Application of a vision in the Lake District of Salzburg

Understanding the complexity of landscapes is an essential prerequisite to propose strategies for landscape development in the mid future, to predict long-term effects of landscape change, and assess future demands on landscape resources. In order to be able to direct today's landscapes to a possible future state (German: Leitbild), landscape planning must include socio-cultural, economic and political considerations in addition to ecological aspects of the landscape. In response to this challenge, this paper unifies the Leitbild concept with a spatial explicit planning procedure and introduces a case study application for describing and classifying landscape visions based on a transdisciplinary, holistic concept.The general assessment system of planning a vision is adapted to the natural, cultural, political and economic conditions of the given case study area in the Federal States Upper Austria and Salzburg (Austria). The assessment system includes exercises that identify the assets of the planning procedure and encourage stakeholders, scientist and local people to collaborate in planning and implementation processes. This paper provides an overview of planning procedures from the Leitbild perspective, outlines problems encountered in the case study, and compares them to the findings of other scholars.