The SOS II project has the general objective of contributing to the development and enhancement of (a network of) sustainable open spaces based on landscape identity. This will stimulate the sustainable development of the region in question.
In Frankfurt, on 12 to 14 May 2004, the SOS-partners organise lectures, visits and exchanges between experts and practitioners. They will try to develop marketing strategies for the open spaces. They will do this using the experiences from the several local actions carried out in the different regions.
The workshop uses as a starting point the ideas of the “culture economy” developed by Christopher Ray. Local cultural resources are seen as the key to improve the social and economic well-being of local areas. Especially traditional foods, literary references, historical and prehistoric sites, flora and fauna, (landscape) landmarks. Those cultural markers in open spaces can contribute to the landscape identity. It can be regarded as an art and it calls for a strategy to promote those markers as identifying for the landscape. Several projects in SOS have proposed approaches to do just that.
The workshop starts with a visit to the Regionalpark Rhein-Main and the ‘Gartenlandschaft’ in Bad Homburg, one of the local actions in SOS II. Various aspects and experiences will be shown and discussed.