Environmental aesthetics : ideas, politics and planning / J. Douglas Porteous.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 266-283) and index.

1. Introduction. 1.1. Environmental aesthetics. 1.2. A short history of aesthetics. 1.3. The origins of the aesthetic impulse. 1.4. The senses -- 2. Humanists. 2.1. The humanist approach. 2.2. A history of landscape taste. 2.3. Landscapes. 2.4. Some national contrasts -- 3. Experimentalists. 3.1. The experimentalist approach. 3.2. Properties of environments and persons. 3.3. Scenery is good for you. 3.4. Methodological problems -- 4. Activists. 4.1. Literary and design activism. 4.2. Citizen action. 4.3. Legal issues. 4.4. Public policy -- 5. Planners. 5.1. Aesthetic landscape planning. 5.2. Urban aesthetic planning. 5.3. Environmental education. 5.4. Aesthetic critique. Afterword: Beyond aesthetics.

This is the first comprehensive, integrated study of the emerging interdisciplinary field of environmental aesthetics. The author takes the reader through a brief history of both aesthetics and taste, then discusses the psychology of human-environment relations, the influences of literary, artistic and legal activism on city, countryside and wilderness, and concludes with an analysis of the roles of public policy and of planning.