D i s c u s s i ng Lan d s c ap e A r c h it e c t u r e
Edited by Christiane Sörensen Karoline Liedtke
N E E D S H E RITAGE A MUS E UM? ON TR A N SFORMATION, CONS E RVATION AND P ERSISTENCE IN TH E UNE SCO - L A ND S C A PE HA LLS TATT-DACHSTEIN
Pe t er Kurz
Vienna University of Technology, Department of Urban Planning and Landscape Architecture, Austria
[email protected] Peter Kurz studied landscape ecology and landscape planning at University of Applied Life Sciences, Vienna. His PhD-thesis is on landscape transformations due to processes of globalization in agricultural systems in an Austrian rural region. Research and teaching interests contain analysis of cultural landscapes, focusing on local practices of governance and management shaping the land. Kurz’s current research deals with questions of agricultural landscape and land-use as cultural heritage in context to the UNESCO-World Heritage Concept.
world heritage / cultural landscape / landscape management / social-ecological systems
I ntro d uc tio n
The world heritage concept was introduced by UNESCO in order to protect outstanding examples of natural and cultural heritage. Within the program, the category of “organically evolved, continuing landscapes” takes a distinguished position, linking natural and cultural heritage and retaining “an active social role in contemporary society closely associated with the traditional way of life, in which the evolutionary process is still in progress. At the same time they exhibit significant material evidence of its evolution over time” (Droste 1995). Continuing cultural landscapes have achieved popularity within the world heritage program. Particularly numerous “traditional agricultural landscapes” have been recently nominated for world heritage (Fowler 2003). Still, the cultural landscape concept is the subject of controversial discussions and the target of criticism within debates on protection and management. Critics have stated that the heritage label promotes the creation of museum landscapes, aiming at the conservation of certain sceneries suitable for tourist marketing (Usborne 2009). Yet—so the critique—the museum concept provides little perspective or support for local
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F i g u re 1 Location of the Hallstatt-Dachstein region
rural communities who utilize and maintain those landscapes within their everyday practice. The UNESCO claims a living heritage, instead of creating museum landscapes (Rössler 2006). But if conservation of historical landscape of universal value forms the counterpart to maintenance of everyday landscape, providing the basis of livelihood for local people, one may ask: (a) What makes a cultural landscape a “living heritage”? (b) When or why does a landscape become a museum? And (c) How can those processes be influenced by planning and management? We explored these questions in the case of the UNESCO world heritage landscape Hallstatt-Dachstein, where “musealization” has been the subject of reoccurring discussions. Investigating the effects of nomination as a World Heritage landscape and setting them in context to the current regional discourse and to the historical framework conditions that reasoned the nomination, we tried to figure out the ambiguities related to the heritage concept. As a conclusion, we argue that these ambiguities may also provide a starting point for (re-)definition of the heritage and—in a further context—for local peoples’ empowerment and emancipation. This forms the groundwork for reflections on implications for the role of planning and management.
from the Neolithic Ages (Moser 1994). Bloom as a mining region stretched from the thirteenth to the late eighteenth century, when a centrally organized resource management system was established under the royal house of Habsburg, combining forestry, water management, and the allocation of human labor in order to optimize exploitation of salt. This made the Hallstatt landscape a unique document of a historic alpine mining region (Jeschke 2002), and for resource management of the prefossil physiocrat age (Radkau 2002)
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Landscape Planning
[Figure 1].
