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

Abstract

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.

Keywords

• landscape policy
• goal conflict
• unesco world heritage
• gis
• regional planning
• germany