Cultural landscape, urban landscape and agriculture: preservation and sustainability

Ref.: 130
Key theme: 02 Functional integrity of historic urban landscapes
Date of reception: 16/11/2008

AUTHORS (*Main author)

CASTRIOTA, Leonardo Barci * (Brazil) - Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais (UFMG)
PEREIRA DE SOUSA, Vilmar (Brazil) - Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais (UFMG)

ABSTRACT

As the French historian Pierre Nora points out, in the last years the concept of "heritage" has expanded - or rather exploded - to the point where it allows a very broad definition such as the one given by the Collins Dictionary of the English Language that refers to it as "the evidence of the past... considered collectively as the inheritance of present-day society". In our view, the most important issue here concerns the type of transformation that takes place when the focus shifts from artistic, historical and archeological values to broader cultural and urban values. It is not merely a quantitative change. As the heritage concept expands, a different approach will be adopted to shift the treatment from a preservation to a conservation paradigm: whereas preservation is concerned with limiting change, conservation is about the inevitability of change and the management of that change.
It's interesting to notice that the concept of historic urban landscape (HUL) also shifts from a notion of "groups of buildings" to a much broader perspective that recognizes cities as witnesses of accumulation of cultures and traditions, encompassing the intangible elements of the heritage concept. In this perspective, the main task for the conservation of historic urban landscapes will be to "maintain and restore the spirit and character of cities understood in relation to the sense of identity and collective memory embodied in the structural permanencies". In fact, the idea of landscape, as a "stratification of previous and current urban dynamics, with an interplay between the natural and built environment", is quite adequate to convey the complex meaning acquired by the concept of historic urban landscape.
In this perspective, we can show that the idea of a historic urban landscape has important connections with the much discussed idea of a cultural landscape, that constitutes a highly innovative field within the theoretical framework of heritage conservation, since both concepts try to indicate the significant interactions between people and nature, and combine inextricably material and immaterial aspects that have so far been considered separately. In this paper we will show the proximity between these two ideas as well as their differences, pointing out how certain aspects of the cultural landscape concept can illuminate difficult topics concerning historic urban landscapes.
As an illustration, we will examine the role played by agriculture in the historic urban landscape of Brazilian traditional cities especially those located in the state of Minas Gerais, a region that underwent a "gold and diamond fever" in the eighteenth century. Here we intend to show not only the specific urban-rural interface in Brazilian cities, by also the presence of urban agricultural activities that molded the townscape. As a case study, we will take the old colonial town of Serro (MG), located in the "Diamond District", one of the few towns in the mining region that was strongly marked by agriculture since its early days. Finally, we will discuss the possibility of elaborating a sustainable conservation plan based on guidelines and tools derived from this perspective.

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