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Inventorying Landscape Assets in Rural Utah Communities: A Sociocultural Approach

A community's physical environment embodies distinct natural and built elements, which hold meanings and values that are formed through daily social interactions within that environment. Such elements, however, are not often recognized until they are dramatically changed or lost. As amenity-rich rural areas of the Intermountain West steadily attract new residents, consciously identifying these elements prior to rapid growth is critical to their preservation.
Research suggests that strong social capital has the potential to encourage the identification of a place's visual assets prior to such change. A documentary research approach was used to understand why citizens do not actively participate in community planning and to identify possible solutions from the public participation movement. A framework was built to evaluate existing participation methods and identify specific approaches and practices which could be employed by "citizen planners" to effectively engage citizenry in identifying the visual, landscape assets while strengthening social relationships.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:UTAHS/oai:digitalcommons.usu.edu:etd-4437
Date01 May 2007
CreatorsHale, Jennifer F.
PublisherDigitalCommons@USU
Source SetsUtah State University
Detected LanguageEnglish
Typetext
Formatapplication/pdf
SourceAll Graduate Theses and Dissertations
RightsCopyright for this work is held by the author. Transmission or reproduction of materials protected by copyright beyond that allowed by fair use requires the written permission of the copyright owners. Works not in the public domain cannot be commercially exploited without permission of the copyright owner. Responsibility for any use rests exclusively with the user. For more information contact Andrew Wesolek (andrew.wesolek@usu.edu).

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