Village Landscape Research Articles

Het Voornse Berkenrijs: van keizerlijk hakhout tot caravanopslag

Berkenrijs on Voorne: from imperial coppice to caravan park Berkenrijs means ‘birch coppice’, which was formerly used for the periodic harvesting of branches and twigs. On Voorne, ‘Berkenrijs’ is a field name that appears in records and on maps from the Middle Ages onwards. Now there are still street names: Berkenrijs, Berkenrijspad and Berkenrijsweg, all near the old Limiet between the former lordships of Rockanje and Oostvoorne. There is no longer any birch wood to be found here, but there is a single row of alders. If the land had remained the property of large landowners, coppices along the inner dune fringe would have often turned into standing wood, such as on the Voorne estates of Mildenburg and Kranenhout. After the old imperial estate Berkenrijs was given an agricultural purpose, probably not until the 20th century, it even ended up as a caravan park. In the protected village landscape established by the state (Ontginningen Voornes Duin, 2017), Berkenrijs appears to be a blind spot.

What Collapsed in 1177?

What Collapsed in 1177?

Cartography and Landscape of Agrarian Colonisation Villages in Spain during the 20th Century: Graphic Recording and Reconstruction of the Productive Territory, the Case of El Chaparral (Granada)

The Spanish domestic colonisation of the 20th century was a major territorial management and planning project which followed a policy of recovering agricultural land and making it habitable, emulating different international innovative collective models for rural exploitation. In Spain, this led to the creation of approximately three hundred colonisation villages between 1939 and 1977 which, along with their landscapes, represented a comprehensive vision of land intervention, transformed following minimal energy criteria and making use of pre-existing elements and infrastructures. The proposals of this ambitious project already incorporated ideas which later formed the basis of the modern theories of ecological and landscape urbanism and geodesign. This paper presents cartographic research based on the reconstruction of the landscape before and after this operation, following an overlay-mapping methodology applied to the colonised area of El Chaparral (Granada), which provides an extraordinary overview of the territorial transformation process carried out at different scales. The work concludes that the success of the Spanish domestic colonisation model for comprehensive agrarian planning lies in its multiscale and multidisciplinary perspective, which was developed in continuity with and in a way that was respectful of the characteristics and elements of the landscape. For these main reasons, its approaches are valid for future agroecological developments, and the colonisation villages are a valuable model of rural habitability to be updated.

Comprehensive study of the toponymic landscape of the local territory: the area of the Ryazan villages of Dyadkovo and Vyshgorod

The subject of the study is the toponymy of the Ryazan district of the Ryazan region, which belongs to one of the concentration zones of the Old Russian toponymy of the region. The purpose of the study is a comprehensive survey of the toponymic landscape of the Ryazan villages of Dyadkovo – Vyshgorod with the identification of the most ancient layer of local names, their linguistic and chronological attribution. The sources of the material are Russian chronicles, scribal books, historical and modern topographic maps, as well as data from the author's toponymic expedition of 2021. In the analysis of the material, etymological, structural-semantic, formant, areal methods, the method of comparing linguistic, archaeological, geographical and historical data are used. The novelty of the research lies in the collection and systematization of the modern toponymy of the studied area, a comprehensive description of the Old Russian group of toponyms, identification of links with the territories of earlier Slavic settlement. It is established that the toponymy of this area does not reveal traces of a toponymic substrate, which indicates that the territory was fully developed in the past by the ancient Russian population. The etymology of the names is related to the traditional Slavic geographical terminology (city ‘fortified settlement’, Vyshegorod ‘fortified settlement on a hill’ or ‘city laid upstream from another city’, bystrets ‘small river with a fast current’, raka ‘river with a narrow channel and high steep banks'), Slavic terms kinship or Old Russian namesake (uncle "father's or mother's brother", personal name Uncle). The existing etymologies of names that go back to geographical terms are confirmed by the geographical realities of the area. The appellatives of Ryazan toponyms reveal areal connections with the territories of the basins of the Dnieper, Dniester, Desna, the Carpathian zone, and toponyms – with the Kiev toponymy. The study confirms the importance of conducting toponymic expeditions in the comprehensive study of the toponymic landscape of local territories, even taking into account temporary changes in relief, fauna and hydrographic network. The results of the study are of interest for historical lexicography, regional and interregional toponymy, toponymic cartography.

