Sustainability in historic city centres of medium-sized andalusian cities

Abstract

Landscape is the place where cultural heritage is projected and developed par excellence. Furthermore, landscape is where interaction between the human being and the environment happens, in an economical, social and cultural sense. Landscape is a substantial part of human culture and its best reflection at the same time, both in a spatial and temporal scale, taking into account its cumulative nature. Until a few years ago, academic interests ranged from landscapes with high heritage values to environmental reserves, laying aside the major part of the territory in which human culture actually is performed. These landscapes, commonly known as intermediate or ordinary, have started being relevant recently, as evidenced by the European Spatial Development Perspective (Potsdam, 1999) and the European Landscape Convention (Florence, 2000), where first guidelines for their valorisation and protection were established. Ordinary landscapes, beyond containing elements than can be defined as heritage objectively (both material and intangible) and constituting theirselves a synthesis of the relationships between local communities and their land (economical utilization, territorial organization, settlement patterns, mobility), are the really experienced landscapes, in other words, they are the places where people feel indentified and which contribute to maintain that identity. Their connection with culture exceeds formal and functional links, reaching symbolic and emotional spheres and taking part of the image that communities make of theirselves and of their traditions projected in folklore, literature, art and other cultural expressions. The role of intermediate landscapes is especially evident in medium-sized Mediterranean cities, where connection between the historic core and the country is widely more visible, in a literal and figurative sense. Their valorisation and future management is a challenge that must be faced both by politics spheres and research, conservation and diffusion actors of cultural heritage.