in Maria Mautone and Maria Ronza (eds.), Cultural heritage and landscape: a supply chain approach for territorial planning, Rome, Gangemi publisher 2009

Abstract 

Landscape analysis and planning are becoming increasingly important in spatial governance processes, in relation to the aggravation of many environmental problems and their complex interference with social and economic ones.

According to the European Landscape Convention, the landscape must be conceived not only as the result of the interaction between natural and cultural factors, but also as the expression of different common heritages and the foundation of people’s identities. This requires a new paradigm for landscape policies, covering the whole territory and involving a wide range of different administrative sectors.

Landscape can be considered with different scientific approaches, ranging from geography and geomorphology to ecology, economics, history, anthropology, semeiology, aesthetics and so on. But a holistic view is also required, based on a structural interpretation of the spatial context, which highlights the ‘invariants’ to be respected, as well as the pressures and critical factors that threaten them.

Structural interpretation is a crucial step towards landscape planning, where the special protection granted to exceptional values must be reconciled with the need for careful and sustainable management of the entire territory.

The landscape issue: relevance and topicality

Over the last two or three decades, landscape has assumed increasing importance in land management and planning processes. The ‘demand for landscape’, far from being reduced to a hedonistic impulse crushed by primary needs, reflects the attempt to redefine man’s relationship with the land (Berque, 1995). It has long been part of the claims with which more or less extensive communities attempt to defend or reconstruct their identity. The revaluation of the extreme diversity of its landscape heritage is part of the policies with which Europe IS in search of itself, but landscape identity IS often proudly defended even by emerging countries, not without dramatic ethnic and cultural contrasts. On a local scale, many small ‘losing’ communities, marginalised by economic and social development, entrust their residual hopes for survival or rebirth to their landscape and environmental resources.

The objective of landscape enhancement figures almost ritually in the declarations and strategic programmes with which public administrations at various levels attempt to design their economic and social development.

On the other hand, in spite of such programmes and declarations, the ‘landscape question’, as an inextricable tangle of problems, risks and threats having to do with the landscape heritage, seems destined to worsen and become more complex, according to the International Environmental Reports, which jointly highlight

• the relentless leap in scale of many environmental problems, such as those related to global change, which pose increasing difficulties of control, regulation and governance at the local scale;
• the increasing interference of environmental problems with economic and social problems, such as those concerning poverty, access to water and primary resources, access to information and culture.

In this context, landscape plays a central role. It builds a bridge between nature and culture, not only because it is historically always the result of the interaction between natural and cultural factors, but also because (as the European Landscape Convention says: ECP, EC 2000) it is “an essential component of the living framework of populations, an expression of the diversity of their common cultural and natural heritage and the foundation of their identity”. In fact, there is no landscape, however remote, that can be said to be free of any human influence (Shama, 1995).

This statement is also true in situations of extreme dominance of natural phenomena, such as great peaks or large volcanic complexes (in which, as the case of Vesuvius exemplarily demonstrates, eruptive dynamics have often coexisted for centuries with human activities). But it is also true in the absence of human-induced physical transformations: it is man’s gaze, his interpretation of the natural datum, that gives meaning and “creates” the landscape, inventing it (as in the “invention of the Alps” by the great travellers of the 17th and 18th centuries: Joutard, 1986) or discovering it (as in the “landscapes of discovery”).

In both cases, the creation of the landscape implies some form of control of material reality by human culture (Raffestin, 2007). In both cases, the human gaze leaves its mark.

From this point of view, one may ask oneself whether the concept of ‘cultural landscape’, which has attracted so much attention in recent years, stands up to comparison with the concept of landscape redefined by the European Convention, which attributes to every landscape a precise landscape interest. If the concept of cultural landscape is to be traced back to the concept of combined works of nature and of man (Unesco, 1966), it can substantially be found in every landscape manifestation: even the most famous “nature sanctuary”, Yellowstone National Park, can be considered a cultural landscape to the extent that not only do its physical features descend from the centuries-old activities, such as “fire management”, of the previous indigenous populations, but above all its image and perception crucially depend on the interpretative models that guide the management plans and the organisation of the methods of access and fruition. In this sense, every landscape is a cultural landscape, or more precisely a place of cultural mediation.

