Cultural Heritage and Wind Turbines – A Method to Reduce Conflicts in Landscape Planning and Management: Studies in the German Ore Mountains

• Published in: European countryside Vol. 10; no. 4; pp. 652 - 672
• Main Authors: Wieduwilt, Patrick, Wirth, Peter
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Brno Sciendo 01.12.2018; De Gruyter Poland
• Subjects: algorithms; Conflict; Conservation; Cultural heritage; Cultural resources; Dualism; Geographic information systems; Germany; GIS; goal conflict; issues and policy; Landscape architecture; landscape policy; landscapes; Mountains; Navigation behavior; planning; regional planning; rural areas; Satellite navigation systems; Transformation; Turbines; UNESCO World Heritage; Wind power; Wind turbines
• ISSN: 1803-8417; 1803-8417
• DOI: 10.2478/euco-2018-0036

Landscape policy, management and planning can be interpreted as involving a dualism of conservation and transformation goals. Serious conflicts can emerge when conservation and development goals are contradictory. This paper reflects on the goal conflict between the establishment of a world heritage destination with 39 individual elements and the development of wind power facilities in the German Ore Mountains. In order to meet these challenges, the authors created a GIS-based so-called “Multiple-Visual-Link Method”. By calculating viewsheds with a tailor-made GIS application and defining distance zones (short, middle, long), the user is able to estimate the visual relations between the two types of subjects in a bigger area with a favorable cost-benefit relation. The compact algorithmic approach leads to solid results which can be translated into planning recommendations. There is also potential for it to be applied to similar goal conflicts.