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Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 223 (2016) 634 - 639
2nd International Symposium "NEW METROPOLITAN PERSPECTIVES" - Strategic planning, spatial planning, economic programs and decision support tools, through the implementation of Horizon/Europe2020. ISTH2020, Reggio Calabria (Italy), 18-20 May 2016
Cultural identity and anthropized environment: the multidimensional definition and measure of the resilience
Giampiero Lombardinia *
aUniversity of Genoa, Department of Science for Architecture - Italy
Abstract
Cultural landscapes can be interpreted as geographical spaces with high sensitivity. The pressure of urbanization, or alternatively, the abandonment of wide rural areas as a secondary consequence of the same process of urbanization, in these high fragility territories determines serious environmental crises. The high density of values, such as landscape (natural or man-made) quality of landscapes, ecosystem services production, concentrated presence of resources, is constantly threatened not only by climate change but also above all by the same urbanization processes. It can talk about 'landscape risk' when these urbanization processes determine changes that cause loss of identity of landscape values. Here, resilience is the ability of an ecosystem (or more precisely, a socio-ecological system) to adapt by virtuous change its internal relations and maintaining the identity values. The paper explores the potential of a method of analysis and evaluation in which, starting from the recognition of the heritage elements, the system of values are compared with the conditions of risk and degradation (due to environmental and man-made drivers) with the result ofbuilding maps of vulnerability and resilience.
©2016 The Authors.PublishedbyElsevierLtd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license
(http://creativecommons.Org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
Peer-review under responsibility of the organizing committee of ISTH2020
Keywords: Resilience, cultural landscapes; identity; risk assessment.
* Corresponding author. Tel.: +39 010 20951828; fax: +39 010 2095905. E-mail address: g.lombardini@arch.unige.it
1877-0428 © 2016 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
Peer-review under responsibility of the organizing committee of ISTH2020
doi:10.1016/j.sbspro.2016.05.373
1. Cultural landscape definition
To arrive at a definition of cultural landscape is necessary first to define what we mean by culture and by cultural heritage. Following the thought of Triandis (Triandis, 2004), 'culture' is to society what memory is to individuals. In other words, culture includes traditions (material and immaterial) that has worked in the past. 'Cultural Heritage', on the other hand, is an expression that indicates the ways of living by a community and transmitted from generation to generation, including customs, practices, laws, places, artifacts, settlements, artistic expressions and values. Following this line of thought, cultural landscapes can be interpreted as complex systems (both natural and anthropic), namely systems that through their capacity of self-organization, rise their identity and maintain it over the time. Recent scientific reflections on the concept of both cultural heritage and cultural landscape are trying to emphasize the profound integration between natural processes ("domesticated nature" in the case of anthropic landscapes) and human dynamics that determine the dynamics that underlie the landscapes object of our perception and sometimes our aesthetic contemplation. Perceptual relationships strongly back take into consideration, but today, unlike a few decades ago, this aesthetic perception is integrated in a deep ecological vision of the relationship between man and nature (Pieninger & Bieling, 2012).
Therefore, according to European Landscape Convention, "landscape" can be interpreted as an area, as perceived by people, whose character is the result of the action and interaction of natural and/or human fact. More precisely, landscape is a homogeneous part of the territory whose features are the results of nature, human history and their mutual interrelationships. The protection and enhancement of the landscape safeguard its values, expressed such events of perceptible identity. Also for Italian law, 'landscape' is a homogeneous part of the territory whose features derive from nature, human history and their mutual interrelationships. The protection and enhancement of the landscape safeguard its values, expressed such events of perceptible identity.
Landscape: a complex system
Landscape as perception
Identification and recognition of physical
elements of the landscape (land uses, buildings, heritage...)
INTEGRATION
Identification ofsymolic values
Fig. 1 : Landscape integrated definition.