농촌마을 빈집의 활용방안에 관한 연구 - 김제 하천마을 중심으로 -

Currently the population of rural areas in Korea continue to decline due to low birth rate, aging population, and migration. This phenomenon is accelerated over time. And as a result, there are some declining phenomenon in rural society. And it is same in the residential and basic living conditions of rural villages. The increase ratio of empty houses exacerbates the rural landscape, acts as a cause of crime and bring out various social and economic problems such as worsening settlement conditions and local slums. The study is carried out to prevent this phenomenon by investigating the architectural contents of empty houses in the village, surveyed residents and owners and finally analyzed and synthesized to make a plan to utilize empty houses in the village. This study was conducted from June to December 2021. The conclusions are followings: 1. The empty houses in Korea were 1,511 million in 2020, 8.2% of the total number of houses, whereas those in Jeollabuk-do were 95,412, 12.9% of those of houses, and those in Gimje-city, the subject of this study, were 5,944. It is up to 15.8%. In particular, empty houses in Hacheon village, the site of this study, accounted for the highest ratio, with 25% of the total number of houses. 2. To understand the utilization and improvement of empty houses, surveys and interviews were conducted to residents and owners of Hacheon village in Gimje, and most of the residents submit proposals that empty houses were not desirable in terms of village landscape and safety. The owners don’t have intentions of selling or leasing them. They want to remodel them and rent for a specific period. 3. As the physical condition of the empty houses(9empty houses) 6 empty houses of them are good. 4 of them are in poor condition. 4. By synthesizing these contents, nine empty houses in Hacheon village will be remodeled as the space for those of rural start-up young people, smart farm area, community space and rental housings for rural returnees.

Application of the building cohesion method in spatial planning to shape patterns of the development in a suburban historical landscape of a 'village within Kraków'

This paper focuses on the impact of urban and suburban spread on the preservation of the cultural heritage and landscape of suburban villages with historical cores. It is a case study of a once village of Bronowice Małe the rural structure of which has been listed as a protected heritage site by the municipality. The area is under a severe development pressure because of its attractive location within Kraków’s city limits. Extensive historical studies determined the archetypical Bronowice-style house, which is a modern continuum of traditional wooden architecture in the area, referred to as the Bronowice-style cottage. With the typical features of the archetype defined, the authors developed an original method, a combination of field survey and numeric taxonomy to assess the percentage consistency of new housing buildings with traditional building standards in Bronowice Małe. The results show that despite legal protection with local acts of law and listing of the area as a heritage site, the development pressure in the area is extreme. Housing estates are constructed illegally and at variance with the character of buildings that make up the historical core of the village. The field research identified dynamic growth in multi-family buildings even though the local spatial development plan provides for single-family housing only. The results have demonstrated that the proposed method for assessing development consistency with the traditional standard is universal. It significantly streamlines work with cultural heritage and with developing local spatial development plans. It further builds awareness among residents, planners, and administration officers regarding improved protection of cultural heritage

Understanding children’s preferences: developing ecological literacy in the village landscape

ABSTRACT Children’s experiences with nature may develop ecological literacy and enhance their psychological well-being. However, a limited understanding of how the village landscape has functional impacts on the children’s play behaviour and perceptual performances can influence ecological literacy. This study investigated children’s preferences in the village landscape stimulated by their play behaviour and knowledge, which becomes a basis for ecological literacy. Seventy-one responses from middle-aged children were elicited using drawings and go-along methods. Data were analysed using NVivo 12 Plus for content analysis. The results revealed that children who preferred being outdoors were associated with play activities, which directly influenced ecological literacy. The findings showed that the children were related to the wilderness, interspecific relations with animals and plants, physical work, recreation and socialising, rurality and natural beauty. The children expressed a strong affiliation to their everyday environment in which the village landscape became a milieu for ecological literacy.

