LIEGE’S VALLEY SLOPES. Exploring regenerative potential in declivity’s resources.

The evolution of European cities has, in many cases, been influenced by geo-morphological conditions stimulating belonging of humans with living environment and cultural interrelation with available resources. In the broader set of landform categories, especially in northern Europe, valley slopes are often little explored. Frequently observed in oppositional terms, valley slopes have received inadequate attention in literature, apart from geomorphological or hydrological considerations. Yet they are a dynamic component – thus, by its very nature, definable as an intrinsically ‘regenerative landscape’ – as well as essential for many agglomerations. Because of the cultural importance of the relief as a condition dictating the first core’s birth, the sloping terrain’s geological nature transformed along with the growth and decline of its industrial district, and, finally, the more recent agglomeration’s transition reflecting on the value of ‘high-low connections’, Liège is an interesting laboratory for investigating valley slope as landscape continuity’s system, useful for discussing urban metabolism, beyond the quantitative dimension, as a process of interrelation between social and natural systems, over long periods of time. The contribution reflects on the overall valley slope system in correspondence with the urban agglomeration of Liège by integrating a palimpsest’s diachronic description with an in-situ valley sections’ exploration. A cartographic apparatus makes it possible to recognize the valley slope both as autonomous and interconnected ensemble – due to its internal relations and those within the valley as a whole – and to understand certain principles of interrelation between society and slope – for example: protection, sustenance, conquest, disassociation – recurring and identarian in the evolution of the agglomeration. Beyond sectoral considerations and administrative boundaries, in-situ exploration detects new slope conditions which are, in light of the revealed interrelation principles, discussed as current potential ‘in declivity’ resources – cultural, as well as liveable, ecological or recreational – for populations.