The conceptual shift from cultural landscapes to the cultural significance of all landscapes affects the relationship between landscape and territory, i.e. the inescapable ‘territoriality’ of landscape, which links ‘seen’ and ‘experienced’, tangible and intangible values. In the experience and debate of recent decades, cultural landscapes have mainly been thought of in relation to the territories in which people live and work: ‘living’ landscapes that express peculiar agrarian configurations or hydraulic systems (such as terraced slopes for growing rice or vineyards). But these are often cultivations or productions that have disappeared or are in decline, which make us talk about abandoned or senescent territories, plants or industrial areas that have been abandoned or are no longer used, whose landscape interest does not stem from the coherent representation of current activities and functions, but rather from the memory or nostalgia of past ones: a desire for landscape that stems from the nostalgia of the territory (Raffestin, 2007), not without romantic vague suggestions of a pre-industrial or pre-modern past.

Landscape policies

Contemporary society’s appreciation of landscape values has long been translated into regulatory measures aimed at protecting them. They reflect the recognition of a public interest of the landscape, which in some legislations, such as the Italian one, takes priority, i.e. not subordinate to any other public or private interest. Even if the assimilation of the landscape to ‘public goods’ is contested (in particular due to the fact that, unlike ‘pure’ public goods, landscape goods often cannot be enjoyed by some without limiting their enjoyment by others), there is broad consensus in attributing to it the role of a common resource, deserving of adequate protection.

As with all or most cultural goods, the reasons for protection are rooted in complex juxtapositions of perceptions and awareness, conceptions and evaluations, cultural and ethical attitudes, which are very different in different countries and cultures. Moreover, as has been observed (Brennan and Buchanan, 1985), the ‘reasons for the rules’ vary over time, depending on the overall changes in society, its fears and hopes. However, even if the possibility of equating landscape, like other cultural goods, to public goods (Kling, 1993) or to ‘mixed’ goods (Lichfield, 1988; Samuelson 1958; Ventura 2001) can be debated, there is broad consensus on the need for public intervention in transformation processes that may threaten its integrity, quality and usability.

However, landscape policies in recent decades have taken different paths. Three paradigms seem particularly recognisable.

The first paradigm is the one implicit in the 1972 Unesco Convention, which revolves around the concept of outstanding universal value, systematically recalled in art.1 (for cultural properties) and art.2 (for natural properties) and refers to goods or sites of intrinsic exceptional relevance, authenticity, integrity, as such distinguishable or separable from the context, called upon to represent and celebrate a heritage that belongs to the whole of humanity, without identity constraints towards local communities. The conservation option supersedes all other options and public policy essentially aims to safeguard their unquestionable values. It is important to note that the sites that have so far merited recognition in the World Heritage are currently less than a thousand worldwide and predominantly small in size.

The second paradigm, affirmed in the field of nature conservation by the World Conservation Union (IUCN, 1994), revolves around the concept of “protected landscape”, one of the 6 categories of “protected natural areas”. According to the 1994 definition, Cat.V Protected landscapes/seascapes are those “where the interaction between man and nature over time has produced an area of distinctive character with significant ecological, biological, cultural and scenic values”. Again, this refers to areas of specific, intrinsic and significant interest, the integrity of which deserves special protection. But unlike World Heritage Sites, ‘protected landscapes’ are areas that are recognised and managed for the long-term conservation of nature closely linked to the protection of biodiversity.

It should be noted that ‘protected landscapes’ now cover an important share of the total land area: in Europe, they cover more than half of the total protected area. And again, it should be noted that the ‘insular’ logic that has so far guided the policies of protected areas (conceived as somewhat set aside and disconnected areas) is now allowing ‘new paradigms’ (IUCN, 2003) based on networking and interconnection to emerge.

