African Landscapes

This paper has traced the historic spatial development of Windhoek through five distinct socio-political epochs. These different periods’ spatial, aesthetic, and representational effects on the city’s urban landscape are presented in original maps, allowing a spatial-to-scale comparison and analysis of the city’s development. Rather than the discrete chapters in Windhoek’s urban development, successive occupations’ spatial compositions are shown to have been assembled from and grounded in the geomorphological, spatial, social, and administrative conditions preceding them. The paper expands the concept of the uncanny, the colonial drive to recreate home in foreign lands and local resistance to this, from the architectural to the urban. It describes how infrastructure, residential typologies and neighbourhood morphologies, memorials, places of memory, and public space were designed to segregate and subjugate Windhoek’s population and how this spatial legacy continues to inform city-making in Windhoek today. In doing so, the paper challenges the notion that the city’s spatial structure, layout, and urban planning are neutral quantitative entities.

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Cultural landscape of the Gorica Hills in the nineteenth century: Franciscean land cadastre reports as the source for clarification of the classification of cultivable land types

Gomiršek

2020

Open Geosciences

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The Gorica Hills (Slovene Goriška brda and also Brda) represent a part of the hilly cultural landscapes in the northern Mediterranean. Because of the historical development of the states, the Gorica Hills are situated on the Slovenian western border. The Gorica Hills have been a synonym for a cultivated landscape since the Middle Ages. New studies have changed the pre-existing belief that the cultivation method and crop types have not changed through the centuries, except for the introduction of corn and potatoes. However, detailed descriptions of the cultivation methods and the types of predominant crops in the cadastre show that during the nineteenth century, and especially in the period after World War I, the cultivation method of the vine and the types of crops, in fact, changed significantly. At this point, the nineteenth century can be seen as the period of the final introduction of corn and potatoes. Thus, the cultural landscape of the Gorica Hills is the result of the responses to inside and outside economic and cultural pulses. The paper will point out the advantages of the land cadastre reports that were used in the reconstruction of the cultural landscape. It will also present the questions that have remained unanswered and are left open for further research.

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African Landscapes

Cited by 5 publications

References 21 publications

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The Uncanny Capital: Mapping the Historical Spatial Evolution of Windhoek

Cultural landscape of the Gorica Hills in the nineteenth century: Franciscean land cadastre reports as the source for clarification of the classification of cultivable land types

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