Resumen
This paper discusses, according to the European Landscape Convention (Council of Europe), the landscape management as matter of public policy and governance. It focuses on the metropolitan area of Madrid, putting in relation landscape knowledge and public action in two closely related scales: the territorial scale, landscapes of rural and natural dominance and low urbanization until now, and the scale of cities and their peripheries in a context of urban region. Paper shows both, methodological proposals and empirical results of characterization and evaluation study of landscape carried out for the whole of the Region of Madrid; and, with a specific method, for the urban area of Getafe, in the Toledo metropolitan corridor. It concludes the need for more and better knowledge to develop an explicit policy in favour of the conservation and improvement of the landscape values, but also the adoption of a strategic instrument of territorial planning which democratic quality, that provides cohesion and prudence to the government of the territory. Madrid Autonomous Region Regional Government recent political decisions authorizing housing developments in countryside, text criticizes, are not going in the right direction.
