Landscape understanding and values in extended public consultations on spatial planning in rural communes in Poland

A large part of spatial planning projects in Polish rural communes deals with landscape issues such as protection and planning. Besides legal regulations extended public consultations (EPCs) on spatial planning processes provide an opportunity to comprehensively address and negotiate landscape arguments. This research aims to identify the understanding and value of the concept of landscape by local communities in the examined EPC cases. This paper explores landscape issues through a systematic analysis (multiple-case study) of six cases of EPCs carried out in Poland between 2019 and 2022. The landscape was negotiated in terms of its various functions to provide value for aesthetics, culture, history, identity, recreation, and economy. In some cases, the landscape was used as an argument to promote a hidden agenda. In the rural communes, aesthetic functions of landscapes were frequently addressed, while natural, ecological, and climatic functions of the landscape were barely mentioned, suggesting that the understanding of landscape remains at a representative, cultural, and visual level, which differs from urban discourses that often focus on climatic and ecological functions of landscape. EPCs are a sound instrument to further integrate landscape as a common asset into spatial planning processes.