Digging in the past: New conceptual models in landscape history and their relevance in peri-urban landscapes

Although the importance of knowledge about past landscapes has already been stressed in Landscape and Urban Planning, there are still gaps in how this knowledge can be identified and best put to use in landscape planning and management. Two major gaps cited by many researchers are those between ecological and cultural approaches to study and those between empirical and theoretical studies of landscape. There might be two ways to narrow these gaps. One of these is the landscape biographical approach that is now developing in several European countries, particularly in The Netherlands. Another way is a recently demonstrated path dependency approach, which asserts that previous activities in the landscape will influence the subsequent sequence of events. In this essay we discuss these two approaches and how they might be of help in the context of research on periurban landscapes. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.