The Franciscean Cadaster from the first half of the nineteenth century is an excellent source for studying land use and its changes. However, to date it has only rarely been used in geographical and historical research at the regional or national level. Setting up a digital database of land use recorded in the Franciscean Cadaster at the level of cadastral municipalities covering all of Slovenia and incorporating it into a geographic information system has provided an opportunity for detailed studies of land-use changes spanning two centuries. This article presents the first analyses of changes in individual land-use types and the typology of changes across two centuries.

This paper focuses on five culinary events on Slovenia’s Karst Plateau (Kras). It presents visitors’ motives for attending these events, their satisfaction with them, and their views on sustainability. These traditional culinary events, which take place in the same gastronomic region, differ in their scale, theme, character, and history. A survey was conducted among 244 visitors, approximately 50% of whom had a university degree. The most important motives for their visit include local cuisine; experiencing something new, different, or special; and exploring natural heritage and especially cultural heritage. Visitor satisfaction is the greatest at boutique culinary events, where the main theme is highlighted more strongly than at large-scale culinary events. The main challenge in terms of the sustainability of culinary events is public transport access to the venues. Significant progress would be made by reducing the amount of disposable packaging made from non-sustainable materials. The key to successful culinary events is high-quality services and ingredients, where the word local is key.

The natural vegetation on the Kras (Karst) Plateau is forest. Anthropogenic pressure on this region has been present since the prehistoric times. Because of deforestation linked to excessive grazing and other land uses, and hence accelerated water and wind erosion, the region has over the last millennium gradually turned into bare karst landscape. In the 18th and 19th century, the Kras (Karst) Plateau was a »rocky desert«. In the 19th century, systematic reforestation began, first unsuccessfully with oak and afterwards successfully with black pine. This process took place also in the first half of the 20th century. In the second half of the 20th century, reforestation was replaced by the process of spontaneous afforestation as a result of natural overgrowing of abandoned agricultural land.

This article examines the contemporary industrial semiotic landscape in the town of Velenje, Slovenia, to determine the (positive or negative) collective imaginaries and discourses about industry in the local community. To this end, the semiotic landscape is mapped for signs and symbols of past and present industry, 33 randomly selected short interviews are conducted to understand the residents’ attitudes towards industrial symbols and industrial development in general, and a content analysis of official strategic documents is conducted to determine how industry is represented by officials and whether there are efforts to reimage the town. We found that the industrial past and present are well represented by industrial symbols and are a matter of pride and collective identity for the residents. However, the industrial tradition is hardly represented in official documents: Influenced by the prevailing post-industrial discourses, local authorities have begun to construct new territorial identities in order to increase the town’s attractiveness and economic growth. Currently, both ideas seem to coexist in Velenje. We argue that industrial symbols can become a reference point to create an alternative perception of a modern consumer society based on past industrial values, such as collective well-being, solidarity, and equality.