Rural Landscape: definitions and challenges

Due to profound changes in agricultural and rural settings over the last decades, modern rurality has become a complex matter. This entanglement has historically seen agriculture as a basic element but its traditions are rooted far Beyond agriculture only. The modern agricultural sector has attained a pivotal role in recent years (Rizov, 2004), particularly since the adoption of CAP reforms (Mac Sharry reform, 1992; Fischler reform, 2003; Rural development, EU Reg. 1698/2005; Cross Compliance, EU Reg. 73/2009). New functions have emerged (i.e. environmental services, landscape, human well-being and leisure) in addition to the traditional provision of goods (Fry, 2001; van der Ploeg et al., 2002; de Groot, 2006; Willemen et al., 2008; Perella et al., 2010). At the same time, the huge pace of change in rural settings has forced the agricultural sector to improve and strengthen its relationship with other sectors (human and industrial settlement, commerce, tertiary and services, etc.) also considering the progressive sprawl of those non-rural spatial structures within open spaces (van der Ploeg et al., 2008; Gulinck et al., 2010). As a result of such a co-evolutional trend, rural landscape appears to be made up of structural and functional mixes which diverge from the traditional ones. New patterns have emerged assuming new characteristics that are different within each territorial realm (Antrop, 2004; Gulinck et al., 2010). In other words, each rural territory shows a proper “character” locally forged according to the physical, environmental and historical specificities of a place and of the populations living there (Pedroli et al., 2007). Therefore a rural landscape cannot in any way be simply associated with the agrarian landscape