Exploring Natural Beauty, Governance, and Sustainable Futures in the Cornwall National Landscape
Protected landscapes so far have been discussed in terms of conservation, planning restrictions, and tourism value. Yet at the heart of the system lies a surprisingly open question: what exactly counts as “natural beauty”?
This project now hopes to examines how the statutory concept of natural beauty operates in practice within the Cornwall National Landscape. Although the conservation and enhancement of natural beauty is the central legal purpose of National Landscapes, UK legislation deliberately avoided defining the term. Instead, beauty has historically been treated as something recognised through informed judgement, evolving alongside cultural values, landscape character, and lived experience.
The project therefore now asks:
Research Question
How does the indeterminate statutory concept of “natural beauty” operate in practice within the Cornwall National Landscape, and how does the distribution of social capital influence whether planning functions as an enabler or constraint to sustainable business?
Research Aim
To examine how the concept of natural beauty is interpreted and applied within the Cornwall National Landscape and to analyse how social capital shapes whether planning processes support or constrain sustainable local enterprise.
Listening to How People Describe Beauty
A key element of the research is a new focus on how people themselves understand and describe natural beauty.
Residents, land managers, tourism operators, planners, and community organisations all experience the landscape differently. For some, beauty may lie in dramatic cliffs and coastal views. For others, it may be found in working harbours, historic mining remains, grazing land, or a sense of exposure to Atlantic weather. These interpretations are not merely aesthetic preferences, they influence how landscapes are governed and how development decisions are made.
Through surveys, documentary analysis, and fieldwork across several case-study areas, the research will explore how different groups articulate scenic value. By systematically analysing these narratives, the project aims to construct comparative “lexicons of beauty” that reveal how landscape value is socially produced and negotiated.
This approach recognises that beauty is not simply an abstract policy concept. It is something experienced, debated, and interpreted by communities who live and work in these landscapes every day.
Why This Research Takes a New Approach
The project adopts several novel perspectives within the study of protected landscapes and environmental governance.
1. Investigating governance within a unitary authority context
There is limited empirical work connecting landscape governance to unitary local authority contexts such as Cornwall, where strategic planning, climate policy, cultural policy, and tourism development operate under a single administrative structure. Studying this setting allows the research to evaluate how the Cornwall National Landscape Plan is implemented within a complex but unified governance system.
2. Bringing Romanticism into governance research
While Romantic ideas of landscape beauty are widely discussed in cultural geography and environmental humanities, they are rarely integrated into empirical research on landscape governance. This project explores how Romantic constructions of “natural beauty”, shaped by nineteenth-century writers, artists, and conservationists, continue to influence planning interpretation and landscape management practices today.
3. Treating “natural beauty” as a governance mechanism
Although “natural beauty” underpins the legal purpose of National Landscapes, it is rarely examined as a constitutional design feature. This research takes a different approach by treating the absence of a statutory definition not as a weakness or ambiguity, but as a functional governance mechanism that allows planning systems to exercise informed judgement and respond to local values.
4. Developing an innovative qualitative methodology
There is little methodological precedent for empirically analysing how communities articulate landscape value. This research introduces a new qualitative method that constructs comparative “lexicons of beauty” across different places. By analysing the language people use to describe landscapes such as: tranquillity, exposure, heritage, wildness, or belonging, the research seeks to better understand how scenic value is collectively produced.
5. Reframing the role of planning
Much existing literature portrays planning in protected landscapes as either restrictive or permissive. This research instead reframes planning as a mediating arena, where aesthetic values, economic interests, and community relationships interact. The study therefore examines how social capital (trust, collaboration, and networks between actors) shapes whether planning becomes a barrier or an enabler of sustainable development.
Why Cornwall Matters
Cornwall provides a particularly rich setting for exploring these questions. The Cornwall National Landscape covers around a third of the county and includes diverse coastal, rural, and cultural environments. At the same time, many communities face challenges linked to housing pressures, seasonal economies, and changing rural livelihoods.
Understanding how natural beauty is interpreted, and how those interpretations shape planning decisions, is therefore central to the future of sustainable business development in the region.
Looking Ahead
By combining landscape history, planning policy analysis, and community perspectives, the research aims to provide a deeper understanding of how protected landscapes function in practice.
Ultimately, the project seeks to show that natural beauty is not simply something that landscapes possess; natural beauty is something that societies interpret, negotiate, and govern together.
And understanding those processes may be key to building landscapes that are not only protected, but also socially and economically sustainable for the communities who live within them.
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