Industrial culturescape: Territory as context

Abstract

The European Landscape Convention has contributed to understanding landscape as an important component of collective well-being and highlighted the need to manage the entire territory as a landscape. The Nervion estuary, Abra Bay and mining area deserve to be considered an urban cultural landscape, because of their heritage value and singular beauty. The landscape of the Nervion and Abra has developed over time, above all, throughout the period of industrialisation. Restoring the industrial heritage landscape, such as the old mining railways, may bring the existing cultural landscape closer to the environment of the people who live in these areas. This study categorises the heritage elements and traces of the Orconera mining railway, in order to understand the current landscape and determine a proposal for action to preserve them and restore the mining railway line as a green infrastructure. In this case, preservation as a sustainable landscape means proposing a new use for it as cultural landscape and tourism. Although industrialisation has had a serious impact on the development of the whole Bilbao metropolitan area, the mining-industrial heritage includes sites that are somewhat unexplored and overlooked by urban policies.