ABSTRACT
Time and space are primal constituents of life. They both determine human existence as well as social and governmental structures. As a result, geographical research always entails a temporal dimension. Within that part of geography that deals with the spatial aspects of human existence (human geography or ‘anthropogeographie’), three fields of research have emerged, which programmatically link the temporal to the spatial dimension:
Historical geography studies human activities and resulting spatial structures in a historical perspective in order to deduce laws of temporal spatial differentiation. This requires describing, differentiating and explaining the scale and quality of economic, social, political, demographic and natural processes. It also includes the reconstruction of past landscapes.
Genetic cultural landscape research seeks to explain present spatial structures and processes in terms of the past. It centres on humans as agents of landscape development and projects back into history as far as connections between the past and the present exist and can be uncovered. The human impact on landscape is most discernible in settlements and their surroundings.
Applied historical geography aims to implement the results of the branches described above in regional planning and environmental education. When sustainable development takes centre stage, it is called cultural landscape conservation.
