THE AESTHETIC VALUE OF SOCIO-CULTURAL IDENTITIES AND THE CULTURAL DIMENSION OF THE LANDSCAPE

Lazaros Elias Mavromatidis

doi:10.5719/hgeo.2012.62.15

Abstract

This paper summarizes an individual theoretical study on how the landscape could be shaped by economic globalization and political restructuring. Providing a socio-cultural approach to the landscape notion I am trying to discover through the international literature the subjective dimension on landscape definition, in order to understand its 'cultural dimension'. In this paper, the notion of 'virtual landscape' is introduced in order to investigate the incoherence that exists in the nowadays megacities regarding their social reality and their iconic existence through architecture and urban planning. In addition, it is also explored in theory how an ideological turn is re-inforced through political orientation focusing on 'virtual landscape' images in order to obtain a favorable publicity in a contemporary context of 'globalised cities' consisting in the elimination of the 'cultural landscape'. Therefore, this contribution has as main objective to define, negotiate and start the debate on radical socio-cultural approaches of landscape notion in the nowadays 'megacities', inside a strict capitalist context.

Highlights

Urban iconic dimension deals with the need to define the abstract term ‘landscape’, in order to understand in which degree the economic and political context can influence a city’s structure and texture
Geographers by theorizing the human visual perception firstly gave to the term ‘landscape’ a direct connection with the natural elements of the space
As a conclusion of the above literature study, what else could be a ‘cultural landscape’ in a contemporary city if not the assimilation of the ethnic, social, gender, economical and local characteristics on a built environment manufactured by human beings? The socio-cultural identity and the non-economic factors interact with the built environment and are transformed into image by architecture and urban planning

Summary

Introduction

Urban iconic dimension deals with the need to define the abstract term ‘landscape’, in order to understand in which degree the economic and political context can influence a city’s structure and texture. Geographers by theorizing the human visual perception firstly gave to the term ‘landscape’ a direct connection with the natural elements of the space. For example Beza, claims that the general term of landscape is flexible in use, referring to ‘constructed and natural environments, macro-scales and micro-scales and physical and cognitive concepts’ (Beza 2010). Therewith, the above mentioned definitions don’t underline the subjectivity of the human visual perception and ignore the presence of social structures inside the ‘landscape field of study’. Kant had given a subjective definition he underestimated the feeling perception by defining the landscape as a ‘construct of one’s cognition of what is being observed’ (Kant, [1790] 2000). The important issue in both of the above perceptions is that the ‘resulting perception is a reflection of culture and experiences and depends on whether one is a visitor or a native to an environment’ (Beza, 2010; Tuan, 1974)

LAZAROS ELIAS MAVROMATIDIS

Marketing and virtual image of contemporary cities