The third paradigm is the one advocated by the European Landscape Convention (Council of Europe, 2000), which revolves around the

concept of ‘landscape’, redefined as mentioned above. This redefinition, which has gathered the results of lengthy debates and reflections, proposes an explicitly “territorialist” approach, emphasising the landscape value of the entire territory, including ordinary or even degraded landscapes, the complex and pervasive significance of landscape values, and the necessary reference to the perceptions, expectations and management responsibility of the populations directly involved. In this vision, the focus is not on valuable “islands”, “excellences” and areas of exceptional value, but on the widespread landscape heritage, an integral part of the “territorial capital”. Its active conservation is inseparable from the enhancement of the territory and local identities.

The first paradigm responds to the need to react to the “retreat of universalism in the face of the pulviscular particularism of communities” (Touraine, 2008), including by reaffirming the founding role of common heritage. This is also true for the second, which however responds more directly to the growing demand for nature and environmental quality and the fears determined by the current processes of degradation. As for the third paradigm, if on the one hand the emphasis on identity values, often dramatically opposed (the ‘armed identities’: Remotti, 1996) is certainly not free of conflicts and contradictions, on the other hand it seems to reflect the affirmation of new citizenship rights, such as those concerning the quality and beauty of the living environment.

Landscape knowledge and assessment

The new conceptions of landscape call into question the disciplinary statutes, methods and interpretative apparatuses that, since at least von Humboldt in the mid-nineteenth century, have investigated the subject of landscape. The discussion primarily concerns two demands:

• the need to adhere to the intrinsic complexity of landscape phenomenology with the pluralism of specialist disciplinary contributions,
• the need to produce holistic and as integrated as possible visions and interpretations to inform public regulatory action.

As far as the first requirement is concerned, it is necessary to start from the observation that the various disciplines and schools of thought often offer partial and reductive visions, or at any rate ones that are difficult to compare. However, the hegemonic role assumed, especially since the 1960s or 1970s, by Landscape Ecology is undeniable, in which the North American traditions of landscape planning also converge (Steiner et al., 1988). Underlying the success of Landscape Ecology is certainly the fact that it has offered an organic and systematic theoretical framework, capable of largely “explaining” landscape phenomenology through objective scientific analysis.

The faith in the exact sciences, which had allowed McHarg (1966) to polemically advocate ecological determinism against the economicist orientations of planning, proved successful in the following decades against the confused impressionism of aestheticising approaches, the descriptivism of certain geographical approaches or the design arbitrariness of landscape architecture. Moreover, the ecological orientation strongly emphasised the need not to detach landscapes from the real country, landscape texts from their environmental context. However, the systemic vision offered by Landscape Ecology, despite presenting itself as a totalising paradigm (ecology as a global frame of reference), leaves in the shadows certain dimensions of landscape, the importance of which has emerged strongly especially in recent decades.

The debate and research of the 1980s and 1990s drew attention to the socio-economic dimension. This attention is not in itself at odds with the theoretical framework of Landscape Ecology (“no ecosystem can be studied without reference to man”, per McHarg, 1981; on the other hand, there are no ecosystems that are not at least partly modified by human culture, per Schama, 1995).

The terrain to be explored is that of the complex interweaving of interactions between economic and social dynamics and landscape transformation processes, which constitute the ‘hard core’ of the landscape question. An interweaving that affects global dynamics (IUCN, 2003, 2004) but that presents itself in even more acute forms in local dynamics: how can we defend the terraced landscapes of rice and viticulture without those activities? How can we safeguard the landscape diversity of the Alps and Apennines without maintaining and renewing agricultural and pastoral activities?

