Special session:
LANDSCAPE AND URBAN SUSTAINABILITY: DISCUSSING THE NATURAL AND SOCIO-CULTURAL FACTORS, IN A POSITIVE OR NEGATIVE MOOD
Dr. Konstantinos Moraitis
Professor Emeritus N.T.U.A.
Content:
We could not discuss and afford sustainability, place-centered sustainability in particular, outside the socio-cultural factors implied by it.
It is in this context of a combined cultural landscape that the natural and social approaches are intensively associated. Cultural landscape in urban or extra-urban formations presents the necessary coexistence, the necessary combination of both groups of influence: no natural ‘more than human’ landscape factor may exist outside the consequences of social and cultural impact. What kind of impact, what kind of influence, nevertheless? Material or immaterial, real or imaginary, positive or negative?
Is landscape interest associated with the ‘flourishing’ of positive cultural apperception, of the ‘emerald necklaces’ and green ‘park movement’ imagery, or with the terrifying aspect of a decaying natural or urban terrifying landscape? Did ‘Les Fleurs du Mal – The Flowers of Evil’ by Charles Baudelaire, blossom in the same urban landscape of the Parisian 19th century parks’ positive intervention? Conclusively: how can we critically comment on the negative social imaginary, or enforce the positive social correlation with natural peri-urban landscape and, especially, with urban public landscape?
Key Words: Cultural landscape, cultural sustainability, political sustainability, urban public space, real space social contact, virtual space guidance.