Landscape Research, Vol. 29, No.

4, 385397, October 2004

La Huerta de Murcia: Landscape Guidelines for a Peri-urban Territory

RAFAEL MATA OLMO* & SANTIAGO FERNANDEZ MUNOZ*,**
*Geography Department, Universidad Autonoma de Madrid, Madrid, Spain **Humanities Department, Universidad Carlos III, Madrid, Spain

ABSTRACT Some of the results of the landscape planning study recently carried out for the Metropolitan Area of Murcia in south-eastern Spain, specically for the areas of the Vega Media del Segura and the Huerta de Murcia, are presented. From the perspective of landscape as heritage, understood as a quality of the entire territory, methodological criteria are contributed for the analysis of landscapes for spatial planning purposes, as well as the result of trends, values and problems affecting the landscapes of peri-urban agriculture. Public participation is highlighted throughout, and proposals are made for the preservation and management of the landscape as a resource contributing to the sustainability of the metropolitan area. KEY WORDS: Landscape, perception, landscape planning, heritage, peri-urban agriculture Introduction Landscape is a quality of all territories, even those considered ordinary, those very altered by current land uses, and those suffering the loss of their values and identity. There are common processes in peri-urban areas and in traditional rural networks within urban agglomerations. The Huerta de Murcia belongs to this last model. This paper analyses some results from the study entitled Landscape Analysis, Diagnosis and Proposals at the Metropolitan Area of Murcia (Huerta de Murcia and Vega Media regions) (Consejera de Turismo y Ordenacion del Territorio de la Region de Murcia, 2001). The study, developed during 2001 2002, was commissioned by the Tourism and Spatial Planning Department of the Murcia (MAM) Regional Government. The main aims were, rst, to become acquainted with the landscape situation, values and tendencies in the Metropolitan Area of Murcia (specically the Huerta de Murcia), and second, to develop landscape planning and assessment proposals, following from a conception of landscape both as an element of the quality of life in metropolitan areas and as a tourist resource for the region.
Correspondence address: Rafael Mata Olmo, Geography Department, Universidad Autonoma de Madrid, Madrid, Spain. Email: rafael.mata@uam.es Santiago Fernandez Munoz, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, 28270 Colmenarejo, Madrid, Spain. Email: santiagofernandez.munoz@uc3m.es
0142-6397 Print/1469-9710 Online/04/040385-13 2004 Landscape Research Group Ltd. DOI: 10.1080/0142639042000289028

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Figure 1. Reference map.

The area of study and planning is physically a great alluvial plain covering more than 250 km2, close to the Mediterranean Sea, in an area of much drought, with less than 300 mm rainfall per annum. However, it has historically been irrigated and highly cropped (huerta), with a permanent population of more than half a million people. (See Figure 1.) A great conceptual and methodological diversity exists within landscape studies (Bell, 1999; Mata Olmo et al., 2001). We have chosen, in agreement with the regional authorities and their technical advisors, a territorial and cultural heritage idea of landscape, well adapted to the characteristics of the area of study. This project offered the opportunity to apply the principles and aims of the European Landscape Convention (ELC) (Zoido, 2002) in a very dynamic metropolitan area, with a population of more than half a million people. Throughout the research project, from the analysis stage to the proposals, special attention was paid to the public participation process, within the existing temporal and material possibilities. This is also an essential element in landscape denition according to the Convention. However, it was not part of the technical requirements settled by the regional authorities for this study. The cultural heritage management of the Huerta de Murcias landscape, which has been built over several centuries (Calvo Garca-Tornell, 1975), based on water management, intense irrigated cropping and an original settlement system in harmony with environmental peculiarities, implies an understanding of landscape as an historical product of culture and as human action over nature, or, in Alberto Clementis words, as a contextual totality dened by the interaction of environmental, social and cultural processes, that give sense to local identity (Clementi, 2002, p. 18). At the same time, the inclusion of the patrimonial element in the concept of landscape needs to overcome a divided conception of cultural welfare (as singular elements in the geographic space) and to enlarge the idea of patrimony to include the network of complex relationships that structure and give visible shape to the territory (Castelnovi, 2002). Landscape is thus shown to be a superb document, a way of interpreting the world, inherent to the aesthetic experience implied in whatever landscape gaze. Despite the deep changes in land use and the loss of landscape quality in the peri-urban area of Murcia, the Huerta continues to be a place representative of Europes traditional Mediterranean irrigated and urban landscapes. It is also one of the main marks of regional and local identity, and an element of quality

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Figure 2. Topographic map of the Huerta in 1980, upstream from the city of Murcia.

