ABSTRACT

Sustainability and conservation both the necessity for future development to stop and none
of them have been studied by considering cultural and social values as an important
aspect of achieving them. This research paper focuses on Urban Landscapes as a social-
ecological system as factors of sustainable cities, sustainable design as they make the
cities or place in which human live and interact meaningful, cultural and social values in
conservation and the importance of ecological factors in governing both of them.
Keywords: Landscape, Landscape approaches, Cultural landscape, Urban landscape,
Socio-Ecological Systems, Ecosystem services, Sustainability, Conservation.

INTRODUCTION
Cultural landscape research may enrich ecosystem services research as it builds on a long
tradition of interdisciplinary and trans-disciplinary environmental studies. It provides
different perspectives on the interactions between man and nature, and deepens the
understanding of the role of humans in landscapes and ecosystems. Nonmaterial landscape
values can be determined qualitatively, quantitatively, or in a spatially explicit way, and
can thus be integrated into accounting schemes for ecosystem services.From a self-
sufficiency point of view there is no such thing as a sustainable city. Cities have always
been dependent on their hinterlands for food and other ecosystem goods and services. The
regional or even global impact cities thus have stresses the important pedagogical role of
functioning ecosystems in cities, especially as urbanization is increasingly disconnecting
people from the nature that supports them.
1.0 Approaches of landscape
Lack of absolute stabilization of the position of the vocabulary and concepts has led to the
creation of different perceptions of urban landscapes among individuals. Le Corbusier’s
view of city has four essential functional areas namely commercial residential, industrial
and transportation infrastructure. But in his view of artistic vision, he believes that
simplicity in architecture is best known answer to human needs. Lynch’s view of city is
that the more of a state thought and not merely a physical mechanism but is involved in
the social process of the people who formed it.

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 Approaches of landscape

Objective approach Subjective approach

Formal Ecological

 Belief that values exist in  Based on naturalness.

abstract aspects.  Belief that defines
 Formal properties that aesthetics as biological
include components such components such as
as lines, forms, colour topography, hydrology,
and shapes. vegetation and animal life.

Psychophysical approach Psychological approach

 Has a theoretical framework.  Data from observers is gathered

 Aims to assess the preference of in relation to past experience or
humans in facing or future expectations or socio
participating in a landscape. cultural condition.

Phenomenological approach Experiential approach

 Explore on mental experiences with  Described in a way that is due to the

interpreting paintings, pictures and development of person’s personal
poetry and expressing their stories. sense of interaction with environment.

Figure 1: Approaches of urban landscape

Source: Literature no. 1

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2.0 Urban landscapes as socio-ecological systems
Urban landscapes are socio-ecological systems where natural and social processes together
shape ecosystems.
Forces of socio-ecological systems

Natural Cultural

 Guided by human ideas and preferences and it is important to control these as they
are likely to cause deviating system behavior such as arrested successions or
changed seasonality.

Figure 2: Urban landscapes as socio-ecological systems

Source: Literature no.3

The ecosystem services approach has become prominent in conservation science and
practice. There is an abundance of data, indicators, and models for assessing provisioning
and regulating ecosystem services. However, the concept of ecosystem services has not
been successful in capturing cultural ecosystem services in any detail. Research in the two
fields “cultural landscape” and “ecosystem services” should be conducted jointly to
enhance the understanding of cultural ecosystem services in social and ecological systems
and to develop methods of assessment

3.0 Culture as an important factor

Culture changes landscapes and culture is embodied by landscapes. Both aspects of this
dynamic are encompassed by landscape ecology, but neither has been examined
sufficiently to produce cultural theory within the field. Four broad cultural principles for
landscape ecology, under which more precise principles might be organized are:
1. Human landscape perception, cognition, and values directly affect the landscape and are
affected by the landscape.
2. Cultural conventions powerfully influence landscape pattern in both inhabited and
apparently natural landscapes.
3. Cultural concepts of nature are different from scientific concepts of ecological function.
4. The appearance of landscapes communicates cultural values.

