Rileggendo un caso di studio nella città diffusa veneta: dimensione spaziale e dimensione sociale nelle percezioni del paesaggio

REINTERPRETING A CASE STUDY IN THE VENETIAN “CITTA’ DIFFUSA”. THE SPATIAL AND SOCIAL DIMENSION OF LANDSCAPE PERCEPTION The relationship between landscape and perceiver represents a central issue in landscape research. Its significance is demonstrated by theoretical reflections and empirical studies within the field of Geography and other disciplines, as well as by the remarks of the European Landscape Convention (2000) that additionally brought this question into play. Adopting Turri’s interpretation of landscape, in this study we consider landscape as an intermediary between a local community and its territory, as an “interface between doing and seeing what we are doing” (Turri, 1998, p.16). Turri, by suggesting the metaphor of landscape as a theater, interconnects, while distinguishing, two dimensions of the humanlandscape relationship: “humans as spectators” and “humans as actors” (ibid.). Therefore, we hypothesize that the way “humans as spectators” assign value to the landscape –through a process of perception in which filters and reference model act– profoundly influences their choices and behaviors, participating in landscape transformations and therefore assuming the role of “humans as actors”. If the relationship between individuals and landscape has been deeply explored in literature, the “collective” landscape perceptions of a community appear to be far less investigated. The role of the social interactions and shared experiences in establishing connections between the landscape and the community’s identity seems quite neglected, especially regarding the “everyday landscapes” remarked by the ELC. Aiming at exploring the link between the way people collectively assign value to the landscape and their shared behaviors that determine landscape transformations, this paper presents the results of two studies carried out during two different time periods. A first exploratory study, conducted over 2003 and 2005, in the Venetian central plain characterized by the phenomenon of urban sprawl (Castiglioni and Ferrario, 2007; Castiglioni and Ferrario, 2008), detected a gap between the inhabitants’ general idea of “landscape” and their actual relationship with their “place of life”. The inhabitants of this area did not identify the even existence of landscape in their everyday life place, however, at the same time, they did not reveal any disorientation or discomfort, manifesting a strong attachment to their place of living. In our interpretation, the inhabitants appear to have scarce awareness about the consequences of their role as “actors” who transform the landscape. Their role of “spectators”, instead, seems to be interpreted inattentively and often in a contradictory way.
These observations have raised additional questions: how do people assign values and meanings to their place of life? Is there any reference to their local practices in attributing values and meanings? How could we investigate the processes of value attribution related to the local scale? How the process of value attribution affects people’s behavior? Can the landscape be a pertinent concept when referring to everyday life places, raising awareness and improving the relationship between people and their surrounding environments? Furthermore, considering some of the remarks of the ELC, one may question: in what terms does the landscape represent an “important element of people’s quality life” and a “key element of individual and social well-being” in the context of ordinary places? To what extent do the inhabitants of the “città diffusa” aspire to “enjoy high quality landscapes” and “play an active part” in their transformation?
On the basis of these questions, a second su