© UNESCO/Editora Brasileira

This book shows that in its modernization process, the city of Rio de Janeiro also needs to guarantee and value its landscape, which gives it an identity and is its greatest heritage. Since the foundation of the city, its landscape has played an important role in which the relationship between the elements of nature and culture reveals an exceptional character. Perhaps more than in other great metropolis of the world, city and nature in Rio de Janeiro comprise an inseparable whole recognized worldwide. Valuing this relationship and recognizing the need for conservation and management of the city within an important tool of sustainable development have allowed Rio de Janeiro to become the first big city of the world to be inscribed on UNESCO World Heritage List as one of the World Heritage Cultural Landscapes. In 1992, this category was adopted by UNESCO for the inscription of areas which mixed cultural and natural heritage and the intrinsic links between communities and their natural environment have been considered of exceptional character. For this reason, these sites would deserve to be preserved through the implementation of the 1972 Convention concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage.