Landscape Research, Vol. 29, No. 4, 385–397, October 2004 La Huerta de Murcia: Landscape Guidelines for a Peri-urban Territory RAFAEL MATA OLMO* & SANTIAGO FERNA´ NDEZ MUN˜ OZ*,** *Geography Department, Universidad Auto´noma de Madrid, Madrid, Spain **Humanities Department, Universidad Carlos III, Madrid, Spain ABSTRACT Some of the results of the landscape planning study recently carried out for the Metropolitan Area of Murcia in south-eastern Spain, specifically for the areas of the Vega Media del Segura and the Huerta de Murcia, are presented. From the perspective of landscape as heritage, understood as a quality of the entire territory, methodological criteria are contributed for the analysis of landscapes for spatial planning purposes, as well as the result of trends, values and problems affecting the landscapes of peri-urban agriculture. Public participation is highlighted throughout, and proposals are made for the preservation and management of the landscape as a resource contributing to the sustainability of the metropolitan area. KEY WORDS: Landscape, perception, landscape planning, heritage, peri-urban agriculture Introduction Landscape is a quality of all territories, even those considered ordinary, those very altered by current land uses, and those suffering the loss of their values and identity. There are common processes in peri-urban areas and in traditional rural networks within urban agglomerations. The Huerta de Murcia belongs to this last model. This paper analyses some results from the study entitled ‘Landscape Analy- sis, Diagnosis and Proposals at the Metropolitan Area of Murcia (Huerta de Murcia and Vega Media regions)’ (Consejerı´a de Turismo y Ordenacio´n del Territorio de la Regio´n de Murcia, 2001). The study, developed during 2001– 2002, was commissioned by the Tourism and Spatial Planning Department of the Murcia (MAM) Regional Government. The main aims were, first, to become acquainted with the landscape situation, values and tendencies in the Metropoli- tan Area of Murcia (specifically the Huerta de Murcia), and second, to develop landscape planning and assessment proposals, following from a conception of landscape both as an element of the quality of life in metropolitan areas and as a tourist resource for the region. Correspondence address: Rafael Mata Olmo, Geography Department, Universidad Auto´noma de Madrid, Madrid, Spain. Email: [email protected] Santiago Ferna´ndez Mun˜oz, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, 28270 Colmenarejo, Madrid, Spain. Email: [email protected] 0142-6397 Print/1469-9710 Online/04/040385-13 © 2004 Landscape Research Group Ltd. DOI: 10.1080/0142639042000289028 386 R. Mata Olmo & S. Ferna´ndez Mun˜oz Figure 1. Reference map. The area of study and planning is physically a great alluvial plain covering more than 250 km2, close to the Mediterranean Sea, in an area of much drought, with less than 300 mm rainfall per annum. However, it has historically been irrigated and highly cropped (huerta), with a permanent population of more than half a million people. (See Figure 1.) A great conceptual and methodological diversity exists within landscape studies (Bell, 1999; Mata Olmo et al., 2001). We have chosen, in agreement with the regional authorities and their technical advisors, a territorial and cultural heritage idea of landscape, well adapted to the characteristics of the area of study. This project offered the opportunity to apply the principles and aims of the European Landscape Convention (ELC) (Zoido, 2002) in a very dynamic metropolitan area, with a population of more than half a million people. Throughout the research project, from the analysis stage to the proposals, special attention was paid to the public participation process, within the existing temporal and material possibilities. This is also an essential element in landscape definition according to the Convention. However, it was not part of the technical requirements settled by the regional authorities for this study. The cultural heritage management of the Huerta de Murcia’s landscape, which has been built over several centuries (Calvo Garcı´a-Tornell, 1975), based on water management, intense irrigated cropping and an original settlement system in harmony with environmental peculiarities, implies an understanding of landscape as an historical product of culture and as human action over nature, or, in Alberto Clementi’s words, “as a contextual totality defined by the interaction of environmental, social and cultural processes, that give sense to local identity” (Clementi, 2002, p. 18). At the same time, the inclusion of the patrimonial element in the concept of landscape needs to overcome a divided conception of cultural welfare (as singular elements in the geographic space) and to enlarge