Landscape as a Founding Element of the Contemporary Urban

LANDSCAPE AS A FOUNDING ELEMENT OF THE CONTEMPORARY URBAN Landscape as a Founding Element of the Contemporary Urban CRISTINA MATTIUCCI This paper discusses how landscape transformations and uses redefine the features of urban and non-urban (sub-extra-urban, or rural) contexts in collective imaginaries, and their role as a key element in planning policies. More specifically, the study investigates landscape transformation processes by discussing changes in the perception of the territory among inhabitants and visitors. As argued in this paper, due to its use as a cultural, economic, and political tool, landscape strongly influences territorial marketing strategies and individual living choices, contributing to the rise of new issues on the urban question. This argument is based on research into the social perception of landscape in the mountain area of Montagnoli, near Madonna di Campiglio, in the Trentino Province (Northern Italy), where a project for a water storage basin for artificial snowmaking caused significant material and cultural changes to the territory. Using this case study, the paper discusses the role of nature in the evolution of the founding myths of an urban environment. Madonna di Campiglio is a site in the mountains in Italy and part of a wider settlement stretching from the valleys to high-altitude areas. The site, a well-known tourist destination, represents a particular case of urban development on a regional scale, where the geographic and historical peculiarities, as well as the contemporary global urban dynamics, have contributed to the formation of a polycentric urban structure across an orthographically complex territory (see Dematteis, 1975; Gaido 1999; Perlik et al., 2001; Bätzing, 2005; Dematteis, 2009). Madonna di Campiglio is also part of the (winter) tourism system which affected the destinies of local communities in the Trentino Province (Zanon, 1992). During the high season this rural landscape changes dramatically. The resident 2,000 inhabitants increase significantly (and even reach tenfold), filling the empty accommodation buildings (hotels and houses). Part of Madonna di Campiglio tourist BUILT ENVIRONMENT VOL 44 NO 3 attraction is its location in the Val Redena, known as ‘the pearl of the Brenta’ for its consistent landscape heritage, and it is particularly famous for the presence of the Brenta Dolomites, which, along with eight other Dolomitic systems, became part of UNESCO World Heritage in 2009. Due to its history and orography, the Val Rendena boasts a remarkable landscape that significantly influenced settlement choices – both seasonal and long-term – and territorial planning in the valley’s individual municipalities as well as in its wider community.1 In such a context, landscape is not merely a valorization element but also a strategic tool for the distribution of value (and power) in the territory. In fact, this is due to the complexity of the area’s features (i.e. spatial connotations, attributes, accessibility, etc.) which go beyond its ecological potential as a significant natural area. As Manfred Perlik (2011) stated, when landscapes show uncommon qualities and are 315 BRANDED LANDSCAPES IN CONTEMPORARY CITIES perceived as particularly prestigious, their value as positional goods (or symbolic capital) increases. This value adds up to the natural qualities of landscapes, namely, their capacity to meet biophysical needs, and their cultural dimension, which defines the relationship between a society and its territory. Based on a study of the social perceptions of the landscape transformation processes in Madonna di Campiglio, this paper focuses on the analysis of the contemporary landscape’s features and attributed values, which contribute to define landscape uses and living practices as the aspiration for temporary or permanent enjoyment of amenity contexts (Moss, 2006; Bourdeau et al., 2012), and which orient territorial policies and projects. This analysis contributes to the wider debate on landscape as foundational element of the contemporary urban, assuming small mountain environments as paradigmatic of this argument. According to the prism of Lefebvre’s (1974) notion of space production,2 the urban is not a self-evident scalar entity, and can only be defined in substantial terms by reference to the specific socio-spatial processes that produce it. From this viewpoint, landscape – conceived as a culturally determined concept – carries a central role in space production processes and urban construction. The central role of landscape can be viewed at the levels of lived, perceived, and conceived landscape(s) (Mitchell, 2002), be they a product of the imaginaries of those who live in them, or programmatic elements for territorial marketing, or the result of the productive processes occurring in a territory.3 Presenting the research findings, with a focus on socio-spatial processes and their influence on the perceived landscapes, contributes to understanding the urban and to the role of landscape in making the urban. An Infrastructured