Dear Colleagues,

The nexus of culture, landscape, and sustainability is not a new research area (Palang et al. 2017). The issue of sustainable future management of old cultural landscapes had already been raised in 1999 by Vos and Meekes. Although culture is not so self-evident in the visions of United Nation’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals, Routledge has been running a book series on Studies in Culture and Sustainable Development, since 2015. Furthermore, based on its integrative, interrelating, and interlinking character, as a strand of sustainability, should cultural sustainability altogether be considered a separate pillar, intersecting the ecological, economic, and social dimensions or forming the basis of them all (Dessein et al. 2015, Soini and Dessein 2016)?

Although we claim that all landscapes are cultural, cultural change continues to impart upon and imbue landscapes with new qualities and characteristics (e.g., renewable energy ones or eco-villages) with newly emergent lifestyles and expectations. How are we to operationalize sustainability in these new contexts of landscape change (Antrop 2006)? In the ongoing series of crises (i.e., climate change, energy and food crises, war, pandemics, migration and economic depression, tourism, etc.) unforeseen developments—both positive and negative—may become a mainstay, despite long-term landscape planning visions and strategies. How to tackle reactionary, adaptive, counter-active (i.e., re-wilding), resilient, interim-usage and conservative, or other processes in our landscapes? Landscape transformation has been seen as a rather stable development in recent decades, while acknowledging changes in the values that landscapes represent in their constant state of becoming (Pavlis and Terkenli 2017). What is or may be the role of culture in landscape planning, use, management, stewardship and governance, and vice versa (Terkenli and Georgoula 2022)?

Meanwhile, landscape sustainability as a science continues to evolve (Wu 2013, 2021). In light of the ‘new reality’ presently faced by humanity, do we need to accommodate (cultural) sustainability in landscapes accordingly, as in, for example, ‘quiet sustainability’ (e.g., Smith and Jehlička 2013) or degrowth? Is sustainability (Kuhlman and Farrington 2010), as well as cultural sustainability (Soini and Birkeland 2014), relevant or even meaningful and desirable, in newly emergent landscape contexts? How do top–down policy-making interacts with bottom–up needs and priorities and how may these best accommodated in the landscape? Finally, how do these overly complex and often vaguely-defined concepts (culture, landscape, and sustainability) come together in socio-spatial experience and practice?

This Special Issue seeks to ascertain and highlight recent theoretical and epistemological contributions, as well as methodological innovations and empirical applications, in the contemporary interdisciplinary field constituting of research areas on culture, landscape, and sustainability. We invite research ranging from specific case studies to theoretical-methodological inroads into scientific areas of interface between and among these three research subjects: culture and landscape, cultural sustainability, and landscape sustainability.

References

• Antrop, M. Sustainable landscapes: contradiction, fiction or utopia? Landsc. Urban Plan. 2006, 75 (3–4), 187–197. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.landurbplan.2005.02.014
• Dessein, J.; Soini, K.; Fairclough, G.; Horlings, L. (eds.) Culture in, for and as Sustainable Development. Conclusions from the COST Action IS1007 Investigating Cultural Sustainability. University of Jyväskylä, Finland, 2015.
• Kuhlman, T.; Farrington, J. What is sustainability? Sustainability 2010, 2, 3436–3448. https://doi.org/10.3390/su2113436
• Palang, H.; Soini, K.; Printsmann, A.; Birkeland, I. Landscape and cultural sustainability. Norsk Geografisk Tidsskrift – Norwegian Journal of Geography 2017, 71 (3), 127−131. https://doi.org/10.1080/00291951.2017.1343381
• Pavlis, E.; Terkenli, T.S. Landscape values and the question of 'cultural sustainability': exploring an uncomfortable relationship in the case of Greece. Norsk. Geogr. Tidsskr. 2017, 71 (3), 168–188. https://doi.org/10.1080/00291951.2017.1345977
• Smith, J.; Jehlička, P. Quiet sustainability: fertile lessons from Europe's productive gardeners. J. Rural Stud. 2013, 32, 148–157. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jrurstud.2013.05.002
• Soini, K.; Birkeland, I. Exploring the scientific discourse on cultural sustainability. Geoforum 2014, 51, 213–223. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2013.12.001
• Soini, K.; Dessein, J. Culture-sustainability relation: towards a conceptual framework. Sustainability 2016, 8, 167. https://doi.org/10.3390/su8020167
• Terkenli, T.S.; Georgoula, V. Tourism and cultural sustainability: views and prospects from Cyclades, Greece. Sustainability 2022, 14 (1), 307. https://doi.org/10.3390/su14010307
• Vos, W.; Meekes, H. Trends in European cultural landscape development: perspectives for a sustainable future. Landsc. Urban Plan. 1999, 46 (1–3), 3–14. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0169-2046(99)00043-2
• Wu, J. Landscape sustainability science: ecosystem services and human well-being in changing landscapes. Landscape Ecol. 2013, 28 (6), 999–1023. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10980-013-9894-9
• Wu, J. Landscape sustainability science (II): core questions and key approaches. Landscape Ecol. 2021, 36 (8), 2453–2485. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10980-021-01245-3

Dr. Anu Printsmann
Prof. Dr. Theano S. Terkenli
Guest Editors

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• culture and landscape
• cultural sustainability
• landscape sustainability