Genesis

This project stems from the CERES team’s reflection on the real needs and problems of Chilean rural areas. In recent decades, Chilean rurality has suffered from a loss of identity, resulting in a low valuation and little development of its characteristics and potentials. Because of this, rural areas have gradually become to be areas “outside the city limits,” where the aspiration of the community -specially of the younger generation – is to migrate to cities. This also causes a decline in the traditionally emblematic activities of rurality, such as small-scale agriculture.

Since the wide diversity of realities that exist in different rural localities depends heavily on the natural landscape in which they are inserted, their historical background, proximity to urban centres, main economic activities and institutional management, among many others factors; we believe that it is necessary to develop tools for rural development which consider and incorporate this wide range of factors. This development requires a strong territorial and multidisciplinary approach.

Also, as a team, we believe that the process of revaluation of rural landscapes can only be generated from the communities themselves, building a participatory vision of the potential of rural communities, generating and prioritizing actions that aim to give welfare to communities and, with this, help to regain their dentities.

From this analysis, the project aims to build together with communities a vision of the development potential of their territories, actively contributing with this to its development.

Objectives

This project aims to develop and validate a participatory methodology for the valuation of rural landscapes in the region of Valparaiso from a different range of dimensions: productive, architectural, socio-cultural, ecological and geographical scenario. This methodology will become a tool to generate – with communities and from a multidisciplinary approach – an integral vision of the value of rural landscapes. This is deemed useful to identify future sources of development. We believe that this information can serve as a base for public entities or others to generate territorial strategies and instruments for rural development, based on empirical evidence and in line with the real needs and potential of the territory; contributing to rural development and the welfare of communities.

Stages of the project

Stages of the methodology

Our proposal is that the process of valuation of rural landscapes is carried out in four phases (Figure 1). These phases are planned on the basis of increasing levels of community participation (Figure 2), starting from a level where the valuation is carried out by researchers, then, an assessment from the communities and finally a phase of dialogic encounter of two visions . During the process, several quantitative and qualitative methods are used, considering a joint research strategy. Also in each of the stages the number of participants is reduced, reaching working with key actors in the final stage (Figure 3).