Mimi Urbanc

The forgotten rural landscapes of Central and Eastern Europe

Interactions between nature and man – the underlying forces in landscape – have over time caused diversity. Usually, geographers and landscape ecologists deal with spatial diversity; in this paper, we would like to also consider temporal diversity. We argue that Central and Eastern European landscapes (using the examples of Estonia, Hungary, Poland and Slovenia) are much more diverse in time (layers) than Western European ones. This difference requires the use of different indicators in order to measure and study landscapes and special problems, threats, and possibilities of management and future development – but most important is the consideration of different perceptions. We also show that this diversity reduces the readability of landscapes, creating miscommunication and a transformation of meanings. We further argue that the link between humans and landscape is lost in Central and Eastern European countries due to temporal diversity, and that this link will be created anew in a globalizing world. To overcome alienation, we need slightly different classifications/typologies for each country in this region, with the aim of a sound future management of cultural landscapes.

Comprehension of rapidly transforming landscapes of Central and Eastern Europe in the 20th century

The article presents landscapes as natural, historical, cultural, social and political phenom-ena, and above all as a meaningful part of the environment. We will argue – by giving a contextual framework of landscape changes followed by four case studies from Central and Eastern Europe – that comprehen-sion of landscapes has declined in the 20thcentury. Along with urbanization, globalization and other societal processes rapidly varying socio-economic formations have caused alienation: changes in power result in changes in a societys values and thus some landscape elements are disintegrating, fading or disappear-ing and, as a result, these landscapes are taking on new, altered or modified appearances, functions and meanings. Every change in landscape needs some time to become accepted but if this re-coding of what is regarded as valuable is constantly changing, people become confused, with resultant physical conse-quences: land abandonment; illegal dumping; ill fitting infrastructures; inappropriate housing developments; etc. The main question is whether modern development, e.g. tourism, enhances the relationship between people and the landscape.

Gravel plains in urban areas: gravel pits as an element of degraded landscapes

In the past, the excavation of gravel placed Jarski prod among areas of great opportunity, but this was followed by a major ecological blow: the filling of gravel pits with waste. The area started to regain significance with the construction of a drinking water pumping station and in accordance with the Spatial Plan of the City Municipality of Ljubljana is today seen as a forested area with a pronounced ecological or recreational importance. In spite of suitable legal foundations, as a protected water catch-ment area Jarski prod is in practice still unprotected. Considering the most important natural (shallow groundwater, easily permeable layer of gravel) and social characteristics (location near a densely popu-lated area, irresponsible attitudes), the groundwater is an extremely endangered natural resource.

The Franziscean Land Cadastre as a Key to Understanding the 19th-century Cultural Landscape in Slovenia

The aim of the article is to present the use of the Franziscean Cadastre in studying past land use and reconstructing the rural cultural landscape of the 19thcentury. Special attention is devoted to pre-senting the content and accessibility of archival materials. By comparing maps from the Franziscean Cadastre with current land use, we successfully determined the changes, particularly in the rural cultural landscape. A general trend in Slovenia is the selective abandoning of farm land, which has had a great impact on the appearance of the landscape: cultivated fields become meadows, once cultivated areas on less favourable sites are overgrown by forest, and the same occurs with pastures. On the basis of case studies, we estab-lished the great usefulness and value of the Franziscean Cadastre, which still exists for almost the entire territory of todays Slovenia.

Stories about real and imagined landscapes: the case of Slovenian Istria

This paper presents the cultural landscape as an abstract concept and the result of a complex relationship between the natural environment and human society, and at the same time as a result of comprehension and personal views. A landscape is a story about the people that created it. The theoretical part establishes parallels between a landscape and the stories that this landscape has generated as well as their connection with geographical knowledge. This is followed by stories about real and imagined landscapes from Slovenian Istria, as ascertained through an analysis of extensive material using the ATLAS.ti software and taking into account the principles of grounded theory. This approaches a holistic view of the landscape, or understanding the landscape as a system of material and non-material elements and processes that direct them.

The Importance of Teachers’ Perception of Space in Education

In addition to environmental problems, spatial pressures are also being exacerbated by increasing economic development, the prosperity of the European population, and the increasing needs of various activities. These can only be mitigated through carefully planned use of space, which demands more active inclusion of the public in addition to relevant services. For successful public inclusion it is important for both individuals and social communities to be aware that space is a limited commodity exposed to increasing social and economic pressure. This kind of awareness demands an informed and educated population that will not only build its attitude towards space based on conceptual knowledge, but also supplement this through perceptual knowledge obtained in education. Active, responsible, and critical citizens can only be cultivated by properly educated, informed, and motivated teachers. These teachers can use new methods to address many existing topics and include new topics to considerably broaden their students’ minds. This is also what this paper seeks to demonstrate. It focuses on the comprehension of space through spatial perception, further development of routine conceptual knowledge through fieldwork, and the possibility of applying selected methods to learning processes. The goal of these efforts will be achieved when individuals and society understand that space is a limited commodity and that the attitude towards it must change as soon as possible if space is to be preserved for future generations in the spirit of sustainable development.

