The responsibility to identify, protect, look after and develop cultural and historical values in our surroundings - urban as well as rural - falls on the local authorities. This essay focus on local preserve programs for cultural landscapes in Sweden’s municipalities. Programs for preserving cultural landscapes are important tools in the aim to reach a sustainable development of these values. The object of the essay is to delineate how the municipalities handle cultural landscapes in terms of how cultural and historical values is identified, how the landscape is divided and assessed and how different aspects of intangible and tangible values are taken into consideration. The author has adopted an approach inspired by the academic ethnology where the individual and her identity are focused. In the initial study of relevant literature the essay refers to the ethnologic anthology “Moderna landskap” (Modern Landscapes), which discuss the individual and her mutual connection to the surrounding landscape where she lives. An archeological approach on the same subject is also referred to, as well as the pioneering work “Kulturvårdsprogram för Grangärdsbygden” (Cultural preserve program for Grangärdesbygden) and the Burra Charter. Based on the studied literature as a theoretical frame of reference, local cultural preserve programs for cultural landscapes from four Swedish municipalities are analyzed: Nacka, Vallentuna, Lund and Södertälje. The guiding principles for the outline of the programs were developed in the end of the 1970’s by the Swedish National Heritage Board and The National Board of Housing, Building and Planning. The aim was to make historical and cultural values a part of the physical planning of society, as4well as to contribute to a preservative attitude towards these values by the public at large. The analysis of the programs made in plain that all four municipalities have deviated from the ambitions of the National Heritage Board. The programs were supposed to consist partly of a fixed part with a historical analyze of the cultural landscape in the municipality in general as well as selected landscapes, and partly of a plan of action open for revise. Accordingly the preservation programs of cultural landscapes were meant to be an active program but have now turned into a passive document, consisting solely of selected and valued landscapes. And it does not address to the public but act only as an instrument of physical planning. Without plan of action and connection to the public, the municipalities fail to secure a long-term preservation of the landscapes as well as missthe chance to let the programs be a part of the development of the concerned areas. But the programs could work as a solid base in the engagement and responsibility of the public in this matter, concerning historical and cultural values in our cultivated and built environment. The individual is unfortunately missing as a collaborator in the preservation process. The outline of the four analyzed programs varies. The two programs of Nacka and Vallentuna represent opposite poles. Nacka has produced a traditional preservation program with landscapes delimited selected into narrow areas of high values. The concerned landscapes correspond to a character that is similar to that of cultural reserves. This leads to the risk of future fragmentize of the landscape as a whole, due to the fact that only a small part of the cultural landscape of the municipality is included in the local authorities’ ambition to preserve. The rest is “unexplored regions”. Vallentuna on the other hand has produced a program that characterizes the landscape at whole, at the expense of details such as close descriptions of physical structures. The tangible presuppose the intangible. A cultural landscape is an intangible fact as well as a tangible, and because of this, the intangible dimension must be regard to in the same way as we today assess tangible values. Public engagement in the preservation process and the consideration of intangible values becomes one and the same aim, because the engagement of the individual can be a method to identify intangible valuesin the cultural landscape. It is also an opportunity to handle the rich information of the landscape, a landscape that work as a vast and complex phenomenon. The responsibility to secure cultural and historical values5in our environment is then no longer a question only for the local authorities; it is a question for one and all.