A minimally effective landscape protection seems impossible if the role of man as landscape ‘producer’ is not brought back to the centre and the historically intervening separation between ‘producer’ and ‘inhabitant’ is not addressed. The reflections (Magnaghi, 1990) on the ‘territory of the inhabitants’ indicate how – under what conditions, with what processes – the landscape can constitute an effectively irreplaceable resource for endogenous and self-centred local development.

If landscape protection and design are placed in the wake of current economic and production models and their evolutionary trends, there is instead the risk that they will be reduced to a ‘cosmetic’ action (landscaping, the ‘bastard’ child of landscape architecture), ultimately contributing to the consolidation of those same models and trends.

Another dimension of the landscape whose growing importance is being felt concerns historical and cultural aspects. These, too, do not, in principle, entail any reasons for conflict with ecological theory and research, which have long emphasised how much the structure and functioning of ecosystems depend on past events; on the other hand, the ecological perspective itself, in the thinking of scholars such as Bateson or Lorenz, expands to encompass cultural processes as well. The contribution of history and historical geography, on the other hand, has proved to be fundamental, especially in European countries, whose landscapes are directly based on the history of habitation and complex processes of acculturation (“memories in which the history of man’s territorial designs is recorded and synthesised”, as Sereni put it, 1961), regardless of whether man is still present. The excavation of territorial palimpsests using the methods of landscape archaeology (Sereno, 1983) makes it possible to bring to light the deep traits, latent geometries, and transformative rules of landscape texts, while the historical perspective illuminates the underlying processes, what is unseen and often more important than what is immediately graspable with the eye (Gambi, 1961). The contributions of cultural anthropology, environmental sociology and humanistic geography, which imply “the definitive overcoming, in European culture, of the traditional opposition between myth and logos” (Quaini, 1992), are also connected to the founding thought of the geographical landscape.

This brings us closer to another dimension of landscape, the semiotic and aesthetic dimension, which, completely absent from ecological analysis, is perhaps the one on which there has been a livelier awakening of interest in recent years. If the cultural role of landscape – of every landscape, regardless of the quality of its cultural content – is recognised, it is because it is considered as a process of signification (Barthes, 1985) and, therefore, as a phenomenon of social communication (Eco, 1975). In itself, the recognition of the aesthetic function of landscape is certainly nothing new. In fact, the landscape occupies a prominent place in the history of art (Clark, 1976) and even its most primitive descriptions, such as prehistoric graffiti, have been interpreted as artistic expressions and irreplaceable ‘cultural’ testimonies (Jellicoe, 1987). In Italy in particular, the traditional focus on the aesthetic aspects of the landscape has been reflected in the 2004 Cultural Heritage and Landscape Code. And also in Great Britain and the United States, especially since the 1970s, interest in the aesthetic values of the landscape (or more precisely the ‘scenic’ or visual ones) has stimulated a vast production of plans and research.

But the semiological interpretation of landscape demands much more. If in fact one recognises the dual foundation – natural and cultural – of landscape experience, one must also recognise that the sign system constituted by the sensitive substance of the landscape cannot in any way be translated into a ‘given’ set of meanings: landscape semiosis is an always open process (Dematteis, 1998). The dynamics of things – the ecosphere – is inseparable from the dynamics of meanings – the semiosphere – and thus from the social processes in which this is produced (Dematteis, 1998). But, if this is true, then the landscape cannot be the cognitively perfect one (Socco, 1998) that is the subject of the earth sciences. It is a space of open semiosis, which cannot be enclosed in the scientific semioses of the various disciplines. It is in this dynamic openness that its symbolic and metaphorical functions, its mythical and memorial deposits, its narrative functions and its properly aesthetic functions are located and must be investigated. Thus, if the landscape is theatre (Turri, 1997), it is not a ‘given’ theatre, with its fixed scenes and immobile backdrops, where only actors and spectators can change; self-representation, which allows local actors to ‘distance themselves’ from the events represented by becoming spectators of themselves, continually reconstructs the theatre itself, or at least the meaning it takes on for those who participate in various ways in the theatrical action.

