Heritages’ management and operative strategies on the Alto Douro Wine region, Portugal

Abstract

The main objective of this work is to analyse the operative strategies of cultural landscapes such as policies, legislation/regulation, tourism, etc. The study subject is specifically, the landscapes that have strong rural and patrimonial characteristics. The main question is to assess if the used policies and initiatives are sustainable for the communities and local interests. Since 2001, the Alto Douro Wine Region has the UNESCO World Heritage status, and is thus regarded as a suitable case study that presents the opportunity to evaluate the pliability of the used strategies. In order to answer to the goal stated previously, the used methodology has two main parts: i) a theoretical framework concerning cultural landscape narrative; ii) the analysis of the various documents and studies available related to the Alto Douro Wine Region, in the period between the pre-candidature until the present. It is a qualitative method based approach, providing the definition of guidelines that can be hereafter applicable on other cultural landscapes that are not classified by UNESCO.