Jan Těšitel

Amenity Migration in the Context of Landscape-Ecology Research

Amenity Migration in the Context of Landscape-Ecology Research Amenity migration is a specific type of migration that is not economically motivated. Rather it is brought about by a desire to render more valuable the natural or socio-cultural environment of the target territory, and it is often directed from metropolitan to rural areas. This phenomenon has been strongly supported by the spread and growing accessibility of mass information technologies. As with any other kind of migration, it can lead to changes in the spatial distribution of human activities in the target territory. Under specific conditions, it can become one of the driving societal forces determining the socio-economic development of a given rural region. In the European context, amenity migration appears to be in its early stages of development. As such, it has been the subject of theoretical debate rather than being documented by empirical evidence. Amenity migration can be seen as an ambiguous phenomenon. Optimistic hypotheses claim that it could support local development of rural space and thus diminish the disproportionate development of particular regions and that it can maintain or even improve these regions environmental and cultural quality. On the other hand, it can also lead to a massive invasion of urban behavioural patterns into rural areas, making them culturally uniform. Tried and tested GIS methods exist for identifying a landscapes potential for amenity migration. The use of qualitative and quantitative techniques is a useful and progressive approach to landscape ecological research. We can expect further progress in the methods used to study amenity migration and for evaluating rural development within a landscape context following further research on amenity migrants, which will take place over the coming years.

Biophilia as the invariant in human thinking: A case study — the town of Tábor

Abstract Aesthetic and symbolical relations of humans to nature were not properly considered either in theory or in practice of urban planning as it was carried out in our country in the 1970s and 1980s. The fact, that elements of nature within urban environment play an important role as they partly satisfy the biophila needs of man, i.e. his affinity with plants and animals, was generally neglected. The contribution describes the attitudes of inhabitants in the housing estate of the town of Tabor, South Bohemia to the urban environment they live in. Based on the empirical evidence, two conclusions can be arrived at. Absence of nature, at least in its symbolical form, proved to be the factor limiting the “pleasant existence” of the people living within housing estates. Low willingness of inhabitants to actively participate in the process of making their urban environment livable seems to remain one of the most crucial problems inherited from the former totalitarian regime.

Participatory Management for Rainwater Harvesting in Patan, Nepal

EUREKA Project STORAGE—Sustainable TOols for gRoundwater manAGEment optimisation and water scarcity mitigation, whose research serves like the base for our paper, deals with the water supply problems affecting local communities in the area of Thapa hiti and Tagal hiti, Patan, Nepal. The innovation of our research and piloting is in an implementation of managed aquifer recharge not only for a few local users within a square or a school. Instead, we have devised a rainwater infiltration system encompassing the whole local shallow aquifer, without being tied to a particular end-user. For this, strong participative management (i.e. involving local communities and interest groups) is needed, and the close cooperation with local residents is of high importance to initiate integrated water management at least on a local scale of several neighbouring communities.

Action Research in Landscape Ecology (Šumava Biosphere Reserve, Czech Republic Case Study )

Abstract Current landscape ecological research applies trans-disciplinarity as a principle when considering the study of landscape as a multifunctional entity. The principle can be practically applied by use of participatory action research. The paper reports on the use of participatory action research in the process of step-by-step institutionalization of the Šumava Biosphere Reserve, as a complement to the state-conducted nature conservation, which took place in the period 1991−2016. To briefly summarize the main findings, we can suggest that the present institutional model of the Šumava Biosphere Reserve emerged primarily thanks to the ‘permanent jointly conducted experiment’ that followed the spiral scheme of action research, in which outputs of one implementation project served as a starting point to formulate, and subsequently realize the follow-up projects(s). The local community was engaged in the whole process, hence lessons learned became a part of local social and cultural capital, which since can be considered important endogenous developmental potential of the region.