Cultural Economy for the Environmental Preservation of the Landscape as a Key Resource in Historic Territories

Abstract

Sustainable production besides economic, energetic, and environmental aspects should consider social and cultural features of the territory in which it relies. This occurs above all for agriculture that is intrinsically related to the territory. Today, the territory as a landscape represents a complex eco-system (subjects, communities, traditions, cultures, and specific agricultural systems) and a valuable vehicle for art and history and it is also a strategic asset to defend and promote with environmental policies. The topic of urban preservation and regeneration has been increasing by opening up to other factors such as the engagement of local communities and the contribution they can give toward the development of the identity and the symbolic universe of every community especially for historic territories. The main research question of this study is: Can historic territories be described as the landscape of a complex eco-system able to support a new cultural policy? In addition, which type of connections between physical resources and the virtual-cultural ones of that landscape are strategic assets for promoting historic territories? This theoretical manuscript is oriented toward improving territorial policies. In more details, it tries to develop a new model to reach a “global community of creativity” as a bridge between the networks of historic territories, which is meant as roots of variety to transfer to future generations, and between local and global quality in an emergent landscape. In order to reach this new model, the local community and ecosystem capabilities require a multi-level connection among both art, science, and culture as well as nature, technology, and civic capability. The result is that the new model is able to share common goods, which are both internal and external. Following this path, it is urgent to develop policies in an emergent perspective that are able to combine artistic, ecological, environmental, and cultural assets. In particular, the goals are to: (i) explore the complex value of territorial contexts that develop/evolve from both a medium-term and long-term point of view that is not described by Gross Domestic Product (GDP) standard indicators, (ii) reach the suggestion of a continuous re-articulation of sectors of knowledge proposed by cultural resources, and (iii) highlight that cultural marketing is involved in the interpretation and transmission within a large network of participants, users, institutions, markets, virtual, and territorial places. The starting point is identified as the landscape of historic territory, but an important achievement will be to transfer the main results to other territories by studying specific case histories of urban and non-urban landscapes.