in a metropolitan structure, in the process of saturation (See Figure 2). In such a landscape, with few signicant physical and biological elements (Rios, 1994; Gonzalez del Tanago et al., 1995), with an ecological matrix of limited connec tivity and with serious environmental problems, the interest and values of landscape are based, rst, on the relevance and singularity of the Huertas landscape picture as a whole, second, on some of its elements, and nally and especially, on a complex rural network, with a long history and with valuable heritage elements, most of them related to a hydraulic culture. Apart from this, the Huerta de Murcia provides excellent conditions for landscape contemplation and reading, thanks to its topographical conguration, dened by a wide alluvial plain from west to east with high mountain barriers at both north and south. The local scale of this study was appropriate as a geographic space, a landscape with sense, and one which offered scope for landscape planning. The Huerta belongs mainly to the large administrative authority of the city of Murcia, inherited from a great medieval alfoz (Christian jurisdiction), but it also includes other small municipalities (Alcantarilla, Beniel y Santomera) that could not be omitted from the Huertas framework either functionally or visually. Therefore, the landscape guidelines referred to this local territory as stretching across several municipalities. Public Participation and Dynamic Landscape Knowledge Those undertaking this study were convinced that plans and projects with social, economic and territorial inuence must take local peoples points of view into account, so the aims of the study were the result of an understanding, even if limited, of a variety of different perspectives concerning the future. Nowadays, the challenge of every plan is how to incorporate the numerous groups involved in a territory, who have diverse and often contradictory attitudes (Borja, 2003, p. 112). This idea is related to the common opinion that it is necessary to introduce methodological changes, to modify the invariable and foreseeable ways of implementing plans, so that they become processes each time more complex and rational. Planning no longer requires a few technical bodies

388 R. Mata Olmo & S. Fernandez Munoz applying their own knowledge as the source of discussion, but the negotiation of many bodies, the design of sample experiences, innovation and learning, for a nal elaboration of new and distinctive policies (Font et al., 2004, p. 23). Social participation is even more important in a landscape planning project because the idiosyncrasies of landscape and the values attributed to it by society are both the result of identity relationships between local society and its territory (Arler, 1999). Consultation with social and institutional bodies is fully consistent with the ELC, which in articles 5 and 6 establishes the necessity of foreseeing public participation procedures, of both local and regional authorities and other bodies involved in the conception and implementation of landscape policies. On the other hand, experience shows that, to accomplish a goal as ambitious as planning the landscape of a territory with so many territorial stresses as the Huerta de Murcia, initiatives from public authorities are not enough. It is essential that a number of social organizations appraise and support the project to some extent. It is not about the community starting the initiative, but about it becoming involved in the early stages of territorial planning and project denition. Based on this conviction, the project has favoured the active incorporation of the community that lives and uses the land of the MAM at the different stages of the study: the stage of identication and assessment of places and elements, and the most representative views of landscape; the stage of indicating changes, tendencies and problems; and the stage of drawing up proposals, policies and measures. In an area such as the Huerta de Murcia and the Vega Media with a population of more than 400 000, it is not easy to develop participation dynamics able to involve every social group. As a result of this, after much discussion and taking into account the technical possibilities of the study, the Delphy method was chosen (Landeta, 1999). It allows the inclusion in the programme of a limited, but highly qualied and representative, number of people. The aim is that a signicant part of the Murcian society is involved in the decision-taking process, even though this is done indirectly through experts and social associations. Forty-seven people were invited from a selection of experts in territorial matters in the Huerta de Murcia and the Vega Media, from technical bodies concerned with the specic problem of traditional Mediterranean irrigated crops, and from people whose activities could be potentially inuenced by the proposals of the study. The Delphy method, with its three consecutive questionnaires, was conceived as a transverse element throughout the project. The conclusions of the Delphy process have allowed the improvement of the project as a whole. Nevertheless, the method was particularly valuable during the diagnostic stage, because its results enabled the researchers to form a hierarchy of the importance of the identied landscape problems and processes. Social participation was also particularly useful to identify the distinctive components of landscape and the values given to them by local people, and to locate the viewpoints and the most typical places of the MAM landscape. One of the most outstanding results of this process was the identication of territorial landmarks currently very degraded and excluded from the sightseeing circuits, but with symbolic importance for local people. As a result, this identication gave new meaning to the subsequent denition of actions to plan, improve and create the network of viewpoints.

