Тowards a landscape therapy theory

Aim. The study pursues the following objectives: to evaluate the aims and prospects for the development of landscape therapy in geographical research, to determine the role of landscape therapeutic and aesthetic resources in health tourism, to summarize the experience of using landscape therapy in tourism, and to develop scientific and methodological approaches as well as practical measures for the establishment of landscape therapy as part of recreational systems.

Methodology. National and international materials concerning the development of landscape therapy are collected and analyzed. The study relies on systematic synthesis as a universal scientific method. It provides a systematic interdisciplinary analysis and generalization of published literature and Internet sources on the state of the art in landscape therapy and its further potential. Descriptive, evolutionary and aesthetic-geographical methods are used. The experience of drug-based medicine is critically examined. The factors that determine and make it possible to consider landscapes as aesthetic objects are revealed. The study summarizes medical and geographical works on the health-improving functions of landscape therapy.

Results. The study develops the concept of landscape therapy as one of the most important natural and health resources, which only raises in prominence at the age of Covid. The study demonstrates the importance of landscape therapy in improving the quality of life. The conceptualization of landscape therapy helps analyze and substantiate the healing power of landscape beauty. The role of beautiful places in the formation of recreational spaces is revealed. Such sites have significant heritage importance and, in many cases, acquire national symbolic importance. The study reveals the relationships between natural features and healing and health-improving phenomena (geohealing and geopathic zones).

Research implications. This study is one of the first attempts to comprehensively address landscape therapy. This new approach to landscapes expands the possibilities of and puts additional requirements for their protection and the organization of tourism as a driver of socioeconomic development of the countryside. Practical recommendations for the development of landscape therapy are formulated. The analysis demonstrates the need for a comprehensive understanding of the healing power of certain landscapes in the context of the coronavirus pandemics. Recommendations are given to support medical studies in geography in order to move its focus more from the transformation and protection of the nature to the transformation and salvation of human beings. The results of the study are necessary for developing a health landscape theory and can be used to educate geography students and specialists in the field of tourism, as well as to develop educational and methodological materials.

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