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Dwelling in the Fuchun Mountains is a traditional Chinese landscape painting by Huang Gongwang (1269-1354) that depicts the landscapes on both banks of the Fuchun River, one of the ten most famous landscapes in China. An examination of the work and of its philosophical message provides insight into its standing as a major work of Chinese art and the reasons why it has served as inspiration for countless urban and rural development projects in the area it depicts, as well as in other areas in China. The Fuchun River and its surrounding mountains, painted by Huang Gongwang over 670 years ago, is situated in the middle section of the Qiantang River, a cradle of Chinese civilisation and an area with several UNESCO World Heritage Sites recognised for their living cultural landscapes. This is a picturesque river made famous in China by the many paintings and major literary works in praise of it. This very rich cultural and historical landscape heritage which has been recognised for centuries is currently subjected to major transformations (urbanisation, agricultural development and the installation of dykes). This study focusing on several projects seeks to understand how current landscape developments are contributing to restoring harmony between inhabitants and nature by drawing inspiration from the harmony represented in Dwelling in the Fuchun Mountains.

Marrakesh was developed based on the classic model of the garden-city imbedded in an oasis. In the iconography and descriptions of writers and travellers, Marrakesh is indissociable from its palm groves and plants which confer a strong identity to a landscape the city has promoted for tourism. This image has increasingly become disconnected from reality, the garden-city and oasis image is fading away in the face of the extension and densification of the city. The palm groves and rows of trees have been retreating with encroaching urbanisation, golf courses, tourist complexes and villas, ever since the colonial period and increasingly in recent decades. The composition of this plant heritage is a reflection of various cultural influences which have shaped the current identity of the city. The palette of plant species reveals a qualitative change in landscapes correlated to changes in the tastes and choices of a social class and a population which questions this identity, historically based on a balance between plant and mineral elements. Gentrification has led to food production being abandoned to the benefit of recreational and aesthetic landscape functions.

The Moroccan regional planning was often marked by security concerns, based on historic inheritances of conflicting relations between central authority and tribes. This analysis focused on history/space and security has lead to the marginalization of some regions, in particular the mountain considered as "useless" space. Since the creation of a Ministry of regional planning, a new consciousness has appeared. In this context, the development of an atlas of landscapes may constitute an opportunity, the landscape becoming a way to think, in a different way, the everyday life territory. It also may constitute a new tool to assist in the decision-making and the promotion of local potentialities for local and public actors, decision-makers, and to encourage the emergence of a territorial perception and consciousness. This atlas raises numerous linguistic and conceptual questions necessary to define a coherent content in adequacy with the local specificities and culture. Conscious of the limits and gaps, result of the simple transposition of this westerner concept of landscape, we have put in evidence the existence of a landscape culture peculiar to this country with its local and regional specificities.