Landscape education embraces areas and activities, which are not strictly related to formal educational environments. In this sense, landscape planning experiences emerge as opportunities for developing the multi-level relationship community-landscape, fostering different educational paths for the actors involved in the planning process. Using qualitative methods in the analysis of educational paths, actors and instruments, through a review of the Italian regional landscape plans, the paper shows the changing use of the concept of landscape (from instrumental to values-oriented meanings) and the processes of recognition related to citizens’ rights to landscape, which question the achievement of ‘democratic landscapes’ at the local scale. Through the analysis of top-down and bottom-up educational processes, embedded in the participatory policies which shape the landscape plans, the research underlines the need of strengthening the educational processes included in landscape planning experiences and the urgency of re-defining the ethical dimension of the relation community-landscape.
