THE ROLE OF INDUSTRIAL HERITAGE IN PRESENT CULTURAL LANDSCAPE TYPOLOGY.doc

the role of industrial heritage in present cultural landscape typologyassoc. prof. dr. jaromr kolejkainstitute of geonics, academy of sciences of the czech republic, department of environmental geographydrobnho 28, cz-60200 brno, czech republickolejkageonika.czdipl.-ing. martin klimnek, phdmendel university, faculty of forestry and wood technology, department of geoinformation technologieszemdlsk 1, cz-61300 brnoklimanekmendelu.czabstractdata on industrial heritage was applied for the identification and typology of the post-industrial landscapes on the regional level on the example of the ust region in the north of the czech republic. this region was presumably the most industrialized territory in the country and was significantly changed after the structural changes in regional economy. the planning of the future regions development requires a precise target areas definition, delineation, typology and multi-parameter depiction. the industrial heritage is represented by objects and traces in any landscape left by the industry in the previous period which is not serving the present industrial activities. accessible data sources on man-made land, land use, brownfields, undermined sites, contaminated sites, industrial architectural heritage, etc. were applied to identify and classify the post-industrial landscape (pil) in the study region using gis technology. the outline, area, content and topic description are essential for the decision making about pil future fate. the planners require this crucial information to start negotiations with the local authorities as well as with developers and investors. the mining activity was usually the main cause of the pil origin. the territorial extend of the underground or open cast mining is dominating. the additional role was played by the iron/steel industry, textile and glass industry. the present landscape is mostly given by the man-made land forms, brownfields and architectural heritage, while the territory stability reflexes the number and concentrations of contaminated sites. introductionpost-industrial landscape, i.e. a landscape which has been initialized, created, affected and finally abandoned by industry, has attracted profound interest of experts from a wide range of fields. especially, individual industrial objects and/or areas directly related to past industrial activities are typical representative landmarks of such kind of landscape, common not only in the classical industrial countries. traditionally, most attention is paid to the architectural, social and environmental aspects of individual industrial heritage objects and their sets. particularly western countries have experienced long-term efforts to prevent important monuments from demolition and provide them with new functions in the contemporary society. outstanding examples of former industrial activity industrial buildings, areas and exceptionally landscapes became in some cases subjects of the international protection as parts of the unesco whs of historical heritage. a number of industrial cities opted for revitalization of originally industrial areas and accompanying residential districts with the primary objective of transforming them into modern residential and service areas with high standard facilities. the most important concentrations of various objects of a direct or indirect industrial heritage (inherited from the industrial age app. from the end of 18th century to middle 1960s) form a special landscape view which determined a post-industrial landscape. the post-industrial landscape is the legacy of the industrial revolution. landscapes initially created and now abandoned by industries are characterized by a number of specific physiognomic, structural and functional attributes which represent relics of the past industrial era. while “recent” in functional industrial landscapes, these characteristics are “fossil” in post-industrial landscapes. the characteristics are valid for all contemporary landscape structures. industrially formed landscapes are classified by m. antrop (2005) among landscapes of revolutionary periods. such landscapes are formed rapidly and disappear quickly as a result of technological and social changes as well as military conflicts. the industrial landscape, which has a significant to dominant impact on landscape character, structure and function, is usually studied in close relation to the urban landscape. industrial or post-industrial landscapes may form “islands” within cities and thus become an epicenter of future reconstruction and functional changes (gospodini, 2006). especially, the aspect of the future of post-industrial landscapes attracts attention of international scientific and economic community. definition, classification and typology of post-industrial landscapes of the st region in the czech republic is also the main aim of the grant project “the fate of czech post-industrial landscape” number iaa 300860903 supported by the grant agency of the academy of sciences of the czech republic (for years 2009-2011).objective of researchthe existence of post-industrial landscape is a generally accepted fact of the contemporary world. however, its scientific research still fails to meet requirements. in all probability, the primary research initiative can be accredited to architects studying industrial heritage buildings. historical industrial architecture has been attracting the attention of professionals since the 1970s. industrial architecture became the centre of attention due to rapid structural changes in western industrial economies which resulted in closure of a number of businesses whose facilities no longer met operational standards despite the fact that the architectural value was high. looming demolition of such buildings triggered response from the general public, yet conclusive plans of action usually failed to be agreed