Management of cultural heritage areas in rural-urban interface zones in Lithuania: the elaboration of provisions of the National Landscape Management Plan (original) (raw)
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Rurban Areas as Reflected in Lithuanian Territorial Planning Documents
Architecture and Urban Planning
The research focus is the territorial planning documents of different level valid in the territory of Lithuania, and the phenomenon of rural-urban interface reflected in them. The methods applied include the desktop study aimed at determining the presence of rural-urban influence, the character of rurban landscapes, their potential, current state of their management and development possibilities as reflected in the existing planning documents. The conclusions demonstrated not only the presence and the fragmented character of rurban areas in Lithuania, but also their potential as representative and widely accessible accumulation of cultural heritage and exceptional landscape feature of the country.
Peculiarities of Rural-Urban Interface in Lithuania and Implications for Landscape Management
2014
The ongoing territorial urbanization changes the character of the rural-urban interface both in the so-called developed/developing countries and post-Soviet territories in transition as Lithuania. Even if the rurban landscapes, having the features of both urban and rural environment, are the global phenomenon, the local-national, regional, local etc. peculiarities can also be distinguished. The aim of this research was to analyze the rural-urban interface in Lithuania and to distinguish the global trends, local peculiarities, and the factors that determine or could determine the identity of the country's rurban landscapes. The research has demonstrated such global trends as metropolisation, industrialization, commercialization, uniformity or internationalization and local distinctive aspects related with the character of the natural landscape, urbanization patterns, and history of the rural landscape in the rural-urban interface in Lithuania. In the concluding section we have presented some management guidelines for the rurban landscapes of the country based on our findings: view the question of the rural-urban interface in the context of overall country's regional development and in the context of the development strategy of a particular urban settlement, follow the strategy of "brown urbanism", maintain historic continuity together with innovation, encourage multifunctionality and self-sufficient communities, use the ecological and recreational benefits of these areas, maintain their distinctiveness, develop unique image and aesthetics with optimal visual diversity.
This book seeks to enhance the cultural dimension of sustainable development and particularly focuses on minor historic centers and their natural and rural landscapes. In a society becoming ever more globalized, without territorial restrictions in the production of goods and able to reproduce in China the goods and product characteristic of South American crafts (to mention just two extremes), the only element that can still be contextualized is heritage identity: the result of close integration between cultural assets, intangible assets and settled communities. Thus, heritage identity is one of the few elements, together with natural resources, which has the potential for economic development that is still firmly rooted in places and local populations. These towns are often the centerpiece of urban landscapes and geographical areas with original features, not always but often as individual places within networks of minor historical centers linked by shared history, traditions and/or natural elements (rivers, forests, river systems or other natural elements). They are outside the major tourist networks, even if now there is a budding interest in the touristic exploitation of these environments. So, they are the right places to pursue a sustainable and local development with a cultural perspective. This book is a product of the VIVA_EASTPART project (Valorisation and Improving of management of Small Historic Centres in the eastern PARTnership region), under the EU-funded “ENPI Eastern Partnership” program. It complements the more practically-focused work that is in production from this group, more focused on empirical approaches to the development of minor historic centers of the nations involved. Though the book has been influenced by this research and working experience, the authors are solely responsible for the content and opinions presented.
2010
More and more frequently, one witnesses these days the appearance of a new approach to historical cultural landscapes. Not only do they now embrace objects of historical and environmental value, but also the potential for local and regional development. However, such an understanding of historical cultural landscapes, as a potential for local and regional development, necessitates additional instruments, plans, approaches, and methodologies. The article presents an analysis of a landscape plan in Germany and a case study on the potential of historical cultural landscapes for local and regional development in Poland. Conducted studies reveal the usefulness of activities for the protection of historical cultural landscapes in the context of land management. Such activities contribute to the improvement of landscape protection and conservation methods, taking into consideration their potential for local and regional development at the same time.