Traditional resource management of the Hallstatt mining landscape was—above all—a social system, building upon strictly hierarchical orders. Its backbone was formed by a complex set of governmental regulations, defining property and usage rights and—in a broader context—fixing social relationships: top of this hierarchy was formed by organisations managing forestry, water, and mining under stately supervision. Authorities controlled the extensive forests and the bodies of water in the region in order to generate maximum surplus (Koller 1970). The other end contained numerous smallholder landowners, who had been settled as workers in mine, saline, forestry, and transportation logistics shipping the salt outside of the region. Sideline farming T h e Halls tat t- Dac hst ein Region: practiced in small units (usually only two to five hectare) H i s tor ical He r itage and Tr ansformat ion for subsistence, supplemented by servitude rights for alpine The Hallstatt-Dachstein region, situated in the south of the pasturing within forest land are characteristic features of the province Upper Austria, provides a landscape with an outstand- Hallstatt landscape [ F i gu r e 3 .1–3.5]. ing historical heritage. Equipped with a natural source of rock The traditional salt mining system was maintained throughout more than a 500-year period. Changes started slowly with salt, the region has been shaped by salt mining activities back Who owns the L andsc ape?
F i g u re 2 Core- and buffer zones of the World heritage (source: UNESCO World Heritage Center)
mechanization of workflows and the introduction of fossil fuels from mid-nineteenth century. This brought along a gradual release of workforce in forestry and mining, starting in the nineteenth and stretching out over the twentieth century. Transformations were overlaid by the arrival of tourism, which gradually provided an alternative source of income and brought along the development of a modest regional tourism industry (Hellmuth 2011). However, the local populations’ low endowment with capital, the peripheral location, and persistent relations in land ownership with dominance of large-scale landowners were responsible for a rather slow pace of change. It took until the nineteen-nineties for the coincidence of several events to cause a historic break in the regions’ development: privatizations of state-owned forest, mining, and energy businesses and their transformations into stock corporations were followed by a massive fall in regional job markets. Changes in agricultural policies due to Austria joining the European Union impacted on the regions’ sideline farm households, bringing along substantial decline in the support of smallholder agriculture. Both developments formed the starting point for a regional crisis, finding expression in demographic shifts and—as visual landscape evidence —abandonment of agriculture and farmland (Kastner 2012). Hallstat t and the UNESCO World Heritage Label
Occasionally during this period, the Hallstatt-Dachstein region saw the introduction to the UNESCO world heritage list in 1997. Protection goals originally centered on the ensemble of the mining town of Hallstatt with its famous scenery
along the shoreline of the Hallstatt lake. But the surrounding agricultural landscape was recognized as an integrated part of the cultural heritage. However, activities in protection and management focused on monument protection, setting an emphasis on the built environment of the townscape of Hallstatt, and scattered monuments in the surrounding settlements. Nomination and award of the UNESCO label were received ambivalently: parts of the regional communities recognized it as a chance for (tourist) development, while others showed skepticism due to suspected impacts of conservation on local living environments. This is why state authorities’ attempts on elaborating and implementing a management plan for the world heritage region—as instructed by the UNESCO—have not been successful so far. The World Heritage label, however, has become an essential part of regional development strategies [Figure 2]. He ritage o f th e Wo rl d He ritage
Since becoming World Heritage, the development of the Hallstatt-Dachstein region was shaped by an enormous growth in the touristic sector. The municipality of Hallstatt features 800,000 visitors per year, in relation to its 800 inhabitants. Tourist infrastructure was developed quickly, and tourism industry today certainly forms the main overall source of income. In the wake of marketing there is also a steady rise in the prices of properties and building land. Without a doubt, the heritage label has become the motor of regional economic development. At the same time we find dramatically proceeding demographic shifts. The region lost nearly twenty percent
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Figur e 3.1–3.5 The “continuing cultural landscape” of the Hallstatt-Dachstein region
of its population within the past fifteen years, which is far above average for Austrian rural areas. When asking for the reasons, the main argument is the lack of adequate jobs in the region. But rising property prices, declining quality of everyday life, and feelings of alienation due to tourist developments, secondary residences and a decline in public services for everyday life are also frequently mentioned by local people as reasons for abandonment [ F i g u r e 4]. The regions’ struggle with demographic decline increasingly gets linked to questions of maintenance of the material heritage of the cultural landscape. While maintenance of the built environment and infrastructure successively becomes an issue of external investors, sustaining of the agricultural landscape turns out to be a great future challenge. What might be judged as a “natural” development in the agricultural sector is also evidence for the regions specific heritage and the way it has been managed over the past years. When the traditional system of jobs in mining industries and sideline agriculture broke down, it was replaced by tourist development, promoted by marketing of the World Heritage. But this broadly happened without an integration of that group of smallholders, who gradually were forced to commute outside of the region for jobs. So the cultural landscape problem is linked to a monofunctional development strategy based on tourism and social and economic disintegration of parts of the local population within that development. It will strongly depend on how the region will be able to manage this aspect of its heritage. Advancing as a museum landscape or being able to sustain a “living heritage” will strongly depend on how the region will manage to integrate the persisting culture of smallholder farming into its development.
