The patrimonial process of rural territory and landscape planning

This essay analyses the significance of historical and visible form as a fundamental component of landscape. The form of landscape derives from the inseparable whole made up of both sensitive and material reality and is a result of a co-evolved and stratified process between society and environment, continually re-interpreted by the observer. In this paper the relationship between social identity and historical rural landscape is considered as a central theme; such a relationship is intended as a basic patrimonial resource, which works as a medium of an active connection linking inhabitants and places. For a long time, there has been a total identification between landscape and rural landscape (interpreted as a sum of agronomic aspects and settlements in their complexity). Until the industrial revolution, more than 70% of the European population was employed in agriculture: Europe was a world of farmers (Tosco 2009). Nowadays agrarian landscapes represent the founding and identity-making structure which characterises the entire European Community. Currently, landscape assumes several specifications, but, as highlighted by recent European Union policies, rural landscape has also taken on the role of protecting and safeguarding all territory. A correct management of rural heritage is not only able to produce quality goods and services, but also to improve the quality of all landscape. This essay will attempt to understand how to transfer the historical and structural knowledge, typical of historico-geographical research, to planning, and to create a link between historical knowledge and the participation of the population in the planning process.