El valor estructurante del patrimonio en la transformación del territorio

this paper pretends to understand and discover the potential of the identity of a territory, and to set out the new challenges that the concept of cultural landscape introduces in urbanism. a special interest is taken for reading and interpreting, at different scales, the keys of recognition and construction, discovering the existence of patterns and laws of occupation that transform the territory, and defining a formal logic of its own that resumes and represents its identity. the article is structured in five parts. the first one brings up a hypothesis: the landscape and the territory are a reality in continuous evolution; therefore we must not try to avoid mutations, but make sure that, in the natural process of transformation, landscape and territory do not lose their heritage values. in the second part the article explains that the value given antiquity and the past, in fact is a modern invention, that has been evolving from the preservation of monumental pieces only to a much wider view of heritage, that could be resumed with the concept of cultural landscape. subsequently, the concepts of cultural landscape and heritage park are explained, specifying their development tools and some of the lessons learned from the case studies about heritage parks are described. in the end, the article reviews some initiatives in the netherlands that show the capacity of cultural heritage to help develop evolution strategies for vast territories.