Where is Helvellyn? Fuzziness of multi-scale landscape morphometry

The landscape in which people live is made up of many features, which are named and have importance for cultural reasons. Prominent among these are the naming of upland features such as mountains, but mountains are an enigmatic phenomenon which do not bear precise and repeatable definition. They have a vague spatial extent, and recent research has modelled such classes as spatial fuzzy sets. We take a specifically multi-resolution approach to the definition of the fuzzy set membership of morphometric classes of landscape. We explore this idea with respect to the identification of culturally recognized landscape features of the English Lake District. Discussion focuses on peaks and passes, and the results show that the landscape elements identified in the analysis correspond to well-known landmarks included in a place name database for the area, although many more are found in the analysis than are named in the available database. Further analysis shows that a richer interrogation of the landscape can be achieved with Geographical Information Systems when using this method than using standard approaches.     

解读西湖——西湖文化景观的特色和构成

西湖,本是一个山水实体,属于自然界的一部分,但在不断地演变中成为一个著名的文化景观,并且在一千多年的时间里,始终处于中国人审美体验、审美活动的中心位置,不断地影响着中国人的生活、思绪和艺术活动。     

区域民俗文化的旅游资源的类型及旅游业价值研究——九寨沟藏族民俗文化与江苏吴文化民俗旅游资源比较研究之一

民俗文化是文化景观的组成部分,本文对民俗文化类型及其旅游资源类型进行了研究和划分。本文认为民俗文化对自然景观、人文景观以及旅游地整体形象有着多方面的影响或贡献。"地方"的概念是阐释旅游地整体形象形成及特征的有效工具。论文对九寨沟藏族民俗和江苏吴民俗进行了实例比较研究,讨论了其形成与地理环境背景的关系、各自特征、现状及开发途径。     

The romance of the Inland Isle: Tocqueville's Democracy in America and the landscape of Providence

Nearly two centuries after its publication, Alexis de Tocqueville's Democracy in America (1990a) remains among the most influential accounts of American political culture. This essay argues that the rhetorical foundation of the Democracy's enduring cultural power is its “imaginative geography” (Said 2000), about which I make two, interrelated claims. The first has to do with the Democracy's identification of the American land with divine Providence. I claim that the providential landscape is the chief means by which Tocqueville contains and organizes the account of the tension between achieved liberty and natural freedom that drives the Democracy. My second focus is on the romantic character of the providential landscape. Cosgrove (2005, p. 302) reflects upon the “tenacity of the island condition on the Western imagination” as frame and vessel of “imagination, desire, hopes and fears.” I argue that the Democracy's “Inland Isle,” as I call it, is a metaphorical island in this sense, and that its theoretical capacity and exhortative power derive from Tocqueville's use of an idiom expressive of a distinctively French tradition of landscape theorizing in which garden metaphor was used to construct meanings of equality and freedom, and voice and identity, in an emerging national, bourgeois order.     

Biological values of the Nordic cultural landscape: Different perspectives

Intensified land use practices in the Nordic countries are increasing the need for more determined strategies in both natural and cultural conservation. The development of such management strategies requires an inter‐disciplinary approach to overcome the existing boundaries between research disciplines. The paper focuses on certain biological elements which should be taken into account in landscape management. These elements are discussed in different perspectives: temporal, spatial Nordic and European, and the close relationship between biological and historical landscape values is emphasised. Examples of changing evaluations over time and among different groups of people are given. In conclusion the paper stresses the need for a holistic approach to preserve the natural and cultural heritage and secure a long‐term utilisation of the landscape.     

