Daily life explorers, social networks and landscape policies

The article sheds light on virtual networks’ capability of driving landscape changes, both at epistemological level and at geographical level. “Living in” the landscape brings out the main drivers of change at individual level, while the ICTs are offering complementary places, with respect to those ones already existing, for increasing people’s role in sharing values and meanings. Then, common visions might emerge and “inform” landscape policies, indirectly influencing the meaning of wellbeing. Specifically, the socioeconomic theory might constitute a missing link between regulatory issues and technological achievements, enhancing and combining the new opportunities for participation offered by the European Landscape Convention, and by the widespread diffusion of social networks on the web. Indeed, “living in” the landscape inspires a plurality of visions that people are able to describe and share on the web or send directly to the interested institutions. Geographers might collect these issues and explore the landscape by living in it in order to produce “ethic visions”. Integrated with political and economic issues using the Regulation Impact Analysis (RIA), their contents might contribute to inform landscape transformation policies. Landscape policies might be participated also in the implementation phase, involving people in the fund raising activities and delegating the realization of some interventions to the spontaneous action of the interested citizens and firms. More participation at political and at social level might strengthen the sense of community reinforcing the narratives that connect the human and natural elements of landscape, integrating equity and sustainability in the traditional meaning of wellbeing.