Historic Visual Integrity of Rural Landscapes in Northeast of Spain and Southeast of France

Ref.: 262
Key theme: 03 Visual integrity of historic urban landscapes
Date of reception: 18/11/2008

AUTHORS (*Main author)

SAURA, Magdalena * (Spain) - Universidad Politécnica De Cartagena (Upct)

ABSTRACT

The visual integrity of historic urban landscapes is becoming unsustainable in a French-Spanish border. In order to evaluate the environmental impact of this historic region known as Catalonia, assessment has been done through the following set of parameters: 1) Description and analysis of physical, rural environmental traits of the area under study. 2) Taxonomy of local farming and land-use systems, tools, and storage structures. 3) Continuity of agricultural activities and adaptive reuse of traditional, vernacular forms of architecture such as barns. 4) Glossary of Catalan, Occitan, Provençal or local words, e.g., "mas." which stand for not only for the visual but also the social and economic integrity of a farming/ rural institution. 5) Different meanings of terms for the environmental protection of rural/vernacular, open-space and architectural heritage. 6) Description, on the one hand, of the different perception people living in the area have on the concept of heritage protection and, on the other, description of today's heritage protection policy-making.

The aim of the paper is also to summarize research conducted during the year 2007-2008 on rural vernacular heritage found in the autonomous region of Spanish Catalonia. Work has been done by a multidisciplinary team of professors and students of the Technical University of Catalonia (UPC) within the Forum, UNESCO, University and Heritage network. As a director of this research project, I have included research experiences done by other European universities across the border, particularly in the historic region of French Catalonia. Agriculture is the bridge between the natural and the man-made environment. It represents one of the oldest human activities to change natural sites and has been recorded by a UPC university database on the rural environments of about 600 villages of the border region.

A common terminology has been elaborated to study the visual integrity of this kind of human activity by inquiring into the following set of indicators concerning a conceptual framework for projects on rural heritage research:

- Farm landscapes studied within the history of a farm-type of land use.
- To what degree different kinds of settlements have been solely determined by agricultural production.
- Building typology linked to agriculture.
- Urban form typology of small rural settlements.
- The socio-economic forces of traditional cadastre laws and orthogonal
grids which have shaped fields and other historic plots of land.
- To monitor the changes affecting rural vernacular heritage, there
have been developed different models of environmental legislation for the
programming, evaluation and the overall protection of the rural vernacular
heritage.

A main conclusion of this work-in- progress report is that unsustainable building in rural areas is affected by conflicting points of views. Evidence gathered through ethnographic data proves that heritage protection of rural sites is not done through an environmental whole. Visual integration of different parts of rural landscapes is perceived differently by policy, decision-makers interviewed at different governmental levels (state, region, and municipalities).

REFERENCES

Saura, M., A Prediction Model for Environmental Impact Studies in Tourism in N.S.. Baer, C.Sabbioni, and A.I.Sors, SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY AND EUROPEAN CULTURAL HERITAGE, Proceedings of the European Symposium, Bologna, Italy, 13-16 June 1989, (Oxford, 1991), pp. 838-843.
Saura, M., CATALAN VILLAGES. L.B.ALBERTI'S ICONOGRAPHY OF URBAN FORM IN THE EMPÚRIES- ROUSSILLON COUNTY, Edicions UPC, 2edition, (Barcelona, 1997)
Saura, M., El Mas Castellar de Pontós i la chora d'Empúries, EL MAS CATALÀ DURANT L'EDAT MITJANA I LA MODERNA, Centro de Investigaciones Científicas, CSIC, (Barcelona, 2001), pp. 615- 646.
Saura, M., Un proyecto de paisaje arqueológico/A Project for An Archaeological Landscape , ARQUITECTONICS. MIND, LAND & SOCIETY, Newsletter, 2004, pp. 41-81.
Saura, M., Herència multicultural d'un paisatge sostenible emporità, EL PAISATGE, ELEMENT VERTEBRADOR DE LA IDENTITAT EMPORDANESA,
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