Custom-Made Patchwork Landscape: Entrepreneurial And Private Regionalism

Abstract

Regional identity as a subject of invented tradition is continuously updated in whole Europe; this process is especially regular in cultures of small populations, such as Latvia. It is a multilayered term, which involves a continuously changing main value-focus and numerous disciplines, including architecture. One of the ways to look at it realistically is to analyze the visually represented main hegemonic values and processes in society. Appropriate platform for this is provided by agglomeration expansion – fusion spots of the urban and the rural, thus creating a characteristic local landscape. The aim of this article is to clarify core impacts on the regional identity formation of the landscape of Riga region as observed today. Methodology is based on the case study of Mārupe County, using RES (residential) landscape inventory, urban-morphology, photo-analytical and rhetoric problem-definition methodology. Major findings lead to a conclusion of unbalanced role between the state intervention and free trade system, based on the neoliberal ideology intensified in the transition – economy zone. Thus regional spatial identity has mostly failed following any professional standards, but has rather developed as clusters with residential function, mostly under the strong impact of the market economy and entrepreneurship.

Keywords

• regional spatial identity, suburban landscape, neoliberals, transition economy, patchwork landscape.