How Do We Accommodate New Land Uses in Traditional Landscapes? Remanence of Landscapes, Resilience of Areas, Resistance of People

Abstract

Faced with the challenge of major changes, it is becoming urgent to consider what makes the specificity and strength of European landscapes, in particular landscapes still fashioned by traditional farming. The central question in this paper—how to accommodate new land uses in traditional landscapes—cannot be approached without reference to some other topical issues that could be identified as driving forces: the development of renewable energies, the spreading of green networks, the maintenance (or return) of sustainable agriculture. The paper's analysis, with examples from Brittany, opens up a certain number of principles which can serve as a guideline in territorial development: acceptable scale of development, adjustment to land resources, and maintenance of multi-functionality, maximum threshold of specialization. This is necessary if we are to better understand, and then implement: an acceptable scale of development, adjustment to land resources, maintenance of multi-functionality. The landscape expertise might then be useful not only for landscape protection and planning, but also to consider broad lines of future development adapted to the ‘sense of place’, thus improving economic, ecological and social values. At a theoretical level, this analysis proposes an approach to territorial dynamics via the interaction of three concepts: resilience of territory, remanence of landscapes and resistance of people.

Key Words:

• rural landscape
• driving forces
• remanence
• resilience
• resistance

Acknowledgements

Thanks are due to Laurence Henneton for Figure 2, Antoine Luginbühl for Figure 3 and the anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments on earlier drafts of this paper. This study was supported by the Regional Council of Brittany.

Notes

ELC article 6C : Identification and assessment.

With the active participation of the interested parties, as stipulated in Article 5.c, and with a view to improving knowledge of its landscapes, each Party undertakes:

a.	to identify its own landscapes throughout its territory; to analyse their characteristics and the forces and pressures transforming them; to take note of changes;
b.	to assess the landscapes thus identified, taking into account the particular values assigned to them by the interested parties and the population concerned.

In France the notion of green network is often reduced to the association of protected areas connected by ecological corridors, although the Grenelle 2 law specifies more general objectives, in particular: “Toimprove the quality and diversity of landscapes” (Art. L. 371–1).

As used in the definition of landscape in the first article of the convention: “‘ Landscape’ means an area, as perceived by people, whose character is the result of the action and interaction of natural and/or human factors.”