Landscape's values: the meaning of rivers and teh mangrove Recife city

Abstract

This paper shows a reflection on the values assigned to the landscape of rivers and mangroves of the Recife´s city, represented here by the Capibaribe river and Pina mangrove, through interpretation of the meanings evoked by human groups who live and maintain a relationship, directly or indirectly, with these environmental systems. The reflections seek to develop subsidies for the construction of instruments for assessment of heritage maintenance procedures or guidelines of public policies aimed at protecting the natural and cultural heritage. It starts with the assumption that the environment consists of natural and cultural assets, expressed in the landscape. Understanding the natural site has a fundamental role in shaping physical, geographical, urban structure and the use and occupation of the city, constitutes a milestone asset representative of the cultural identity of its landscape. The landscapes can be interpreted in time and space in different ways to be represented according to the values assigned to them by the looks and perceptions formed within specific socioeconomic and cultural contexts. The analysis was adopted as the theoretical basis, the approach of the cultural landscape from the perspective of the New Cultural Geography, and as a result, we identified different values obtained from the representations interpreted by groups of people surveyed.