The notion of “industrial landscape”, as an extension of the industrial heritage to include a whole valley, region, or city, cannot be reduced to a single concept, because it applies to different kinds of territories connected with industrial production: mining sites, industrial cities, company towns, technical networks etc. Although these examples are very dissimilar to each other, the landscape they generated is the most suitable framework for exploring their multidimensional value (both tangible and intangible), and promoting sustainable redevelopment programmes (tourism, cultural economics, creative activities, performing arts etc). Moreover, as examples of the interaction between production systems and the environment, industrial landscapes can be assimilated with the category of “cultural landscapes” that are still in a state of evolution. As such, policies for their protection are aimed at managing the conservation of their authenticity and integrity with their adaptation to take on an active role in the contemporary social, cultural and economic system. This paper will take an advance look at the findings of a comparative survey (in progress at the Department of Architecture, University of Florence) involving a sample of European mining landscapes, each of them representative of peculiar features concerning: - Settings, that is the way of linking the buildings and individual industries with their wider landscape settings; - Landscape historicity, that is the generation of the mining landscape as a progressive stratification of multiple phases of technical organisation; - The meaning of authenticity and integrity with reference to the industrial heritage as an evolutionary cultural landscape; - How to marry conservation of authenticity and integrity values with reconversion of the mining landscape, in order to promote new processes of sustainable economic development. It is anticipated that one conclusion of this research study will be the development of a set of guidelines aimed at defining effective policies for evaluating the significance of the industrial landscape, promoting the best valorisation of these landscapes in accordance with the protection of their integrity, and improving local participation in their management and monitoring.