Young people speak about the landscape

In 1996 schools and members of the Geographical Association in the United k ingdom volunteered to collect data for the Land Use-UK mapping project. At the time surveyors were asked to record their views and visions of the land scape. The 1287 responses note the hopes and fears of young people and thei r observations concerning the most important environmental issues facing th e landscape. These data provide a rich and immensely interesting insight in to the thinking of young people and highlight what they value most. Further more, in the context of current theoretical repositioning of geography in t he broad spectrum of other disciplines connected with socially critical the ory the data collected in 1996 provides an important empirical base for pos t-modernist interpretation. Several themes may be identified in the young p eople's judgements about the environment. These can be categorised broadly as descriptive knowledge, aesthetic ethical, and socio-political Arguably, such themes in the ideas uncovered are not exclusive to the 'new' geographi es but find their origins in thoughts of earlier geographers.