Cultural landscapes are at the interface between nature and culture. They represent the permanent interaction between humans and their environment, shaping the surface of the earth. With the rapid social and economic development cultural landscapes belong to the most fragile and threatened sites on earth. Adapted protection and proper management is urgently needed. Since 1992 outstanding cultural landscapes can be protected under the World Heritage Convention. Thus, the World Heritage Convention is the first international legal instrument recognizing and safeguarding this type of property for future generations. This important step has led to enhanced international and national recognition. The present volume aims to contribute to enhanced protection and management of cultural landscapes around the world. It furthermore highlights in a truly interdisciplinary approach some of the most outstanding cultural landscapes of universal value in their geocultural and environmental context.

Cultural landscapes are at the interface between nature and culture. They represent the permanent interaction between humans and their environment, shaping the surface of the earth. With the rapid social and economic development cultural landscapes belong to the most fragile and threatened sites on earth. Adapted protection and proper management is urgently needed. Since 1992 outstanding cultural landscapes can be protected under the World Heritage Convention. Thus, the World Heritage Convention is the first international legal instrument recognizing and safeguarding this type of property for future generations. This important step has led to enhanced international and national recognition. The present volume aims to contribute to enhanced protection and management of cultural landscapes around the world. It furthermore highlights in a truly interdisciplinary approach some of the most outstanding cultural landscapes of universal value in their geocultural and environmental context.

New approaches to both cultural landscapes and historic urban landscapes increasingly recognize the need to guide future change, rather than simply protecting the fabric of the past. Challenging traditional notions of historic preservation, Conserving Cultural Landscapes takes a dynamic multifaceted approach to conservation. It builds on the premise that a successful approach to urban and cultural landscape conservation recognizes cultural as well as natural values, sustains traditional connections to place, and engages people in stewardship where they live and work. It brings together academics within the humanities and humanistic social sciences, conservation and preservation professionals, practitioners, and stakeholders to rethink the meaning and practice of cultural heritage conservation, encourage international cooperation, and stimulate collaborative research and scholarship.

This book explores the international legal framework developed by UNESCO to identify and protect world heritage and its implementation at the national level. Drawing on close policy analysis of UNESCO's major documents, extensive professional experience at UNESCO, as well as in-depth analyses of case studies from Asia, Europe, and Latin America, Sophia Labadi offers a nuanced discussion of the constitutive role of national understandings of a universalist framework. The discussion departs from considerations of the World Heritage Convention as Eurocentric and offers a more complex analysis of how official narratives relating to non-European and non-traditional heritage mark a subversion of a dominant and canonical European representation of heritage. It engages simultaneously with a diversity of discourses across the humanities and social sciences and with related theories pertaining not only to tangible and intangible heritage, conservation, and archaeology but also political science, social theory, tourism and development studies, economics, cultural, and gender studies. In doing so, it provides a critical review of many key concepts, including tourism, development, sustainability, intangible heritage, and authenticity.

This book has been initiated by the workshop on Cultural heritage in changing landscapes, held during the IALE (International Association for Landscape Ecology) European Conference that started in Stockholm, Sweden, in June 200 1 and continued across the Baltic to Tartu, Estonia, in JUly. The papers presented at the workshop have been supported by invited contributions that address a wider range of the cultural heritage management issues and research interfaces required to study cultural landscapes. The book focuses on landscape interfaces. Both the ones we find out there in the landscape and the ones we face while doing research. We hope that this book helps if not to make use of these interfaces, then at least to map them and bridge some of the gaps between them. The editors wish to thank those people helping us to assemble this collection. First of all our gratitude goes to the authors who contributed to the book. We would like to thank Marc Antrop, Mats Widgren, Roland Gustavsson, Marion Pots chin, Barbel Tress, Tiina Peil, Helen Soovali and Anu Printsmann for their quick and helpful advice, opinions and comments during the different stages of editing. Helen Soovali and Anu Printsmann together with Piret Pungas - thank you for technical help.

The traditional patterns of land use that have created many of the world's cultural landscapes contribute to biodiversity, support ecological processes, provide important environmental services, and have proven sustainable over the centuries. Protected landscapes can serve as living models of sustainable use of land and resources, and offer important lessons for sustainable development. Examples of these landscapes and the diverse strategies needed to maintain this essential relationship between people and the land are provided.

Preservation has traditionally focused on saving prominent buildings of historical or architectural significance. Preserving cultural landscapes-the combined fabric of the natural and man-made environments-is a relatively new and often misunderstood idea among preservationists, but it is of increasing importance. The essays collected in this volume-case studies that include the Little Tokyo neighborhood in Los Angeles, the Cross Bronx Expressway, and a rural island in Puget Sound-underscore how this approach can be fruitfully applied. Together, they make clear that a cultural landscape perspective can be an essential underpinning for all historic preservation projects. Contributors: Susan Calafate Boyle, National Park Service; Susan Buggey, U of Montreal; Michael Caratzas, Landmarks Preservation Commission (NYC); Courtney P. Fint, West Virginia Historic Preservation Office; Heidi Hohmann, Iowa State U; Hillary Jenks, USC; Randall Mason, U Penn; Robert Z. Melnick, U of Oregon; Nora Mitchell, National Park Service; Julie Riesenweber, U of Kentucky; Nancy Rottle, U of Washington; Bonnie Stepenoff, Southeast Missouri State U. Richard Longstreth is professor of American civilization and director of the graduate program in historic preservation at George Washington University.