Cultural heritage sites in Vilnius: a critique of selected interventions in landscape architecture
Landscape architecture and art
International researchers intensively explore the tradition of criticism in landscape architecture theories and practices from different angles: socio-cultural inquiry, historic prospective and retrospective, heritage perception and cognition, modern public engagement. Over the past two years, Vilnius City has witnessed a breakthrough in the public debate on urban open space, and several landscape architecture projects related to the revitalization of the cultural landscape have provoked the active public debate. Three selected cases have multi-layered evolution in which previous solutions have been deliberately or naturally denied by subsequent ones. The aim of the paper is to analyse and summarise the state of collective memory and tendencies of stakeholder’s opinions that influence the creative process in landscape architecture projects. The paper analyses the opinions of three stakeholder’s groups about the projects going to be realised: the public, the planning and design profe...
European Spatial Research and Policy, 2015
The aim of this paper is to map the spatial variations in the size of the shadow economy within Brussels. Reporting data provided by the National Bank of Belgium on the deposit of high denomination banknotes across bank branches in the 19 municipalities of the Brussels-Capital Region, the finding is that the shadow economy is concentrated in wealthier populations and not in deprived or immigrant communities. The outcome is a call to transcend the association of the shadow economy with marginalized groups and the wider adoption of this indirect method when measuring spatial variations in the shadow economy.
ASSESSMENT AND PROTECTION OF THE CULTURAL RESOURCES OF THE NADWIEPRZAŃSKI LANDSCAPE PARK
A landscape park is one of the legal forms of nature protection in Poland. It is a protected area due to its natural, historical, cultural and landscape values for preserving and popularising. The Nadwieprzański Landscape Park is located in southeastern Poland, on the middle section of the Wieprz River. The Park was established in 1990 and covers an area of over 6,000ha. The research aimed to identify resources, recognise threats and develop guidelines for protecting the cultural heritage elements of the Nadwieprzański Landscape Park. In the Park, there are monuments from various historical periods, e.g., former fortified settlements, castles, palaces and manor houses, churches, synagogues, war and religious cemeteries, granges, distilleries, mills, railway stations and small objects of sacral architecture, i.e., crosses and roadside shrines. In addition to immovable monuments, an essential part of the region's intangible cultural heritage is a tradition in the form of holiday customs and rituals, legends and traditional crafts. It is impossible not to mention people associated with the region, their knowledge of this subject and the need to document oral traditions. Protection and preservation of heritage for future generations and rational use of environmental resources significantly affect the constant and sustainable economic development and may improve the standard of living of the local population. Unfortunately, many changes occurred within the Park due to various reasons. These are both natural causes, resulting from the destructive impact of environmental and material changes resulting from the passage of time and reasons related mainly to the lack of proper supervision of the facilities by the legal user, e.g., historic palaces and park complexes. In summary, objectives of the so-called passive, i.e., formal and legal ones and goals of the nature of activeconservation activities and the nature of activities restoring the lost cultural values of the region's cultural heritage.
2017
In this paper we propose to look at rural landscape from the perspective of heritage. The issue of landscape is presented in the context of contemporary factors which result from the evolving approach both to the notion of heritage itself and to the rules of its conservation. It was noted that activities which identify not only the natural value of landscape but also its historic, cultural, visual, aesthetic and symbolic values, as well as activities which define a heritage community should become a permanent component of current works on integrated rural development. Rural landscapes are cultural landscapes emerged as a result of a long interaction of environmental factors with the activities of a community living in a given area. In these landscapes traces of the past can be seen in a form of landscape patterns. Identifying and defining landscape heritage should be an important component of spatial planning processes. Landscape is shaped on a local scale. In the spatial planning s...
