Building the landscape. Rehabilitation and renewal of traditional mediterranean structures

Abstract

One of the main features of Mediterranean landscapes, particularly in limestone areas, is the terraced land frame, usually supported by dry stone walls. In addition to the scenic aspects and landscape identity, network compartmentalization established by terraces, property division walls, pathways and traditional paths, shapes ecological corridors that frame the different human activities. It is a structure whose conservation is particularly important in areas of intense human impact, or rapid transformation, such as the urban-tourist spaces of the Algarve, where the hills displayed by such structures form the background scenario. In order to put in value their importance for landscape conservation and evolution, this presentation will focus on the interrelated ecological, aesthetic, symbolic, socioeconomic and political aspects that influence the spatial distribution and image of the terraces. Of course, the values that local people can assign to their landscapes will be determinant, but specially at the Algarve, the role of tourists as outsiders must be seriously take into account. We then argue that the future of the dry stone walls structure must be prospected into the diversity of possible solutions about landscape development as the living part of a whole unit that includes the densest urbanized areas with less ecological functions. We call such unit the urban-touristic region of Algarve, inspired on two utopic references: the 'urban regions' and the 'Agroplia'. It means that we try to use landscape as an instrument of knowledge and acknowledgement –democratic governance– of regional spaces. ; info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion