'Reconnecting the City The Historic Urban Landscape Approach and the Future of Urban Heritage' book review, JAC, 07 2015 (original) (raw)
Related papers
'The Historic Urban Landscape and the Geography of Urban Heritage', 2018 07 (text)
The Historic Environment: Policy and Practice, 2018
This article reflects on the extent to which the commitment set out under Article 5 of the 1972 UNESCO Convention Concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage ‘to adopt a general policy which aims to give the cultural and natural heritage a function in the life of the community and to integrate the protection of that heritage into comprehensive planning programmes’, is reflected in the ambition and interpretation of the 2011 UNESCO Recommendation on the Historic Urban Landscape. It questions the degree to which that Recommendation’s evolution and formulation addresses the longstanding failure to interpret and position the broad spectrum of values of urban heritage within the mainstream of urban planning policy and practice. In the context of today’s over-arching global priorities, this article concludes by advocating greater engagement with United Nations agendas, including the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals.
European Journal of Post-Classical Archaeologies (PCA) 12, 2022
Urban heritage constitutes the major unresolved challenge facing conservation theorists and practitioners in this 21st century. Inhabited historic cities lie at the intersection of human geography, territorial and detailed urban planning, economic development, delimited heritage agendas, and global environmental and sustainability priorities. By the third quarter of the 20th century – from roots traced from the Italian Renaissance and the Age of Enlightenment in Europe – cultural heritage orthodoxy became systematised and institutionalised with the aspiration to establish and promote universal principles for the protection and conservation of designated heritage assets. Notably in the context of the world’s diversity and wealth of inhabited historic cities, the core premise has been challenged from multiple directions, including contradictions at the heart of the World Heritage system. As we mark the 50th anniversary of the 1972 UNESCO Convention Concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage, this paper interrogates this conundrum from first principles. Keywords: Dresden Elbe Valley, Liverpool – Maritime Mercantile City, living heritage, UNESCO, urban landscape, Charte de Venise/Venice Charter.
'The Geography of Urban Heritage', 2015 08 (text)
The heritage community has long faced difficulties with the theoretical as well as practical challenges of managing continuity on the scale of historic cities. Identifying individual components of the architectural heritage and selected areas for a variety of levels of conservation, from the benign to the interventionist, has largely proved to be the limit of attainment. In the generality of situations, where the survival of the components depends on their place within the whole, urban heritage is consequently at risk of suffering unnecessary losses. This is especially the case where the culturally sensitive historic cores of towns and cities are the primary focus of pressures for major change or redevelopment and counterbalancing policies are not in place to address those pressures proactively. Recent years have seen a number of reflections on urban heritage: notably, at the international level, by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) World Heritage Centre and the International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS). Deriving as they do from a vital but largely self-contained set of cultural heritage parameters and interests, their impact on positioning heritage at the core of urban planning and development processes has been limited. The essential human factor has not really been taken into account. With a focus on Europe, this paper looks beyond a paradigm founded on a limited perception of values to the objective of positioning the spectrum of urban heritage within the mainstream of urban planning policy and practice. This is a province dominated on a professional level by the broad discipline of geography, in which the urban geographer is the often-overlooked but essential ally for a constructive partnership. A second paper, in the following issue of this journal, takes the debate forward and addresses the governance of urban heritage.
'Urban Heritage, Development and Sustainability' book review, Context 150, 07 2017
Context, 2017
Urban Heritage, Development and Sustainability forms part of the same Routledge series ‘Key Issues in Cultural Heritage’ as Heritage and Globalisation, a review of which appeared in Context 123. Similar in format (it is a collection of 16 essays contributed by academics and practitioners), the book offers a spectrum of reflections and case studies on models and practices in urban heritage. With a particular focus on tensions between conservation and development, Urban Heritage explores the disconnection between international frameworks and national and local implementation; assesses how international heritage branding can legitimise unsustainable practices at national and local level; and champions bottom-up approaches for the negotiation and realisation of socio-culturally inclusive conservation strategies.
Reflections on The Built Environment And Associated Practices , 2016
This paper analyzes the policies and initiatives taken by three cities in UNESCO "World Heritage Sites" list: Évora in Portugal, Paris in France, and Kathmandu in Nepal. These cities have been chosen as they represent various contexts, possess different heritage management backgrounds, and manifest different economic settings. It may seem that these cities are incomparable in certain aspects but the main aim is to focus on the policies these cities have taken for development and the activities that are still being taken to cope with new challenges regarding Heritage Conservation. The conventional way of Heritage Conservation, which is often criticized for being "Eurocentric" is in reality also unable to deal with the pressure of modernization, globalization, and urbanization. UNESCO's recommendation on Historic Urban Landscape (HUL) has been discussed in this chapter, which adopts a holistic approach to conservation. Like any other city in the world, these cities are no exceptions in terms of constant change and evolution over time. It has been understood and advocated throughout the paper that the management of any city is not a one-time job-it needs constant effort and creation of new ideas and plans to keep a city functioning properly.
'The Governance of Urban Heritage', 2015 08 (text)
The term integrated conservation first entered the lexicon of urban heritage in the 1975 Council of Europe European Charter, recognising that the future of the architectural heritage depends on the weight attached to it within the framework of urban and regional planning. Since then, the agendas of sustainability, sustainable development and climate change have entered the debate, and various attempts have been made to re-position urban heritage from a specialist to a mainstream activity in the European context. In ‘The Geography of Urban Heritage’, we argued that the quantum of urban heritage recognised and appreciated today underscores a level of responsibility for the maintenance and processes of continuity whose realisation is beyond the scope and capacity of a specialist field. Additionally, that the complementary values of community, heritage, resource and usefulness, harnessed to common purpose, afford a potent combination for responding to the challenge. That article promoted the thesis that for urban conservation to become a mainstream activity, heritage professionals need to nurture relationships centrally within the broad discipline of geography – the core discipline of urban planning; and reciprocally, geographers need to recognise the vital role of urban heritage beyond a limited perception of its compass. The 2010 European Union Toledo Declaration acknowledged the importance of urban heritage, and defined the multiple dimensions of sustainability as economic, social, environmental, cultural and governance. Governance at the municipal level is the key to integrated urban planning policy and practice. This article explores current initiatives in the field and proposes directions for further research and implementation.