LANDSCAPE: A STRATEGIC RESOURCE

Landscape, as the set of elements that characterise the environment hosting a community, is a collective strategic resource that contributes to determining the perceptive and functional quality of the living and working spaces therein.
Landscape is also a collective resource in that it guarantees the possibility of creating a collective exchange and communication with other communities. Hence, landscape is an element that determines the image that a community offers the outside world and is proof of the degree of civilisation and capacity for welcoming of the same.
Landscape is a resource that must be used effectively in order to develop economic exchanges: it is the main element of a location that attracts tourism; it confers material (healthiness) and immaterial (ability to stir emotions) values and it is a vehicle for promoting the production and intellectual works of a community.
Landscape is an essential resource in the pursuit of the general interests of the community. As the environment is a constant element of time and history that determines the character, habits and customs of a people, landscape is an element that ensures the residents see themselves as a community. At the same time, the elements of the landscape which are the fruit of man's toils are proof of this.
In its role as a fundamental element for the recognition of identity, the landscape is an essential strategic resource for managing, as a community, the competition and exchanges with other communities in the world that are increasingly characterising the current historical period of globalisation.
Telos is specialised in landscape analysis and focuses on the landscape as one of the elements that qualifies the culture of a territory, both as an element related to territorial and urban plans and projects, and also as the subject of specific landscape plans and projects.
In territorial and landscape design, Telos adopts the guidelines contained in the European Landscape Convention.

THE ENVIRONMENT IN TERRITORIAL PROJECTS

The carrying capacity is the ability of an environment and its resources to sustain a certain number of individuals and activities. The notion derives from an idea that only a defined number of individuals can live in a certain environment, with limited resources available.
The CC is a concept that originates from the natural sciences, but is not indifferent to the evolution of social systems and their ability to skilfully balance and make the most of the capacity of the environment to absorb and transform the residues of human activities (territorial and urban metabolism).
Natural systems and social systems are characterised by constant change and the quest for forms of dynamic stability (homeostasis).
A key concept for tackling the concept of stability in changing environments is the theme of the co-evolution of man and environment, in relation to which territorial and urbanistic evolutionary matters must show forms of "intelligence".
Telos has the reliable know-how and methodologies required to verify the sustainability of plans and projects from an environmental standpoint, and is particularly specialised in strategic environmental assessments of plans and projects pursuant to the European Directive on the SEA (2001/42/EC). It also has a vast range of experience in analysing and assessing elements according to the Land Capability Classification (LCC) method.