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Both the study of landscapes at a human scale and experimentation with possible
landscapes, landscape patterns invented to accommodate ecological function, are
recommended as means of achieving more precise cultural principles. Culture can change
when people begin to recognize different landscape patterns as material evidence of long
held values.Culture not only helps to explain landscape structure, it helps to suggest the
enormous array of possible human actions and constructions in the landscape, including
landscapes that do not exist now but might be designed to promote ecological function.
Culture is a shaping force of landscape and its character reflects the values of the people
who continue to live in it.
4.0 Roles of socio ecological systems
4.1 Role of socio-ecological systems in achieveing sustainability:
To gain much needed support for ecosystem preservation as well as more sustainable
consumer demands, the places where people live and work should be designed so as to
offer opportunities for meaningful interactions with natural world also including the
services that are essential for human well-being; forming important aspects of liveable
cities. Landscapes reflect human activities and are imbued with cultural values; they also
combine elements of time and space, represent political as well as social and cultural
constructs. When necessary, optional and social activities take place together and compete
with each other and collective spaces of cities become meaningful and attractive and
which affects the well-being of users intensely. Establishing the sustainability paradigm as
a cultural discourse points to a more holistic foundation for architecture that encompasses
and expands on vital benchmarks already established in current sustainable practice
models. Herein lies architecture’s potential, transforming from a contributor to the
bedevilling problems of human impact on the global ecosphere, to being part of a
sustaining solution to its, and our, on-going viability.
4.2 Role of socio-ecological systems in conservation:
The goal of conserving a landscape should be ensuring that all interventions and actions
meet the test of authenticity in all respects and the retention of authenticity is the aim of
good conservation practice. The diversity of the intangible knowledge forms of cultural
landscapes must be mapped, evaluated and protected in order to support other preservation
initiatives. The combination of ecological and social information should be able to capture
important processes in the landscape and determine their origin and implications for
sustainability, e.g., how citizens’ access to different ecosystem services affects their

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choices and actions. It is not the form of the city that is sustainable or not but the processes
that create it are in turn shaped by the form.

5.0 Relation of sustainable urban development

The expanding notion of cultural heritage to incorporate associative values and multiple
perspectives. The concept of landscape gained importance in the urban planning and
development discourses. It started to be part of many disciplines that call for the
application of a landscape approach that integrates distinct theoretical perspectives, which
are usually discussed separately, to address the complex layering of the various aspects of
the landscape, including landscape archaeology landscape urbanism and landscape
ecology. These trends towards a landscape approach to urban management are of great
interest to urban conservation as they would allow the integration of cultural heritage in
the wider goals of sustainable urban development. The practice of sustainable architecture
has largely been understood as an issue of technology and energy performance.
Consequently the discourse surrounding it has remained separate from the broader
discussion of architecture as a cultural project. However, for sustainability to fully take
hold and bear fruit, it must be understood within the broad cultural scope it clearly
embodies. This is done in the context of regional responses to sustainable, examining the
relationship between sustainable building practices and regional architectural and material
cultural traditions. The examination of contemporary green building design, using the
analytic framework of three reference terms culture, process and assembly; to explore
parallels between the current practice of sustainable architecture and other contemporary
cultural discourse. Sustainable development seeks to meet the needs and aspirations of the
present without compromising the ability to meet those of future and also being sensitive
with nature and the culture related to context.
6.0 Relation of the identity concept
Identity is the extent to which a person can recognize or recall a place as being distinct
from otherplaces and can vary in different situations in different people and societies
hence a city’s publicidentity is intertwined with our imagination of urban landscape. City
is recognized as a product of the complex relations between humans and nature,
disrupted ecosystems and can be studied as its structures, functions and processes; main
elements being patches, corridors and the matrix.