Landscape In order to guarantee artificial snow on the Madonna di Campiglio ski slopes, Montag316 noli’s artificial water reservoir, a landscape infrastructure, was built between 2012 and 2014. Funivie Madonna di Campiglio Spa, a private company that manages the local ski facilities, proposed the project to secure the immediate availability of water for the artificial snowing-making systems in the Madonna di Campiglio ski area, which, together with those of Folgarida-Marilleva and Pinzolo, cover more than 150 ha (370 acres) of slopes. The basin – which is 360 m (1,180 ft) long, 120 m (394 ft) wide, 12 m (39 ft) deep, with a perimeter of about 800 m or half a mile – can store up to 200 m3 (7,063 ft3) of water. The rationale behind this project is the prominence of Madonna di Campiglio in the tourist itineraries in Trentino, and the necessity to adapt the infrastructure to what had become a mass tourism practice by the mid-twentieth century. In particular, there was a need for a massive reorganization of ski facilities that would allow the system to remain operational in spite of the unpredictable weather. A growing number of ski resorts in the Dolomites are equipped with snowmaking machinery, and some can cover 100 per cent of the slopes with artificial snow. The original purpose of artificial snow was to supplement natural snow, particularly when the latter was scarce. In fact, the opposite has become true: more and more often natural snow serves to supplement to artificial snow (Cipra, 2004). Figure 1 shows a series of photographs documenting landscape transformations from 2014 to 2016 during the winter and summer seasons. The photographs show that the Montagnoli basin has an irregular ellipsoidal shape built in an existing natural depression of 1,776 m (5,828 ft). The main water sources for the basin are the nearby torrent Sarca di Nambino and the Grotte spring. The basin can guarantee artificial snow covering for all slopes and ensure the ski facilities 120 hours of uninterrupted activity.4 In terms of juridical boundaries 60 per cent of the basin area belongs to the former BUILT ENVIRONMENT VOL 44 NO 3 LANDSCAPE AS A FOUNDING ELEMENT OF THE CONTEMPORARY URBAN Figure 1. Photographs documenting landscape transformations of the Montagnoli basin from 2014 to 2016. (Photos: © Greta Maria Rigon. See note 6) BUILT ENVIRONMENT VOL 44 NO 3 317 BRANDED LANDSCAPES IN CONTEMPORARY CITIES Ragoli municipality (now Tre Ville5), and the Comunità Le Regole Spinale Manez is in charge of its management. The remaining 40 per cent is part of the Adamello Brenta National Park, a protected natural area. According to the planning rules of the municipality, the project has undergone numerous revisions and negotiations. This was because multiple institutions lay claim to the area’s jurisdiction, and to the magnitude and the complexity of the project, which has been perceived as having a major impact on the natural ecosystem and thus needed to be subjected to a series of assessments, in accordance with the Italian law. The project was declared to be of public interest, so a lot of ordinary plans authorized a modification to their original rules. For instance, to proceed with the basin construction, the Adamello Brenta National Park Council modified the Park Planning (Piano del Parco), which originally forbade the construction of ‘open-air water collection reservoirs for artificial snowmaking’ with the intent of preserving and valorizing the environmental, natural, and historical features of the Madonna di Campiglio valley. The realization of the water basin was subject to extended conflict between those holding opposite views on local development and government. On the one hand, the Società Funivie Madonna di Campiglio and the Autonomous Province of Trento considered winter tourism the main driver of growth in the Val Rendena. On the other hand, local associations and committees strongly opposed the project, as it introduced an artificial element in the landscape and embodied a territorial development model based on the commodification of nature and common resources. This polarization marked the entire decision-making process. Each side made its voice heard through all means available to them: public acts, technical documents, brochures, protests, and demonstrations. Today, a few years after the planning and construction of the basin, there has been a decrease in the winter tourist visitors to the area, the dispute 318 lost momentum, and the basin became an integral part of the landscape. Perceiving the Modified Landscape How has the landscape been perceived since the basin’s construction? Studying the perceptions of landscape is guided by the assumption that landscape is a cultural construct, and that perceived landscape is the outcome of experienced landscape (Zube et al., 1982; Thwaites and Simkins, 2007; Mattiucci, 2012).6 The work has been based on understanding socio-spatial processes producing the perceived landscapes and the deep interconnectedness – and interdependence – of landscape and territorial dynamics. Perception is considered a complex system in its multiple