Methods of valorization of cultural heritage in rural settlement systems. Proposal for assessing the value of spatial systems based on previous studies

The protection of historic rural layouts often has a purely declarative dimension. Since the second half of the 20th century, the landscape of the Polish countryside has been undergoing transformations that have a significant impact on its architecture and on the preservation of the value of rural layouts. The number of rural layouts under legal protection is also a problem. There are about 80 examples of rural settlements entered in the registers of monuments (they constitute 0.001% of all items entered in the registers). There are fifteen times more protected urban layouts (1,066 - as of 01.01.2018), which in terms of quantity exceed the number of towns with city rights (944 - as of 01.01.2020), therefore, there are 1.15 protected urban layouts per 1 city, while there are 0.0015 protected rural layouts per 1 rural locality (and there are 52,363 of them in Poland). This state of affairs contributed to the adoption of the aim of the article, which is a proposal for a method of valorisation of historic rural layouts and their cultural heritage. Its task would be to enable conservators and planners to clearly determine which of the rural systems and the heritage elements contained therein require special protection or reconstruction. As part of the conducted research, a method was adopted consisting in the analysis of the methodology for the valuation of monuments, landscape, elements of cultural heritage, urban and rural systems, the aim of which was to develop a compilation method of valuation. The prepared valuation method was tested on three different settlement systems: Chochołów, Cedry Wielkie and Nowosolna, which were inventoried in detail. The summary included reflections on the need to strengthen the protection of rural settlement systems and proposals for the specification of the developed method of the valuation of rural systems. The basis of this article is the author's master's thesis, entitled "Methods of valorisation of cultural heritage in historical rural systems. Diagnosis of the existing state and possibilities of improvement", distinguished in the 2nd edition of the competition for the best master's thesis in the field of rural development in the field of social sciences, organised by IRWiR PAN and EFRWP.