West Wales in the Iron Age contained a diverse range of settlement types, from hill-forts to unenclosed farmsteads, with the dominant type of settlement the enclosed farmstead. However, a recent review of information available for the British Iron Age identified a relative lack of systematised information for Wales and consequently there is a pressing need to re-examine the settlement record for this area, as the belief in a single Iron Age "culture" gives way to recognition of regional difference in material cultures, social institutions and life-ways. This thesis examines the settlements and landscape of West Wales in an attempt to contribute to our understanding of this region in the Iron Age. In order to make a regionally synthesised investigation of the social, I conducted a survey of excavation and survey information for Iron Age settlements in West Wales. Analysis centred on examining the spatial patterning of settlements by considering the morphology, distribution, placement and structure of settlements, their place in the landscape and regional trends in the structuring of space and artefacts. The investigation was contextualised within the wider body of material for the Iron Age in Britain. The use of landscape theory as an interpretive framework in examining the spatial patterning of the material culture in the Iron Age proved an effective method for interpreting domestic settlements within the lived landscape. Social and cosmological relations within settlements and within the referential structuring of a landscape, particularly with respect to pre-existing monuments, were suggested by the analysis. By comparing these trends in the structuring of settlements within the landscape to settlements elsewhere in Britain, a distinct and regional culture for the Iron Age of West Wales was identified.

A practical, aesthetic and philosophical examination of lookouts as found in Australian National Parks. Investigates the impact of landscape (as refering to both the actual phenomena and cultural product) on environmental values and human relationship with place. Explores the unique relationship between visitors and environments conserved for their 'wilderness' value. Discusses the management of lookouts and the mediation and potential manipulation of visual perception in the design of these facilities. Suggests lookouts subjegate immediate physical 'site' to celebrate a distant 'scene' granted greater environmental value on the basis of aesthetic principles of beauty, the sublime and the photogenic.

Outdoor recreation and heritage resources have the potential to provide a wide range of benefits to individuals, groups of individuals and the economy. An increased knowledge of these benefits can give recreation managers and planners a better understanding of how their actions and decisions regarding a resource may impact upon the visitors and communities that they serve. Placed within a climate of increasing public sector accountability, this information might also prove useful in justifying the allocation of scarce resources to recreation and heritage preservation. Justifying the value that recreation adds to society is an issue recognised by Benefits Based Management (BBM), a recreation management and planning framework that seeks to identify and target the positive outcomes realised by individuals, groups, local businesses and communities that result from participation in recreation and leisure. To date, recreation planners and managers have not been presented with a BBM research effort that seeks to describe and understand the visitor and community benefits associated with a rail to trail conversion. This study aimed to identify and describe benefits gained by visitors and neighbouring communities, with specific reference to the Otago Central Rail Trail (OCRT), Central Otago, New Zealand. Information was gathered from seventy-seven semi-structured interviews with visiting users of the OCRT, residents of neighbouring communities and trail managers. The results of the study indicated that community stakeholders reported benefits such as local economic development linked to visitor expenditure, heightened sense of community identity and solidarity and social contact with people from outside the local area. An additional finding was that the perceived benefits of the OCRT have reportedly had a positive influence on local people's attitudes towards the rail trail. Visitor interviews revealed that personal and social well-being benefits such as physical activity, aesthetic appreciation, sense of achievement, psychological refreshment, family togetherness and social interaction with friends and local people were outcomes of an OCRT visit. Reported visitor benefits were further linked to physical fitness and health, enhanced mood and positive mental state, leading a balanced lifestyle and stronger relationships within families and between friends. Visitors also perceived that an OCRT visit had forged a greater knowledge and awareness of railway heritage through gaining insight into railway and Central Otago history and appreciation of the engineering skills and craftsmanship associated with 19th century railway construction. Following the benefit chain of causality (Driver, 1994; Driver & Bruns, 1999; McIntosh, 1999), interview responses were linked to potential community and visitor benefits that could be realised off-site such as enhanced quality of life, community satisfaction and a greater connection with and appreciation of New Zealand's historic and cultural heritage.

