Main issues of the European Landscape Convention

Annalisa Maniglio Calcagno

University of Genova, Faculty of Architecture (IT)

The application of the European Landscape Convention requires the integration of landscape into all national, regional and local land policies, in order to achieve a better quality of landscapes and the protection of their identity, through a comprehensive and integrated approach to the different aspects and elements involved in the new conception of landscape, that regards the whole territory.

Necessary measures include:

• To address protection initiatives, presently limited to areas defined as outstanding, towards a new approach, expected to consider the features of the whole territory and to outline their identity, values and vulnerability
• To extend protection from bare conservation measures to proactive landscape protection actions, and to management, valorisation and recovering intervention
  To foster conditions, objectives and policies to protect, exploit and manage the great heritage of landscape resources, to recover damaged areas and increase the value of those areas that lack
• To identify the methodologies useful to integrate landscape into land planning at the national, regional and local scale and in those project that can, directly or indirectly, affect the achieving of landscape quality and the protection of landscape identity
• To elaborate, through the Observatory tool, programmes and strategies to monitor the quality of the occurred or ongoing landscape interventions and to orient land transformations according to cultural and landscape requirements able to protect the present quality and cultural values, to preserve and exploit identities and to improve the qualities of those areas that lack
• To promote the dissemination among citizens and residents of information about the values, the fragility and the identity of landscapes to increase their awareness and to foster public participation actions for local communities, to give an active contribution to landscape quality and evolution, through the interpretation of its values and of planning solutions
• To promote multi-disciplinary university level courses in the field of landscape knowledge and management, in order to train professionals able to correctly and consciously work on landscapes, in outstanding landscape areas, but also in damaged and everyday sites.