Development opportunities in the rural landscape Analysis of case studies in Yubune and Cella Monte

The rural areas face the danger of becoming more abandoned due to the recent transformative trends of more people choosing to live in urbanized areas and decreasing and aging population. The base of this thesis was born out of two workshops which were the result of a collaboration between Politecnico di Torino and Kyoto Institute of Technology. This research paper aims to find potential development opportunities in the rural landscapes with heritage focus through analyzing two case studies, of which both located in rural areas connected to traditional food production and consumption. In one case it is wine-production in Italy while in the other case it’s tea-production in japan. Landscape Character Assessment, SWOT analysis and assessing scenarios are used as a method in this thesis. The similarities of the two case studies and the method mentioned before allows to create a comprehensive set of goals which suggest actions that can be transferrable to other similar case studies. The proposed comprehensive set of goals aims to answer to the question on how to enhance the productive landscapes without compromising their value, their heritage. Defining the development goals is best attended with involving the local stakeholders in participatory planning. It responds to the locals’ demands which need priority as they are the primary users of the landscape.