A protected view or protected vista is the legal requirement within urban planning to preserve the view of a specific place or historic building from another location. The effect of a protected view is to limit the height of new buildings within or adjacent to the sightline between the two places so as to preserve the ability to see the landmark as a focus of the view. The protection may also cover the area behind the place or building concerned.
For example, in London views of St Paul's Cathedral are protected from various prominent locations around the city. In Edinburgh, a 2005 skyline study compiled a list of almost 170 key views which will now be protected in the planning process.
Protected views are not unique to the UK, also existing in places such as San Francisco which has some of the strictest limits in the world; Portland, Oregon where the size of downtown blocks is kept low to maintain the views of Mount Hood from the West Hills; and the city of Vancouver which has protected "view cones".
Read more about Protected View: Protected Vistas in London
Famous quotes containing the words protected and/or view:
“Guns have metamorphosed into cameras in this earnest comedy, the ecology safari, because nature has ceased to be what it always had been—what people needed protection from. Now nature tamed, endangered, mortal—needs to be protected from people.”
—Susan Sontag (b. 1933)
“Among the virtues and vices that make up the British character, we have one vice, at least, that Americans ought to view with sympathy. For they appear to be the only people who share it with us. I mean our worship of the antique. I do not refer to beauty or even historical association. I refer to age, to a quantity of years.”
—William Golding (b. 1911)