Long-Term Risks of Urban Landscape Transformation

This article analyses different approaches to defining the concept of landscape. The author’s approach to the definition of the concept of landscape, allows to substantiate the original interpretation of urban planning activity as an activity to replace some components of the landscape by others: natural components by man-made ones. Further, the authors note that the replacement of some components in such a complex system as landascape is always associated with risks. Risks of this type are referred to by the authors as Landscape risks. The authors describe the main characteristics of landscape risks and give specific examples for the largest city, which is Ekaterinburg in Russia. Then the authors analyses various ways of identification and management of landscape risks and come to a conclusion that the best way to identify not only risks but also chains of cause and effect describing changes in landscape, is the system DPSEEA: driver, pressure, state, expansion, effect, action. The authors have constructed chains of indicators for the examples of landscape violations given in the article. Further the possibilities of including landscape risks in spatial urban development planning procedures are analyzed. It concludes that such opportunities are not sufficient.