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Who owns the L andsc ape?
F i gu r e 4 Demographic Developments in the Hallstatt-Dachstein region
Co nclus io ns
Summarizing, we could learn from the Hallstatt case that: a) The World Heritage label may contribute to regional development, but simultaneously can push tendencies of creating a museum of the regional landscape. Neither protection nor the heritage seal per se promote problems of creating museum landscapes but rather the way the protection status is handled by a region. Landscape Planning
b) “Living heritage” relies on involvement of local people from all social groups to negotiate “their” heritage. In Hallstatt it is particularly the important group of sideline farmers who have to be integrated into development processes. To support those processes, planning and management have to go beyond the question of conservation of the material heritage, taking into account economic and social “landscapes” of a region. In addition to providing technical knowledge, the planners’ role lies in organizing framework conditions for transparent processes of communication and negotiation. Therefore, principles of adaptive management, as introduced by Fikret Berkes (2004) and Carl Folke (2006), may provide useful tools. Beyond, understanding of the “political ecology” (Widgren 2012) of a landscape, its historical structures and power relationships allows estimation of current dynamics and forms a groundwork for the planners work. Asking the question “who owns the landscape?” in its historical, social, and political dimensions appears crucial, if creation of a living heritage shall be goal of the planning process. Interpreted that way, the World Heritage might provide a powerful instrument supporting a democratic “policy of place” (Primdahl and Swaffield 2010).
Ac k n owle d g emen ts
Inquiries are based on a study project called “Sustainable Use of the Regional Heritage,” carried out in the summerterm 2012. I would like to thank Dr. Gisa Ruland, the student team, and our regional partners for their cooperation. Information for this paper was generated in an analysis of spatial and historical data, interviews with local stakeholders, farmers and inhabitants, completed by two workshop meetings in the Hallstatt-Dachstein region.
Re f e re nces Berkes, F. (2004) “Rethinking commu-
nity-based conservation,” in Conservation Biology 18(3): 621-630 Droste, B.v. (1995) “Cultural Landscapes in a Global World Heritage Strategy,” in Droste, B.v. (ed.) Cultural Landscapes of Universal Value, 20-24. Jena, Stuttgart, New York, Gustav Fischer Verlag. Folke, C. (2006) “Resilience. The Emergence of a Perspective for Social-ecological Systems Analyses,” Global Environmental Change 16, 253-267 Fowler, P.J. (2003) “World Heritage Cultural Landscapes 1992-2002,” World Heritage Papers 6. Paris: UNESCO. Hellmuth, T. (2011) “Die Erzählungen des Salzkammergutes. Die Entschlüsselung einer Landschaft,” in Die Erzählung der Landschaft. Vienna, Cologne, Weimar: Böhlau Verlag. Jeschke, H.P. (2002) “The Hallstatt-Dachstein/Salzkammergut Site as an UNESCO Cultural Heritage Landscape,” in Jeschke, H.P. (ed.) Das Salzkammergut und die Weltkulturerbelandschaft Hallstatt-Dachstein/Salzkammergut. Beiträg zur Landeskunde von Oberösterreich 13, 375-380. Linz. Kastner, M. (2012) “Kulturlandschaftssicherung Inneres Salzkammergut,” ppt-presentation 18.11.2012, Hallstatt, unpublished. Koller, E. (1970) “Forstgeschichte des Salzkammergutes. Eine forstliche Monographie,” Vienna: Österreichsicher Agrarverlag. Moser, R. (1994) “Hallstätter und Obertrauner Almen im Bereich des Dachsteinmassivs,” Musealverein Hallstatt 32. Hallstatt. Rössler, M. (2006) “World Heritage Cultural Landscapes: A UNESCO flagship