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A fundamental aim of the study was to provide the regional authorities with an exhaustive and dynamic appraisal of the Huertas landscape. Previously no such systematic appraisal existed. From the analysis of the structural elements of landscape, 15 landscape units were dened and characterized. These essentially morphological and functional units express at the same time the internal diversity of the great Huerta landscape framework, different evolutionary patterns (related basically to peri-urbanization and agricultural land use) and several levels of relevance and integrity of landscape. Some of these units, most obviously those with the most outstanding landscape congurations and those with the best state of preservation, have comprised the base for some of the protection areas established in the planning proposals. During the process of landscape analysis, together with expert knowledge and the inputs from public participation (See Figure 3), cultural images of landscape were consideredboth pictorial and literary that artistically re-create some elements and landscape congurations of the Huerta, and also reect recent changes. Examining novels and paintings of Murcia from the last century, it is easy to be aware of the transition from the dominant view in the rst half of the 20th century, that of a lyrical, fertile and idealized Garden of Eden, into the Huerta as a problem, where there was a struggle for water and a rural landscape in decay during the 1970s and 1980s. The Segura river is a critical central feature, capable of giving life and fertility, but dry and rotten at the same time. Water and hydraulic management in a Mediterranean, alluvial and semiarid environment are major problems within the landscape (Chabart et al., 1996). The sinuous Segura river builds and rebuilds its fertile oodplain. A dense, hierarchical and historical net of drainage channels, irrigation ditches and other hydraulic infrastructures of Arab origin (acequia, azarbes) establish the network from which the shape and performance of the Huerta are built, and on which most representations of the landscape and of regional identity are based. Public participation has emphasized the primacy of water by noting it as one of the main elements, and places associated with water are most valued, but it is also one of the main problems. Contrasting with the oodplains physical landscape, and providing the main panoramic components, the following elements have also been evaluated: the mountains on the perimeter of the Huerta, the Cresta del Gallo mountain range, the group of alluvial fans and the cabezos (prominent hills at the northern border). They are images that, with no specic geographical relationship to the oodplain, are associated with it via landscape, as has been demonstrated in the public participation process and in Murcias landscape paintings from the last century. The remaining elements that congure the landscape are associated with waterways and their evolution. They are as follows:

1. the small plots and the mosaic of horticultural crops, orange, lemon and other fruit trees, with remarkable differences between the ancient orchards, situated upstream from the city of Murcia (See Figure 2), with irregular shapes and winding trails, and the more rational and rectangular orchards, with orthogonal shapes, resulting from the colonization of ooded areas during the 18th century (See Figure 4); 2. a dense system of rural paths, based on the hydraulic network design, that

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Figure 3. (a) Oil painting showing cypresses of the Huerta, Amela Costa, 1942. (b) A postcard of the Huerta in 1930.

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Figure 4. (a) Detail of a horticultural plot. (b) Horticultural mosaic downstream of Murcia. Colonization during 18th century.

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Figure 5. Panoramic view of the Huerta.

gives access to each point of the Huerta and nowadays offers visitors the possibility to meditate on the landscape; 3. linear elements of natural vegetation, scarce or non-existent, close to the recently channelled Segura river, but found at both sides of drainage channels, irrigation ditches and azarbes; 4. nally, a very dense system of settlements, extremely important to the character of an intensely and historically urbanized landscape. Currently these settlements are dened by processes of re-urbanization, with a hierarchy and morphological conguration coherent with the physical properties of the Huerta and the irrigation system: the city of Murcia together with the Segura river in the centre of its Huerta; small villages close to mountain edges of the oodplain, together with the main drainage channels; hamlets on oodplains lined by drainage channels and irrigation ditches; and dispersed development, traditionally for agricultural purposes, and at present mainly residential. (See Figure 5.) Together with the analysis of morphological and functional properties of landscape, the study has given special attention to scenic and perceptual issues, identifying the more or less formalized viewpoints, as well as some signicant sightseeing circuits. Equally, levels of visual fragility for each landscape unit have also been estimated, considering the inherent values of each unit and their capacity for emitting and receiving views. Four sources of information have been used to select the observation points and the sightseeing circuits: eldwork; 3-D technology; travel literature and tourist guides; and the results of the public participation process. For the characterization and assessment of landscape observation points the project has taken into account: the extent of the panoramic views, the possible close readings, the local landscape and the diversity of external references, and the condition of those visible landscapes.

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Figure 6. The Segura river today.

