Paisajes de oro: enclaves de la zona rural-costera de Canelones

Abstract

The present research aims to investigate through the analysis of landscape, the bond between the beach, the rural area and the different urbanizations in the coastal zone of the Department of Canelones, "Costa de Oro". Landscape is understood here as a source of information for a set of processes within a territory. Its territorial structure appears like a synthesis of the cultural and ecological systems that constitute it, as a result of the environment’s transformation process through time. The area of study could be defined as a zone of confluence and marine, land, and coastal interrelation. The activities within this coastal zone are explicitly under guardianship of the State and they have the characteristic of assuring public access for the enjoyment of all citizens. Our contribution implies a different look on that territory. For this reason we developed a methodology that allows a new interpretation of the area, working from the morphological, historic, and geographical complexity of the territory, and assuming the fragility and the dynamism of the coastal system. Dynamic border between the land and the sea, between the solid and the liquid, the coast constitutes a type of landscape whose interpretation has changed along history. From the last two decades of the 20th century, our coasts have become an object of territorial planning with the conviction that this new space generated for the use of humans, summarized the utopia of recomposing harmony loss between man and nature (Torres, 2007).