New Cultural Landscapes

Maggie Roe, Ken Taylor, Maggie Roe, Ken Taylor

• Editorial: Routledge
• Año: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781317963707
• Edición: 1
• Categoría: Architecture
• Categoría: Urban Planning & Landscaping

While historical and protected landscapes have been well studied for years, the cultural significance of ordinary landscapes is now increasingly recognised. This groundbreaking book discusses how contemporary cultural landscapes can be, and are, created and recognised.

The book challenges common concepts of cultural landscapes as protected or 'special' landscapes that include significant buildings or features. Using case studies from around the world it questions the usual measures of judgement related to cultural landscapes and instead focuses on landscapes that are created, planned or simply evolve as a result of changing human cultures, management policy and practice.

Each contribution analyses the geographical and human background of the landscape, and policies and management strategies that impact upon it, and defines the meanings of 'cultural landscape' in its particular context. Taken together they establish a new paradigm in the study of landscapes in all forms.

1
New Cultural Landscapes

Emerging issues, context and themes

Maggie Roe and Ken Taylor

It is the landscape as a whole – that largely manmade tapestry, in which all other artefacts are embedded . . . which gives them their sense of place.

(Lowenthal 1975: 12)

Introduction

Internationally there is a widening interest academically, professionally and in the community at large in the concept and meaning of landscape, rural and urban, as the setting for everything we do. Whilst there are many landscapes, we tend to refer to landscape in the singular, but that is expressive of a multitude of settings. Landscape is therefore a ubiquitous entity: we live in it, pass through it every day, and it thereby affects our lived experiences tangibly and intangibly. We shape it and it shapes us. It is a value-laden entity. We see landscape continuously; nevertheless landscape is not simply what we see, a kind of transient static scenery vacuously experienced with detached contemplation. Rather it is as Cosgrove suggests (1998 [1984]: 1):

a way of seeing that has its own history, but a history that can be understood only as part of a wider history of economy and society; that has its own assumptions and consequences, but assumptions and consequences whose origins and implications extend well beyond the use and perception of land; that has its own techniques of expression, but techniques which it shares with other areas of cultural practice.

Variously described as an important but ambiguous term (Meinig 1979) and a slippery term (Stilgoe 1982), landscape, as Lowenthal (2007) declared, is everyone’s heritage and an essential part of our patrimony. In this sense therefore and increasingly across the spectrum of interest in landscape the term ‘cultural landscape’ has firmly taken root. David Jacques’ (1995) paper ‘The Rise of Cultural Landscapes’ tracked its emergence and significance to the international conservation community and criticised the shallow approach, evident until the early 1990s, to landscape evaluation based on visual or scenic aspects of landscape value. David Lowenthal (1978) had presaged this shift in his piece ‘Finding Valued Landscapes’. The movement was coincidental with increasing appreciation of human values reflected in landscapes alongside the focus on landscape as process (Taylor 2012) and the inevitability of change over time.

Three forces may be seen to have helped drive the rise of the focus upon and interest in cultural landscapes. The first is the introduction twenty-one years ago in 1992 of three categories of cultural landscapes recognised by the World Heritage Convention process (Figure 1.1). The second is the European Landscape Convention which was adopted in 2000 and came into force in 2004 (Figure 1.2). The third is the alternative and changing views on the discourse into cultural landscapes as a bridge between culture and nature (Taylor 2012), seen not least in the IUCN Protected Areas Category V Landscapes with their biodiversity values (Dudley and Stolton 2012) and in community conserved areas (Brown and Kothari 2011) as discussed in Chapter 2 (Taylor and Francis).

Whilst this book is not about World Heritage cultural landscapes, consideration of these categories as a yardstick for identifying new cultural landscapes is helpful. By the term ‘new cultural landscape’ we do not solely mean new from scratch, although such landscapes exist and are created as for example in surface mining, in new urban areas, and by new landscape park designs. Our focus is also on how change creates new cultural landscapes incrementally where change adds new layers to an already layered composition, and may add new meanings to a materially changed or unchanged situation. We are also interested in how human values and ideologies affect the way people create changed landscapes.

