Landscape planning facing the challenge of the development of cultural landscapes

Today’s landscape planning and design cannot favour one of the alternatives either to reproduce only historical images of landscapes and treat landscape a patient or to transform land use by following the organisational principles of human natural systems. Landscape planning must focus on the multi-functionality of the landscape using the premise of sustainable land use. Three examples, in Germany, that illustrate possibilities of future landscape transformation are presented. Though landscape planning is an important instrument to regulate the relationship between man and environment in such landscapes, in general practice landscape planning faces a lot of concrete problems. Requirements, methods and potentials of landscape planning that enable it to tackle these problems are proposed.