abstract: As a significant level of the reformation and transformation of our society has been provoked by environmental deterioration, ecological approaches in environmental design have drawn much attention from professionals as an alternative world view and also as a practical design approach. Particularly in landscape architecture, ecological understanding has been at the very core of the profession since its emergence and plays an important role in the decision making processes. While ecology supports the profession with an objective rationale, aesthetics plays another major role in providing various understandings about the aesthetic experience of people, which is rather subjective. However, the ways to seek the balance between them are still controversial. Furthermore, the conventional aesthetic value system of landscape appears to have limitations for guiding us to an appropriate appreciation, especially in dealing with newly emerging urban landscape patterns such as regeneration of post-industrial landscapes. Understanding these issues, there have been continuous attempts to describe the relation between ecology and aesthetics, suggesting that a new approach known as "ecological aesthetics," can bring us a new set of viewpoints seeking a reunion of nature and culture, and science and art. It asserts that "there is a type of beauty" in the landscape associated with its ecological health which people could aesthetically appreciate; and therefore, revealing the "hidden" beauty of nature in more visible ways should be the primary concern of today's ecological designers. This research mainly consists of extensive literature research and a case study on two landscape restructuring projects of post-industrial landscapes in Seoul, Korea. The literature research redefines the tasks of landscape architecture based on the idea of ecological aesthetics, and the case study seeks the potentials and limitations of current design projects. This research proposes a framework for landscape perception and reflects on the lessons that would be useful for better practice and research. / Dissertation/Thesis / Ph.D. Environmental Design and Planning 2011

Le paysage constitue à la fois un cadre de vie pour les populations humaines et un support du cycle de vie des espèces animales. Les modifications du paysage induites par les dynamiques d’occupation du sol se répercutent sur ces deux dimensions, l’une esthétique et l’autre écologique. Ces logiques étant généralement étudiées dans des champs disciplinaires différents, peu de recherches ont porté sur la manière dont elles s’articulent selon les modifications des structures paysagères.Ce travail cherche donc à modéliser de manière rétrospective la coévolution spatiale des fonctions esthétique et écologique du paysage à partir de métriques spatiales basées sur des données d’occupation du sol. Il se focalise sur les changements intervenus dans les franges urbaines de deux agglomérations françaises (Besançon et Paris) durant les 30 dernières années.La démarche adoptée a d’abord visé à modéliser, à partir des données d’occupation du sol, (1)les préférences paysagères d’un ensemble d’individus et (2) la connectivité écologique pour un ensemble d’espèces animales. En mobilisant de manière complémentaire des analyses statistiques multivariées et des analyses spatiales, le cœur du travail a ensuite consisté à étudier comment ces deux fonctions ont évolué de manière convergente ou divergente au cours du temps. Les résultats donnent de nouveaux éléments de compréhension des relations entre esthétique et écologie du paysage et amènent à s’interroger sur l’intérêt de la modélisation spatiale pour une gestion du paysage conciliant la préservation du cadre de vie des habitants et la conservation de la biodiversité. / Landscape is both a backdrop to the lives of human populations and a medium for the life cycle of animal species. Landscape changes induced by land-use and land-cover dynamics affect both these dimensions, the one aesthetic, and the other ecological. Because these rationales areusually studied within different disciplines, little research has been done into how the two clashor combine as and when landscape structures change. This work seeks therefore to model the spatial co-evolution of the aesthetic and ecological functions of landscape retrospectively usingspatial metrics based on land-cover data. It focuses on changes in the urban fringes of two French cities (Paris and Besançon) over the last 30 years. The approach attempts first to use land-cover data to model (1) the landscape preferences of a set of individuals and (2) the ecological connectivity of a set of animal species. Drawing on both multivariate statistical analysis and spatial analysis, the core of this work consists in investigating how the two functions have evolved in convergent or divergent ways over time. The results provide fresh insight into the relationship between landscape aesthetics and landscape ecology and raise questions about the value of spatial modelling for a landscape management approach that endeavours to reconcile the preservation of residents’ living environments and the conservationof biodiversity.