dimensions, composed of physical/natural, symbolic/cultural, physiological/personal and intersubjective/ collective elements (Backhaus et al., 2008), whose understanding becomes meaningful as a synthetic expression of the contemporary condition of living the places. In the case of the Montagnoli-Madonna di Campiglio landscape, socio-spatial processes are magnified, given the complex social realities interacting within it. The site itself includes about 2,000 traditional residents, but is also inhabited by tourists, new residents, commuters, who also inhabit/live/use its landscape. Thus, economy and politics profoundly influenced the rhetoric that accompanied the construction of the basin, and the narratives that partly shaped its representation in the collective imaginary. After all, following the Mitchell’s (2002) argument, the conceived landscape (produced by economy and politics) and lived landscape, mediated through images and symbols, are complementary features of perceived landscape. For this reason, testimonies were collected in the field from insiders and outsiders. In addition, a collection of landscape images has enabled us to grasp the different processes of meaning and value attribution to the Montagnoli basin, and how they have changed over the years.7 This visual material provides a starting point BUILT ENVIRONMENT VOL 44 NO 3 LANDSCAPE AS A FOUNDING ELEMENT OF THE CONTEMPORARY URBAN for a qualitative, multi-method analysis, involving interviews and a progressive photo elicitation (Harper, 2002), to understand the meanings assigned to places and events. In fact, photo-elicitation has allowed us to investigate accurately the landscape image in its different stages – before and after the construction of the basin. In the following, some of the main positions of different respondents are classified according to their position as insiders or outsiders, also in subcategories according their role in local society: members of the local community, politicians, professionals and inhabitants, among insiders; winter and summer tourists, commuters, seasonal workers, among outsiders. The insiders (sub-categorized as politicians and economy stakeholders) highlight that the economic benefit that would derive from the basin would be considerable: the construction of a storage facility would solve the recurring problem of lack of snow in the area, which possibly caused the decline of winter tourism in the Val Redena. Insiders and local stakeholders who welcome the promise of economic development implied in such interventions as the basin also share this view. Hotel owners, who have a direct stake and interest in landscape transformation, due to their involvement in economic activities that depend on territorial resources, already describe the basin ‘as a naturalized Alpine lake’. From their point of view, the basin would be an asset in winter, when snow makes the landscape aesthetically more pleasing, and a new opportunity for summer tourism, as an attractive location for outdoor activities. Hotel owners embrace the landscape changes produced by the construction of the basin in the spirit of integration between local economic development and the preservation of Alpine identity. The population of the Tre Ville municipality, where the basin area is located, holds similar views, as they are the beneficiaries of the economic growth the basin would generate for the entire territory. Among the respondents in this sub-category of insiders, BUILT ENVIRONMENT VOL 44 NO 3 there is a consistent presence of ski instructors and young people, who have a positive opinion of this landscape transformation, also with regard to the summer months, as they can imagine this would generate future investments in the tourism sector. They are less worried about ongoing transformations and changes than older members of the community. Members of the Regole Spinale Manez community, who surrendered part of their land to the Società Funivie Madonna di Campiglio, expressed favourable opinions regarding the basin, which already yielded revenues as the land was sold for 256,000 euros. From the point of view of landscape, if earlier local inhabitants themselves thought of the area as devoid of attractiveness, an insignificant busa (hole), now they speak of it as a pleasant spot both in winter and in summer, where one can sit beside the lake, take a walk in summer, or look at a breathtaking landscape while skiing in winter. The artificial quality of the lake dissolved into the landscape, not least by virtue of the mitigation and naturalization works laid out in the planning process. Although the interviewees indicate artificial snowmaking in the winter tourist season as the basin’s main function, they also acknowledge the value of other features summer users may benefit from. Similarly, all representatives of local institutions are interested in and aware of the economic impact and the direct and indirect benefits of winter tourism for the territory. They endorse the basin project as it ensures stability and development for the entire local population, who work and thrive thanks