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7.0 Case studies explaining relation between “cultural landscapes” and
“ecosystem services” in aspects of sustainability and conservation
7.1 Murdena Marshall Meeting Hall, Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, Richard Kroeker
Architect:

Image 1: Murdena Marshall Meeting Hall, Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, assembly of small dimension lumber
thinnings into structural members (photo: Richard Kroeker).
(Source: Literature no.6)

For more than a decade Richard Kroeker has been working with First Nations Mi’kmaq
peoples of Cape Breton in Nova Scotia on the Atlantic coast of Canada, developing a
building technology that deftly marries native and contemporary construction techniques.
The primary element of the technique involves the use of small scale round wood poles,
often referred to as pre-commercial thinnings, derived from plantation forests. Kroeker’s
concern for developing an appropriate technology linked to the craft traditions of the
region and resonant with indigenous cultural practice has been based on use of the
inherent structural potential of this material that typically goes to low value, low grade
uses such as paper pulp and firewood. Kroeker has worked closely with community elders
of the Eskasoni Reserve on Cape Breton on several projects, refining construction methods
and processes. Kroeker notes that while the First Nations people he works with do not see
the architecture as representative of their culture and symbolism, they recognize in it
characteristics that resonate with their relationship to place. In this sense Kroeker’s
buildings demonstrate an inseparability of the three terms culture, process and assembly
referred to earlier as touch points for a cultural analysis of sustainability.

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7.2 Nicola Valley Institute of Technology, Merritt, B.C., Busby + Associates
Architects:

Image 2: Nicola Valley Institute of Technology, Merritt, B.C., and view from northwest (photo: Marco
Polo).
(Source: Literature no. 6)

Wood is used sparingly to emphasize its structural and visual qualities, and its value as
a natural resource: glue-laminated Douglas fir columns support concrete floor slabs,
with cast steel capitals and bases transferring the loads. The primary building
envelope consists of a faceted modular wood frame rainscreen wall, clad horizontally
with Alaskan yellow cedar which, left untreated, will age to a silver grey and blend
with the landscape and surrounding vegetation. Operable tilt-and-turn windows
provide natural ventilation and are shaded by adjustable wooden louvers. Of the three
reference terms cited earlier culture, process and assembly used in this study to
examine projects from a broadened cultural definition of sustainability. The abstract
modernist language of the project is distinguished from other recent work for First The
building demonstrates how First Nations clients can express their cultural identity not
through the sentimental replication of traditional formal typology, but by espousing the
principles of green building in a contemporary re-interpretation of the imperative of
environmental stewardship. Climatically, the Nicola Valley experiences hot dry
summers and moderately cold winters, which led local aboriginal people to devise two
highly pragmatic forms of shelter. In summer, the tepee provided a simple and
efficient ventilation structure that promoted cooling by convection. In winter, the pit
house provided an earth-sheltered structure built with a southern orientation to
maximize solar heat gain and which relied on thermal mass to minimize heat loss.

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CONCLUSION
One major challenge in the future is the organisation of dialogue and cooperation between
the two (ecosystem services and cultural landscape) research communities. The
advantages need to be transparent for both communities to engender a willingness to
cooperate. Cultural services, an essential element, are rarely taken into consideration in
current research activities. This is particularly problematic if the concept of ecosystem
services is applied in cultural landscapes. Cultural landscape research may enrich
ecosystem services research as it builds on a long tradition of interdisciplinary and
transdisciplinary environmental studies. Considerations while studying landscape:
1.The understanding of environmental history and long-term historical transformations
underlying present-day perceptions of environment.
2.Tried and tested methodologies of studying landscape as personal and collective cultural
constructions (in participatory studies, archive studies, fieldwork, surveying, and mapping)
3. Solid groundwork on mapping national and regional landscape character.
4. And a long tradition of landscape-based heritage and nature management, planning, and
design.
5. Ecosystem services and cultural influences
The comparison shows that both the concept of “ecosystem services” and the concept of
“cultural landscape” concentrate on the human dimension of ecosystems and landscapes
and therefore study almost identical objects.

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