Cultural landscapes fall into three main categories (UNESCO 2011) Operational Guidelines for the Implementation of the World Heritage Convention (Annex 3: p. 88)

1. The most easily identifiable is the clearly defined landscape designed and created intentionally by man. This embraces garden and parkland landscapes constructed for aesthetic reasons which are often (but not always) associated with religious or other monumental buildings and ensembles.
2. The second category is the organically evolved landscape. This results from an initial social, economic, administrative, and/or religious imperative and has developed its present form by association with and in response to its natural environment. Such landscapes reflect that process of evolution in their form and component features. They fall into two subcategories:
   1. A relict (or fossil) landscape is one in which an evolutionary process came to an end at some time in the past, either abruptly or over a period. Its significant distinguishing features are, however, still visible in material form.
   2. Continuing landscape is one which retains an active social role in contemporary society closely associated with the traditional way of life, and in which the evolutionary process is still in progress. At the same time it exhibits significant material evidence of its evolution over time.
3. The final category is the associative cultural landscape. The inclusion of such landscapes on the World Heritage List is justifiable by virtue of the powerful religious, artistic or cultural associations of the natural element rather than material cultural evidence, which may be insignificant or even absent.

Figure 1.1 World Heritage cultural landscape categories

Source: UNESCO 2011; http://whc.unesco.org/archive/opguide11-en.pdf

Noting that the landscape has an important public interest role in the cultural, ecological, environmental and social fields, and constitutes a resource favourable to economic activity and whose protection, management and planning can contribute to job creation;

Aware that the landscape contributes to the formation of local cultures and that it is a basic component of the European natural and cultural heritage, contributing to human well-being and consolidation of the European identity;

Acknowledging that the landscape is an important part of the quality of life for people everywhere: in urban areas and in the countryside, in degraded areas as well as in areas of high quality, in areas recognised as being of outstanding beauty as well as everyday areas;

Noting that developments in agriculture, forestry, industrial and mineral production techniques and in regional planning, town planning, transport, infrastructure, tourism and recreation and, at a more general level, changes in the world economy are in many cases accelerating the transformation of landscapes;

Wishing to respond to the public’s wish to enjoy high-quality landscapes and to play an active part in the development of landscapes;

Believing that the landscape is a key element of individual and social well-being and that its protection, management and planning entail rights and responsibilities for everyone.

Figure 1.2 Extract from the Preamble, European Landscape Convention

Source: CoE 2000a; http://conventions.coe.int/Treaty/en/Treaties/Html/176.htm.

Conceptions of cultural landscapes: cultural, culture and cultures, and landscape

Understanding the various ways cultural landscapes are conceived and experienced is of particular importance in considering what might constitute new cultural landscapes. In the academic world, there is a wide conception of cultural landscapes and, particularly once out of the area of heritage studies which focus primarily on layers of activity in the past that build up present-day landscapes, cultural landscapes are seen as living landscapes that reflect a range of relationships between humans and natural cycles. Although in the literature there is still an emphasis on cultural landscapes as ‘a product of human management of one form or another’ (Convery and Dutson 2008: 104), it is possible to identify other characteristics: an emphasis on thinking about a wider than site scale, about seeing the characteristics of landscape as being continually created by behavioural patterns (human and other species) and the way cultural landscapes portray an understanding of integrated, connected, complex relationships between species, places and the environmental conditions. Throughout such discussion the issue of language is important, particularly in relation to policy, because descriptions of cultural landscapes enshrine concepts and set out principles and approaches for landscape management.

Carl Sauer (1889–1975) is often attributed with coining the term ‘cultural landscape’. However the term originates from the early twentieth century from the German geographer Otto Schlüter (1872–1959), Professor of Geography at the University of Halle. Sauer translated Schlüter’s term kulturlandschaft into English and suggested that: ‘the cultural landscape is fashioned from a natural landscape by a culture group. Culture is the agent, the natural area is the medium, the cultural landscape is the result’ (Sauer 1925: 46). Raymond Williams (1921–88) in Keywords (1985 [1976]: 87–93) proposes three useful associations for the term ‘culture’: process of intellectual, spiritual and aesthetic development; a particular way of life relating to people, a period in history, or humanity in general in material and spiritual senses; and artistic activity. His view of culture is that it is a process which is traditional and creative; its nature is to have both the ordinary common meanings and the finest individual meanings.