Landscape Situation and Planning Guidelines Landscape diagnosis was based on the condition of its main components and on certain aspects of landscape management (or lack of management). Its content has been organized in to four categories: 1. the deterioration of water landscapes, not only the Segura river and its historic channelled ow (Molina et al., 1990), but the irrigation network and its hydraulic elements, some of them with high cultural heritage interest. These are two landscape components repeatedly mentioned in the public participation process as identity signals and as a problem (See Figure 6); 2. a critical review of the Huertas urbanization, a common and accelerating process, with different morphological patterns related to routes and the traditional system of settlements, with diverse levels of territorial intensity and, to some extent, the result of a chronic town-planning indiscipline; 3. the change of agricultural land-use pattern, with the improvement of citrus culture, the loss of space, the diversity and intensity of horticultural crops, and the intensication of productivity at some of the oodplains edges, instead of traditional dry crops and steppes; 4. the absence of landscape management as a territorial resource. This is noticeable, for instance, in the deterioration and abandonment of cultural heritage buildings of the Huerta, including problems of poor conservation, surroundings and access, and also in the lack of formal sightseeing routes and viewpoints. The proposals implemented were the result of the diagnostic phase and the inputs from the public participation process. They are Landscape Guidelines with a supra-municipal scopescops, which will have to be incorporated into the

394 R. Mata Olmo & S. Fernandez Munoz sub-regional spatial planning instrument of Murcias Metropolitan Area, established by the Soil Law (1/2000) from the Region de Murcia.

Social Educational and Training Programme In a metropolitan area, as well as dening the landscape cultural heritage, it is necessary to increase the territorial culture of the population and to increase their esteem for the landscape in which they live, or which they visit. To do this, a social educational programme was detailed, with the main aim of increasing and improving the demonstrable knowledge (not simply panoramic) of the Huerta de Murcias landscape. The programme is divided into four main activities: 1. the creation of a Huerta landscape Visitors Centre, which can take advantage of a museum infrastructure, or rehabilitate some of the most highly appreciated buildings; 2. the denition of a specic environmental education programme devoted to the Huertas landscape (the existing ones are focused on biological aspects, with little interest in the landscape itself); 3. the implementation of a travelling exhibition of the Huerta de Murcia landscape (across the municipalities and little villages of the region); 4. the elaboration and publication of a landscape guide for the Huerta.

Programme to Enhance Landscape Vision The analysis of perceptions of this landscape has demonstrated, on the one hand, the excellent opportunities that the Huerta provides for contemplation at different scales and, on the other hand, the abandonment of those existing viewpoints or places, already appreciated socially, that might merit this recognition. We have also veried the lack of any kind of programme for the interpretation of the landscape or any sightseeing routes of interest. Moreover, viewpoints act as attractions for visitors and, although the Metropolitan Area of Murcia is not a common destination for tourists, the improvement of its landscape offering in relation to the important heritage that already exists in certain sectors of the oodplain, can be an additional element for local tourism promotion. The plan proposed the following: 1. a complete treatment of the existing primary viewpoint network, involving formalization, promotion and signage, as well as improvements to access, parking and landscape information, and environmental amelioration of its surroundings; 2. similarly, a new network of viewpoints and landscape sightseeing routes, to allow better access for the contemplation of the Huertas main landscapes. The purpose is to establish the real value of such landscape resources, simplifying and supporting access for local people and, in certain areas, for the tourists who visit the city of Murcia or the region.

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Figure 7. Proposal for high landscape interest areas.

Protection and Conservation: Denition of Areas and Elements with a High Landscape Interest; Planning Criteria The project proposal also identies and delimits certain High Landscape Interest Areas (Zonas de Alto Interes Paisajstico, ZAIP), with the main aim of protection and improvement. The criteria followed for ZAIP selection were: (1) highly valuable landscape units, highly esteemed socially (Rincones del Segura and Sierra de la Cresta del Gallo); (2) areas of the Huerta that formed foregrounds and middle distances from the main viewpoints (Huertas fragile network); (3) viewpoint surroundings (conservation and improvement); (4) the Huertas patrimonial milestones, identied during the public participation process, and their surroundings (Con trapasadas water wheel, Alcantarillas and La Noras wheel, Funess and Alfategos mills (17th and 18th centuries), and Sedas palace). The detail of the planning criteria varied from one area to another, but all of them include: (1) strict regulation of land uses in order to preserve signs of rural identity in the landscape; (2) priority for actions to rehabilitate the existing cultural heritage; (3) priority for actions that restore quality to the landscape; (4) priority for the development of an agro-environmental programme; and (5) intervention in the cultural heritage by public authorities. (See Figure 7) Landscape Improvement and Regeneration Proposals must improve and restore the landscape and the degraded landscape elements, which are often much appreciated socially in the Huerta. They will also have to handle areas with a signicant visual impact, like the surroundings of some roads or viewpoint foregrounds. Finally, they have to re-designate certain facades and urban edges. These proposals concern regional and

