Pre-Alpine Landscapes: How production, culture and ecology can shape a resilient future.

Keywords: Prealpine, culture, landscape, resilience, agriculture, designers, urbanplanners, ecology, social engagment, economy
Abstract Type: Virtual Paper Abstract

Abstract

Any theoretical or physical framework that attempts to separate nature and society into distinct realms paralyses the ecological movement for the on-going crisis (Loftus, 2012). The nature-culture divide has led to a widespread diversity loss, which is not a singularly ecological question but an interdisciplinary one encompassing food systems, geographical features, policy making. Landscapes of production have played an important role in maintaining the equilibrium which over the industrial revolution has been drastically altered. What role do designers play in such landscapes of high ecological value that are being extracted for human production? In an attempt to generate a discussion around these landscapes the paper focuses on the pre-alpine cultural and agrarian landscape and its lack of diversity and inefficient land use in the mismanaged pastures. The paper approaches intensive animal farming as a rather global issue, since the effects of animal farming go far beyond the Pre-Alpine geography. It will debate about how designers, urban planners and geographers can approach natural and equally cultural territories to address these vulnerabilities through design. It further aims to discuss how social, economic and ecological dead-ends are created in these intensively farmed landscapes. Lack of ecological diversity creates a threatened ecosystem that is vulnerable to collapse. Lack of economic diversity is shaping an asphyxiating environment for the locals. The paper aims to discuss animal farming in pre-alpine geography through the prism of ecology, economy, and social engagement and the potential of design thinking to transform a (mono)cultural landscape to a polymorphous socio-ecological landscape.