Cultural landscape and traditional agriculture: preservation and sustainability in a historic center

Ref.: 130
Área temática: 02 Integridad funcional de los paisajes urbanos históricos
Fecha de recepción: 16/11/2008

AUTORES (* Autor principal)

Barci Castriota, Leonardo * - Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais (UFMG) (Brasil)
Pereira de Sousa, Vilmar - Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais (UFMG) (Brasil)

EVALUACIÓN FINAL DEL COMITÉ CIENTÍFICO: Pendiente

ABSTRACT

As the French historian Pierre Nora points out, in the last twenty years the concept of "heritage" has expanded ­ or rather exploded ­ to the point where it has become transformed, and allows a very broad definition such as the one given by the Collins Dictionary of the English Language that refers to it as "the evidence of the past... considered collectively as the inheritance of present-day society". In our view, the most important issue here concerns the type of transformation that takes place when the focus shifts from artistic, historical and archeological values to broader cultural and urban values. It is not merely a quantitative change. As the heritage concept expands, a different approach will be adopted to shift the treatment from a preservation to a conservation paradigm.
In this new perspective, the idea of a "cultural landscape" may, in fact, constitute a new and highly innovative field within the theoretical framework of cultural heritage conservation, since this new concept tries to indicate the significant interactions between people and the nature, and combines inextricably material and immaterial aspects that have so far been considered separately. The fact is that since its approval in 1972, the World Heritage Convention had dealt with both cultural and natural heritage, definitely adopting and launching this new category only in 1992, after years of discussion on the essence of cultural landscapes, by the occasion of the 16th session of the World Heritage Committee held in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Thus, the Convention will be the first international legal instrument to recognize and protect such a complex type of heritage focused on the interaction between nature and culture and, at the same time, so closely linked to traditional ways of living. For both UNESCO and the World Heritage Committee, the new approach represented an achievement as a contribution to sustainable development and community involvement.
In this direction, this paper examines the role played by agriculture in the cultural landscapes of Brazilian traditional cities especially those located in the state of Minas Gerais, a region that underwent a "gold and diamond fever" in the eighteenth century. Here we intend to show not only the specific urban-rural interface in Brazilian cities, by also the presence of urban agricultural activities that molded the townscape. As a case study, we will take the old colonial town of Serro (MG), located in the "Diamond District", 158 miles north of Belo Horizonte, and one of the few towns in the mining region that was strongly marked by agriculture since its early days. Finally, we will make some considerations on the importance of this perspective to establishing a sustainable conservation planning for these cities.

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