基于旅游者凝视的后发型旅游地文化认同与文化再现

后发型旅游地是在欠发达地区,旅游业起步较晚,准备不充分,在资金、技术、人力资源、客源市场、基础设施等方面处于相对不利地位的旅游目的地,在旅游发展初期,旅游者的凝视会对旅游地文化产生重要影响。旅游者凝视理论为分析后发型旅游地文化认同与文化再现提供了理论依据。通过对泸沽湖景区旅游者问卷调查并运用主成分分析法发现旅游者凝视的主要对象为:特色民俗文化、仪式性文化、母系氏族文化、自然景观,且以人文景观为主。对居民的问卷调查和非结构式访谈发现旅游者凝视对提高居民文化认同和文化自豪感、强化"摩梭人"族群认同、建构旅游地文化再现具有重要影响,也在一定程度上改变了文化的真实性,而政府引导性文化再现在提升泸沽湖旅游形象的同时,使得文化再现表现出秩序化、可持续的发展趋势。     

自然环境与云南历史文化城镇形象设计

云南复杂多样的自然环境对当地历史文化城镇的形象构成有着普遍而深刻的影响。考虑自然环境特点的云南历史文化城镇形象设计应遵循尊重和顺应自然的亲和原则,将自然与人文因素相结合的综合性原则,以及将城镇与其所在的自然环境统一考虑的整体性原则。同时要高度关注自然环境在城镇理念形象构成中的重要作用。在城镇视觉形象设计中,要注重城乡景观协调的整体效果,反映其田园山水城镇特色;注重三维景观效果;注重视觉体验的心理特点分析,组织景观层次系列;注重对城镇建筑色彩的控制。     

HEIDEGGER,LATOUR AND THE REIFICATION OF THINGS: THE INVERSION AND SPATIAL ENCLOSURE OF THE SUBSTANTIVE LANDSCAPE OF THINGS – THE LAKE DISTRICT CASE

“Thing” has undergone reification, and it has done so together with its linguistic “conjoined twin” – “landscape”. Whereas thing once was the name for meetings where people assembled to treat common things that matter, things, in the modern sense, have become physical objects (things as matter). Likewise, landscape's meaning has been reified from being a polity constituted by common thing meetings treating substantive things that matter, to becoming a spatial assemblage of physical things as matter. To fully grasp the contemporary meaning of both things and landscape it is necessary to understand the way in which those meanings are the intertwined outcome of a process of revolutionary inversion, or turning inside–out, by which the meaning of things has been spatialized, enclosed, individualized, privatized, scaled and reified as a constituent of the mental and social landscape of modernity. The potentiality of the concept of thing lies, it will be argued, in its continued containment of older, subaltern meanings that can work to empower an alternative “non‐modern” understanding of things along the lines of, but distinct from, Bruno Latour's notion of Dingpolitik, which will be termed “thing politics” here. This argument is analysed in relation to Martin Heidegger's concept of the “thing”, and exemplified by the mandate of the European Landscape Convention, and the modern planning usage of Landscape Character Assessment and Ecosystem Services, as applied to England's Lake District.     

The New Mexico-Centered Hispano Homeland

Like mexicano for Mexican, Hispano is a gender-neutral term that has been used increasingly since the 1960s as a substitute for the more cumbersome Spanish American. In their New Mexico-centered homeland, Hispanos adjusted to the natural environment, stamped it with their culture, and from both the natural environment and the cultural landscape created a sense of place or a homeland identity. The word in Spanish that comes closest to capturing the Hispanos' concept of their homeland is patria, which means fatherland.     

北京历史文化街区现状及发展研究

以北京市西城区西四北头条至北八条和什刹海地区的300多份问卷调查结果显示:无论从历史发展规律、城市发展规律或人居环境科学视角分析,旧城区的改造都是必然的,居住于此的多数居民对于危房改造的态度是积极的,并且认同现代化建设可以与保护古都风貌相结合的观点。鉴于此,建议将传统历史文化街区分为三类,即完全原样保护的区域、住宅区和旅游商业区,在改造的过程中注意从总体上把握建筑外观、布局及周边环境与北京旧城风貌的协调。     

太湖演变的历史过程

太湖及其附近地区自晚更新世末期以来,由于内外营力共同作用的结果,经历着一个由沟谷切割的滨海平原景观,演变为蝶形洼地的泻湖地貌形态,其后由于出入口通道的变化,泻湖演变为太湖,并经历面积大小的伸缩演变过程。     

The Landscape Sphere and the Geographical Environment

An advocate of a unified geography adopts a biosocial, or natural-social, approach to the definition of several concepts in geography, distinguishing the landscape sphere and the geographical environment. The landscape sphere of the earth consists of the sphere of the natural landscape (comprising both untouched and man-altered nature) and the sphere of human activity, or sociosphere, which includes the sphere of the cultural landscape (agrosphere plus technosphere) and mankind itself. The geographical environment includes the natural environment (man-altered nature plus parts of untouched nature), the material results of the labor of past generations and geographical manifestations of the social environment.     