to winter tourism and the activities connected to it. They also emphasize that the basin can guarantee the area’s long-term attractiveness, if adequately supported by the local authorities in the promotion of new responsible outdoor and cultural activities in the summer. The outsiders – tourists, who are not aware of the artificiality of the basin and see it as a 319 BRANDED LANDSCAPES IN CONTEMPORARY CITIES natural mountain lake, are those who make use of it for hikes or picnics in summer, and not just in the winter ski season. The area, accessible by easy hiking paths, allows for leisure activities and compensates the cost of the holiday. Although some tourists know about the artificial landscape transformations in the area, they do not see it negatively. Thus far, this overview has presented a generally positive view of the basin, mostly connected to the economic dimension of landscape perception. Yet, there are also less positive reactions from both insiders and outsiders. One the groups who are more critical are senior citizens (people over 60 years old), who witnessed a transformation they describe as ‘excessive urbanization of Madonna di Campiglio and anthropization of the mountain territory’. More specifically, critical remarks on landscape transformation in that area emerged from a review of ‘historical’ photographs that are an integral part of these citizens’ personal memories. In their view, this transformation affected not only the landscape’s physical configuration, but also ways of life, habits, economy and infrastructure, urbanization, and the very definition of Alpine identity. In contrast to the previous interviewees, whose cultural framework and interiorized territorial image were influenced by the perspective of economic growth or of new outdoor activities, interviewees with a historical memory of these places (elderly locals, ‘old-time’ tourists) were reluctant to accept these transformations. They registered the loss of an (alleged) ideal mountain landscape and defined Madonna di Campiglio and its surroundings as ‘a Las Vegas, an amusement park, a dormitory for the Alpine tourist’. Comparisons of the ways in which different social groups perceive the basin and the landscape around it reveal that the values attributed to the territory have changed over time. Though a strong polarization between positive and negative perceptions of the modified landscape has not been identified, it can be argued that this is in part due to economic opportunities and programmatic 320 uses that have been made possible in the basin. Minute Materialities at a Global Scale The case of Val Rendena and the Montagnoli basin is an example of the use of landscape initiatives as a branding tool that could enhance the development, image, and economy of the area. This approach features prominently in the rhetoric of local authorities – and in the practices and perceptions of part of the population who grew accustomed to its presence. The basin brought about a revaluation of the area through the construction of buildings and infrastructure: for example, the lighting installation for the Monte Spinale cableway; the new forest road from Malga Boch75 to Spinale; facilities to access the ‘Malga Fevri’ area surrounding the new basin; and the introduction of the summer shopping system. This demonstrates how a single element, such as the Montagnoli basin, can change an entire landscape’s cultural dimension, becoming functional in positioning that specific territory within global processes. Furthermore, the basin has been the target of urban politics on a supra-regional scale. The goal of these politics is the realization of a complex urban system that builds its structures in the valley towns, completely modifying their physiognomy, extending their reach, and generating a seasonal demographic pattern that is typical of tourist locations. It also reconfigures the features of high-altitude areas, stimulating the growth of new (kinds of) settlement and a close infrastructure network connected to mountain leisure activities. The analysis of the driving forces that contributed to transforming the materiality and collective perception of the Montagnoli landscape shows the crucial influence of changes in the trajectories of global tourism and economies, and an infrastructuration that allowed the small towns in the valley to participate in a larger settlement system made up of cultural, social, economic, and political connections, where local relations also take BUILT ENVIRONMENT VOL 44 NO 3 LANDSCAPE AS A FOUNDING ELEMENT OF THE CONTEMPORARY URBAN on new shapes and features. The reconfigurations of the territory – including the building of residential facilities (hotels, second homes) – the development of commercial activities (cafés, restaurants, spas, etc) and mobility infrastructure, and the changes of the social structure of local communities are joint processes that also influence social perceptions of landscape, and, as a result, the role of landscape. To date, Montagnoli artificial basin – which was the object of controversies at first – has become over time a familiar