From the heritage inventory to the identification of landscape units: strategies within the framework of a territorial sustainable development

Abstract

The cultural heritage inventory of Jucar’s river has been a project funded by the European Initiative Leader+ within the framework of the inter-regional cooperation project “Actions for the integral development of fluvial spaces (EFLUS)”. The territorial scope of the project is articulated by the Júcar and Cabriel rivers and it spreads over three different provinces (Albacete, Cuenca and Valencia), which belong to two Regional Autonomous Communities (Castilla-La Mancha and Valencia Community), and 68 municipalities (48 of them watered by Júcar river and 20 by Cabriel river). Up to the moment we have inventoried the heritage resources of 70 por ciento of both rivers. The following research stage, beside the accomplishment of the remaining 30 por ciento of the river basin, deals with an integrated and inter-discipline analysis of the natural and human components, material and immaterial, understanding the landscape as a social product, the cultural projection of a society in a space determined from a material, spiritual and symbolic dimension. For all this the public participation has been the key to the process since the inventory stage.