Influence of Built Heritage on Sustainable Development of Landscape

Abstract The concept of sustainable development has influenced the evolution of many scientific and practical activities. An application of this concept to landscape, as a product and a field of interaction of human and natural processes, is possible and necessary. It is evident that concepts of landscape and cultural heritage are closely interrelated: cultural heritage can obviously exist in a landscape and influence it as well as landscape can be treated as cultural heritage. The interrelationship between these concepts makes possible the search for links between cultural heritage and sustainable development of landscape. Built heritage, the abundant category of cultural heritage encompassing historic buildings, their ensembles, and other structures, has an indisputable influence on landscapes and is crucial for their sustainable development. In order to determine the influence of built heritage on sustainable development of landscape, four main dimensions of sustainability representing the integration of human and natural processes (i.e. cultural, economic, environmental, and social) are distinguished and analysed in this paper.