Cultural and Historical Significance in Contemporary Landscape Design: Preserving Heritage in Modern Settings

The old urban countryside is a culturally significant remnant of the city's geographical and temporal past, serving as a link between the manmade and natural worlds. Regrettably, the persistent social revolutions have led to increasing conflicts between the construction of cities and the preservation of cultural landscapes, which is causing their cultural landscape heritage to deteriorate. According to the layers of history, this study distinguishes the cultural landscape's epochs—Emergence, Development and Exploration, Diversity and Prosperity, Turbulence and Change, and Stability and Precipitation—throughout Shanghai’s Sheshan Urban Countryside Historic District. Using Historic Urban Landscape Historic Land use Assessment (HUL) and Historical Landscape Assessment (HLA), this research aims to establish the qualities and values of Sheshan's cultural landscape heritage layers by examining their evolution. Accretion, juxtaposition, overlay, and decline are the four separate stratigraphic relationships identified in the cultural landscape legacy of Jiufeng Sheshan, as per the study. These findings provide further evidence that the continual stacking of different stratigraphic patterns is an evolutionary characteristic. Also, the legacy value of Jiufeng Sheshan's cultural landscape stratum has been growing at a quicker pace in recent times. Modern scientific and religious buildings are more likely to survive than literati gardens and Buddhist relics. In view of the cultural landscape heritage's understanding and appraisal of its worth, living preservation and restoration of landscape heritage must be addressed. This calls for the development of a strategy to restore and protect cultural landscape heritage, one that follows the idea of historical stratification and unites the scattered cultural artefacts. This study has the potential to inform organic revitalisation efforts in both urban and rural areas, as well as efforts to preserve and transmit cultural landscape assets in historic districts in both urban and rural areas.