Cultural Heritage of Roads and Road Landscapes: Classification and Insights on Valuation

Abstract Over time roads and their surroundings gained historic and cultural significance. This significance is oftentimes acknowledged and numerous roads and road infrastructure objects with their surrounding environment are listed and protected. Notwithstanding this, it is necessary to note that the ways in which roads, their surrounding environment, and adjacent objects can manifest heritage values, can be complex, and are not limited to historic roads or historic road landscapes. Different categories of these ways can be distinguished: road landscape can be recognized as cultural heritage, cultural heritage objects functionally related or unrelated to the road can exist in its surrounding environment, and roads can also be treated as cultural heritage objects in landscape. Understanding the dimensions of the cultural heritage of roads and road landscapes and analysing its values can be important not only to the environmental, technological, and cultural history, but also to the future-oriented heritage management and territorial planning fields. The article is aimed to present a framework for analysing the cultural heritage of the automobile roads and road landscapes consisting of the system for its classification and of identification of factors determining its cultural value and the categories of economic value it can provide. Assessment possibilities of these values are also shortly discussed.