Landscape as an interpretative key

The above considerations show that landscape cannot be adequately understood within a single disciplinary framework, on pain of the risk of reductivism: “see the trees and lose sight of the forest” (Tricart and Kilian, 1985). But an adequate consideration of the various dimensions of the landscape, such as that urged by the CEP, cannot be found in the simple widening of the range of disciplines involved in the landscape question. It is not so much a question of considering a few more aspects, but of rethinking the entire landscape question in more complex terms. It is in this direction that landscape interpretation, a crucial step between reconnaissance and landscape design, becomes of interest.

It is a tendentially holistic interpretation, which cannot arise from the simple juxtaposition of multiple disciplinary readings, but requires that they interact, confronting and fertilising each other. A unitary interpretative framework, in which the various specialised readings converge, aimed at highlighting the basic, relatively stable, permanent or long-lasting factors and characteristics, destined to guide protection, management and planning policies, assuming a conditioning value with respect to transformation processes. These factors – which in various experiences and legislations are evoked with the term structural invariants – essentially express the ‘constitutive rules’ from which no plan choice can disregard and represent the least negotiable part of plan choices. For a better understanding they can be framed as follows:

• A Structuring factors
• B Characterising factors
• C Qualifying factors
• D Critical or degradation factors

The factors defined in this way can be cross-referenced with the various profiles of specialised analysis of the area under consideration: profiles that may naturally be different in different situations, depending on the varying relevance of each sectoral issue in each situation. Such as, for example:

1. Physical aspects (geological, geomorphological, climatic, hydrogeological, pedological…);
2. Biological aspects (flora and vegetation, fauna, ecology, agroforestry, etc.);
3. Cultural-historical aspects (history and geography of the territory, historical matrices, cultural heritage, etc.);
4. Settlement and infrastructural aspects (town planning and land organisation, settlement systems and morphologies, infrastructure, etc.);
5. Landscape-perceptual aspects (perceptual apparatus and sign systems, systems of visual relationships…).

The structural interpretation of the territory is an important step towards the identification of landscapes, appropriately envisaged by the European Landscape Convention. In this regard, landscape units (PUs), which have been the subject of a wide variety of research programmes in recent decades, can be of considerable importance. Their usefulness lies in proposing an articulation of the territory that captures significant forms of landscape characterisation, cohesion or solidarity (hydrogeomorphological, environmental, historical-cultural, settlement, landscape-perceptual, visual, etc.). The concept of Landscape Unit (UP) can be usefully combined with that of Environment Unit (EU). The concept of Environment Unit (EU) has been developed in recent decades, within the framework of Landscape Ecology, as a tool for a holistic representation of the landscape, which tends to identify significant portions of the territory, organised “unitarily” in a specific and precise spatio-temporal level (Zonneveld, 1989).

These articulations can then be compared with those that capture the economic and social aspects of the organisation of the territory (such as the ‘local territorial systems’, SLOT: Dematteis, Governa, 2005), as well as with the institutional-administrative articulation of the territory (Regions, Provinces, Municipalities, or others), in which the processes of public regulation of territorial and environmental dynamics are developed. It is important to note that all these articulations, apart from the last one, appear, in themselves, to be founded on different analytical-interpretive categories, consolidated within the ambit of the various disciplinary statutes; and, therefore, mutually irreducible. Their comparison cannot therefore tend towards an unfeasible ‘collimation’, but rather must tend to highlight the different solidarities that are manifested in the territory (and that can sometimes translate into true ‘indivisibility’ such as those long frequented by economic analysis) and that configure the different ‘relational fabrics’. This is an essential condition to give concrete meaning to that ‘territorialisation’ of landscape-environmental protection policies that characterises both the ‘new paradigms’ for nature conservation and the basic concept expressed by the CEP. It is in fact no coincidence that perhaps the most important innovation introduced by the 2004 Cultural Heritage and Landscape Code in the wake of the CEP concerns precisely the articulation of landscape planning by Landscape Areas, to each of which specific ‘landscape quality’ objectives are to be associated. This articulation makes it possible to decisively shift attention from the ‘landscape assets’ – on which protection action has traditionally focused – to the different landscape contexts that take shape in the overall territory.

