphasising their importance for cultural identity and well-being, and promoting community engagement in their management and planning. Various participatory planning methods have been advanced in line with this charter, yet these methods have not been widely applied to cultural landscapes in rural contexts. To ad-dress this gap, this study evaluates the added value of methods harness-ing Geographic Information Systems (GIS) for community participation in rural cultural landscape settings. It does so by comparing five European participatory experiences that use both GIS-based and non-GIS-based methods for landscape planning in rural contexts. The main findings pro-vide insights into the advantages and disadvantages of various participa-tory methods based on inclusiveness, effectiveness, and repeatability. GIS-based methods show great potential in integrating citizen inputs into landscape planning, particularly by engaging a larger audience and facili-tating discussion and exchange of spatial ideas through digital maps. Fur-thermore, the authors argue that simplified GIS-based methods could help disseminate the European Landscape Convention principles of com-munity engagement in landscape planning.