on. societies studying and conserving the most valuable buildings as industrial heritage were established in developed industrial countries. the international committee for the conservation of the industrial heritage was established (ticcih). in 2003, the nizhny tagil charter for the industrial heritage was published by ticcih. it draws attention to the fundamental significance of industrial heritage for the human culture, whether in urban centers or open landscape (loures, 2008).while individual industrial objects represent interesting subjects both of public and scientific interests, a significantly less attention is paid to wider areas of industrial heritage. for instance, functional industrial landscapes are part of research portfolios of many academic institutions (e.g. purkyn university in st nad labem, czech republic vrblkov, vrblk, 2007), the post-industrial landscape has so far failed to secure a firm position in the focus of experts and as such remains in the sphere of popularization. the relations between industrial heritage and the landscape are still subject to less intensive studies but interest in this issue is growing promisingly. needless to say that even abroad it is initiated primarily by architects (e.g. the newly established department of landscape architecture and industrial landscape at the munich university of technology in 2009). in the czech republic, a certain link can be traced in the work of the institute of industrial landscape ecology of the czechoslovak academy of sciences which operated in ostrava in the 1970s and 1980s. although the term “post-industrial landscape” has become frequent in specialized literature at the turn of century and various measures concerning its future are seriously considered, its geographical definition (delimitation and content) remains vague and indefinite (see loures, 2008). in case of slovenia (hladnik, 2005), industrial landscape as a special landscape type is defined according to the ratio of industrial areas (registered in the corine) project within the entire area of a cadastre. according to ch. ling, j. handley and j. rodwell (2007), any area significantly affected by mining (on example of dearne valley and showing numerous abandoned buildings, brownfields but also subject to rehabilitation programs and requiring other than conventional approach to decision making about its future can be considered a post-industrial landscape). t. stuczynski, et al. (2009) developed an original concept of geographic identification of post-industrial regions in eu. in the last decade, the expert community deals with a number of aspects associated with the post-industrial landscape. traditionally, architectural (cashen, 2006), economic (shahid, nabeshima, 2005, dunham-jones, 2007) and social aspects (kirkwood, 2001, kirk, 2003, hansen, winther, 2006) of this type of landscape have been the dominant focus of their studies (in the geographic context). landscape science deals with its ecological aspects, particularly focusing on the occurrence of biotic communities and species (kirkwood, 2001, keil, 2005), possibly also environmental ones (soil and water remediation). another aspect of the post-industrial landscape is vegetation succession into former industrial or other abandoned areas. among other things, this spontaneous process has initiated the establishment of a new scientific discipline, restoration ecology, which studies these phenomena (naveh, 1998). in the post-industrial landscape thus appears and prospers an “industrial nature” (clek, 2002) or a “new wilderness” (sensu z. lipsk) as a landscape segment left to its spontaneous development regardless the original, purely anthropogenic-conditioned situation. an exception to the existing research practice is the designation of a post-industrial landscape covering 39 km2 in the vicinity of blaenavon, southeast wales, as a unesco world heritage site in 2000 (rogers, 2006). with a few exceptions abroad, the issue of post-industrial landscape remains to be elaborated descriptively in cases of individual studied areas. yet, the descriptive aspect of research is vital, as it turned out necessary in cases of conservation and integration of remaining industrial landscape heritage into territorial planning documents. projects of future use of selected landscape units have been probably developed relatively best so far, despite the fact that architectural and conservation aspects without deeper elaboration of theoretical approaches probably played a key role in these cases. needless to say that conservation of such areas was timely and probably came on time. the description of post-industrial landscape attributes may be related to individual structures of the contemporary cultural landscape (natural primary, economic- secondary, human tertiary and spiritual quaternary). these structures affect one another strongly in the contemporary landscape, which means that changes in one of them tend to trigger changes in the remaining structures. all the structures demonstrate logical territorial differentiation of the landscapes building components. detailed descriptions of these structures and their characteristics in a post-industrial landscape are listed below:1) natural (primary) structure: changes in the topoclimate (urban heat islands, atmospheric admixtures gasses and dust), changes in drainage relations (artificial surfaces, drained areas, man-made water reservoirs), soil removal or coverage (by buildings or deposits in their vicinities), terrain changes (due to mining, industrial, water management, transport or other relief shapes), changes in contact with the geological environment (removal of weathering products in the course of foundations construction, isolation and ground levelling embankments, earth dumps, construction and industrial waste dumps), radical changes in the biota (in extreme cases a total removal of vegetation and creation of artificial surfaces, a complete