This degree project is based on my personal relation and engagement to the small-scaled cultural landscape. My viewpoint is the village Torpa in Östergötland. My observations of the changes and development together with the stories of the village people has lead me to the questioning about the future prospects of the small-scaled cultural landscape. The rationalization of the society and our urban culture has lead to big changes in the cultural landscape and the people have reduced to a small crowd. Fewer and fewer hands are managing the small-scaled cultural landscape and fewer and fewer young people have connection to this kind of landscape and its management. The cultural landscape is reducing and grows over, the agricultural companies get bigger, fewer and more specialized and soon there will be many pension retirements in the agricultural sector. Many of today’s Swedish farms have no heir or heiress. Sweden operates its environmental issues on the basis of sixteen environmental goals and one of those is Ett rikt odlingslandskap. The small-scaled cultural landscape has many great values and its future existence is completely dependent on the younger generation taking over and managing the landscape. The question is if enough of today’s youth, who has more choices and opportunities than yesterday’s youth, will choose to go on managing the small-scaled cultural landscape? By searching for contextual knowledge and meet and talk with the people out in the field I have tried to get clarity in my own questioning about the future prospects of the small-scaled cultural landscape and tomorrow’s landscape managers.
The interviews that took place in the river valley of Bräkneån in Blekinge and Bråbygden in Småland points to that the small-scaled landscape will continue reducing and that there will be too few people to continue managing it. The probable overgrowing is a development in the opposite direction of the Swedish environmental goal Ett rikt odlingslandskap. The overgrowing can be reduced by more landscape managers, but the time is running out.The middle age of the managers is high and the older generation of farmers is getting too old to maintain the management of the small-scaled cultural landscape. To make the future of this kind of landscape possible we have to wake an interest among the younger generation and facilitate and make it possible for them to take over. We also have to increase the awareness of the broad mass. The interviews points out that cooperation and good development of the countryside are keystones for the future of the small-scaled cultural landscape. The strategies and purposes of the European Landscape Convention have clear similarities with what the interviews suggests as important conditions for the small-scaled cultural landscape survival. This shows that the convention can come to get great importance for this kind of landscape when it ratifies and carries out in Sweden. The development towards fewer and fewer managers of the cultural landscape increases the need for landscape plan...
