Schueckler – Week 3 Question

The UNESCO handbook places special emphasis on the potential for cultural landscapes to provide valuable information regarding sustainable land-use. What about cultural landscapes that embody unsustainable land-use? Quarries? Strip mines? Oil rigs or oilfields? Sites of deforestation? How should we think about protecting these places for the history they represent, whether abandoned or still in use? And should they be protected purely for the history to which they testify, or should they be opened to unrelated use in such a manner as would keep or make their history legible? Do we want that history to remain legible? And does a cultural landscape require continuity?