Geographies of the South. The Study of the Rural Landscape in Portugal: Southern Unicity in Patterns and Changing Functions

Abstract

The landscape is the result of a complex and dynamic system where natural and cultural factors interact, perceived in a particular way by each observer. In Southern Europe, this interaction is particularly complex due to a detailed mosaic of natural conditions and a long history of human occupation. This complexity has been accentuated in recent decades, by overlapping multiple functions in the landscape or a successive replacement of some functions by others, not known before. In the South the multiple landscape functions are not segregated in space and time, but overlap and interconnect in the same space and at the same time, refecting a hybridity formerly related to agriculture and now related also to other uses of the landscape. Thus, to understand the landscape, the description and classifcation of the pattern of spatial elements proves to be insuffcient. In this chapter we describe the multiple changes ongoing in Southern European rural landscapes and the drivers that need to be considered to understand such changes, ranging from that hybridity to urban-rural and local-global linkages. The chapter proposes adaptive conceptual models to interpret the ongoing changes and fnishes by raising awareness to the complex drivers now at play, which require novel management paradigms, if the character of the landscape is to be preserved.