'Institutional’ vs ‘everyday’ landscape as conflicting concepts in opinions and practices. Reflections and perspectives from a case study in Northeastern Italy

This paper originates from a contribution to the Conference “Crisi dei paesaggi, paesaggi della crisi. Quali vie d’uscita?” [Crisis of landscapes, landscapes of crisis. Which ways out?] held in Cagliari (Italy) in December, 2014. It focuses on the distance that exists today among the different approaches used to address the issue of landscape and the different ideas connected to the landscape concept. Starting from a model that schematises this distance in its different facets, the paper focuses on two of them, the “spatial” and the “social” dimensions, and outlines two landscape concepts, provocatively in opposition. On the one hand it identifies the “institutional landscape”, explicitly recognised but of limited spatial extension and ruled by an elite; on the other hand the “everyday landscape”, of which there is often little awareness, that encompasses the whole territory and is managed by the whole community. The European Landscape Convention, which refers explicitly to the landscape as “an essential component of people’s surroundings!” does not definitely solve this antithesis and bridge the gap between the two approaches. The results of research activity in a case study in North-eastern Italy confirmed the co-existence of these two opposite concepts in the relationships local people build with their place of life. Perceived landscape values and opinions of laypeople can be referred to the problematic practices and approaches that have intensely changed the landscape in that area and used to interpret them. An increase of awareness of different sets of values existing in a landscape seems the most appropriate strategy to overcome the opposition between the two landscape ideas and the questions of landscape change, through a wide process of “landscape literacy”, focused to the acquisition of a way to “look at” the landscape and to act responsibly on it.