Landscapes, Identities and Development

Zoran Roca, Paul Claval, John Agnew

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9781409405542
• eBook ISBN: 9781351923446
• Topic: Physical Sciences
• Subtopic: Geography
• Index: Geography

Bringing together theoretical and empirical research from 22 countries in Europe, North America, Australia, South America and Japan, this book offers a state-of-the-art survey of conceptual and methodological research and planning issues relating to landscape, heritage, [and] development. It has 30 chapters grouped in four main thematic sections: landscapes as a constitutive dimension of territorial identities; landscape history and landscape heritage; landscapes as development assets and resources; and landscape research and development planning. The contributors are scholars from a wide range of cultural and professional backgrounds, experienced in fundamental and applied research, planning and policy design. They were invited by the co-editors to write chapters for this book on the basis of the theoretical frameworks, case-study research findings and related policy concerns they presented at the 23rd Session of PECSRL - The Permanent European Conference for the Study of the Rural Landscape, organized by TERCUD - Territory, Culture and Development Research Centre, Universidade Lusófona, in Lisbon and Óbidos, Portugal, 1 - 5 September 2008. With such broad inter-disciplinary relevance and international scope, this book provides a valuable overview, highlighting recent findings and interpretations on historical, current and prospective linkages between changing landscapes and natural, economic, cultural and other identity features of places and regions; landscape-related identities as local and regional development assets and resources in the era of globalized economy and culture; the role of landscape history and heritage as platforms of landscape research and management in European contexts, including the implementation of The European Landscape Convention; and, the strengthening of the landscape perspective as a constitutive element of sustainable development.

PART I

Landscape and Identity between Imagery and Reality

Chapter 1

Limits to Transformation in Places’ Identity: Theoretical and Methodological Questions

Lionella Scazzosi

Introduction

Landscape

The present contribution is part of a process of theoretical and methodological layout that aims at defining some basic concepts regarding the quality of landscapes. A quality meant as the achievement of an appropriate relationship between innovation and conservation of the specific characters that places have inherited from the past (Scazzosi 1993, 2002c, 2004, 2008, 2009).

Recently, a vast literature has been published on the changes in the concept of landscape and on its polysemy. What we must point out here is the fact that today the concept includes both a physical – material understanding and a perceptive one, its broader and more complex sense (cultural and sensorial). It involves the whole territory – i.e. all spaces (rural, urban, peri-urban or natural) regardless of their quality (outstanding, ordinary, degraded) – as a physical object but also as the object of the ‘cultural look’ people cast on places, even places with no human presence.

The definition of landscape given by the European Landscape Convention (Florence 2000) synthesizes this long cultural evolution: ‘Landscape means an area, as perceived by people, whose character is the result of the action and interaction of natural and/or human factors’ (art. 1). And ‘[…] This Convention applies to the entire territory of the Parties and cover natural, rural, urban and peri-urban areas. It includes land, inland water and marine areas. It concerns landscapes that might be considered outstanding as well as everyday or degraded landscapes’ (art. 2).

Landscape as physical object

In a landscape approach, places may be considered in their physical characters as a large and complex artefact (a word meant to underline the material and building aspects) and a large architecture (if we want to point out the formal organization of spaces). They result from the action man and natures have carried out over the centuries; they may be either directly and voluntarily built or be the outputs of indirect changes made by man on nature, even in less anthropized areas. Places are systems of spatial, functional, visual and symbolic relationships between its constitutive elements. They are the result of a project that has been desired, more or less consciously, by a collectivity that has been building, using and modifying the place over the centuries¹ and sometimes the result has been voluntarily carried out by a single person.

Landscape as meanings

Places are attributed very different meanings. Some have been emerging and taking force according to the readings that past and present intellectuals, painters, photographers, mass media have passed on to us and have finally entered and settled into the mechanisms of collective memory.² They partially result from the use and the meaning that local populations attributed to places and elements (meeting, rest, feast, religious practices). But some are also the projection of expectations, wishes, meanings that collectivities or socio-cultural contemporary groups attribute to them (naturalness, new arcadia, etc.).

Landscapes as ‘open works’ and palimpsest

Landscapes are dynamic. They are subject to continuous changes, either diffused and/or exceptional, by the action of man and nature over the centuries. That is why they may be called open works. Traces from the past interlace with those of the present and that modify them continuously and inevitably. Places bear dense and diffuse tangible traces of their history (even in the most contemporary urbanised areas) which are still visible if one knows how to read them. Places’ characters and meanings contribute to the people’s identity.

