Analysis and definition of strategies for the characterization, restoration and enhancement of the heritage of public works. An approach from the territorial scale.

The identification and conservation of the heritage of public works still needed the definition of conceptual and strategic keys that would allow us to have a critical discourse capable of repositioning and giving content to a heritage whose specificity has generally been dissolved in the heritage of architecture, the industrial archaeology or cultural landscapes. In addition, and regardless of the consideration of other variables, the project was proposed in response to the idea that any strategy aimed at characterizing, recovering or enhancing the heritage of public works must pay special attention to three decisive problems: the problems derived from the scale of approximation to the heritage of public works (compared to the usual orientation that has circumscribed the protection and conservation of the heritage of civil engineering that focuses on bridges, dams, lighthouses or railway stations, the project focused on the analysis of public works on a territorial scale - road and railway infrastructures, canals, etc.), the problems derived from their functional rigidity (and it is that, with few exceptions, public works of historical interest keep in use and, consequently, deeply transformed) and the excessive weight given to the value of the age of these assets.