2015
Preface Nowadays, responsibility for the heritage, broadly understood as human and environmental coexistence, is the most important challenge of humanity. The Convention Concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage proclaimed in 1972 by United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) reinforced and popularized the Western thought that divided the nature and the culture, which had its beginning in the thought of Enlightenment (MacCormack and Strathern 1980). The nature vs. culture dichotomy, understood as contrasting those two qualities, had huge consequences often depreciating the value of the one for the another. In Articles 1 and 2 of the Convention (UNESCO 2005), the criteria allowing for qualifying properties as examples of cultural or natural heritage were defined. Sandra Pannell lists definitions of cultural heritage we can find in Convention as ‘‘monuments’, ‘groups of buildings’ and ‘sites’, the last ones being the ‘works of man or the combined works of nature and of man’’ (Panell 2006). Definitions of natural heritage are put as ‘‘physical and biological formations’, ‘habitats of threatened species’ and ‘natural sites or natural areas’, which are of ‘outstanding universal value’ from the point of view of science, conservation and/or aesthetics’’(Panell 2006). We can also find ‘mixed heritage’ understood as combination of cultural and natural ones. Nowadays UNESCO proclaims a new way of understanding heritage, a new vision which ‘strives to recognize and protect sites that are outstanding demonstrations of human coexistence with the land as well as human interactions, cultural coexistence, spirituality and creative expression’ (UNESCO 2008). That approach wins more and more supporters not only in the scientific world but also in people all over the world. The discussed process is taking place on numerous planes. Starting from the discussion of specialists on universal values and defining the basic notions, through changes in legal regulations e.g.: connected to implementation of the European Landscape Convention, which is to be accepted by every signing country, to a purely social plane connected with popularization of a new way of understanding, viewing and protecting the Heritage. The term ‘Cultural landscape’ is the actual sample of such a new thinking, and therefore we have decided to focus mostly on the elements of cultural landscape. The subject, approached from various perspectives, from a theoretical (defining and situating cultural landscape in the social space) to a practical one (revitalizations of historically and culturally valuable objects, the value of which forms the identity of the region, winning the sources of financing), from the municipal (examples of Cittaslow towns, urban parks, or ‘The Holy Cemetery’ in Romania) to the rural one (‘Village Renewal’), from a French (an excellent sample of the Parc Naturel Régional de la Brenne ) to a Polish one (examples of Warmia and Mazury, as well as Podlasie) constitutes the first part and the core of this publication. The further part deals with the subjects connected with difficult/dissonant heritage basing on the example of Warmia and Mazury, where, due to political and historical conditions, the regional cultural landscape was subjected to ideologization in favour of Polish raison d’état. The authors have presented how important and more and more common it is in that ‘difficult’ environment to discover and build identity of a human being based on the heritage of the region. The final part of the following monograph discusses particular actions taken by various organizational units (the University, societies, funds) to put theory into practice. We let those who make that theory work in practice speak. Launching the cultural and natural studies as well as the Centre for Cultural and Natural Heritage at the University of Warmia and Mazury in Olsztyn, together with work of specific people in associations and organizations show us how important it is to be aware of and to take care for the cultural heritage and what difficult this work it is. The collected examples, however, prove that it may be done successfully. We realize that we have not discussed in this publication numerous important issues and areas of heritage or we have not devoted as much time to them as they deserve. Our intention is to inspire with the expertise and experience of this book as much people, organizations, and self-governments to notice the cultural and natural heritage and to take measures for its protection. The international exchange of experiences presented in this publication would not be possible without personal involvement by the authorities of the University of Warmia and Mazury in Olsztyn, the Association France-Pologne de l'Indre and the management of the Parc Naturel Régional de la Brenne. We believe that that every initiative to be born under the influence of this publication, which aims at showing how it is possible to take care together for heritage understood according to the UNESCO World Heritage Centre as ‘our cultural and natural heritage are both irreplaceable sources of life and inspiration. They are our touchstones, our points of reference, our identity’ (UNESCO 2008), is to serve well for the local societies building, at the same time, a relation with the place of living. M. Śliwa, K. Glińska-Lewczuk
Landscape Research, 2009
Concern about changing cultural landscapes has increased recently, with the advent of the European Landscape Convention placing signatory countries in a position of having to develop action for protecting and managing cultural landscapes. In countries of the former Soviet Union the landscape underwent many changes as a result of agricultural collectivisation and its aftermath. This situation has been analysed for six sample rural municipalities (pagasts) in Latvia, one of the three former Soviet countries to join the European Union (EU), using maps from the period 1901 to 1927, (to represent the "traditional landscape")and 1997 orthophotographs updated to 2000, (to represent the "post-Soviet landscape") and field assessment of their character. It was found that all sampled pagasts had experienced significant landscape change during the Soviet times which replaced the pre-Soviet, traditional character with a new "ideological landscape". The implications for the protection and conservation of such landscapes created by a previous foreign occupying power are many, raising questions of what landscapes or elements to conserve under the requirements of the Convention.