Limits to the ‘openness’ of the ‘work’

To consider landscape ‘open work’ does not mean freedom/permission to transform, innovate or add without questioning the limits beyond which the inherited work is physically destroyed or used in an instrumental way. Therefore, if we want to respect, preserve and transmit the specific characters of places and the identity of people, there are some limits to these transformations. Such an awareness of inevitable changes means taking a position, consciously or not, in the face of specific characters place inherited from the past, including the recent one.

The concept of ‘limit’

The concept of limit is a question that needs to be explored. Various disciplines are useful to understand its different meanings.

From an etymological viewpoint, and according to the linguistic dictionary, limit (limite in Italian, limite in French, limit or boundary in English, límite in Spanish, but Grenze, in German) comes from the Latin limes-itis. It means the terminal lines of an area (in the figurative sense too) or divisory lines between two areas (Limes was the defensive fortified boundaries of the Roman Empire from the first century ac). However, the concept also refers to the value that may determine the entity or the extension of some activities, actions, behaviours, performances, properties or characters (for example, speed limit).³ At the same time, limit is used to suggest the means or the reason for a constraint or a restriction. The latter may be imposed or suffered but also self-chosen for general or occasional reasons, mainly dictated by moral or economic rules (Dizionario Etimologico 1999; Dizionario Devoto Oli 2004).

Limit is a fundamental concept of mathematical analyses, clarified in 1821 by A.L. Cauchy to give rigour and strictness to infinitesimal calculation.

From a philosophical perspective, the main and still essential reference was provided by Aristotle (Metaphysics, Book 5, 1022A), who clearly explained the different meanings of the word limit: (1) the last point of a thing; (2) the form of a spatial magnitude or of a thing that has a magnitude; (3) the end of each thing as point of arrival or, sometimes, as starting point; (4) the substance of each thing and the essence of each. In this sense, limit means condition (necessary substance or essence) that says what a thing ‘cannot not be’ and is the precise reason of the thing⁴ (Abbagnano 1998; Dizionario di Filosofia 2002).

During the last decades, the fourth meaning of the word and of the concept of limit has been particularly developed and used to tackle specific problems of our time.

The concept of limit came into force during the 1960s at a time when ecological problems were becoming a burning issue. These were taking an important and diffused part in the mind of a growing number of scholars, politics, administrators and populations. In 1972 the important Report The Limits to Growth (Meadows et al. 1972) opened the international debate on the links between economic development, preservation of natural resources and populations’ needs. The Brundtland Report to the United Nation Organisation (United Nation Organisation 1987) was a key moment to introduce the concept of ‘Sustainable Development’ as ‘forms of progress that meet the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs’: in particular, it develops the relations between economic growth, protection of natural resources, populations’ quality of life (with a special focus on physical well-being and survival). It stated the pillars of Sustainable Development: economy and environment. Now, the concept of sustainability implicitly contains the concept of limit.

The concept of landscape adds a new pillar to the concept of sustainability, cultural diversity, which various international and European organizations recognize as essential for people’s well-being. At international level, in 2001, the Universal Declaration on Cultural Diversity (Unesco 2001) states cultural diversity is as necessary for humankind as biodiversity is for nature (art. 1).

At European Union level, the European Spatial Development Perspective- ESDP (Potsdam 1999) establishes some guidelines for territorial policies and also introduces the concept of preservation of cultural characters of the various European regions as a means to preserve the populations’ identity and as an economic and social resource. It defines three pillars: Economy, Environment, Society.

At Council of Europe level, in 2001, the European Landscape Convention (Florence 2000) gathers and articulates the concepts and includes references to the physical and material value of places as well as a perceptive value in its broader meaning (i.e. sensitive and cultural) (art. 1). The European Conference of Ministers responsible for Regional Planning (CEMAT) adopted the Ljubliana Declaration on the Territorial Dimension of Sustainable Development (Lijubliana 2003), which confirms and further defines the concept of sustainability. It emphasizes the existence of a ‘fourth dimension’ in addition to the three objectives established by ESPD: ‘cultural sustainability’.

