The periphery is not only the unforeseen and undesired result of a centre that is growing and needs to expand, with no regard to where or how. The periphery is more than just the perimeter of a centre; it is also, and above all, a threshold between different territorial (and sometimes mental) realities, with increasing prominence. To understand their logic and their idiosyncrasy requires a great variety of gazes, from art to literature, from music to cinema, from photography to architecture, from geography to sociology, from town planning to ecology. To act in the periphery, we need a substantial change in the space and time scale to which we are accustomed, and we need to understand that its social and symbolic (and even landscape) yardsticks are different.

This new text is the result of the international seminar with the same name held in Olot in November 2010 and it aims to propose new, alternative readings to hegemonic and traditional views, new landscape references, and new means of intervention and management of these spaces in order to not abandon daily peri-urban landscapes from public policies in keeping with the European Landscape Convention. These areas are often neglected or suffer from chaotic growth.

• Franges. Els paisatges de la perifèria. Complete version (12,2Mb)
• Summaries in Spanish (731,3kb)
• Summaries in English (727,8kb)