Characteristic Assessment and Cultural Landscape Conservation of Urug Indigenous Village

Abstract

Urug Indigenous Village is a traditional Sundanese village that still adheres to its local customs and wisdom. However, along with the development that happen in Urug Indigenous Village, the character of cultural landscape is feared to change and will result in loss of identity. The purpose of this study is to analyze the cultural landscape characteristics, to analyze significance value of cultural landscape, to analyze stakeholder perceptions about knowledge of cultural landscape characteristic, conservation priorities, and element of mental map, and also to formulate recommendations for conservation plans of Urug Indigenous Village. The method used in this research is description, spatial, and scoring method. The result shows that Urug Indigenous Village has unique characteristics in land use and activities, patterns of spatial organization, response to the natural environment, cultural traditions, circulation networks, boundary democrations, vegetation, building and structures, clusters, archeological sites, and small-scale elements. Urug Indigenous Village divided into three, that is Urug Lebak, Tengah, and Tonggoh. This distribution is based on differences in height of location and the implementation of traditional ceremonies. Urug Lebak belongs to high significance value of cultural landscape, while Urug Tengah and Urug Tonggoh belong to medium significance value of cultural landscape. According to the perception of stakeholders, the landscape character that characterize Urug as an Indigenous Village is cultural tradition’s. The characteristics of cultural landscape that need higher conservation prioritized are land use and activities. The most imaginary aspects are Gedong Ageung, tradisional houses, the main road, and Cidurian River. The conservation concept is to protect Urug Indigenous Village by maintaining and improving the characteristics. The conservation zone divided into two, that is core zone (Urug Lebak) and buffer zone (Urug Tengah and Tonggoh) with different conservation strategies.