Lefebvre (1991: 17) hypothesises that different periods have their own spatial codes, each characterising a particular spatial/social practice. Following this an already produced space can be de-coded, or read and that such a space implies a process of signification (ibid). At the same time Lefebvre is cautious about the reductive possibilities of this,suggestingthat reading the city as if it were
a
text,andby drawing on literary codes of understanding, this space is reduced to a reading (1991: 7). Spaces then forLefebvre are lived and not just read-the reduction to a text tends to ignore the contingencies of history and practice implicated in that space. In 'reading the landscape' then the intention here,following Duncan (1990), is to engage with the role of landscape as a dynamic feature within social process - the landscape as a constituent element within the socio-political processes of cultural reproduction and change (1990:11).Duncan suggests that the landscape forms one of the central elements in a cultural system, that as "an ordered assemblage of objects, a text,it acts as a signifying system through which a social system is communicated, reproduced experienced and explored"
(1990: 17).As a signifying system it is more thanjust the sum total ofmaterial conditions in which people and social groups live out their routine lives. In reading the landscape then we are not limited to reading the landscape as a text but must also acknowledge it as a"structuring structure" (ibid) that helps reproduce a social order.
The signification of landscapeis evidently somethingthat depends on interpretation and position. The signification of the landscape for those who make use of it everyday is evidently different from those from the outside. To the users of the landscape, that landscape may appear 'natural' and depending on their reflective stance would logically contribute to the structuring of an internalised and embodied form of knowledge that enables them to live out their daily lives. Part of this may refer to a purely practical engagement as suggested by Lynch's (1959)identification of an 'environmental image' the powerful internalised knowledges people develop of their environments through the
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mental structuring and organisation of individual sensory experience and perception.
Reducing the meaning of the landscape to this emphasises the apparent tangibility and transparency of the landscape and naturalises a set of economic, social and political relations embedded init.
Taking a more critical and reflective approach we would recognise that, following Duncan (1990: 18), the landscape as a signifying system is also a site of ideologies. We might say that landscapes are discursive fields, originating out of and structured through discourses. Particular ideologies are present however and serve to hide the origination of a space in discourse or to naturalise this space. Here Duncan points to the rhetorical role of landscape and the process whereby the landscape as a text is read and "acts as a communicative device reproducing the social order." Landscapes act as powerful ideological tools because they become part of the everyday, objective, natural and taken-far-granted world and this masks the "artifice andideological nature of its form and content" (ibid). Because of their objective qualities,landscapes may make "objects and subjects appear as fixed, codified, reified, to make what is patently cultural to appear as if it were natural" (ibid). A similar approach was taken by Barthes who developed a semiological analysis to decode French everyday life and culture. For Barthes signsare never innocent and are caught up in a complex web of ideological reproduction; "myth is experienced as innocent speech, not because the intentions are hidden...but because they are naturalised" (cited by Smith, 2001: 110).
The landscape as a signifying system according to Duncan makes use of various tropes which mayor may not provide the mechanisms to convince users or readers of the landscape of the rightness, naturalness, or legitimacy of hegemonic discourses (Ibid).
Clearly in highly textual, cosmically ordered or traditional societies there may be a distinct narrative structure to the language of the landscape and this might entail as Duncan (ibid: 19-22) suggests a variety of tropes such as allegory, synecdoche and metonymy. Innon-traditionalcapitalist societies the language of the landscape may be more difficult to decode not being dependent on a cosmically ordered reality.
Nevertheless people and particularly people in powerful positions are able to impose their ideals on the landscape. Through a "vocabulary of various conventional forms - signs, symbols, icons and specialised tropes in the landscape", people may
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communicate a set of ideals and tell particularstories about themselves and their social relations with others (Ibid:20).
The landscape then is "a product which expresses a distinctive culture of ideas and practices"(Ley cited by Knox 1991: 182). As such it contains sets of signs,images and symbolic meaning laid down through the production of a space and the formation and reformation of a social order.We may also recognise that the landscape does not just originate from nowhere and that it is historically located within the broader macro processes of social change. Consequently we may identify the shifting urban landscape as located within social,economic and cultural change related to a hypothetical process of postmodernisation and resulting in the distinctive features of a postmodern geography. The formation and the production of a landscape may also serve the interests of distinctive social groups (Ibid). Consequently although we may recognise capital's power in shaping the landscape ultimately it is lived as a cultural space and takes on its meaning particularly through this form of signification.
Likewise although the landscape and the ordering of urban space may originate out of specific underlying discourses which tend to structure the implicated practices, the landscape also mobilises a set of ideologies, which although inherent in the language and structure of the discourses, has the effect of 'naturalising' this landscape. This suggests that landscape, besides being a powerful medium for establishing social order is also a medium of symbolic power. Power symbolically expressed may be identified with the specific interests and ideals of social groups and their relation to others and the shaping of the environment. In reading the landscape the emphasis here is more on the demystification and deconstruction of power than locating the landscape within causal explanation.
Methodology
The process of interpreting the landscape is based on the idea of the landscape as a discursive and textual terrain. Following poststructuralism we need to accept that there is no one single true reading of the landscape. This is equally true for the 'writing' of the landscape as there are always unintended consequences. However the readingmakes use ofdifferentmedia sourcesincluding planning documents,and marketing information, brochures and the Internet. This is in support of an engagement with the actual
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landscape. Planning documents inform part of the rhetoric of the landscape and locate the sub-region within a particular 'imaginary'. Marketing brochures,pamphlets and web pages are valuable sources for understanding the construction of these places as products to be sold. The actual interpretation of the landscape therefore draws on multiple kinds of texts including the landscape itself each of which relate to a variety of discourses underlying this newlandscape.