The UNESCO Convention on the Diversity of Cultural Expressions as a coordination framework to promote regulatory coherence in the creative economy

The present article aims to inquire about business convergence in creative industries from the perspective of cultural diversity. It is based on the premise that the recognition of the creative and innovative component of the so-called ‘creative industries’ or the ‘creative economy’ confirms the need for non-economic factors and particularly cultural concerns to be taken into account in regulatory efforts addressing those industries. It examines the way new technologies and business convergence may affect the ‘trade and culture debate’ vis-à-vis the World Trade Organization (WTO), and how the 2005 UNESCO Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions (CDCE) may respond in a relevant manner to challenges brought therefrom. Despite its weakly binding language, the CDCE contains principles, objectives and rules that set a comprehensive framework for policy ‘related to the protection and promotion of the diversity of cultural expressions’ at the national, regional and international levels. A fundamental piece in such an approach is the explicit integration of cultural concerns into the concept of sustainable development. This article argues that the material and economic perspective adopted in the CDCE, based on the production and consumption of cultural goods and services, remains relevant and pertinent in the creative economy, despite business convergence. By prioritizing policy and regulatory coordination, it maintains that the main elements enshrined in the CDCE should be employed to contribute to greater coherence in view of the objective of promoting cultural diversity, including vis-à-vis the WTO and other international organizations, and puts forward potential paths for such coordination.     

旅游景观形成与演变机制的符号学解释——兼议符号学视角下的旅游城市化与旅游商业化现象

旅游景观形成与演变机制的研究对于旅游景观的建设与保护具有重要意义。本文借助于符号学的相关理论,对旅游景观的形成与演变机制进行分析,并指出:在旅游景观形成与演变过程中,基于旅游景观意义的博弈,旅游文化主体不仅把自在景观符号作为一个整体加以改造而形成旅游景观符号的"能指",而且在此基础上赋予它的新的文化内涵,形成旅游景观符号的"所指",从而完成旅游景观的符号化过程。旅游城市化和旅游商业化现象是这一过程中的必然产物,是基于文化主体意义博弈的旅游景观符号的现代化重构。     

A place in the sun: the British housing market’s (de)construction of Andalusia

Abstract

Andalusia has become one of the main destinations for British residential tourists, attracted by leisure, a mild climate and the search for a better lifestyle. Prompted by its interest in selling houses, the real estate industry has devised an image of the Andalusian landscape that is, to all intents and purposes, partial and biased. The purpose of this research is to assess the importance of the elements and features that characterise this particular vision of this Spanish region, paying particular attention to more rural inland areas. For this, an empirical study has been conducted based on content analysis of real estate websites targeting British buyers. This study has revealed that: (i) the misrepresented and romantic projection of the image of Andalusia still persists to a certain extent. Among the main elements and attributes that characterise the landscape are all those that emphasise the region’s sublime, picturesque and exotic nature; other main landscape qualities and unique areas, specifically, any that today enjoy natural or cultural legal protection due to their heritage value, are less important in this cultural construction; (ii) the various parts of Andalusia are treated unequally. Malaga province and the rest of the Baetic Mountains are much better represented than other areas (the Guadalquivir Valley and the Sierra Morena mountains). This imbalance sometimes results in a distorted construction of the territory. This way of conceiving Andalusia puts Malaga at the heart of the region, and the further from the Costa del Sol, the more peripheral the regions become; (iii) the complexity of the landscape as a cultural expression is reduced to a set of simplified features that can be easily digested by a social group focused not on experiencing, but on consuming the landscape.     