Structural land interpretation offers a powerful contribution to landscape assessment, another crucial step towards landscape design. More precisely, it allows, with the identification of UPs, the landscape “characterisation” of sites, which involves highlighting:

• Of the values to be protected and the stakes involved;
• Of the impending risks, threats and pressures;
• Of relations with the territorial context;
• The subjects and interests involved.

But it is worth noting that, in the perspective outlined by the CEP, the aim is not so much (or only) that of guiding the regulation of forms of protection, but more broadly that of guiding the activation of “instruments of intervention aimed at the safeguarding, management and/or planning of landscapes”, according to the “landscape quality objectives” established, “taking into account the specific values attributed to them by the subjects and populations concerned” (art. 6). The recognition by the various subjects of factors or components that play different roles in shaping landscapes and defining their qualities and risks, represents an irreplaceable contribution to the “reasoned” comparison of the respective protection and governance choices. The possibility of a reasoned comparison of interpretations and assessments is the basis of any authentically cooperative strategy.

In the perspective outlined by the CEP, such interpretations are also an important tool for linking scientific knowledge to widespread or ordinary knowledge and for recovering local ‘environmental knowledge’, such as that reflected in traditional ‘good practices’. Despite the efforts of experts to anchor their evaluations in relatively stable historical or scientific analyses, and as far as possible removed from the arbitrariness and impressionism of the observer, there is no doubt that the determination of values is always far from being expressed in unambiguous and absolute terms, and is always immersed in more or less complex socio-cultural processes with uncertain outcomes. The construction of new interpretations (and therefore new images) of the landscape, especially in the presence of severely altered or degraded landscapes that require creative redevelopment interventions, cannot in fact be configured as a subject exclusively for experts, since it requires instead open processes of collective learning and social planning.

The landscape project. The structural interpretation and identification of landscapes are a bridge connecting the reconnaissance phase to the basic options that guide, even in the absence of explicit “deliberations”, protection and intervention policies. The recognition of the “invariant” factors and solidarities that define the UPs, the very way of “looking” at the landscape, always presuppose a more or less tacit intention of protection or enhancement.

Landscape design also manifests itself for those landscapes that, due to their relevance and integrity, seem to have to be removed from any transformative dynamics, in order to be rigorously preserved in their current state. This observation leads one to question the meaning that can be attributed to conservation today. On the level of practice before that of principles, the content of conservation actions has progressively changed in recent decades, both in the field of nature conservation and in the field of cultural heritage conservation (Gambino, 1997). In both the one and the other field, it has become increasingly clear that effective conservation of values cannot be ensured by mere inhibition, restriction or prohibition measures (even though such measures are often absolutely indispensable), but requires positive management and innovation actions, aimed, as the case may be, at removing risk or degradation factors, at activating restoration or redevelopment processes, and at overcoming existing criticalities.

The ‘new paradigms’ for the conservation of biodiversity (IUCN, 2003 and 2004) decline conservation actions in very diverse forms. Similarly, the 2000 Convention prefigures landscape policies aimed not only at protection but also at management and planning. More generally, the reflections and experiences of recent decades for cultural heritage have reaffirmed the statement of the Gubbio Charter (ANCSA, 1990) according to which there can be no authentic conservation without the production of new values, and indeed conservation is, for contemporary society, ‘the privileged place of innovation’.

In this dynamic context, landscape planning is forced to redefine its missions. The importance and complexity of the cognitive and evaluative mission grows, aimed at enabling all stakeholders to become aware of the values and issues at stake, the impending risks and threats, the opportunities and potential, the resources that can be mobilised, and the subjects and interests affected. It changes the regulatory mission, aimed at defining constraints, limitations, specific measures to regulate and govern the processes of territorial transformation, according to the objectives assumed. This mission must increasingly take place in a radically changing institutional and regulatory horizon, characterised by the complexification of decision-making processes, the growth of cooperative instances and the need for flexibility in government actions.

