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- Towards integrating rural vernacular settlements in urban regions: a study of Algarve, PortugalPublication . Costa, Miguel Reimão; Batista, DesidérioThis paper deals with the vernacular settlements that often exist in the fringes of urban centres and their adaptations and absorptions within the expansions of the urban regions. In many parts of the world, the processes of urban expansions that began with the industrial revolution often led to the integration of rural settlements previously located in the outer rings of cities through adaptations that naturally took place at that time. In the recent decades however, this has become more arbitrary and in many cases have led to the loss of value of agricultural land, vernacular settlements and buildings of significant heritage values. Antagonisms have developed between the urban and rural areas and the value of vernacular settings have played little role in urban metropolitan planning. Studies of such situations can reveal how vernacular buildings and hamlets could be integrated to urban areas with appropriate development techniques. In such situations, the rural vernacular buildings and settings need to be protected; enabling them to acquire in the diffuse cities the significance that the historic centers achieved in the traditional compact cities, especially in the second half of the twentieth century. In fact, if the conventional antagonism between city and country had become less significant, the vernacular patrimony – as the ecological systems or the old rural paths and property structure – has to be considered as core considerations in urban planning. This paper argues, in this context, that one should make a distinction between the dispersion patterns and the agglomeration patterns in that they raise different questions in the land use transformations. In order to facilitate the integration of peri-urban vernacular values in metropolitan contexts, it proposes an urban development model based on heritage and landscape which assumes the relevance of appropriating the ecological and cultural structure of landscape as a basic concept of urbanization. To understand some of the issues inherent in this process, the paper looks at the lower Algarve in southern Portugal. The vernacular settlements in this area becomes important due to the fact that the present regional and municipal plans constrain the building process outside the compact urban areas to those existing rural settlements in its fringe areas.
- The process of landscape (trans)formation: a methodology for sustainable intervention in contemporary landscapePublication . Batista, Desidério; Costa, Miguel ReimãoResulting from two different evolutionary processes - 4000 million years of biological changes and the cultural process of human inhabitation of the planet - landscape makes evident the level of integration of its natural and cultural dimensions. The cultural context (ensuing from the transformations imposed by human population) affects the natural environment and the overall construction of landscape. For centuries, the relationship between society and territory was harmonious and balanced, producing urban, rural and natural constructed landscapes which were not only attractive and productive, but formed a core part of our shared heritage and the basis for our European identity. More recently, however, sectarian and utilitarian visions ruled by the principles of easy and maximum profit have become prevalent, side-by-side with new dominant trends of human intervention which have assisted in the adulteration and degradation of landscape. If a more sustainable approach to the organisation of contemporary landscape is to be defined, this will have to be based on the in-depth knowledge of its values, dynamics, problems and contradictions. This approach will have to jointly consider the landscape’s natural and cultural aspects in the planning process and use both of these dimensions for the definition of the objectives presiding landscape preservation and transformation. Only such a methodology, which respects the heritage and identity of landscape, can be said to foster the long-term development of both society and nature. In the context of the changeable dynamics typical of contemporary landscapes, this article contributes to the formulation of an intervention methodology based on an ecological and cultural reading of the landscape in order to apply the method used in landscape ecology to the conurbation of central Algarve coast.