Rural areas as living space are blessed with important qualities; space, clean air, woods and rivers, and present a better living environment for the nation than their urban counterparts. Rural development and improvement projects have tended to neglect or even destroy these qualities without recognizing their importance for human living. We should not allow further degradation under the widely-condoned justifications of modernization and efficiency.
We can easily find examples of landscape degradation; cutting down century-old trees to locate roads efficiently, blocking the top of roadside streams with concrete plates to enlarge the roads, replacing hedges with concrete walls, etc. The traditional scene of houses with white walls and thatched roofs, blended into the surrounding green fields, is losing ground to modern houses which show little harmony in materials, colors and shapes. Serene, restful rural settings are being swept away and turned into tasteless living space.
The degradation of landscapes is partly attributable to individuals' differing sense of beauty, but more importantly to a lack of recognition that housing is the most important element of the rural landscape. There is also a wide-spreading feeling that individuals should be able to do anything they want. This has lead to justification for new buildings without regard to harmony with surrounding natural or architectural beauty. This is true also of public buildings.
One nation-wide survey demonstrates that people's values are changing; more people are now becoming less purely materialistic and value natural surroundings rather than artificial ones. Another survey shows that urban people favouring rural living are increasing. We can foresee from these findings that more people will value rural living in the coming 21st century. This is where we stand now: we should give proper weight to landscape planning as an important element of rural planning practice.
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