Exploring Visualisation Methodology of Landscape Design on Rural Tourism in China

Rural tourism has become a hot topic in China in the context of the nation’s rural revitalisation. Rural tourism allows tourists to experience local life and promotes local economic development. However, there is considerable controversy over the landscape design of ancient Chinese villages. Many problems, such as how to design and protect the landscape of these ancient villages and how to improve the tourist experience, are not resolved. For our research object, we selected the ancient Gaotiankeng Village in Kaihua County, Zhejiang Province. Using questionnaires, image interviews, and some user experience techniques such as mental maps, we collected user experience data by assessing design cases. The visualisation method presented a wide range of experience in the landscape and planning field. This study primarily used computer image processing, image entropy calculation, and colour mapping to process the data. A visualisation framework was defined to highlight the landscape aesthetics, landscape service, and tourists’ emotion. The results indicated the relationship of three elements. The objective of our study was to develop a method of landscape design and planning that can effectively enhance tourists’ experience and provide practical suggestions for rural landscapes and relatively better services.

Artificial Intelligence in the Protection and Inheritance of Cultural Landscape Heritage in Traditional Village

To continue to protect and inherit the cultural landscape heritage of traditional villages, starting from the perspective of artificial intelligence (AI), literature review methods are used, and related theories are collected. Then, Wuyuan County in Jiangxi Province in the traditional villages is taken as the research object. By analyzing the tourism income of this place from 2016 to 2020, the overall income of this county is relatively good. In fact, due to the weak protection of traditional villages in Wuyuan County, the lack of supervision awareness, the implementation of the “immigrant and relocation” policy, and the backward thinking of residents, the cultural landscape of traditional villages has collapsed and destroyed. Up to now, there are 113 ancient ancestral temples, 28 ancient mansion houses, 36 ancient private houses, 187 ancient bridges, and only 12 ancient villages. Finally, AI technology is applied to the cultural landscape of traditional villages. Through image restoration technology, traditional villages can be restored to a certain extent. Intelligent positioning and radio frequency (RF) technology can also realize real-time monitoring of traditional villages from the perspective of weather and service life to achieve the purpose of protecting cultural landscape heritage. Therefore, AI technology is applied in the protection and inheritance of traditional village cultural landscape heritage, which has great reference significance for the management of various historical and cultural heritage.

Rural Architectural Planning and Landscape Optimization Design under the Background of Ecological Environment Protection.

The ecological problems faced by China's environmental protection are becoming more and more serious. Serious haze occurs frequently in some areas. Water pollution, soil pollution, and other new types of pollution are still relatively prominent problems. Therefore, rural architectural planning and landscape optimization design should be based on the premise of ecological environmental protection. This paper puts forward the evaluation of rural architectural planning and landscape in the context of ecological environment protection and uses the analytic hierarchy process to analyze and obtain the evaluation results. This method has a comprehensive and scientific powerful evaluation function. The experimental results of this paper show that after the evaluation of the analytic hierarchy process, it is found that the comprehensive score of the architectural planning and landscape of village A is not very high. The highest weight is 0.3210, the landscape diversity score of street A is 1.28, and the landscape diversity score of street D is 1.76. This is the highest score, indicating that the architectural planning and landscape of the village cannot meet the needs of contemporary ecological environmental protection. Aiming at the problems existing in the landscape, the corresponding measures are also given at the end of the experiment, which has certain significance for the landscape optimization design.

Spatial Distribution Characteristics of Ethnic Traditional Villages Based on Schema Language

With the rapid development of new rural construction, industrialization and urbanization in recent years, traditional villages in many areas appear to be hollowing out, or replaced by modern elements, and the number of traditional villages is decreasing. Through the analysis of the spatial layout of Zhagana Village, it is found that in the process of adapting to the needs of life and natural environment, the elements and spatial structure of traditional villages have been continuously modified under the joint influence of human and natural factors. The spatial layout of traditional villages shows very high consistency, integrity and adaptability. It provides guarantee for the planning and protection of village landscape and sustainable development of villages.

Ecosystem services in Sahelian village landscapes 1952–2016: estimating change in a data scarce region