396 R. Mata Olmo & S. Fernandez Munoz local public authorities as well as the government. The most readily distinguished one is that entitled Water landscapes regeneration. It includes the development of a specic project for restoring and/or creating the Segura rivers groves and for the landscape processing of abandoned meanders and the system of major water wheels and irrigation ditches (identied in the study). The proposal Regeneration of degraded areas and landscapes is targeted at the highly visible mining activities, the places of uncontrolled waste dumping and some urban edges that still have the chance to be integrated into the rural network of the Huerta.

Town Planning and Agro-environmental Management As with any other territorial intervention, landscape planning projects must have clear legal support, a schedule, and all measures that will make proposals real and viable. Originally, a Territorial Performance Programme was foreseen as the result of this study and its proposals. It is a juridical instrument included in the Soil Law 1/2001 that allows, by an exceptional route, its independent development without the requirement of being part of previous spatial planning instruments of higher status. After the regional authorities have assessed them, the landscape proposals will comprise the landscape directive from the planning instrument with sub-regional scope that it is established in the above law (Spatial Planning Directives). Moreover, the study considered it essential to introduce an agro-environmental programme, with certain performance indicators and agreements for the maintenance and promotion of agricultural activities, whether they are a main activity or just a secondary one. It will also support preservation and improvement initiatives for traditional elements of the rural network (forested areas at the edge of forests, scattered tree formations, fences, maintenance and reinstatement/rehabilitation of infrastructures, etc.). The agrarian and land-use evolution over recent decades in the Huerta de Murcia, as in other peri-urban irrigated areas, demands greater environmental concern in agronomic areas, especially when the intensication and modernization of irrigated crops is taking place outside of these areas, in places without any structural limitations on the new productive and local irrigation systems (for instance, in the Campo de Cartagena, close to the Huerta in the Murcia Region). The rural landscape of the peri-urban area is transformed into an element with cultural heritage and identity, and into a planning objective for balanced and sustainable territorial models. These models preserve, improve and integrate the rural networks into the new urban structures, and defend the scarce and valuable resource of the alluvial soils of the oodplain.

References
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Chabart, M., Collin, J. J. & Marchall, J. P. (1996) Modelling short-term water resource trends in the context of a possible desertication of Southern Europe, in: C. J. Brandt & J. B. Thornes (Eds) Mediterranean Desertication and Land Use, pp. 389429 (Wiley: Chichester). Clementi, A. (2002) Interpretazioni di paessagio (Roma: Meltemi editori). Consejera de Turismo y Ordenacion del Territorio de la Region de Murcia (2001) Analisis, diagnostico y propuestas sobre el paisaje del Area Metropolitana (Comarca de la Huerta de Murcia y Comarca de la Vega Media), 3 volumes (Murcia: Direccion General de Ordenacion del Territorio y Costas). Font, S., Goma, R. & Subirats, J. (2004) La participacion ciudadana. Diagnostico, Experiencias y perspecti vas. En curso La participacion ciudadana como eje trasversal de la gestion municipal: planes, iniciativas y mecanismos de participacion. Escuela de Gestion Publica-CAP (mimeo). Gonzalez del Tanago, M., Vidal-Abarca, M. R., Suarez, M. L. & Molina, C. (1995) Consideraciones sobre el estado actual de las riberas de los principales cauces uviales de la cuenca del ro Segura (S.E. de Espana), Anales de Biologa, 20, pp. 117130. Landeta, J. (1999) El metodo delphi (Madrid: Ariel). Mata Olmo, R., Gomez Mendoza, J. & Fernandez Munoz, S. (2001) Paisaje, calidad de vida y territorio, Analisis Local, 37, pp. 2740. Molina, C., Suarez, M. L., Vidal-Abarca, R. & Ramrez-Daz, L. (1990) El paisaje de ribera del tramo nal del ro Segura (SE. de Espana): impactos derivados de las obras de encauzamiento. I Congreso de Ciencia del Paisaje, Barcelona. Ros, S. (1994) El paisaje vegetal de las riberas del Ro Segura (S.E. de Espana) (Murcia: Universidad). Zoido Naranjo, F. (2002) El paisaje y su utilidad para la Ordenacion del Territorio, in: Paisaje y Ordenacion del Territorio, pp. 2132 (Sevilla: Junta de Andaluca (Consejera de Obras Publicas y Transporte) y Fundacion Duques de Soria).