Introduction to: Routledge Handbook of Cultural Landscape Practice

This chapter considers the adoption and use of the cultural landscape concept in World Heritage practice. It also considers the way in which the cultural landscape concept has changed since its adoption by the UNESCO World Heritage Committee in 1992 and consider these changes alongside the dynamic and rapidly shifting values and meanings of ‘heritage’ more broadly. The chapter finds that the cultural landscape concept has a huge diversity of ways in which it is and can be applied in heritage practice, which demands that, when operationalising the concept, it is essential to be clear in explaining the way it is being used in each specific context. In the sense of a ‘property’ or ‘estate’, cultural landscape can apply to a selected region of the Earth that has been transformed by human-ecological intra-action.1 Cultural landscape as a heritage place is inclusive of tangible and intangible attributes and values.