Burkina Faso and the wider Sahel region have experienced substantial changes in rainfall, population, and landscape use. These changes have altered ecosystem services, the benefits that people receive from ecosystems, and rural livelihoods. However, it is difficult to assess the magnitude of these changes because of missing and fragmented social, agricultural, and ecological data. We estimated changes in 10 key provisioning ecosystem services in rural Burkina Faso between 1952 and 2016. We used a simple model of plausible social-ecological changes to make a historical extrapolation that bridges these data gaps, and assessed historical changes. Our approach combined the interpretation of historic aerial photographs and satellite images, with field observations and interviews. We applied the approach for six villages in two administrative regions for six points in time. We modeled the use of historic ecosystems by analyzing a range of estimates of changes in the generation of each service and its value to people. We found that cultivated ecosystem services have increased 1.5–23 times over the study period, while the non-cultivated ecosystem services firewood, construction material, and medicine have decreased to 66–20% of their previous values. Per capita production of cultivated ecosystem services has remained relatively stable, while the per capita production of all other ecosystem services has decreased, to 54–11% of their 1952 values. Although alternatives are available for some ecosystem services, such as medicine and construction material, there are currently limited alternatives available for other services, such as firewood. Decline in wild food availability and consumption is likely to reduce the nutritional value of rural people’s food. Our analysis of changes demonstrates that shrubs and trees on fields generate many ecosystem services that are key to rural livelihoods, and that efforts to enhance crop yields should maintain shrubs and trees. Our approach for estimating historical ecosystem services may also be useful to apply in other data scarce regions.

Color Extraction and Replacement of Traditional Water Town Landscape Based on Visual Perception Theory—— Take Zhujia Village in Shijiu Lake, Lishui, Nanjing as an Example

Color is one of the important carriers in traditional village composition, which reflects the characteristic culture of village. It embodies the local attributes and characteristics of a village, carries the unique regional culture, and shapes the rural civilization. At the same time, the color of rural landscape also has strong regional characteristics, which is the external expression of rural landscape style, history and culture. This paper attempts to deeply interpret the color of rural landscape from the perspective of visual perception theory, focusing on the components of the color of traditional water towns. The thesis also extracts and designs the landscape colors of the traditional water village Zhujia Village, so as to build a traditional water village landscape integrating historical culture, fishing culture and multi-function. By analyzing the application of landscape colors in Zhujia Village, the thesis aims to create a beautiful and harmonious traditional water village habitat space.

Landscape plasticity and its erasure

For centuries, people who call themselves Akha had formed village landscapes of rotating shifting cultivation fields amid regenerating trees together with enduring wooded sites, all under the purview of their ancestors. In Mengsong, an Akha settlement on the ridge separating China and Burma, farmers had managed complex, biodiverse and flexible landscapes for 250 years. In 1996–1997, my extended research there identified cultivation patterns that I called landscape plasticity, referring to farming practices that were highly mutable over space and time, often transgressing state-allocated property lines and the international border with Burma. From 1997 to 2011, a combination of exclusionary state forest policies, the racialization of upland minorities, and a state poverty alleviation project brought landscape plasticity and the ancestors to an end. Using concepts from sentient landscapes, resource access, environmentalism, racialization, and capitalist markets, this paper seeks to explain how landscape plasticity and the ancestors were erased. At the same time, I explore the puzzle of why Akha farmers saw these contingent outcomes as positive

Retraction Note to: Spatial distribution of mountain soil environment and traditional village landscape based on image simulation

Retraction Note to: Spatial distribution of mountain soil environment and traditional village landscape based on image simulation

Traditional Village Landscape Integration Based on Social Network Analysis: A Case Study of the Yuan River Basin in South-Western China

Traditional rural Chinese landscapes have fragmented from the impact of rapid urbanisation and modernisation. Aiming to address this tough issue, the Chinese central government proposed the Traditional Villages Project, which is top-down traditional village management and conservation policy. A traditional village landscape network (TVLN) can be used to integrate rural landscapes and ensure the unified protection of natural and cultural landscapes. This paper aimed to establish a method of building a TVLN through three main steps: the calculation of the connection strength of traditional villages, calculation of the tie strength between traditional villages, and establishment of a TVLN. The results demonstrated the rich layers and stable structure of the Yuan River Basin’s TVLN, but there was a hidden risk in its stability due to the existence of tangent and isolated points. This TVLN quantitatively examined the characteristics and relationships of traditional villages and provided data support for the approval of traditional villages and protection policy formulation. A TVLN can support the overall conservation of traditional village landscapes, enhance their comprehensive value, and promote the sustainable management and cross-regional protection of traditional village landscapes.

