The landscape theatre; an account from Spain

Abstract

This account is based on a social and geographical study: « Landscape: resource for local and across-border development », ordered to the Forest Technological Centre of Catalonia with the backing of the European Union for the purpose of advising local councillors. This work has been conducted from a multidisciplinary and multi-scale standpoint. As in most development projects, the territory is considered a « scenario » that the acting people wish to share, but the decision-making process of the regional planning tends to develop as on a theatre play in which the actors look for a continuity and safeguarding of private interests. After a brief presentation of reference values, of acting people and of their situations with respective functions, a series of tools is proposed. One of these tools consists in using a landscape-measuring grid as a working instrument. The landscape-measuring grid is a hierarchically structured systemic model for information acquisition from the present landscape. It helps to provide the structure project with the required information to achieve the expected results. From a cartography of socially perceived landscape units, the landscape development plan is a document capable of including all the meaningful elements which are socially felt as belonging to a common identity and which can be enhanced in the future. This approach leads to the design of a development plan providing an organisational answer in order to succeed in meeting the priorities of economic development and planning.