As said, Kevin's Lynch's Imageability has merited considerable attention in the field of Landscape Studies. From all those I'd like to dwell, because of its relevance to landscape appreciation, on a paper by Tveit, Ode & Fry, titled: Key Concepts in a Framework for Analysing Visual Landscape Character ( Landscape research, 31, 229- 255, 2006).

      The authors propose nine concepts in terms of which the 'visual quality' of a landscape may be described:

     stewardship, coherence, disturbance

     visual scale, historicity, imageability,

     complexity, naturalness, ephemera.

  I have advanced previously the idea that appreciating a particular landscape entails a consideration of its 'visual quality'. As such, the sentence sounds quite nice but, in the absence of some understanding of what aspects may determine the said 'visual quality', nothing much would be gained by proposing it. The above nine concepts of Tveit et al. may provide a way to turn the visual quality of a landscape into a notion susceptible of further study by exploring those nine component-concepts and their interrelations.  

  In my view the analyzing of visual quality of a landscape, within the context of its appreciation, should emphasize what Lothian (1999) calls the subjectivist approach, where the focus is "on the viewer's experience of a landscape",  keeping in mind that although we may distinguish various components for study, those components cease to be so when isolated; in other words " a holistic experience of them all". This point of view differs somewhat from Tveit et al.which emphasize more the relations to the features in the landscape than the psychological processes of the viewer.

 It is interesting to note that the authors tie up the concept of imageability with "synonymous or closely related concepts" like:  

spirit of place; genius loci; uniqueness/distinctiveness; vividness.

  The 'spirit of place' in the connotation of  'sense of place'  is a subject that was discussed at some length in this Message Board (see Malpas, Heidegger's Topology, Posts # 162 -167 ) In its connotation of genius loci it is discussed by Russell (see Posts #152- 155 and his Psychological Perspective of Place in our website )

       We have not discussed much 'uniqueness' and 'vividness' but those, together with other aspects of Tveit's paper are tabled for consideration in future posts.