我国历史文化村镇保护的内容与方法研究

历史化村镇是我国遗产保护体系的重要组成部分,随着第一批中国历史化名镇(村)的命名公布。遗产保护工作又进入了一个崭新阶段。我国历史化村镇保护研究较国外起步较晚,相关研究也欠深入全面。导致在当前城镇化快速发展过程中,一些颇具价值特色的古村镇没有得到很好保护。本首先回顾了国内外历史小城镇、村落保护的演变发展,然后指出历史化村镇保护在价值特性方面,不同于历史化名城;在保护内容方面,要在以往偏重于物质化遗产保护的基础上。进一步加重非物质化遗产的保护;在保护方法方面,要综合运用历史学、地理学、建筑学、社会学、景观生态学等方法,才能达到较好的保护效果。     

The Subject of Geography and the Science of the Man-Nature Relationship

A philosopher views the geographical environment as a natural-social concept, in which individual elements function simultaneously in a system of natural and social relationships. The geographical environment should be the province of a discipline called general geography, which would exist in addition to specialized physical and social geography. However, since general geography is limited spatially to the earth's landscape sphere, it cannot deal with the broader aspects of the man-nature relationship now that man's influence extends increasingly beyond the earth into outer space. A new discipline called “noology” is proposed to deal with the interplay between human society and all of nature.     

Cultural landscape protection in Australia: The Wingecarribee Shire study

Abstract

The concept of cultural landscapes as remarkable windows onto the past, and rich historical documents that can be read has gained increasingly wide acceptance in Australia over the past few years. Allied to this, and informing it. is the way in which landscape as a cultural construct plays a major role in attachment to place and sense of Australianness. The understanding of cultural landscapes as a setting where human history is on display is a community movement as well as a professional one. This paper reviews one particular study which focused on heritage evaluation of an historic rural landscape and moves for its protection.     

Cultural Capital and Place: Coles Bay and the Freycinet Peninsula,Tasmania

This paper poses the question: what is the role of cultural capital at the interface of environment, economy and society, and what other factors affect this role? A review of Pierre Bourdieu's concept of cultural capital and later developments of this concept by ecological economists serves to establish the values that comprise cultural capital, and its relationship to natural capital and economic capital. These relationships are investigated through a case study of a small coastal community, Coles Bay and the Freycinet Peninsula, in Tasmania. Three study groups are identified which comprise the communities associated with this place; long‐term residents, repeat visitors and tourists making a single visit. The complexity of the relationships of people with place are revealed through an examination of the different forms of capital (social, cultural and economic) relating to the different study groups. The dynamics of the social, economic and environmental realities of Coles Bay and the Freycinet Peninsula are seen to be complex and interlinked, with the potential to provide a model for action in communities of similar character and location.     

The cultural landscape near the ancient city of Tharros (central West Sardinia): vegetation changes and human impact

The evolution of the cultural landscape in coastal western Sardinia is investigated by means of pollen analysis in the Mistras Lagoon sediments, near the ancient city of Tharros, with particular attention to changes in evergreen vegetation and the impact of human activity. The pollen diagram, spanning the time interval from 5300 to 1600 cal BP, documents the influence of man, climate, and geomorphic dynamics on the evolution of a semi-open evergreen vegetation landscape and variations in extent of a salt-marsh environment. Anthropogenic indicators and microcharcoals concur in depicting increased land use coinciding with the Nuragic, Phoenician, Punic and Roman dominations. Pollen data, along with archaeobotanical evidence, suggest a prevailing arable farming economy, vocated to Vitis and cereals exploitation, during the Nuragic phase until 2400 cal BP, replaced since then by a prevailing stock rearing economy. Between 2050 and 1600 cal BP, a less intensive human impact on the landscape is profiled, consistently with the archaeologically documented abandonment of the rural villages in favour of a slow urbanization, experienced by the Sinis territory in Imperial times. The pollen record provides new insights into the history of important economic plants in the Mediterranean, such as Vitis, Olea and Quercus suber. The results of the pollen analysis reveal how the records of these taxa are primarily influenced by the cultural development of the Sinis region and secondarily by dynamics involving the natural companion vegetation.