component of the local landscape. It also transformed the social perception of the local landscape, shedding light on the fluctuating relationships between local societies (multi-local, permanent, and temporary) and the spaces they inhabit, in terms of imaginaries, lifestyles, settlement and productive prospects and, obviously, values. Hence, these changes have a deep and parallel influence on landscape transformation prospects. Landscape becomes a founding element of the contemporary urban, due to an increasing degree of hybridization in usages, forms, and policies. From a cultural perspective, this case study outlines not only the risks that are intrinsic in the commodification of nature, but also those inherent to the commodification of landscape values, as they emerged from the territory barely a few years after the building of the basin, and from the consolidation of its image.8 In contexts like these, it is exactly the landscape capital that determines their fragility, as issues such as landscape preservation and valorization via territorial strategies may imply commodification and asymmetries in the distribution of wealth in the territory, or even pose questions of spatial justice. Hence, the landscape emerges as a foundation element in territorial planning strategies. The peculiar mingling and mixing of metropolitan services and natural amenities, which the contemporary landscape hosts, proves attractive for original residents as well as for the so-called ‘new inhabitants’ with a ‘multilocal’ profile (Corrado, 2010). BUILT ENVIRONMENT VOL 44 NO 3 Infrastructured Landscapes and the Urban Question Mountain areas, new suburban/interurban settlements configure new landscapes where density and proximity combine to create an ever-finer mesh of relationships at a distance and, consequently, new social and spatial configurations. Contemporary mountain landscapes have been characterized by peculiar phenomena linked to the expansion of the cities below and around (e.g. settlement patterns, integrated transport systems, commuter and tourist flows, development policies, etc.). These phenomena shape a wide polycentric inhabited area where traditional towns and urban agglomerations are highly integrated within the broad territory they share, and where places such as the little town we described above become a new centrality, a meeting point, a hub for winter and summer leisure, and, as a direct motor for new infrastructure (e.g. elements such as the basin), also an indirect motor for the hospitality industry, catering for tourists as well as for new inhabitants. In contexts with significant landscape consistency, such as those addressed in this study, infrastructure has not generated a diffuse urbanization according to classical models of territorial development, but rather facilitated the development of new urban areas within territories traditionally represented as rural. In fact, they go beyond the city–nature dualism, and they also question landscapes such as those analysed in this study, which represent environments ‘in nature’, infrastructured as spaces to be used by a population which inhabits and enjoys territories that – although not densely settled – are urban along a metropolitan scale. Landscapes like these also rework the founding myths of nature (or the desire for nature), since their transformation serves the purpose of featuring these spaces – at least in their shapes and features – as rural territories serving the urban. The demand for nature which produces these landscapes 321 BRANDED LANDSCAPES IN CONTEMPORARY CITIES is a widespread social demand, closely and profoundly related to the urban way of life of contemporary societies. These aspire to be in contact with, and experience, nature on a daily basis, if possible, and not only on special occasions such as weekends or holidays. The spatio-temporal proximity that is necessary to satisfy this social demand for nature implies that nature itself is infrastructured and accessible, wild in the imagination but certainly not in reality, where it is practicable and liveable in and from the city. Moreover, this could be read as a process which is complementary to the one of policies that, playing the same desire of nature and using the rhetoric of putting the nature in city, can often hide urban speculation or more simply orient the city development, by means of an even more sophisticated and technologic nature. Paul Wapner (2010), providing a powerful vision for environmentalism’s future, defines the current a ‘postnature age’, where it is necessary to overcome the conventional anachronistic polarization of environmental politics (nature vs mastery), as we can note an increasing disappearance of the wild, in the empirical sense, and the conceptual end of the nature. More generally, any plan and project, even if it has been developed in the landscape architecture or urbanism field, expresses a desire to manage nature, interpreting the human need for nature; we can see this in the regulations safeguarding parks, in the plans for coastal areas, and in any other territorial planning process. One