3. Towards a Method of Assessing the Well-Being Brought by Landscape and Heritage Along a Blue and Green Infrastructure: The Loire Valley (France)

This paper summarises the progress of a research project that developed criteria to link well-being to landscape, heritage, and environmental issues, by experimenting a method that can bring operational extensions. The project was part of the economic evaluation of amenities that place well-being as one of the fundamental principles for assessing the quality of life in the context of enhancing ecosystem services, biodiversity, and urban resilience towards climate change. The research focused on the case study of the Loire Valley—UNESCO World Heritage, France—taking advantage of a ‘natural’ blue and green infrastructure supposedly comforting social well-being and not opposing biodiversity restoration. The methodology was based on (i) interviews with the different categories of actors—which helped identify conditions of well-being, prioritise them, and come up with a (non-exhaustive) list; validated during (ii) collective readings of the landscape and heritage; (iii) workshops were then used to validate these criteria and evaluate their importance in the perception of well-being. In the long term, the suggestions proposed should help influence economic dynamics, suggest spatial planning measures through urban planning documents, and improve performances of the environment and society through the enhancement of blue and green corridors, landscape, and heritage.