This research operates at both the meeting of wilderness and landscape, and also landscape architecture and design-directed research. It applies a phenomenological understanding of landscape to the New Zealand conservation estate as a means to reconsider wilderness’ prevalent framing as an untouched ‘other’. It does this through enlisting the designerly imperative found within landscape architecture as the means by which to direct this research, and through landscopic investigations located in the artefacts of cooking, haptic qualities of walking, cartographies of wilderness and a phenomenological diagramming of landscape experience. The results of this layered programme of research are four-fold. First, it finds that a landscopic interpretation of wilderness, and its tangible manifestation in New Zealand’s conservation estate, has the potential to suggest a greater depth of dialogue in which both ecological and cultural diversity might productively flourish. Second, it finds that landscape architecture has significant potential to broaden both its relevance and types of productive outputs beyond its current intent to shape specific sites. It identifies that artefacts and representations – such as cookers, track markers and maps – can be creatively manipulated to design alternative formulations of landscape. Third, through self-critique the potency of a programme of design-directed inquiry is demonstrated. In this dissertation new knowledge is revealed that extends the formal, diagrammatic and conceptual dimensions of wilderness, New Zealand’s conservation estate, and a phenomenological expression of landscape. This research illustrates the potential for design-directed research methods to be more widely adopted in ways that extend landscape architecture’s value to multi-disciplinary research. Finally, it finds a pressing future direction for landscape architecture research is to further identify and develop techniques that diagram landscopic practice and performance with the same richness and detail that spatially derived descriptions currently offer. It is the considerable distance between the spoken and written poetics of phenomenology and the visual and diagrammatic articulation of these qualities that is identified as a problematic and also productive site for ongoing creative research.

Enquanto alguns paises tem o ecoturismo como a sua principal fonte de renda, o Brasil nao explora a atividade de forma planejada, o que resulta, muitas vezes, na degradacao do meio ambiente e na descaracterizacao da diversidade cultural local. Assim sendo, este estudo pretende contribuir para a compreensao do processo de adaptacao de uma comunidade tradicional ao fenomeno do ecoturismo e dar um alerta para a necessidade de considerar a identidade cultural das populacoes locais como bem patrimonial e como elemento de risco no planejamento da atividade. Com esse intuito, foi realizado um Estudo de Caso, durante os anos de 2000 e 2001, com uma familia residente na praia de Martim de Sa, caracterizada como caicara. Essa comunidade foi escolhida, pois reside em um local onde o ecoturismo esta apenas comecando, fato que permitiu refletir a respeito das consequencias da atividade. Martim de Sa, apesar de estar inserida nos limites de duas Unidades de Conservacao da Natureza, esta sobre forte ameaca de degradacao ambiental devido a especulacao imobiliaria incentivada pelo crescimento do fluxo turistico sem planejamento e facilitado pela falta de fiscalizacao dos orgaos ambientais responsaveis por essas areas. Para o desenvolvimento do Estudo de Caso foram utilizadas nesta pesquisa a Observacao Participante e as entrevistas estruturadas com a finalidade de caracterizar a comunidade local e os turistas e, a Historia de Vida, para a reconstituicao da historia do nucleo receptor.

Enquanto alguns paises tem o ecoturismo como a sua principal fonte de renda, o Brasil nao explora a atividade de forma planejada, o que resulta, muitas vezes, na degradacao do meio ambiente e na descaracterizacao da diversidade cultural local. Assim sendo, este estudo pretende contribuir para a compreensao do processo de adaptacao de uma comunidade tradicional ao fenomeno do ecoturismo e dar um alerta para a necessidade de considerar a identidade cultural das populacoes locais como bem patrimonial e como elemento de risco no planejamento da atividade. Com esse intuito, foi realizado um Estudo de Caso, durante os anos de 2000 e 2001, com uma familia residente na praia de Martim de Sa, caracterizada como caicara. Essa comunidade foi escolhida, pois reside em um local onde o ecoturismo esta apenas comecando, fato que permitiu refletir a respeito das consequencias da atividade. Martim de Sa, apesar de estar inserida nos limites de duas Unidades de Conservacao da Natureza, esta sobre forte ameaca de degradacao ambiental devido a especulacao imobiliaria incentivada pelo crescimento do fluxo turistico sem planejamento e facilitado pela falta de fiscalizacao dos orgaos ambientais responsaveis por essas areas. Para o desenvolvimento do Estudo de Caso foram utilizadas nesta pesquisa a Observacao Participante e as entrevistas estruturadas com a finalidade de caracterizar a comunidade local e os turistas e, a Historia de Vida, para a reconstituicao da historia do nucleo receptor.