of the most evident consequences of such processes is that a territory that was once the edge between the city and the valley (and also between the urban and the rural, the inhabited and the uninhabited) is now featuring a predominantly residential and recreational multifunctionality, ever less occasional, and this changes its status and broadens the ground for the urban question. Indeed, if one considers the wide spectrum of interviewees involved in the present inquiry, one sees how each individual, in his/ 322 her different capacities, has been acknowledged as playing a part in shaping a social perception of the Montagnoli landscape today, beyond his/her physically and permanently dwelling there. Everyone, with his/her experience of landscape, can be considered a dweller of that place and as having a physical and perceptual horizon that is deeply dematerialized from his/her actual proximity to, and presence in, places. This also inevitably implies that interlocutors, when articulating their relationship with their territory, may produce new and sometimes generic attributes and meanings. Finally, landscape perceptions are influenced by contemporary economic and post-Fordist development processes affecting the territorial transformation (Mattiucci, 2015). These generate global geographies within which even the mountain area which is the subject of this article can, due to its territorial capital, play a significant role. As this study has shown, the global processes that influence the perception of space bring into play matters that raise complex planning questions. The big increase in investment in artificial snow installations observed over recent years is the most remarkable illustration of the spatial and territorial dimensions of a reaction to global processes such the climate warming. This reaction consists also of adapting local practices to new climatic and political conditions. Indeed, these reactions can probably be considered as territorial if their aim is to radically reform or, more modestly, to adjust a system of practices and representations in response to a changing landscape. Reactions of the kind addressed above do in any case capture underlying cultural transformations within which aesthetic perceptions and value attributions are epiphenomena of the risks of landscape commodification or of the potential of virtuous planning processes. At this scale, in a polycentric extended city, the landscape may be the container of the reformulation of policies in a relational form, supporting projects and policies that rethink local specificities taking into account the BUILT ENVIRONMENT VOL 44 NO 3 LANDSCAPE AS A FOUNDING ELEMENT OF THE CONTEMPORARY URBAN multiplicity of social groups and development processes. We must consider that the complexities of landscape-making processes imply that landscapes are better understood in a broader, explicitly socio-political discourse. As Debarbieux (2007) argues, the newly acquired value of landscape, enabled by the diversification of contemporary practices and territorialities, generates new spatialities. Similar to what emerges from the case study, this dynamic is an outcome of individual mobility and/or the adoption of different lifestyles in spaces that respond to different logics (work, free time, home, family, etc) which, in turn, push new matters into urban agendas. In Debarbieux’s analysis, contemporary society ‘claims’ landscape not only in ecological terms, but as the space of political action. Practices and perceptions contribute to the definition of the political identity of those who inhabit a landscape, and to the ways in which they interact with space, transform it, or orient strategies, each in accordance with their principles of meaning attribution. If we turn our attention to these processes, landscape clearly emerges as a strategic element of urban transformation and the centre of a debate that identifies it as heritage and common space, as well as a local resource, as ambiguous a denomination this may be. Contexts like the one addressed in this article intensify a landscape’s potential to generate (Alpine) gentrification processes which blur the traditional centre/periphery scheme (Perlik, 2011). Having the possibility to enjoy landscape thus becomes an indicator of social distinction, depending on the effective possibility to benefit from it in a broader sense. Placing landscape at the centre of tensions and instances of safeguarding and/or development of human practices, viewing it as a ‘landscape society’ (Donadieu, 2002), is about awarding an active and conscious political role to the human relationship with landscape. Such a role expresses the convergence (or the divergence) of several social claims and stimulates participation, as in a public space. BUILT ENVIRONMENT VOL 44 NO 3 In fact, even if the most generic planning strategies can easily work by branding and commodifying the space at hand, they must deal with the specificity of a landscape which manifests itself through an infinite range of features – from the eco-systemic to the social and spatial – and which