Therefore, landscape is not the result of a mere aesthetic interpretation: • its quality depends both on the objective regional features that from the aspirations of the population that is in contact with it;
• the implementation of landscape policies should be based on the value that populations attribute to "their" landscape: object of the landscape policy must be both the landscapes of high quality (to protect) that the degraded (to improve);
• landscape is the result of the interaction between the natural environment and human intervention and has often historical nature and value; It will then present in certain contexts the meaning of cultural heritage and as such it will be subject to appropriate conservation actions.
Cultural landscapes (and in particular metropolitan and coastal landscapes) characterized by a strong human dimension and high capitalization, can be intended, by this way, as a specific form of cultural landscape. They are contexts characterized by a wide field of relationships that concern not only the perceptual aesthetic dimensions, but also include ecological processes, economic and social dynamics, a complex set of human artifacts and their relationships. In cultural landscapes are condensed values recognized by the community of reference. Anthropic elements and natural dynamics assume a dimension of great historical depth, result of long processes of sedimentation and cyclical changes that are in turn determined by the ability to adapt to changing environment conditions. High symbolic value for both local community and external "users" recognizes determine at the same time also an economic and social value. Cultural landscapes are therefore constitute complex systems that integrate the dynamics (often non-linear) of physical systems (natural or anthropogenic-natural) with those of symbolic systems, i.e. those more specifically cultural. The representations of cultural landscapes are then the result of integration between recognition functions "objective" of environmental dynamics and identification functions of symbolic values, of which the material objectivity is only an outward expression.
A highly integrated view of man / nature dynamic that recognizes an essential relationship of coevolution between the environment and human behaviours, bring near the concept of cultural landscape to the concept of socio-ecological system. The Socio-Ecological Systems (Kichoff et al., 2012) are complex adaptive systems as they are based on the interaction of ecological phenomena, economic and social crises that evolve according to / adaptation cycles.
2. Cultural landscapes as complex systems
A highly integrated view of man / nature dynamic that recognizes an essential relationship of coevolution between the environment and human behaviors, approaches the concept of cultural landscape to that of socio-ecological system. The Socio-Ecological Systems (SES) are complex adaptive systems as they are based on the interaction of ecological phenomena, economic and social crises that evolve according to / adaptation cycles (Folke et al., 2010). The structure of a socio-ecological system consists of law in space and time of its components, whose mutual relations they shall express the organization and influence its evolutionary trajectory, which develops continuously starting from pre-existing conditions.
The structure of a socio-ecological system consists of law in space and time of its components, whose mutual relations they shall express the organization. Like all complex systems is an open system: for the second law of thermodynamics, can record a negative entropy change, which can lead to the development toward states of greater heterogeneity and complexity, which not only means the initial move it away from equilibrium but also the ability to change internally to "respond" to change. It's 'characterized by the presence of "leverage points", points in which a perturbation, even minimal, can have an impact in a manner amplified within the entire system, the effect of the feedback circuits. The ability to produce emergent structures keeps the system far from equilibrium (ie a low entropy level), in dynamic conditions, which instead lead to an increase of order, and determining the mechanisms of self-organization.
The complexity of the ecological systems, such cultural landscapes, manifests especially in the ability to self-organization and therefore of adaptation which depends, in turn, by the ability to learn (Berkes et al., 2003). In fact it would not be possible without learning the start of adaptation of those cycles which are instead essential distinctive element of such systems.
The characteristics shared by the cultural landscapes to the socio-ecological systems (which in fact are to co-exist within the same territory), can be summarized by a few basic common features:
• both are the combination of ecological systems (biotic and physical) and social systems;
• evolve in successive cycles of internal adaptation to the system, but influenced by external conditions (determined by the system external drivers);
• maintain, in the long run, the forms and functions (or at least those recognizable and recognized and therefore those which contribute significantly to defining the identity of the system), despite altering their production functions (tangible and intangible) and consumption;
• both are defined by internal common elements from a spatial point: levels of connectivity between the elements, interactions, physical size, borders;
• are affected by the same external determinants.