change of fauna).2) economic (secondary) structure: land use is characteristic of dominant production facilities with typical buildings (halls, chimneys, heating plants, warehouses), vast communication areas (handling areas, reloading areas, stations, pipelines, container belts, storage tracks, road and railway networks, transport cableways, very high voltage lines), active and passive mining areas (quarries, mine dumps, temporary waste dumps), water management facilities (dams, consumption devices, pumping and compression devices, pools, sewage clarification plant, canals), surrounding dense residential and service built-up areas. residential areas with service networks tend to be situated in close proximity. these parameters are “recent” in the industrial landscape, while the post-industrial landscape is characteristic of a number of features, among them “fossil” ones as accented above.3) human (social, tertiary) structure: a change in stakeholder interests is manifested by devastated and later abandoned areas, deterioration and loss of the above mentioned industrial buildings original function due to neglected maintenance. on the other hand, some buildings are subject to various degrees of protection. a number of residents faced changes in social standing. in some cases this social status change led to emigration or immigration.4) spiritual structure: both local residents and visitors perceive the landscape differently. this change is partly due to political as well as economic and social changes, and due to better access to information on the environment, different access to power and power structures. buildings and facilities which in the past used to be sources of wealth, as such enabled a better standard of life and thus were perceived positively, may suddenly be perceived negatively (ensuing the loss of their original function even for their former employees and their families). some places show indisputable genius loci.the aims of the paper are to demonstrate the possibilities of identification, mapping, classification and typology of post-industrial landscape on the example of the st region of the czech republic, one of the most industrialized region of the country with deep structural changes in the two last decades and thus demonstrate utilization of available data depicting the industrial heritage in all the landscape structures. the application of gis processing technologies for the purposes of objective delineation on this type of landscape is unavoidable to allow future administrative decision making, territorial planning as well as gain deeper scientific knowledge. theoretically, it is possible to distinguish “urban” and “rural” post-industrial landscapes regardless the industrial revolution and industrializing in general is linked with towns. since original industrial areas have undergone a spontaneous transformation through stopping of industrial production, abandoning industrial facilities or their transformation for other purposes, the cannot dominate in the landscape view in present urbanized areas because of abundance of others still operating industries, services and residential area, only “rural areas” outside the largest towns experience important (and frequently dominant) visual and probably functional role of abandoned heritage from the industrial period. these areas were really transformed into post-industrial landscapes through a de-industrialization.methodologythe st region in the north-west of the czech republic, the seventh largest czech region (from 15), covers 5335 km2 and has approximately 836000 inhabitants (in 2010). it is constituted by seven districts: dn, st nad labem, teplice, litomice, louny, most a chomutov. the region is situated peripherally (fig. 1) at the edge of the bohemian basin in the border mountains with germany (saxonia), and partly reaches beyond them to the spree river basin to the northern forefront of the czech highlands. it owes its peripheral location since the historical beginning of the czech state in 9th century.figure1. position of the st region in the czech republicthe territory of the region was settled by czechs in 6th century. mountainous areas at the border were colonized by germans since 13th century invited there by the czech aristocracy. after the huge life lost during the 30-years war german immigrants started to dominate the regions population, especially in the north and west of the region. the industralization begin there in early 19th century following the previous period of the hand-crafted and manufacture glass, textile and metal production. large deposits of lignite in the basins below the ore mts. ignited the development of the machinery, energy, chemical and food industry (beer), dense railway network construction and steamboat transportation on the elbe river. also the agricultural production was strongly stimulated. at the end of the century, the first damage in forest areas caused by industrial gas deposits were reported in ore mts. at the beginning of the 20th century, the region was one of the most industrialized areas in the kingdom of bohemia as a part of the hapsburg monarchy. economic crises in czechoslovakia in early 1920s and early 1930s led to decline of the textile and glass industry, reduction of underground lignite mining and to social and political disturbances in the local population dominated by germans. after the munich dictate the most part of the region joined the third reich. during the war years the region enjoyed a new wave of industrialization (production of gasoline, chemical products and fats from lignite). after the war destructions caused by allies air raids, the region returned to czechoslovakia, most of german population were resettled to germany and reconstruction started. not every pre-war glass and textile factory was reopened. the chemical and energy industry based on the open air style of coal mining were preferred by the communist governmen