The economic landscape is a landscape that has been created by mankind, and is the physical expression of our varied economic activities: agriculture, mining, manufacturing, services of different types.
Across much of Ireland, the economic landscape appears as a layer that is spread over the physical landscape. It is expressed in the well-managed fields of farms, in planted forests, in the huge transformations made to lowland bogs by the activities of Bord na Mona, and in the punctuation of the countryside by wires and pylons, communciations masts and windfarms. The fairlyregularly spaced network of towns and villages, theessential basic service centres, is a further expression of the economic landscape.In the larger towns and cities, the industrial estates, business and retail parks that lie at the urban edge and, in the case of cities, the concentrations of office and retail activity, sometimes expressed in a high-rise, densely-packed, built environment, are yet more markers of our economic landscape.
Collectively,man's economic activities have produced wide-ranging and, in places, far-reaching transformations of the physical landscape.
