Discursive Relationships Between Landscape Science, Policy and Management Practice: Concepts, Issues and Examples - Landscape Ecology for Sustainable Environment and Culture - page 228

long term visions and short-termed actions of various kinds and nature (Albrechts
2004 ). Such visions must be shared by the groups, institutions and other stake-
holders on whom the strategy depends.
Spatial strategies may integrate multiple dimensions- such as conservation of
valued assets or resources, allocating investment or infrastructure to achieve
particular purposes; and envisioning desirable future conditions to empower par-
ticipants to act. Healey ( 2009 ) has analysed the spatial strategy making process
with multiple stakeholders involved in the complex task of formulating clear and
agreed 'directions' of spatial development. She argues that four dimensions of
such a strategy making process are usually in play when such a process is
unfolding: (1) Mobilising attention to the whole, that is creating a shared interest in
the strategy, (2) Capturing the situation, thus clarifying the present context, its
historic background, and the central goals of the strategy. (3) Mobilising internal
and external resources, including knowledge. (4) Generating a frame for strategy
(with a program over time and key projects). In a landscape context, the landscape
ecologist obviously has much to contribute to the second and third knowledge
focused dimensions, but it would have to be done within a practice context. The
first and fourth dimensions require fundamental skills and knowledge in situated
planning. In combination, the four dimensions of spatial strategy making
expressed in this way are an example of deliberative planning rather than instru-
mental problem solving.
12.4.2 Place and Place Making
Place is a widely used concept in social science and spatial planning. It has varying
definitions, but most express the three dimensions identified by Relph ( 1976 ), and
conceive place as a nexus of distinctive biophysical characteristics, socio economic
activities, and cultural significance- a concentration of form, practice and meaning
in a defined locality (Hillier and Rookesby 2005 ). Place-making (Dovey et al. 1985 ;
Schneekloth and Shibley 1995 ; Healey 1998 ) has been promoted by a range of
disciplines as a process of active creation and cultivation of such qualities—through
physically shaping places, empowering communities to collaborate in place
building practices, and conserving, nurturing and projecting symbols of place.
Place is one level in a multilevel framework of phenomena, connecting geo-
graphic pattern with ecological and social process; and general knowledge with
context dependent understanding. It has an uneasy relationship with landscape, and
is frequently conflated, yet the two may also be conceived as fundamentally dif-
ferent. In his work on globalisation Castells ( 2000 ) distinguishes between the
'space of flows' as the way the material world is organized in interlinked networks
to enable the fast growing flows of goods, information, energy, people and the
'space of place' in which people are living their daily life. He defines a 'place' as
''…..a locale whose form, function, and meaning are self-contained within the