Villages with significant landscape values. The case of Lodzkie Voivodeship

Abstract

The main objective of the work was to determine the state of preservation of significant landscape values of rural settlements. Significant landscape value is understood as those features of a rural settlement that are important for the recognition of its resources as scarce, i.e. those that occur in several or more territories but not commonly. It is crucial to identify those localities in which the various interrelated components of the landscape form a rare one. The scarcity of the resource results primarily from the relict nature of the material cultural heritage, i.e. the concentration of landscape remains of past times. The field reconnaissance and the resulting valorization of rural settlements allowed us to determine many regularities concerning their state of preservation. First of all, it should be emphasized that the group of villages to which rare landscape values can be attributed is very small. The best-rated villages received a score of 8.5 and 8 points, i.e. Bąkowa Góra and Spycimierz, Gidle, and Spała. Among the most important values of these villages, one should point out the preservation of historical features of the spatial layouts of the habitat. This is mainly due to the lack of advanced development processes in the new construction field after World War II and in the twenty-first century. In villages that have preserved significant landscape values, both in terms of planning and physiognomy, the main problem is the advanced degradation of farm buildings. Most of he existing facilities may be destroyed in the coming years. It is also important that these localities have a distinguishing feature or features of the landscape, which are the basis for their social recognition, and thus the possibility of determining the basis for the protection of settlements based on the identity of the rural landscape.