HERITAGESCAPES

Presentation

According to the European Landscape Convention, landscape is the core of the identity of communities, placing landscape as a key concept of contemporary European urbanity. Considering how different the European territorial contexts are, the management of cultural landscapes is particularly complex in large metropolitan regions subject to intense environmental, socio-economic and lifestyle changes. The aim of this project is to study the cultural landscapes of the metropolis in order to characterize them, to better understand some complex heritage phenomena and to propose management guidelines in accordance with the missions of the 11th Sustainable Development Goal.

The project focuses specifically on the landscapes of the metropolitan region of Madrid, but its conceptual and methodological results will be applicable to other areas. To do so, the methodology is based on the study of the metropolitan region as a complex urban-rural gradient. Accepting that every cultural phenomenon has a spatial expression, the methodology interprets critical cartographies developed to represent the correlations between the material and immaterial components of landscapes. This methodology proposes 9 cartographic lines grouped into 3 blocks: (i) cultural values and infrastructures; (ii) cultural properties and protected areas; and (iii) agroecology and supply channels. Maps are expected to identify cultural values and ecosystem services, and to provide sectorial (local or global) readings of the region.