Settlement patterns as patrimonial resource Abstract

Abstract

Settlement patterns defines the way in which a society distributes the diverse built elements such as houses, roads, fields, public spaces or factories. It can be considered as a cultural expression. The types of elements, their number and distribution will depend on the technological, social structure and cultural background, reflecting the knowledge of its environment that the society had, and also their desires, priorities and even bad practices. The present article proposes that these patterns can be useful as a basis for planning, not only preserving what really has value, but even reproduced at different scales they can bring value to the territory. It also raises a question: What should be kept in traditional patterns and what can be, or even should be changed? In order to answer it, first some settlementspart-type are briefly described, and finally some guidelines recently used in planning projects are analyzed.