Challenges in Landscape Cartography

Chapter: Mapping the intangible: making the invisible visibl
Book: Reptes en la cartografia del paisatge. Dinàmiques territorials i valors intangibles
Date: 2013
Authors: Miriam García García, Manuel Borobio Sanchiz
Editor: Nogué, Joan; Puigbert, Laura; Bretcha, Gemma; Losantos, Àgata
Publisher: Observatori del paisatge de Catalunya
Pages: 103-124

 

A result of the seminar “Challenges in mapping the landscape: territorial dynamics and intangible values”, organised by the Landscape Observatory of Catalonia in 2011, this book raises the need for new concepts and new techniques of representation to provide us with maps that incorporate intangible landscape values and express rapidly changing territorial dynamics.

In this context, we face the question of how to map intangible landscape values, if values corresponding to people’s sensorial perception (and not just visual or emotional perception) of a particular landscape may be represented or symbolised. To do so, based on the study of different experiences, we carried out a series of works and mappings within a unique part of the coast of Galicia, the town of Ponteceso on the Costa da Morte, developing three great categories of values that we may conceptualise as intangible: wellbeing and tranquillity, acculturation and identity and aesthetic feeling.