contributes to addressing the future urban agenda. To conclude, it is essential in contemporary times to update the model of landscape interpretation, to transcend from the landscape’s classic forms and features analysis and to acknowledge it as a public space (Mattiucci, 2018). On the one hand, this will facilitate the understanding of the cultural perspectives that impact a landscape, and, on the other hand, it will facilitate the understanding of the dynamics that determine inclusion and exclusion (in terms of accessibility, resources, uses, etc.), putting into the light the crucial questions that should interrogate the operational and theoretical disciplines of urban studies. NOTES 1. An agreement, Accordo-Quadro di Programma per il Piano Territoriale della Comunità delle Giudicarie (PTC), was signed in 2014 by the valley’s municipalities. The PTC is a territorial planning tool for devising community development strategies on the urban and landscape levels. Its goal is the formulation of a development strategy based on high-level sustainability and competitiveness. It also aims to integrate the rules of ‘territorial landscape management’ with settlement and socioeconomic processes, and to promote local resources and identities. The PTC can be accessed online at: http://www.comunitadellegiudicarie.it/content/ download/122642/2200001/file/Criteri_ed_ Indirizzi_PTC_Giudicarie_DP_definitivo.pdf. 2. The research has followed this approach, however refined in more recent times by a new generation of Lefebvrian scholars (among the others: Schmid, 2005). 3. Such processes have taken on different features at times and they can be understood by revisiting Cosgrove’s 1984 Marxist analyses, which brought together social realities and symbolic landscape, through the lens of contemporary productive processes. 323 BRANDED LANDSCAPES IN CONTEMPORARY CITIES 4. Technical data refer to the first Evaluation of Environmental Impact (March 2012). Since then, the basin has undergone further evaluations and technical modification that will be addressed later. For additional information see also: Pro Alpe Integrated Engineering Design – Relazione Ubanistica – Funivie Madonna di Campiglio S.P.A, 15/2011. 5. In 2016, following a public referendum on the framework of a governance reform in the Trentino Province, the municipalities of Ragoli, Montagne, and Preore were combined into the municipality of Tre Ville. Madonna di Campiglio belongs administratively to the municipalities of Pinzolo and Treville, two of the thirty-nine municipalities in the Giudicarie valleys. 6. The field research in two stages, in 2013–2014 and 2015–2016, by Greta Maria Rigon, while preparing an MA thesis in Territorial Management, under the supervision of the author of this paper. The title of her thesis is Interpretazione di un Paesaggio in Trasformazione. Il caso del Bacino di Innevamento Artificiale di Montagnoli a Madonna di Campiglio in Trentino (Interpreting a Changing Landscape. The Montagnoli Storage Basin for Artificial Snowmaking at Madonna di Campiglio, Trentino), 2015/2016; MA Candidate: G.M. Rigon, supervisor: C. Mattiucci. 7. Greta Rigon has carried out the preliminary photo elicitation work in different stages between 2013 and 2016. During these years, she documented the debate on the storage basin, taking photographs of the basin before and after its completion, and of its various functions in different seasons. 8. In their interviews, tourists and frequent travellers to these areas have called the basin an ‘Alpine lake’. Consider the following excerpt: ‘Yes, an Alpine lake. If one goes there and looks at it and doesn’t know the history of the place and is not a local, they would probably think it’s a lake, like all the other lakes in this area. If it’s filled with water you wouldn’t know it’s artificial. If it’s not, well, you do notice it’s manmade because you start seeing the fabric. And until the grass grows on the front side and one walks by, one will know the ground has been dug out and that some massive construction works have been done where the slopes are, too, so to say. But just wait a couple of years and the grass will grow back, and some natural bush they’ve replanted, too. Then it’s going to look like the Spinale Lake, or any other lake’. The views of those who were born in the area before the construction of the basin obviously differ, as they 324 regard the basin as a ‘new’, artificial addition. Yet, this definition draws from a repertoire of narratives and practices that have been exploited for branding and have turned the basin, over a few years, into a shared resource and an ever more familiar element. The description of ‘Lago Montagnoli’ on the construction company’s website states that the basin has been ‘placed into a particularly compatible environmental context and designed with the greatest care for detail to make it look real, and not artificial’. The text also describes the lake as a popular hiking destination in summer, capitalizing on the diffusion of ‘offseason’ practices in the Montagnoli landscape. 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