METHODOLOGICAL PROPOSAL TO DEFINE MANAGEMENT UNITS FOR RURAL LAND-USE PLANNING

Currently, in Latin America, there is a growing concern for the planning of rural territories, particularly in the context of land use planning. However, the distinctive features of the rural territories which are built by the local actors have not yet been addressed in depth. In this article, we define the concepts of territory and social capital to analyze the social networks and how the actors perceive them in order to elaborate a methodological proposal to define local management units for rural land use planning. The methodology consists of four stages that, through qualitative and quantitative techniques and data analysis based on coding, enables the definition of the analytical limits of the unit with the support of a geographical information system. To apply the methodology, we selected a case study in the department of Santa Rosa, Mendoza-Argentina. The consideration of the local management unit in the design of land use policies allows addressing the singularities that local actors express in rural territories. In this way, land use planning could be enriched by approaching the local scale, that is, by considering subjects and their networks as analysis units.