Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
Chapter 11
Geovisualisation of an Urban Landscape
in Participatory Regional Planning
Tomáš Oršulák and Pavel Raška
11.1 Introducing the Geoinformatics Approach to Urban
Landscape
Efficient and optimal landscape development is a primary theoretical and practical
interest of geographers and specialists from the decision-making sphere. However,
such development requires understanding of general laws and concepts operat-
ing in the landscape and also existence of quality information as a basis for the
decision-making process. From the point of view of general conceptions it is mainly
important to emphasise that landscape is perhaps the most suitable criterion for
studying the interactions of global and local structures and processes (Hobbs, 1996),
as it reflects internal heterogeneity sufficiently and at the same time also the struc-
tural and development particularity compared to the other landscapes (cf. Hampl,
1971). However, it is also clear that every type of landscape requires (apart from
an understanding of general principles) a different approach as regards the data
and methodological basis as well as the different ways of impressing environmental
sustainability on it.
A specific type of landscape is an urban landscape (sometimes also called
urbanised landscape), the hard to understand complexity of which is also clear
from the variety of approaches to its (still) geographic study (Oršulák, Raška, &
Suchevic, 2007). If we see urban landscape research as a study of interactions of
society and nature, the range of conceptions and methods is highly differentiated
and in many cases it only emphasises one of the components, which may be caused
by the fact that the concept of nature in towns was traditionally understood as an
oxymoron (Hough in Meyer, 2005). For a long time, studies of towns maintained
their social or political geographic nature (e.g. Sýkora, 1994; Hall, 2006). This
is based partially on the urban ecology which was constituted in the 1920s in the
so-called Chicago school. On the contrary, emphasis was placed on the natural ele-
ments in Central Europe where a field with a similar name was formed - town
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