
Includes bibliographical references and index. 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. 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. J.Douglas Porteous is Professor of Geography, University of Victoria, Canada.ģ 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)Ĥ ENVIRONMENTAL AESTHETICS ideas, politics and planning J.DOUGLAS PORTEOUS LONDON AND NEW YORKĥ 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 This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-library, Routledge is an International Thomson Publishing company 1996 J.Douglas Porteous All rights reserved.

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. 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. This is the first comprehensive account of the new interdiscipline of environmental aesthetics. 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.



The book traces the history of aesthetic thought and practice, examining basic aesthetic concepts and the resultant implementation of aesthetic policy in the landscape. 2 ENVIRONMENTAL AESTHETICS 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.