programme 1992 – 2006, in Landscape Research 31/4: 333-353. Radkau, J. (2002) Natur und Macht. Eine Weltgeschichte der Umwelt, Munich: Beck. Swaffield, S. & Primdahl, J. (2010) “Transformations of Rural Production Landscapes in the Global Network Society,” in Yldizci, A. (ed.) Cultural Landscapes ECLAS Conference Proceedings, 621-631. Istanbul. Usborne, S. (2009) “Is UNESCO Damaging the World‘s Treasures?,” The Independant, Apr. 29, 2009, http://independent.co.uk/travel/news-and-advice/ is-unesco-damaging-the-worlds-treasures-1675637.html. [August 2013] Widgren, M. (2012) “Resilience Thinking Versus Political Ecology: Understanding the Dynamics of Small-scale, Labour-intensive Farming Landscapes,” in Plieninger, T. & Bieling, C. (ed.) Resilience and the Cultural Landscape. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge
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Make -a b i l i t y 2.0 T h e P owe r a n d Resi li ence o f L an d scape Fr ame works
Ma rl i es Br in k h u ij sen
Annet Kempenaar
landscape framework / greenways / green infrastructure /
Wageningen University, Landscape Architecture Group, the Netherlands,
[email protected]
Wageningen University, Landscape Architecture Group, the Netherlands
[email protected]
regional design / ecosystem services
Marlies Brinkhuijsen is an assistant professor at the Landscape Architecture Group of Wageningen University, the Netherlands, since 2008. She has a PhD and a Master’s degree in Landscape Architecture from Wageningen University. Before joining academia, she worked as a landscape architect and landscape planner in professional practice, and contract research for twenty years. Her recent research focuses on sustainable tourism and on landscapes and large parks in a peri-urban context. Her work is characterized by a multidisciplinary approach, and ranges from local to supra-regional scales. Her teaching, coordinating, and supervising activities over the last years included design studios, design theory, critical reflection on contemporary practices, research methodology, internships and theses at bachelor, master’s and PhD level.
Annet Kempenaar is researcher and PhD candidate at the Landscape Architecture Group of Wageningen University. The topic of her PhD is “design in the planning arena.” Kempenaar graduated as a landscape architect in 1994 and has worked as a professional landscape architect for commercial, governmental, and non-governmental organizations since. Currently, Annet Kempenaar is involved in two research projects. The first project is an international research project on the development of Landscape Perspective for the Three-Countries-Park, a cross-border area located in the Netherlands, Belgium, and Germany. The second research project, Analyzing and Exploring Sustainable Urban Strategies (AESUS), researches new planning and design concepts and tools, to deal with contemporary urban development processes.
In a time of devolution of governmental responsibilities (Allmendinger and Haughton 2010) and decreasing budgets, small-scale local interventions and grassroots initiatives are presented as the ways to successful development (Bijl et al. 2011). Large-scale integrated plans are no longer on the agenda. They are considered as technocratic, top-down remnants of a past era when a strong belief in make-ability determined planning and design practices. They are no longer useful or feasible today. Comprehensive landscape designs at a regional scale have had their day, it seems. But is it true that these plans, made in the heydays of regional landscape planning and design, are out-dated? Are we better off without them?
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Who owns the L andsc ape?
T h e L a nd scape F r a m e wo rk Co ncept
In this paper we explore the contemporary and future value of comprehensive landscape frameworks based on a planning strategy that was developed in the Netherlands in the late nineteen-eighties, the so-called “casco-concept” or landscape framework concept. The landscape framework concept is closely related to the concept of greenways. Both concepts are based on networks of land containing linear Landscape Planning
