Conservation of Cultural and Historic Landscape of Walden Pond and Woods − With a Particular Focus on Socio-cultural Environment and Corresponding Activities

Abstract

Walden Pond and Woods, Massachusetts, U.S is an iconic destination, best known for Henry David Thoreau’s book-Walden (1854). Thoreau’s philosophy and the literal value of the book as well as the natural landscape of Walden inspired worldwide literature readers and numerous modern environmentalists. This unique cultural and historical landscape has a long history of conservation effort in various forms started as far back as 1800’s. As a result, now, 80 percent of Walden Woods is permanently preserved. This study focuses on the changing socio-cultural environments and corresponding activities by various stake holders. To clarify the factors that led to its success of today, primary source survey and hearings to the stakeholders were taken place. The study period from 1845 to 2016 is divided in 4phases by characteristic socio-cultural environments. In each phase, corresponding conservation activities were researched and clarified: Phase1 (1845 ~1921): Industrialization and population increase vs. individual activities; Phase2 (1922~1972): Economic growth and Middlesex County’s management policy vs. citizen group’s movement; Phase3 (1972~1987): Rise of environmental awareness vs. involvement of public agencies, policy and plan makings and public input; Phase4 (1988~2016): Suburbanization vs. WWP and continuous implementation of conservation plan. The clarified factors that lead to the success are 1) Common value of the place to empathy with 2) Diversity in stakeholders 3) Longterm and systematic conservation plan with both government and citizen’s participation