Place quality is considered an essential condition to individual and social wellbeing, not only in its physical sense but also in a physiological, psychological and intellectual sense: it is the expression of the specificity of places and a factor of the identity of populations. A cultural dimension is attributed to the entire territory which includes the social perception that people have from their living places and the way they recognize their historic and cultural diversities and specificities. An innovative aspect of the approach is that principles are applied to any living place be it of outstanding value or ordinary and degraded, and that it proposes an organic integration of many cognitive and operational viewpoints in order to reach such quality. Such dimension is essential in order to respect and preserve their identity, and represents an individual and social enrichment.

The fourth pillar involves the cultural field but it has also direct economic implications: if the ‘cultural assets’ that give people their sense of identity are neglected – if no support is given to cultural, material and immaterial values – then people are faced with a loss of well-being and a loss in economic outputs (Throsby 2001). The fourth pillar is seen as a resource able to favour economic activities. Economists have conducted deep analyses on traditional areas of culture (visual arts, museums, monuments) and they are now working on some studies on landscape (an international congress on economy and landscape was organized for the first time in 2009).

The concept of limit contributes to develop – perhaps in this period more than in the past – the idea of self-regulation, self-limitation, self-organization of the world by man.

To better explore this point we can refer to semiologic disciplines which for the last decades have been promoting ample debate around the interpretation of texts. They have placed it within the philosophical problem of interpretation – to identify the conditions that determine any interaction between us and something that is given, i.e. the world that surrounds us (cognitive sciences, epistemology, semiology). The focus is on understanding how a work has been built and how its form might guide/limit the interpreting/transforming action carried out by contemporaries who are willing to avoid any instrumental use and any destructive impact. The focus is therefore placed on the characters of any interpretative activity, intended as the link between the contemporary user and the work, and on a wider concept of ‘interpretation’ related to action.

Umberto Eco, more than others scholars, has explored the problem of limits and the difficulty in finding some parameters to the unlimited interpretation of any work (be it a written text or the nature or the whole world understood as a document).⁵ This does not mean that contemporary needs and activities should take second place but rather that attention should be focused on the relationship between the work and the interpreter (Eco 1990).

Consequences of the concept of limit in the transformation of landscapes

The idea of a necessary respectful attitude towards the specific physical and cultural characters of places during the inevitable process of their transformation recalls the concept of ‘limit’, with two consequences. First, knowledge is the basic step in any project of transformation; and second, the issue of limits contributes to define management policies.

Knowledge is the first step in any project of transformation

From a conceptual and operational viewpoint, we must invert the most diffused process used to design/plan and realize territorial transformation (roads, buildings, technological infrastructures/equipments, but also agricultural layout, or simple small territorial equipments, advertising, etc.). At present, this process normally starts from major – and even exclusive – attention towards the functional and formal requirements of new works; they are studied and built whatever the territorial and landscape consequences on the specific characters of the context in which they will be inserted. We believe, on the contrary, that the first step should be to acquire a detailed, deep and articulated knowledge of the characters of places: the description of landscapes constitutes the preliminary phase of any landscape policy (preservation, innovation, requalification).

The word compatible, or suitable, or match isn’t sufficient to express the idea of respect towards an inherited (constructed by previous generations) work (or place) and neither to answer the needs of the contemporaneous world: the word appropriate better expresses this concept. This principle has been stated in some recent international and national documents (Guidelines 2008, Part I, I.1.h; Di Bene 2005).

The issue of limits contributes to define management policies

From a methodological point of view, we have to clearly separate the concept of description from the concept of assessment of places and from realization of the policies for landscape quality (European Landscape Convention 2000: Art. 6c, Guidelines 2008; LOTO 2005). The process can be synthesized in the following steps:

a. Places knowledge – it is the starting point for any landscape policy. This action requires a knowledge project (not a gathering of data and maps), including Characterization (the present physical and cultural characters), Dynamics (natural and cultural, past and future, material and immaterial historical traces), Social perception (past and present);

b. Assessment (diagnosis of problems and potentialities, not a simple allocation of levels of value);

c. Planning policies (a mix of preservation, innovation, enhancement, rehabilitatio...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of Figures
• List of Tables
• Notes on Contributors
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• PART I LANDSCAPE AND IDENTITY BETWEEN IMAGERY AND REALITY
• PART II LANDSCAPE HISTORY, HERITAGE AND SOCIAL CHANGE
• PART III LANDSCAPE ASSETS, RESOURCES AND SERVICES
• PART IV LANDSCAPE RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT PLANNING
• Index