the idea of patrimony to include the network of complex relationships that structure and give visible shape to the territory (Castelnovi, 2002). Land- scape is thus shown to be a superb document, a way of ‘interpreting the world’, inherent to the aesthetic experience implied in whatever landscape gaze. Despite the deep changes in land use and the loss of landscape quality in the peri-urban area of Murcia, the Huerta continues to be a place representative of Europe’s traditional Mediterranean irrigated and urban landscapes. It is also one of the main marks of regional and local identity, and an element of quality La Huerta de Murcia 387 Figure 2. Topographic map of the Huerta in 1980, upstream from the city of Murcia. in a metropolitan structure, in the process of saturation (See Figure 2). In such a landscape, with few significant physical and biological elements (Rios, 1994; Gonza´lez del Ta´nago et al., 1995), with an ecological matrix of limited connec- tivity and with serious environmental problems, the interest and values of landscape are based, first, on the relevance and singularity of the Huerta’s landscape picture as a whole, second, on some of its elements, and finally and especially, on a complex rural network, with a long history and with valuable heritage elements, most of them related to a hydraulic culture. Apart from this, the Huerta de Murcia provides excellent conditions for landscape contemplation and reading, thanks to its topographical configuration, defined by a wide alluvial plain from west to east with high mountain barriers at both north and south. The local scale of this study was appropriate as a geographic space, ‘a landscape with sense’, and one which offered scope for landscape planning. The Huerta belongs mainly to the large administrative authority of the city of Murcia, inherited from a great medieval alfoz (Christian jurisdiction), but it also includes other small municipalities (Alcantarilla, Beniel y Santomera) that could not be omitted from the Huerta’s framework either functionally or visually. Therefore, the landscape guidelines referred to this local territory as stretching across several municipalities. Public Participation and Dynamic Landscape Knowledge Those undertaking this study were convinced that plans and projects with social, economic and territorial influence must take local people’s points of view into account, so the aims of the study were the result of an understanding, even if limited, of a variety of different perspectives concerning the future. Nowadays, the challenge of every plan is how to incorporate the numerous groups involved in a territory, who have diverse and often contradictory attitudes (Borja, 2003, p. 112). This idea is related to the common opinion that it is necessary to introduce methodological changes, to modify the invariable and foreseeable ways of implementing plans, so that they become processes each time more complex and rational. Planning “no longer requires a few technical bodies 388 R. Mata Olmo & S. Ferna´ndez Mun˜oz applying their own knowledge as the source of discussion, but the negotiation of many bodies, the design of sample experiences, innovation and learning, for a final elaboration of new and distinctive policies” (Font et al., 2004, p. 23). Social participation is even more important in a landscape planning project because the idiosyncrasies of landscape and the values attributed to it by society are both the result of identity relationships between local society and its territory (Arler, 1999). Consultation with social and institutional bodies is fully consistent with the ELC, which in articles 5 and 6 establishes the necessity of foreseeing public participation procedures, of both local and regional authorities and other bodies involved in the conception and implementation of landscape policies. On the other hand, experience shows that, to accomplish a goal as ambitious as planning the landscape of a territory with so many territorial stresses as the Huerta de Murcia, initiatives from public authorities are not enough. It is essential that a number of social organizations appraise and support the project to some extent. It is not about the community starting the initiative, but about it becoming involved in the early stages of territorial planning and project definition. Based on this conviction, the project has favoured the active incorporation of the community that lives and uses the land of the MAM at the different stages of the study: the stage of identification and assessment of places and elements, and the most representative views of landscape; the stage of indicating changes, tendencies and problems; and the stage of drawing up proposals, policies and measures. In an area such as the Huerta de Murcia and the Vega Media