The political relevance of the strategic orientation mission is growing, aimed at proposing visions, guiding ideas and strategic lines, to be discussed and shared with a plurality of subjects, institutions and stakeholders, variously interested and endowed with relative decision-making autonomy, in order to promote coordinated or converging policies. This inevitably calls into question the logic and content of planning. A first problematic point concerns the planning process, in relation to the subjects involved and the field of attention. It is evident that this must appropriately widen, both in spatial terms and in terms of disciplinary content. In fact, the field of attention shifts from individual objects or individual natural and cultural resources to the systems of relations, contexts and networks in which they are located: it is precisely the “networking” and “staging” of these that builds or modifies the landscape. This applies to ecological aspects (just think of the growing importance of ecological interconnection networks) but also to historical and cultural aspects and to scenic and perceptual aspects.

This broadening of the field of attention necessarily corresponds to a broadening of the range of subjects involved, at least potentially, in the planning process. The possibility of identifying a single institutional referent falls away, and a pluralistic approach is imposed, in which different subjects, operating at different scales, in different sectors and with different skills, responsibilities and decision-making capacities, are called upon to confront and collaborate. This tendency implies needs for flexibility and reversibility of choices that are certainly not easy to reconcile with the need for regulatory effectiveness, which arise from the inviolability of environmental, landscape and cultural values and from the primary role attributed to landscape planning in the new Cultural Heritage and Landscape Code.

A second problematic issue concerns its integration into the whole of territorial government activities. The recognition of the “territoriality” of the landscape gives reason to the need (expressed by the CEP, art. 5), to “integrate the landscape into spatial planning policies, town planning and those of an environmental, agricultural, social and economic nature, as well as other policies that may have a direct or indirect impact on the landscape”. This implies a continuous comparison with a vast set of plans and programmes, in order to coordinate or harmonise their choices, on the basis of a comparative assessment of the interests at stake. The assessment must allow the pursuit of a ‘negotiated resolution’ of conflicts, which may, in principle, give rise to outcomes of common satisfaction, in the presence of positive-sum games. But experience teaches that very often public interests in the conservation of the landscape and cultural heritage are difficult to reconcile with those, public or private, aimed at fostering economic and productive development; in these cases it is necessary to recognise the primacy of the former over the latter, as already explicitly provided for in our Constitution. In this direction, the structural interpretation of the territory (with the identification of ‘invariants’) can offer valuable support. A third problematic knot concerns the governance of territorial transformation processes likely to affect the landscape. Landscape planning can play an important role. First and foremost, through the production and accumulation of ‘expert’ knowledge and its interaction with ‘widespread’ knowledge, at all levels, it can foster the growth of sensitivity and a sense of responsibility towards the landscape heritage and its expected or feared modifications. Through the construction of an organic interpretation of the territory and its landscape expressions and a strategic reference framework, it can contribute to the diffusion of “new ideas” and new visions of the landscapes involved and stimulate positive and convergent actions of valorisation and protection. Through regulatory measures and intervention guidelines, it can contribute to modifying behaviour that is detrimental to the landscape, encourage best practices, and innovate management practices and development models. But, for all this to be achieved, it is first of all necessary for multilateral governance systems to find adequate spaces and procedures for public consultation and effective involvement and participation in planning processes, starting from the perceptions and expectations of local communities and their attributions of value, up to the management and intervention choices proposed by the plan. In a democratic decision-making process, the confrontation of interests and expectations is an open and transparent confrontation of values, including those of identity, of which the landscape is the foundation. But for the confrontation not to be reduced to a clash between absolute values and exclusive and irreconcilable identities (“the tyranny of values”: Zagrebelsky, 2008), they must find their limit in rights and their ultimate inspiration in the great universal principles.

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