Crisis of landscapes, landscapes of the crisis: notes for a socio-ecological approach

Abstract

The paper focuses on relationships between landscape and the multi-faceted crisis of our times. We are in a time of crises, both for Western citizens (cultural, ecological, political, institutional and social crises) and for non-western citizens which can suffer humanitarian crises. Landscape crisis is entangled in a bundle of planetary crises, and the paper represents a tentative to outline a relational and “genetic†approach to this subject. Landscape crisis is rooted in an underlying territorial crisis, and the case of the crumbling of the Italian code of space is taken as an example. Pre-modern Italian landscape has been dismantled by the irruption of a growth-first paradigm and a “commodification†of the social system. In a globalising process, surrounding territories have lost importance for localised communities. Contextually, mechanised monocultures and industrialized metropolitan areas have reshaped the geographical features of territories, in Italy and on world scale. The landscape issue cannot therefore be detached  from an overall process of change from traditional to modern territorialities. The aim of this approach to landscapes and landscaping is to develop “healing procedures†to the present crisis, in the conviction that landscape cannot be saved alone. In fact, it is not possible to attain liveable landscapes without preserving at the same time our territories, our living planet and the natural commons essential to life.