Presentation

1. The European Landscape Convention (ELC) encompasses three networks:
  • UNISCAPE: network of European universities;
  • RECEP-ENELC: public and governmental bodies network;
  • CIVILSCAPE: the civil society

The Interdepartmental Centre for Landscape Research (ICLR) at the Università Politecnica delle Marche (Univpm) has been founded in 2010 as a natural consequence of the joining within the UNISCAPE network, bilaterally signed in late 2008. CIRP’s main goal is to challenge the principles embedded in the European Landscape Convention (ELC), with a deep focus on research and teaching on landscape as a whole.

2. What does ‘the term Landscape’ not imply, according to the ELC

  • a pure rhetoric of memory or an unraveled timeless nature
  • scenic beauty
  • a changeless steady conservation’s object
  • an open-air natural museum to exploitable as a mere tourism good

3. The originality of the ELC relay on its ability to:

  • recognize each setting, outstanding beauty ones as well as the every days or degraded landscapes
  • account for peri-urban landscapes as places where the complex interconnections between rural settings and cityscapes rise at the hectic (Article 2.45);
  • work together to find answers to modern architectural, urban, social, economic, ecological issues as well as preserving the quality and richness of European landscapes;
  • stimulate local development’s patterns being compatible with the specific characteristics of each areas, with a special attention to be able to enhance participation of people living the places.

4. Policy, research and action dimensions in landscape’s governance

The landscape has been defined in very many ways, in our believes it is the whole of interconnections between people and places they live, between society and the surrounding environment. A wholeness within which the physical reality and the subjective perception talk each other. A pull of interweaved complex behaves is the main distinctive landscape’s characteristic, so there the only possible pathway to manage and intervene on such complex realm steps through a synergistic integration of biophysical and humanistic sciences.

This pathway lays on some dynamical key-changes occurred in 21th century, such as: urban-rural transformations and sprawl, the ecosystems matter, the post-industrial dimension and the pervasive and widespread commuting.

5. European landscape as a resource and as an educational project

Across Europe landscape represents a living resource that dynamically forges the heart of our common culture, from the basement of creativity up to the top of expressivity: design and communication.

An effective state of well-being relies not only on the subjective economic condition but also on lifestyles entangled within networks of social and environmental knowledge. This imply to address for wide cultural and social responses. So that, the urge to shift from the static protection of cultural and natural heritage to an actual management, specific to each landscape, is paramount.

6. Relationship between population and the places the live

  • each population addresses  a specific set of values to each sites;
  • each participative process of transformation of places is a local actions preconized through global knowledge;
  • Populations feels the places they live by way of the making of an ideal invisible landscape they use to underpin the physical realm.

7. Main goals of the CIRP initiative & the efforts to “Landscape in a Changing World (October 2010)”

General objectives:

  • to foster for a wide European research vision and of its strategic evolution;
  • to join the current European forum on landscape;
  • to challenge the joining of sound European research programs.

Specific objectives:

  • enhancing research efforts on landscape;
  • integrating the holistic approach and a trans-disciplinary perspective;
  • transmitting and spreading knowledge on landscape and planning by training new specialists, practitioners, as well as embedding in processes public and private bodies;
  • pursuing a close engagement of researchers together with scholars and practitioners actives on practical application of landscape planning.