3. Resilience and identity
The resilience is presented as an intrinsic property of a system that transforms itself passing from one equilibrium state to another without losing its internal fundamental structure, otherwise precisely definable in terms of identity. The permanence (or persistence) of a landscape (also and especially in its symbolic components), can be interpreted in terms of a system's resilience. Similarly, the successful paths and / or the stable growth of a region or a city as well as those of continued crisis and / or recursive can be thought as cases of instable equilibrium. A single conceptual model link between vulnerability (environmental, physical and economic), resilience and development trajectories (Adger, 2006).
CHANGE
External drivers
Material components
Immaterial components
CHANGE
Relationships
Social context Economic trends Natural phenomena Culture Law Technology
Landscape
CHANGEf
r ' VALUES
Material Symbolic
RESPONSE
We can define landscape identity as
'the perceived uniqueness of a place'.
Local community
LOSS/CRISIS
Institution Regulation framework Local economy Situated knowledge Technology
LOSS IDENTITY
Fig. 2 : Adaptation cycle of a complex resilient system.
Already the ecologist Holling in 1973 had defined the resilience of an ecosystem as the ability of the system to regenerate by means of an internal reorganization process in order to maintain the same identity, structure and function of the system. Focusing on identity and structure, this new idea of resiliency best explains the evolutionary trajectories of systems: not only the stability of the system components are crucial (e.g., population, economic activities, the fixed capital), but also the ability to remain "vital", passing from a state of equilibrium (unstable) to another (more stable, even if only temporarily). Along this line of thinking, adaptability and transformability are the two main characteristics that a system especially if the crisis conditions have to deal with external events: through
these two features, the resilience manifests itself as a form of learning, structural renovation and reorganization. A resilient system of this type can be represented by the so-called "adaptive renewal cycle": the evolution of the system can be expressed as a dynamic cycle of growth, collapse, reorganization and conservation (Wilson, 2014).
Recently it was also suggested that even more than the resilience of a system, what is decisive for the purposes of assessing understanding of its chance of survival, is the anti-fragility. The anti-fragility goes beyond the same resilience and robustness. While that is resilient and resistant to shocks remains identical to himself (keeps a balance), what it is anti-fragile improves (goes further then the adaptation dimension. The anti-fragility is the basis of all that change over time and which it allows not only survival but also the improvement of a system.
According to Cumming et al. (Kichoff et al., 2012), we adopt a novel view of resilience as the ability of the system to maintain its identity in the face of internal change and external shocks and disturbances. This definition does not conflict with alternative views (for example, resilience defined as the width of a stable attractor; Carpenter and others 1999), but by changing the emphasis of the problem to focus on identity makes it a little easier to grasp. System identity is largely dependent on (1) the components that make up the system; (2) the relationships between components; and (3) the ability of both components and relationships to maintain themselves continuously through space and time (Cumming, 2012). The identity of a social-ecological system (and, therefore, a cultural landscape) can be defined as a relatively stable set of tangible and intangible components recognizable and recognized. What allows a cultural landscape to maintain its identity is not constituted only by the persistence in time and space of the material elements, but also by the permanence of the relationship between them, or the creation of new relationships, while maintaining unchanged the recognition system, determine new evolutionary conditions. In addition, for the purpose of construction of indicator systems for assessing the resilience, it is critical to understand what are the thresholds above which the change radically modifies the system's identity, damage and to compromise. Resilience (or rather anti-fragility) can then be understood as the set of the system properties that guarantee the maintenance of recognizability.
4. Resilience and the external drivers of change
Compared to a situation of general uncertainty and unpredictability, which contrasts with increased rigidity and fragility of many of the current territorial systems, the preservation (active) cultural landscapes, is faced with the turbulence of external conditions (economy, legislation, technological innovation, environmental crisis, climate change, social imbalances) with scarce resources. As for the scenery, we can believe that, among others, the two main phenomena triggered by external drivers (and possibly amplified by local fragility) are attributable to:
• urbanization (understood in the double polarity of the dynamic densification / abandonment);
• real estate development (again, to be understood in the double dimension of the over- or under economic assessment ofland values).
