Philosophical\n aesthetics has traditionally been more concerned with the judgement \nof \;artworks and the experience of \;art than with the natural beauty or \nthe qualities of designed landscapes &ndash\; or the sorts of experiences which\n such places might provide. \; Similarly\, traditional ethics assigned \nintrinsic value and moral standing to humans alone and seemed incapable \nof addressing the harm which humans were capable of doing to the \nenvironment. Over the last forty years\, both aesthetics and ethics have \nexpanded their outlook in response to the widespread sense of \nenvironmental crisis. \; Environmental ethicists have suggested that not \njust humans\, but such things as animals\, plants\, species\, habitats\, \nislands\, forests\, ecosystems and the biosphere\, might have intrinsic \nvalue and that we might thus have duties towards them. Aestheticians\, \nmeanwhile\, have turned their attention to a wide range of \;landscapes\, \nincluding wilderness\, traditional and industrial farms\, and designed \nlandscapes such as parks\, gardens and other forms of \ngreenspace \;associated with the built environment. Environmental concerns\n have moved aesthetics away from an elite preoccupation with art\, \ntowards consideration of the quotidian\, the everyday.
\nThe\n notion that ethics and aesthetics overlap (and might even somehow be \nthe same thing) is ancient: Plato linked Beauty\, Truth and Goodness. \nCertain human capacities\, such as perceptual sensitivity\, imaginative \nfreedom and creativity\, seem to be involved in both moral decisions and \naesthetic engagement. Since the eighteenth century\, landscape theory has\n revolved around the aesthetic notions of the Beautiful\, the Sublime and\n the Picturesque (though a philosopher recently suggested that we might \nfruitfully pay attention to the new aesthetic categories of the Ugly\, \nthe Inauthentic and the Banal). Are these eighteenth-century notions \nredundant\, or do they still have a place in twenty-first century design \ntheory? What is their relation to environmental values such as species \ndiversity\, ecological integrity and sustainability?
\nThe\n designers\, planners and managers of places work under the imperative to\n act. What values do they mobilise when they seek to create or maintain \n&lsquo\;good places&rsquo\;? In creating places which are aesthetically pleasing can \nthey also create places which are healthy\, sociable\, democratic\, \nsustainable and socially just?
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