Читать книгу Resilience. Persistence and Change in Landscape Forms онлайн

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In the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century, the past was seen as forming an integral part of the present in landscape. Diachrony and the palimpsest metaphor offered two means of understanding the coexistence of different temporalities based on the notion of accumulation. The diachronic vision, however, revolved around the idea of an initial, finished form subject to decay over time (ssss1). From a scientific perspective, initial states are reconstituted using the regressive method, removing later elements that blur the view. In the absence of a clear logical framework for the evolution of landscape forms, however, this method is difficult to use except in identifying forms which, in theory, have undergone few transformations. Morphologists thus focus on the study of planned forms, which seem the most likely to be well-preserved, due to their independence from the geographical substrate and their structural “hardness” (dureté). The culturalist school chose to focus on these forms due to their esthetic properties, and because they appeared most likely to guarantee, or even restore, a certain social order. As we shall see, this notion, with its inherent idea of temporal reversibility, is not far distant from that of engineering resilience: an important element in current debates on the use of resilience (ssss1).