- Spatial strategy for the Great War Landscape in Flanders    1216 kb by    Zaman, Jan | jan@polytopos.net    Short Outline In 2014 the centennial memorial of the First World War in Flanders will prove to be a huge challenge, as many heritage sites have lost most of their spatial meaning. This paper proposes an innovative spatial strategy for the region. Abstract Planning a cultural landscape is still inexistant in Flanders. In 2014, however, the centennial memorial of the first world war will prove to be a huge challenge. The existing heritage is scattered and some sites lost most of their geografic and spatial meaning. To construct a spatial strategy, the knowledge of the remaining heritage has to be completed with the functional characteristics of the rather rural 'Westhoek' area. Agriculture, tourism, small towns, villages and local industries form the socio-economic base of this territory. To create an actual meaningful and contemporary cultural landscape, cooperation between all local stakeholders, accross municipality borders is necessary. A good understanding of the functional specificity of this 21st century area will feed into horizontal policy coordination and multi-level governance. A first theoretical part has been developed in the realCORP-paper 'Territorial Cohesion for Managing Change in Cultural Landscapes' (Vanautgaerden and Zaman). This paper will further explore a possible spatial strategy that will translate territorial cohesion from the EU level to the regional level in Flanders where it can support the sustainable management and planning of spatial transformations. Keywords landscape planning, first world war heritage, regional planning, territorial cohesion Case Study presented on the ISOCARP Congress 2011: LIVEABLE CITIES: URBANISING WORLD, Meeting the Challenge   Click to open the full paper as pdf document   Click to send an email to the author(s) of this paper