NEWTON - Cultural heritage in landscape: planning for development in Turkey

As defined in the European Landscape Convention (now signed and ratified by Turkey and the UK), the concept of 'landscape' provides a way to bring cultural and natural heritage together in mutually-supportive ways. Landscape offers a global frame to address social and environmental challenges and to exploit the social, economic and environmental values of different types of heritage for social benefit. Landscape perspectives can be local and universal, personal and collective; they embrace both tangible and intangible heritage and have strong cross-sectoral connections to areas such as urban planning.

Landscapes underpin sense of place and identity: with careful management, they can transform people's quality of life. Although landscapes change constantly as a result of human actions and natural processes, researchers have not yet created spatial models at a large scale that provide detailed insights into historic landscape change. Such models could be used to understand fundamental issues such as the links between historical changes, intensification and climate change, and to inform planning for the future.

To do so, this project will develop emerging landscape characterisation methods that can be used across and between disciplines to address the challenges of environmental and social change through landscape. Leading specialists from
Turkey and the UK will work together with a team of Early Career Researchers (ECRs) to identify and address challenges facing societies in both countries through cultural heritage in landscape.

During the research programme the team will develop innovative practical methods to create positive impacts within 5-10 years. This is especially urgent in Turkey as quickening economic development and social change create unintended negative impacts including loss of landscape character and poor-quality landscapes. The partners will promote research using Historic Landscape Characterisation (HLC), an interdisciplinary technique developed in the UK and first piloted in Turkey by members of the team with the aim of informing positive landscape planning and management.

The project will be organised into five Work Packages (WPs) to develop and demonstrate the value of characterisation using GIS (Geographical Information Systems) for historic landscape research, public participation and landscape planning. The research programme will be focussed around two case-studies in Turkey in the regions of Izmir on the Aegean coast and Mersin on the Mediterranean. Each case-study will include detailed analysis of a large region (including all available modern/historic cartography, remote sensing and aerial photographic data), with targeted ecological and archaeological fieldwork (WP2); public engagement and participation to underpin interpretations of landscape value (WP3); and GIS-based modelling of scenarios informed by historic character analysis to develop methods for visualising and planning future landscapes (WP4).

The project will address these two fundamental challenges in the Turkish context:
1. To identify and implement effective methods for advocating positive landscape change based on a well-understood and clearly presented base of evidence that includes cultural heritage;
2. To create effective relationships between landscape researchers in different scientific disciplines, landscape planning policy and practical implementation in landscape management.

Targeted dissemination actions will promote the project's results to relevant audiences. Two conferences in Turkey are planned during the project's lifetime for delegates including landscape architects, landscape planers, archaeologists, academics, local government officials, and national government ministries and authorities. The tools we develop will also be applicable beyond Turkey in the UK, Europe and beyond: the team will promote their use through their international networks, publications and online communications.

Both (a) the social and economic potential of landscape as cultural heritage, and also (b) the implementation of key international conventions and directives (especially the European Landscape Convention, but also the Faro Convention on
the Value of Cultural Heritage to Society, and the European Environmental Impact Assessment Directive) are currently inhibited by two major challenges:
-- To identify and implement effective methods for advocating positive landscape change based on a well-understood and clearly presented base of evidence including cultural heritage;
-- To create effective relationships between landscape researchers in different scientific disciplines, landscape planning policy and practical implementation in landscape and heritage management.

This project will address these challenges in the Turkish context and promote the results to relevant audiences who will be able to implement the practical 'toolkit' of methods we develop in (1) integrative historic landscape characterisation, (2) public participation in landscape heritage, and (3) scenario modelling to inform future planning. Key beneficiaries will include landscape professionals and public agencies concerned with heritage management and planning. They will be involved in the project directly through two major conferences planned for 2017 and 2018. Delegates will include landscape architects, landscape planners, archaeologists, local government officials, and national government ministries (e.g. representatives of the Ministries of Forestry and Water Affairs, Environment and Urbanization, and Culture and Tourism).

The active participation of early career researchers (ECRs) in the project both as junior researchers and through the project conferences (which will include training sessions) will enable the research team to train a group of future practitioners to use the methods we develop in Turkey and beyond.

The project will also benefit a wider group of citizens by developing effective participatory methods to enable local communities to have their say about the value of cultural heritage and landscape and contribute their views to landscape planning. In the short term (during the project), this work will take place within the case-study areas, engaging with local communities through open public workshops (with accompanying print and online media) that promote knowledge exchange relating to landscape as cultural heritage. The new knowledge about the history of landscapes that is created during the project by the research team will be fed back to local communities through appropriate channels (e.g. through lectures and online). In the longer term, the implementation of the methods we develop will enable local communities to feed their views into landscape strategies and development consultations.

In order to maximise the ongoing benefits of the project, the toolkit of methods we develop will be archived and made publically accessible for free download in perpetuity via the UK Archaeology Data Service (ADS). Original datasets created by the team will also be made available from ADS and via appropriate web sources, e.g. OpenStreetMap. This will enable potential future researchers and professionals to identify examples of good practices to guide their own application and development of integrative HLC methods.

The tools developed during the project will be equally applicable in contexts outside Turkey, and the team will promote them to landscape professionals in the UK, Europe and beyond through international networks (e.g. via their involvement in COST actions, JPI Cultural Heritage projects), international conferences, publications and online communications.