1. The Cultural Landscape and Heritage Paradox. Protection and Development of the Dutch Archaeological-Historical Landscape and its European Dimension

Safeguarding Cultural Heritage in the Urban Fringe: The Role of Legibility

“…A biographical landscape approach is applicable to describe the life history of an object and how it is part of different contexts through time and ascribed different meanings (Holtorf, 1998;Kopytoff, 1986). These two perspectives are also called a past versus a future oriented perspective (Bloemers, 2010). In a past perspective, setting maybe best suited to describe a larger type of a monument or site, whereas for the future perspective, we need knowledge of the past in the present landscape rather than the past in itself (Fairclough & van Londen, 2010).…”

“…Cultural heritage, according to this perspective, should be recognised as a feature in the present-day landscapes (Bloemers, 2010;Burström, 2001;Herring, 2012;Holtorf, 1998;Holtorf & Williams, 2006). An example of this is present in the Sarpsborg area at upper Kulås.…”

Heritage planning and spatial development in the Netherlands: changing policies and perspectives

“…According to the authors of the memorandum, 'preservation by development' required closer collaboration between planning and designing disciplines that were oriented at the future without paying attention to the past, and historians who only had interest in preservation of relics of the past without looking at the future. To facilitate such collaboration, the term 'cultural planning' came into vogue for a time (Bloemers andVan der Valk 2004, Vervloet et al 2005).…”

Digging in the past: New conceptual models in landscape history and their relevance in peri-urban landscapes

“…Landscape biographies show similarities with the British method of Historic Landscape Characterisation (HLC), but the latter focuses on the material landscape and is more of an implementation method (Clark et al, 2004). Based on the geographical ideas of geographer Samuels and anthropologists Kopytoff and Appadurai, a group of Dutch researchers has further developed and tested the idea that cultural landscapes bear the multilayered imprint of numerous generations of human "authors": landscape as a palimpsest (Bloemers et al, 2010). For a thorough understanding of these landscapes, we should not only investigate the physical remains of these "handwritings", but also the social backgrounds and cultural history of their authors.…”

“…However, none of these landscapes has been created "from scratch" -they all have history that might assist in creating sustainable periurban landscapes -if these are possible at all -and in teaching lessons. During the last five years the landscape biography concept has been shown to be a useful element of Dutch rural planning, especially in communicative planning processes and landscape management plans (Bloemers et al, 2010). It has shown that periurban landscapes contain an interesting mix of so-called traditional autochthonous inhabitants such as farmers who are very open to landscape change, whereas newcomers like commuters are much more conservative with regard to landscape change.…”