Atlant and Slovene national consciousness in the second half of the 19th century

The geographic literature made an important contribution to the development of national consciousness among Slovenes in the 19thcentury, as well as to the reinforcement of Slovene identity after Slovenias independence in 1991. A typical example of this kind of geographic publication is Atlant, the first atlas of the world in the Slovene language, which was published in installments from 1869 to 1877. Atlant followed the concept of a Unified Slovenia, and this idea boosted the confidence of Slovenes, the bulk of whom were incorporated into Austria-Hungary as they entered the stage of European politics as a nation for the first time. With the publication of Atlant, a number of geographical names were trans-lated into Slovene or Slovenized for the first time. The geographic, linguistic, and political conditions in which Slovenes lived, as well as the relations at the time between Slovene, German, and Slavic languages, are reflect-ed in the way foreign place names were adapted. The reprinting of Atlant in 2005 is also associated with a critical period in history, since it was published after the independence of Slovenia and its inclusion in the European Union, a time when the young state has been seeking its identity among all the worlds nations.

Geographical imagination of landscapes: analysis of the book of photographs Slovenian landscapes

The article focuses on the geographical imagination of landscapes, depicted in the photographs. The research stems from the assumption that photographs play an important role in shaping and preserving individual and collective imagination of a landscape and that geography as a science is closely connected to visual representations of the world. The empirical part of the research entails selecting and defining/coding the photographs from the book Slovenian Landscapes by Dusan Ogrin and their analysis through statistical methods. The purpose of the article is to demonstrate what kind of image of the landscape this book creates. The goal is to design/formulate a methodology for photograph interpretation, especially to select the indicators and their categories as well as the criteria for a quantitative photograph evaluation. Using these methods, the appearance of the landscapes is analysed according to the individual indicators, placing special emphasis on surface form as the most important landscape element.

Six Decades of Human Geography and Environmental Protection in Acta geographica Slovenica

This article presents the position of human geography, landscape ecology, and environmental protection and how these areas have developed over the sixty years that the journal Acta geographica Slovenica/Geografski zbornik has been published. The goal is to present the development and changes in content orientation, changes in research approaches, and changes in article authorship. The overview shows the development of these research disciplines in Slovenia and the research orientations of researchers at the ZRC SAZU Anton Melik Geographical Institute. During the time that the journal has been published, there has been a perceptible shift from defining and analyzing geographical features to a problem-oriented approach, and towards seeking cause-and-effect connections and responses to current social events. In this process, previously dominant individual contributions have been complemented by articles that were the fruits of joint labor and, alongside various Slovenian contributions, the number and thematic diversity of articles by international contributors has increased. Physical and regional geography will be presented in separate articles.

Public and common goods in the cultural landscape // Javno in skupno dobro v kulturni pokrajini

The main purpose of this paper is to review the literature and national documents, and define the meaning and roles of various types of good in the rural cultural landscape. We identified four main categories: private good, toll good, common good, and public good. The scope, uses, and benefits of goods in the cultural landscape change over time due to, inter alia, socio-political processes and formal (non)recognition at the institutional level. Further, we discuss how public good and common good benefit the community, and the necessity of sound management and conservation of common good. In the context of public good, supporting, regulating, and cultural ecosystem services are becoming increasingly important. They are non-subtractable, but they are inextricably linked to private land. As there are many points of conflict in the use of common and public goods, their protection should be provided in the relevant legislation.Glavni namen prispevka je pregled strokovne literature in državnih dokumentov ter opredelitev pomena in vloge razlicnih tipov dobrega v podeželski kulturni pokrajini. Prepoznali smo stiri glavne kategorije: zasebno, placljivo, skupno in javno dobro. Obseg, nacin rabe in koristi dobrega se v kulturni pokrajini spreminjajo skozi cas, tudi zaradi družbeno-politicnih procesov in formalnega (ne)prepoznanja na institucionalni ravni. Poleg tega razpravljamo, kako javno in skupno dobro prinasata skupnosti koristi ter o nujnosti premisljenega upravljanja in ohranitvi skupnega dobrega. V kontekstu javnega dobrega so podporne, uravnalne in kulturne ekosistemske storitve vse pomembnejse. Z rabo sicer ne upadajo, a so nelocljivo povezane z zasebnimi zemljisci. Ker obstajajo mnoge tocke konflikta v rabi skupnega in javnega dobrega, je njegova zascita pomembna tudi na zakonodajni ravni.