Recognition and preservation of associative landscape features

This study is based on exploring the relationship between examples of coastal settlements of the Eastern Adriatic coast in Croatia and their natural context—the sea and the mountain hinterland. These are landscapes with different intensities and qualities of associative features. Associative landscape provides mental connections of physical elements with intangible heritage through the experience of landscape meaning. Associative experience is possible when landscape is perceived as a whole, with recognised contextual values and a unity of intellectual and physical content. In this research, landscape identity is observed as the most prominent and comprehensive associative landscape feature. The research is based on the Heritage Urbanism approach, with the aim of defining models for the revival and enhancement of landscape identity from the landscape and spatial and urban planning points of view. Selected case studies, Starigrad Paklenica with South Velebit, and Makarska with Biokovo, are landscapes where strong relations exist between urbanscape and the natural context, through which means of the recognition and preservation of the landscape associative features and landscape identity are established. The research results define the present state of perceiving associative landscape features (the landscape identity model), identifying the means of perceiving the landscape identity which requires preservation (the landscape concern model) and setting a spatial development strategy from the aspect of the relationship between the settlement and its natural landscape (the landscape resilience model). Landscape perceived as a whole is presented as a new heritage dimension and as a process of the development of the perception of knowing a landscape. By establishing the perception, concern and resilience models of associative landscape features, the associative dimension is affirmed in landscapes as fundamental to their being retained, restored and redefined. © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019.