E N V I R O N M E N TA L A E S T H E T I C S Why have our public environments become ugly wastelands or banal blandscapes? How important is an aesthetically pleasing public environment to personal well-being? Environmental Aesthetics explores the contributions made by a wide variety of disciplines to the conceptualization, conservation and design of environmental beauty in cities, rural areas and wilderness in the Western world. The book traces the history of aesthetic thought and practice, examining basic aesthetic concepts and the resultant implementation of aesthetic policy in the landscape. Discussing the psychology of human-environment relations and the influences of literary, legal and artistic activism, the author concludes with an analysis of the essential roles of public policy and planning. This is the first comprehensive account of the new interdiscipline of environmental aesthetics. Unique in scope, the book dovetails concepts, methods and practice from disciplines as varied as architecture, art history, biology, environmental studies, forestry, geography, landscape design, law, literature, philosophy, psychology and urban planning. Equally at home with landscape art, psychological experiments, policy making and planning, the author brings us a step closer to understanding how our experience of city and country life can and should be improved. J.Douglas Porteous is Professor of Geography, University of Victoria, Canada. Other books by J.Douglas Porteous The Company Town of Goole: An Essay in Urban Genesis (1969) Canal Ports: The Urban Achievement of the Canal Age (1977) Environment and Behavior: Planning and Everyday Urban Life (1977) The Modernization of Easter Island (1981) The Mells (1988) Degrees of Freedom (1988) Planned to Death: The Annihilation of a Place Called Howdendyke (1989) Landscapes of the Mind: Worlds of Sense and Metaphor (1990) Mindscapes (in Japanese, 1992) ENVIRONMENTAL AESTHETICS ideas, politics and planning J.DOUGLAS PORTEOUS LONDON AND NEW YORK First published 1996 by Routledge 11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001 This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2003. Routledge is an International Thomson Publishing company © 1996 J.Douglas Porteous All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication Data Porteous, J.Douglas (John Douglas) Environmental aesthetics: ideas, politics and planning/J. Douglas Porteous. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Environment (Aesthetics) 2. Landscape architecture. I. Title. BH301.E56P67 1996 95–47890 111'.85–dc20 ISBN 0-203-43732-2 Master e-book ISBN ISBN 0-203-74556-6 (Adobe eReader Format) ISBN 0-415-13769-1 (Print Edition) ISBN 0-415-13770-5 (pbk) for my students CONTENTS List of plates, figures and tables viii Acknowledgements xi Preface xv 1 INTRODUCTION 1 1.1 Environmental aesthetics 5 1.2 A short history of aesthetics 19 1.3 The origins of the aesthetic impulse 24 1.4 The senses 31 2 HUMANISTS 43 2.1 The humanist approach 46 2.2 A history of landscape taste 51 2.3 Landscapes 75 2.4 Some national contrasts 101 3 EXPERIMENTALISTS 111 3.1 The experimentalist approach 114 3.2 Properties of environments and persons 118 3.3 Scenery is good for you 132 3.4 Methodological problems 139 4 ACTIVISTS 149 4.1 Literary and design activism 152 4.2 Citizen action 162 4.3 Legal issues 169 4.4 Public policy 176 5 PLANNERS 189 5.1 Aesthetic landscape planning 193 5.2 Urban aesthetic planning 215 5.3 Environmental education 241 5.4 Aesthetic critique 249 CONTENTS / vii AFTERWORD: Beyond aesthetics 261 Bibliography 266 Index 284 PL ATES, FIGURES AND TABLES PL ATES Fountains Abbey with water scene xiv Coastal forest, BC 2 Convolvulus 44 Easter Island moai 112 Logging truck 150 Public housing, Hong Kong 190 Bank of China building, Hong Kong 260 FIGURES 1.1 From standard of living, through quality of environment, to quality of life 7 1.2 A hierarchy of needs 8 1.3 Intangible relationships with environment 9 1.4 Structuring environmental aesthetics 14 1.5 Normal landscape colours 34 1.6 Colour dominants 35 1.7 Stepping-stones 38 1.8 Reduction of rich sensory experience 39 1.9 Visual aesthetics only 40 2.1 Landscape as background 53 2.2 Medieval and Renaissance gardens 54 2.3 Landscape by Claude Lorrain 56 2.4 Landscape by Nicolas Poussin 57 2.5 Landscape by Salvator Rosa 58 2.6 Landscape by Aert van der Neer 59 2.7 The pastoral 61 2.8 English rural landscape 62 2.9 The gothick 64 2.10 The pleasure of ruins 65 2.11 The picturesque 67 2.12 The bucolic 69 viii PLATES, FIGURES AND TABLES / ix 2.13 The wild 70 2.14 Aesthetico-political Romanticism 71 2.15 The surreal 74 2.16 American landscapes in the nineteenth century 80 2.17 Modern industry invades the countryside 80 2.18 The Baroque landscape 83 2.19 The uninterrupted gaze 84 2.20 The transformation of gardens and park at Stowe 85 2.21 Heveningham Hall, landscaped by Capability Brown in 1781 86 2.22 Classical pavilion in Fountains Abbey gardens 87 2.23 Landscape transformation: informality to irregularity 89 2.24 City of spires becomes city of factory chimneys 91 2.25 Medieval and Baroque city plans 93 2.26 Georgian elegance 94 2.27 Victorian exuberance 95 2.28 Modernist streetscape 97 2.29 Questioning the modernist aesthetic 98 2.30 Standardized post-modern architecture 99 2.31 English landscape tastes: the tamed 102 2.32 English landscape tastes: the historic 102 2.33 American landscape tastes: the vast 104 2.34 British Columbian landscape tastes 108 3.1 A schema of aesthetic response to environment 119 3.2 Characteristic pattern of aesthetic response 119 3.3 Coherence, complexity and mystery 122 3.4 Mystery yields to a complex, coherent view 123 3.5 A nested hierarchy of landscape preferences 124 3.6 A familiarity and preference matrix 126 3.7 Four primary specialist groups 129 3.8 Natural versus urban scenes 133 3.9 The nature tranquillity hypothesis 136 3.10 Sacred waterscape 137 3.11 Alternative approaches to research 144 3.12 Experiential research in the Arctic 145 4.1 A modern nowhereland 155 4.2 Blandscape 156 4.3 Anywhere, UK 157 4.4 Anywhere in the world 157 4.5 Canadian version of ‘America the ugly’ 158 4.6 Canadian version of ‘God’s own junkyard’ 159 4.7 London’s spires and domes obscured 161 4.8 Environmental protest 165 4.9 Wall art 166 4.10 Scenic conservation in Britain 179 4.11 A preservationist problem 181 4.12 Reflections on preservation 183