Inhabiting the landscape: An exercise from the perspective of the production of post-mining landscapes

Abstract

In 2013, the local government of Bogotá, Colombia, proposed closing down the mines located on urban land, in an effort to control the development of extractive activities and their associated consequences. However, the decree regulating that transition was revoked a year later. This research article seeks to respond to a question triggered by that event, regarding the future of these areas, in view of future closings. It seeks to enrich the conceptual and methodological approach for the understanding and definition of post-mining landscapes. On the basis of the interpretation of the theoretical-methodological bridges found between the concepts of habitat and landscape, the article proposes the notion of inhabited landscape as the conceptual basis to build post-mining landscapes from the perspective of inhabiting them. On the other hand, it establishes the elements of the methodological path suggested for the construction of post-mining landscapes, based on the contextual characterization and the critical reading of two different approaches to post-mining: first, the Potosí neighborhood in Bogotá and second, the iba-Lausitz project in Germany. The construction of these landscapes is set forth as a broad project of collective construction that requires the establishment of territorial pacts grounded in participation scenarios and the collective production of knowledge.