Historic landscape characterisation in the urban domain

Landscape characterisation has emerged as an important means for assessing the context and broader setting for decision-making as it facilitates thinking outside of the site boundary. Within the domain of heritage planning, this is congruent with a new appreciation of the cultural landscape as heritage with the current English Heritage programme of historic landscape characterisation emerging as an important tool to support this approach. Although initially providing a predominantly rural emphasis, historic landscape characterisation surveys now provide comprehensive coverage of many urban areas and so potentially offer the urban planner and designer with a key source of map data outlining current urban character and its readable historic time-depth. The summarised findings result from participatory action with Sheffield City Council in exploring potential urban applications of historic landscape characterisation. The emerging themes were drawn from numerous practice scenarios and aim to outline opportunities for incorporating historic landscape characterisation in urban decision-making and design.