There are a number of critics of the mechanistic view of landscape, notably Wylie (2007), and there has in recent years been a plethora of uses and combinations of the terms cultural and landscape. In the discipline of Geography ‘cultures of landscape’ and ‘landscape cultures’ are used to denote relationships between individual, community and national identities, and the design, representation and experience of landscape (see for example the work of Dennis Cosgrove, Stephen Daniels and David Matless). Based on these ideas it is possible to identify a number of helpful theoretical discussions that explore concepts of landscape that depart from linear thinking in time and space and pull together phenomenological, experiential and other ideas. Wylie (2007) provides an analysis of landscape as a ‘series of tensions, between distance and proximity, observing and inhabiting, eye and land, culture and nature’ that help to make the idea of landscape ‘cogent and productive’ (p. 216). Wylie (2007) reflects Cosgrove’s thinking and, like cultural geographers such as Daniels, suggests a definition of landscape as a way of seeing or ‘that with which we see’ (p. 215) extended to an idea of landscape as a ‘lifeworld’ rather than a scene to view or a projection of cultural meaning.

Brown (2008) provides a review as to the useful meanings of the key terms ‘culture’ and ‘landscape’. Definitions of the term culture have been highly contested in a similar way to those of ‘landscape’. Culture is defined as both activity or meaning (as in allotment culture), outlook or tradition (as in Native American culture) and then there are ‘cultures’ which are used to suggest a separation or difference (as in Scottish versus English culture) which then leads to concepts of multiculturalism and cross-culturalism, suggesting states of human being that are changing. Such discussion is however not limited to humans, so animals have culture or cultures. Culture is also considered to be measurable and contain difference; arts are often referred to as ‘high’ culture while skills and crafts are ‘low’ culture. Designing landscapes is often described as an art, thus, does it follow that designed landscapes are considered as having higher cultural significance than those that have evolved through interaction with cultivators? Howard (2011) suggests that recent studies in landscape can be seen to be concentrating more on landscape as a reflection of the context of the time: ‘a window onto the society and culture that produced it’ (p. 22) and thus not neutral in that it also reflects a particular political and social agenda. Head (2012) indicates the importance of this, particularly in countries where people (particularly indigenous people) and cultures have been fenced into landscapes that are considered ‘empty and natural’ (p. 66), while in other examples people and cultures have been excluded from areas for precisely the same reasons in order to preserve what is seen as some kind of ‘pristine’ ecological condition. The way people describe or represent landscapes tells us as much about the perceiver as the landscape itself, so studies on attitudes, preferences and behaviour are important in considering the values of cultural landscapes and these reveal considerable difficulties since there may not be a coherent cultural view of landscape that is not tempered by individual attitudes or beliefs.Two theories are much quoted in discussions about the meaning of culture as either something that is primarily acquired or something that is intrinsic to human life. Logan (2013) suggests that Matthew Arnold’s (1822–88) Culture and Anarchy (1840) and Edward Tylor’s (1832–1917) Primitive Culture (1871) provide different views on the same problem: ‘Each redefines culture from a term limited to individuals to one that encompasses society as a whole. In doing so, each has difficulty actually defining culture’ (p. 1). Logan also suggests that many interpretations of Arnold’s work are in fact erroneous, and that Arnold’s original thesis was ‘that culture hinges on the willingness to question everything’ (p. 5) and that culture is a process that is forever growing and changing. This is helpful in considering the composite term cultural landscape. Culture can be thought as having many characteristics now commonly attributed to landscapes, that is a ‘dynamic, multiple contingent and contested process, worked out in everyday practice’ (Head 2012: 67).

The emphasis on interaction rather than human impact in the creation of cultural landscapes has emerged as a result of the development of theories such as...

Índice

• Coverpage
• Halftitle Page
• Titlepage
• Copyright
• Contents
• Notes on contributors
• 1 New cultural landscapes: emerging issues, context and themes
• 2 Culture-nature dilemmas: confronting the challenge of the integration of culture and nature
• 3 Old culture and damaged landscapes: the new cultural landscapes of post-industrial sites in Britain
• 4 Envisioning new cultural landscapes: agricultural traditions and adaptation
• 5 Cultures in Flux
• 6 The commercial and dream landscape cultures of films
• 7 Communities, heritage and new cultural landscapes: ecomuseological approaches
• 8 Desperation, delight or deviance: conflicting cultural landscapes of the urban poor in developing countries
• 9 Landfill and disasterscapes in the wastelands of Indonesia
• 10 Altneuland: the old new land and the new-old twenty-firstcentury cultural landscape of Palestine and Israel
• 11 New spatial cultures: a landscape story from Egypt
• 12 China: new cultures and changing urban cultures
• 13 Cultural landscapes and climate change: protecting resources that matter in a future of uncertainty
• 14 Exploring future cultural landscapes
• Image credits
• Index