Regarding Tittivulus last Post (# 174):

  Thanks Tittivulus for sounding what you call "warning bells"; you are quite right in that one should be careful in handling notions such as 'imageability', 'place character', 'distinctiveness' , ' uniqueness'  and others of the sort. Although the terms are closely related it is not clear which terms are subordinate to others. Neither it is clear which might be an 'umbrella term' that encompasses all the others. In my opinion, such an umbrella term is 'sense of place', but this is, of course, open to debate.

    I understand your concern with questions such as "To what extent landscape imageability determines landscape character? " which, as you suggest, may plausibly turned upside down as "To what extent does landscape character determine landscape imageability?"      

     What may contribute to the opacity of the terms we are presently concerned with is that the authors reviewed so far (Lynch, Tveit and Green) appear to have a different understanding of the various concepts involved. This may well be the result that they approach them from their respective disciplines: Architecture, Geography, Psychology.

     In a following Post I'll introduce yet another approach to landscape character, that of John A. Jakle, and then attempt, not a synthesis, but a critical comparison of the various approaches.

    Tittivulus quotes two lexical definitions of character which may be relevant to 'landscape character'. I'd rather leave it undefined. As Henry Canby said in his Essay Travelling Intelligently in America (1928) ( as quoted in Jakle's book):

" Character will prove to be, like style in literature, the most imponderable quality, never to be defined and never to be neglected, which when found or felt is a new clue not merely to beauty, but to subject, significance, mood, and result."