Decoding Rural Space Reconstruction Using an Actor-Network Methodological Approach: A Case Study from the Yangtze River Delta, China

Using actor-network theory (ANT), this paper explores the process and mechanisms of rural space reconstruction in China in the post-urbanization era. In the context of urban–rural integration development in China, villages have become diversified. They are not only the living spaces of villagers, but they are also consumption spaces of urban residents. Through a case study of a typical village in the Yangtze River Delta, this study highlights that the actor-network of rural spatial reconstruction includes heterogeneous actors, such as the village committee, villagers, governments, tourism enterprises, makers, housing, and landscape—among which the Lishui Government is the key actor. Therefore, this paper argues that China’s rural space reconstruction is greatly dependent on external resources such as government policy support or enterprise investment. In the future, promoting public participation will be necessary to realize villages’ endogenous transformation and development.

Adaptive reuse of local buildings in Sapa, Vietnam for cultural tourism development towards sustainability

Literature shows that adaptive reuse must consider vernacular architecture. For a tourism town like Sapa and its neighbouring villages in Vietnam, which is characterised with diverse terrain and climate conditions, adaptive reuse of housing regarding vernacular architecture needs to be addressed as sustainable local cultural values to attract tourists, especially foreign tourists. This paper, using data collected from 5 neighboring villages of Sapa, has investigated the villages’ residence characteristics, customs, and traditional house building designs styles and types of villages. A triangular approach of historical approach, systematic approach and the interdisciplinary approach has been adopted for the research to discover, consolidate and promote the values of village landscape and traditional housing. The proposed approach ensures villages retain their traditional indigenous state by building the image of traditional buildings encouraging concentrated living, and implementing concentrated tourism by village. Small sized areas can adopt small types of tourist accommodation. Both adaptation to climate and environmental change and adaptation to the deep intervention of technology in life need to be considered. The proposals will not only help protect the special values of Sapa, but also make good use of new development opportunities.

The use of LiDAR in reconstructing the pre‐World War II landscapes of abandoned mountain villages in southern Poland

AbstractThe cessation of most human activities resulting from post‐World War II expulsions and forced displacements in Central Europe triggered massive land cover transformation in mountainous areas. However, many pre‐War traces of past landscapes have survived—imprinted in microtopography—in permanently abandoned villages. Currently, they constitute unique cultural heritage of communities no longer in existence. Our main goal was therefore to reconstruct a lost cultural landscape of mountain villages abandoned after World War II (WWII). The case study area comprised three such villages located in southern Poland, two in the Carpathians and one in the Sudetes. We used the national airborne light detection and ranging (LiDAR) dataset combined with archival cadastral maps and field survey to detect man‐made microtopographic features related to past boundaries, road network, agriculture and buildings and to interpret them in the landscape context. We demonstrated that the pre‐War human footprint left in relief was shaped largely by past landownership divisions, land use and environmental constraints (related to lithology, soils and topography). Our secondary goal was to assess the value and application opportunities of LiDAR in reconstructing past landscapes. We showed that 38–70% of non‐natural parcel boundaries and 65–79% of roads marked on mid‐19th‐century cadastral maps are still detectable using LiDAR. Therefore, we argue that the past landscape pattern, originating in late Middle Ages and subsequently transformed prior to WWII, remains well preserved in the relief and that LiDAR is an effective tool to reconstruct a past landscape of mountain villages abandoned after WWII. We also confirmed that customized LiDAR visualizations are more informative than ready‐to‐use shaded digital elevation models (DEMs), in particular when integrated with cadastral and field‐based data. We conclude that the greatest advantage of LiDAR is the capacity to provide a landscape context for isolated traces of past human activity, allowing for the reconstruction of entire spatial patterns and interrelationships developed by past societies.

민속마을 문화재구역 내 건축물 보존현황에 관한 조사연구 - 제주 성읍마을의 성외지역을 대상으로 -

This study aimed to analyze the current status of preservation of buildings in the Cultural Heritage Zone of folk village. Since actual residents inhabit and live in cultural properties, for instance a folk village, so their original forms have been changed over time responding to changes of the social environment. So this present study selected one folk village, located in the largest cultural heritage zone and lived most resident in our country, after which investigated its deformation process. This study also conducted in-depth analysis relying on the data collected from aerial photographs, field surveys, building ledgers. In particular, such analysis focused on changes in unauthorized alteration to the existing state that have been attempted so far. As a result, various variations were found in a number of buildings, caused from damages to landscape of cultural assets. Finally, the reasons for such deformation were interpreted to utilize as future references for restoration of the folk village landscape.