Place and People: Landscape as a Basis of Development and Preservation of Cultural Identity

Processes of globalization and urbanization are the main factors of changes in our environment and social foundations. Culture, traditions, customs, mythology are tightly bonded with the geographical environment and the land itself, which also defined the way of economic activity and the lifestyle of inhabitants. Identity may become apparent through landscape in two principal ways. On the one hand, landscape can represent and identify the certain culture by means of its visual image. On the other hand, the manifestation of deep links of landscape and its inhabitants by means of reviling emotional, visual and semantic connections of man to a land, affords to strengthen people’s feeling of belonging, rooting and thus safety, which is exceptionally essential in our era of non-stable uncertain modernity.