FutureScapes: Managing Emerging and Future Cultural Landscapes

On 20 July 1969 the world was changed irrevocably. An estimated 600 million people, about one fifth of the human population at the time, watched the live-television broadcast as Neil Armstrong stepped onto the Moon. Yet despite the fact that this would forever be THE first moment that a human stepped onto another celestial body the significance for humanity as a whole was not immediately recognised. Moreover, no steps were – or have since been – taken to protect and manage significant elements of that event for the benefit of future generations. This begs the question – ‘Why?’ In this latest book in Springer’s innovative Landscape Series, Dirk Spennemann explores the conceptual barriers that prevent the recognition, and subsequent protection, of significant elements of contemporary and emergent heritage. Using the new research paradigm of heritage futures, Spennemann argues that the heritage management profession’s extensive reliance on hindsight remains its major conceptual shortcoming, and sets out the issues faced by cultural heritage professionals if cultural landscapes are to have a future and if future heritage is to be safeguarded. With its focus on cultural landscapes and landscape futures the book will have appeal for academics, professionals and students engaged in archaeological management, heritage/historic preservation, space history, futures studies and cultural landscapes, as well as for the broader space and environmental communities.