By Manuel Roberto Guido
Over
a quarter of a century after European Architectural Heritage Year (1975),
the Council of Europe has launched the “Europe, a common heritage” Campaign
with the aim of promoting a more up-to-date and wider concept of heritage
encompassing movable and immovable assets, sites, the natural environment,
non-material assets and the landscape. Indeed, the landscape, given that
it has been shaped by both human beings and nature, is a particularly
appropriate theme to represent the Campaign message.
Acknowledgement of the importance of landscape is by no means recent:
back in the late 19th century, several European countries introduced legislation
to protect regions of particular interest. It is only recently, however,
that a more sophisticated vision of landscape has emerged at international
level, resulting from the pooling of research in a range of disciplines.
As a result, the concept of landscape today encompasses a variety of discrete
values, enabling landscapes to play a bigger part in the context of our
common heritage.
The landscape has environmental value as part of an ecosystem; cultural
value as the historic evidence of a site and the transformations it has
undergone or as a feature to be learned about and studied, and which provides
inspiration to writers and poets; aesthetic value as a visual and representative
expression of the relationship forged over the centuries between human
beings and their environment; and social value, in that it increasingly
reflects human identity.
A
broader definition
This change in the
concept of landscape is the result of a series of processes deriving from
human and scientific disciplines. The Italian ability to identify and
preserve elements of its heritage dates back to the Roman era, when particular
care was devoted to religious artefacts. Subsequently, art works were
included in the heritage to be conserved and then, much later, the major
archaeological remains, monuments, their surroundings, minor architecture,
historic town centres and the landscape.
Furthermore,
not only was there an increase in the number and size of heritage items,
but the field of interest was extended to include documentary sources.
Landscape, no longer regarded simply as a beautiful vista, has developed
along similar lines, together with the acknowledgement of environmental
values and the need for nature conservation, primarily under the influence
of the countries of northern Europe, where the concept of landscape is
traditionally linked to the natural features of the territory.
A
wider scope
The
approaches of the traditional disciplines, the natural sciences and the
humanities tend to merge today with regard to the landscape since there
is virtually no European virgin territory left, given the impact – both
positive and negative – of human activities on the environment.
This
cross-sectoral approach to landscape requires us to abandon approaches
focusing merely on the conservation of regions which are particularly
rich in terms of natural, cultural or aesthetic features at the expense
of those where any transformation is possible. In contrast, the concept
of landscape, because of the multiplicity of values it encompasses, must
be extended to the whole of the territory. However, because these values
vary in terms of concentration and the degree of impairment sustained,
action taken on the landscape must be diversified and range from conservation
to reclassification, and include rehabilitation and creative development
in order to bring about a better quality of life for the people living
there.
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