These two dynamics (urbanization and annuity) as well as related to each other, are guided by global dynamics, mostly external to the individual territorial systems and tend to generate polarizing effects on cultural landscapes, risking to disintegrate (or at least impair) the values identity.
In particular, the process of urbanization may comprise three basic components:
• Intensive land uses, which means a pressure on convertibility building soil, in speculative pressures and a general over-use of territorial assets, including public spaces),
• Abandonment in many rural areas and former rural dynamics of neglect of agricultural principals are increasingly serious crisis factors, causing the onset of dangerous erosion or a messy (as non-regulated) return of nature (re-naturalization) which in turn further increases vulnerability factors (hydrological, fire risk, usability of forest resources, etc.)
• Misuse, which manifests itself in distortions in the spatial distribution of land uses (compression of the public space, development of secondary residences, segmentation of service facilities, etc.), The activities and functions.
Similarly the distorting effects of a housing market dominated by external factors, which in value, such as cultural landscapes tend to capture value only selectively for specific and narrow product segments (real estate, territorial,
functional), can generate effects of impairment of relations between historical settlement and environment. As well as its opposite, i.e. the loss of real estate value to many areas of crisis is a factor that accelerates and increases the dropout phenomena.
5. Towards a resilience system measurement
The resilience factors for a cultural landscape can be traced to the following pairs of elements:
• Density / distribution: for some items, such as the provision of services, the spatial density is critical; while in other cases what we must try to ensure, maintain or restore is the diffusive size, as in the case of the human presence in the territory, which is in every way encouraged, especially where the abandonment has already started producing distorting effects;
• Connection / decoupling: in some situations the system connectivity is essential (these refer to the ecological networks, to networks of public services, accessibility), but in some cases the system can be defined more resilient when it's able to subdive. An example may be diversification of tourism, which can represent an effective densification of distorting control tool as well as a useful aid to the defense of the territory. Similar reasoning can be done with reference to the time scale in relation to the diversification of the year (Cumming, 2011).
• Diversity / homogeneity: also in this case may be situations in which a strong diversification is fundamental to the conservation of the active system (the example can be represented in this case by the diversification of the offer); while in other cases the homogeneity can guarantee better performance standards.
The decision support system based on GIS, in this perspective, assumes the character of an organization of knowledge-based system that enables ontology for the representation of the basic components of landscapes (geomorphology, hydrology, coastal dynamics, biodiversity, land use and agriculture, settlement patterns, cultural heritage, functions and infrastructure). The production of queries that allow the construction of indicators that measure levels of resilience of the landscape (according to the above dimensions: density, distribution, access, diversity) reported either the same components than to their integrated interpretation. Indicators (Cassatella & Peano, 2011) can take either the form of the status indicators and pressure (to measure the current level of system resilience), which that of the response and effectiveness indicators (with respect to the actions and policies implemented).
References
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resilience, adaptability and transformability", Ecology and Society, Vol.15 (4), Art. 20, 2010. Berkes, F.; Colding, J. and Folke, C., Navigating Social-ecological systems: Building resilience for complexity and
change, Cambridge University Press, Cambrige (MA), 2003. Adger, W. N., Vulnerability, Global Environmental Change 16,n. 3 pp. 268-81, 2006.
Wilson, G.A., Community resilience: path dependency, lock-in effects and transitional ruptures, Journal of
Environmental Planning and Management 57, n. 1 pp. 1-26, 2014. Cumming G.S., "Spatial resilience: integrating landscape ecology, resilience and sustainability", Landscape
Ecology 26 (l),pp. 899-909, 2011. Cumming, G.S. Spatial Resilience in Social-Ecological Systems, Springer: Dordrecht, 2011.
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