This book presents methodological approaches that can help explore the ways in which people develop emotional attachments to historic urban places. With a focus on the powerful relations that form between people and places, this book uses people-centred methodologies to examine the ways in which emotional attachments can be accessed, researched, interpreted and documented as part of heritage scholarship and management. It demonstrates how a range of different research methods drawn primarily from disciplines across the arts, humanities and social sciences can be used to better understand the cultural values of heritage places. In so doing, the chapters bring together a series of diverse case studies from both established and early-career scholars in Australia, China, Europe, North America and Central America. These case studies outline methods that have been successfully employed to consider attachments between people and historic places in different contexts. This book advocates a need to shift to a more nuanced understanding of people’s relations to historic places by situating emotional attachments at the core of urban heritage thinking and practice. It offers a practical guide for both academics and industry professionals towards people-centred methodologies for urban heritage conservation.

Human-Centered Built Environment Heritage Preservation addresses the question of how a human-centred conservation approach can and should change practice. For the most part, there are few answers to this question because professionals in the heritage conservation field do not use social science research methodologies to manage cultural landscapes, assess historical significance and inform the treatment of building and landscape fabric. With few exceptions, only academic theorists have explored these topics while failing to offer specific, usable guidance on how the social sciences can actually be used by heritage professionals. In exploring the nature of a human-centred heritage conservation practice, we explicitly seek a middle ground between the academy and practice, theory and application, fabric and meanings, conventional and civil experts, and orthodox and heterodox ideas behind practice and research. We do this by positioning this book in a transdisciplinary space between these dichotomies as a way to give voice (and respect) to multiple perspectives without losing sight of our goal that heritage conservation practice should, fundamentally, benefit all people. We believe that this approach is essential for creating an emancipated built heritage conservation practice that must successfully engage very different ontological and epistemological perspectives.

Public participation and local community involvement have taken centre stage in heritage practice in recent decades. In contrast with this established position in wider heritage work, public engagement with conservation practice is less well developed. The focus here is on conservation as the practical care of material cultural heritage, with all its associated significance for local people. How can we be more successful in building capacity for local ownership and leadership of heritage conservation projects, as well as improving participative involvement in decisions and in practice? This book presents current research and practice in community-led conservation. It illustrates that outcomes of locally-led, active participation show demonstrable social, educational and personal benefits for participants. Bringing together UK and international case studies, the book combines analysis of theoretical and applied approaches, exploring the lived experiences of conservation projects in and with different communities. Responding to the need for deeper understanding of the outcomes of heritage conservation, it examines the engagement of local people and communities beyond the expert and specialist domain. Highlighting the advances in this important aspect of contemporary heritage practice, this book is a key resource for practitioners in heritage studies, conservation and heritage management. It is also relevant for the practising professional, student or university researcher in an emerging field that overarches professional and academic practice.

Examining urban heritage in twentieth-century Australia, James Lesh reveals how evolving ideas of value and significance shaped cities and places. Over decades, a growing number of sites and areas were found to be valuable by communities and professionals. Places perceived to have value were often conserved. Places perceived to lack value became subject to modernisation, redevelopment, and renewal. From the 1970s, alongside strengthened activism and legislation, with the innovative Burra Charter (1979), the values-based model emerged for managing the aesthetic, historic, scientific, and social significance of historic environments. Values thus transitioned from an implicit to an overt component of urban, architectural, and planning conservation. The field of conservation became a noted profession and discipline. Conservation also had a broader role in celebrating the Australian nation and in reconciling settler colonialism for the twentieth century. Integrating urban history and heritage studies, this book provides the first longitudinal study of the twentieth-century Australian heritage movement. It advocates for innovative and reflexive modes of heritage practice responsive to urban, social, and environmental imperatives. As the values-based model continues to shape conservation worldwide, this book is an essential reference for researchers, students, and practitioners concerned with the past and future of cities and heritage. The Foreword and Chapter 1/Introduction of this book are available for free in PDF format as Open Access from the individual product page at www.routledge.com. It has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.

The Past in the Present deals with the complexities in the operation and management of living heritage sites. It presents a new interpretation of such sites based on the concept of continuity, and its evolution to the present. It is demonstrated that the current theoretical framework and practice of conservation, as best epitomised in a values-based approach and the World Heritage concept, is based on discontinuity created between the monuments (considered to belong to the past) and the people of the present, thus seemingly unable to embrace living heritage sites. From this position, the study suggests an innovative approach that views communities and sites as an inseparable entity: a Living Heritage Approach. This approach brings a new insight into key concepts such as authenticity and sustainable development. Through the use of the monastic site of Meteora, Greece, as a case study, the discussion generated aims to shift the focus of conservation from ‘preservation’ towards a continual process of ‘creation’ in an ongoing present, attempting to change the way heritage is perceived, protected and, more importantly, further created. “The Past in the Present is an important and much-needed contribution to the debate about living heritage – and it is particularly significant in the context of the heritage of the past in the modern world. Anyone concerned with how the past is, or should be, integrated within modern lives and identities will need to read this book.” – Leslie Brubaker, Director, Centre for Byzantine, Ottoman and Modern Greek Studies, University of Birmingham, UK. “This interesting and thoroughly researched book by Ioannis Poulios is a useful tool in promoting the Living Heritage Approach, and provides a sound theoretical basis for future work. Living Heritage Approach is a paradigm shift that suggests a new way of addressing conservation for our heritage. ICCROM is proud to have introduced this approach, also with the contribution of Ioannis.” – Gamini Wijesuriya, Project Manager, ICCROM.

This book presents new ways of understanding heritage and heritage work. It addresses the ways physical processes of creation, maintenance and decay are entangled with cultural and political processes of management, access and care. The book analyzes a critical practice of heritage work oriented to recognizing and collaborating with diverse knowledge holders and their practices of caring for heritage. This requires rethinking accepted heritage concepts, such as heritage management, artifact, site and the definition of heritage itself. The book presents an engaging and applied approach to this task through examples that include Majapahit statues and temples in Indonesia, skating in London, an online heritage movement, building bivouacs in Australia, First Nations advocacy for Country and batik collections in the Netherlands. Offering a new model for collaborative heritage research and analysis, this book will be of interest to researchers, students and practitioners. Drawing from developments from the posthumanities, cultural geography and critical heritage studies, it presents a collaborative mode of scholarship and writing that considers how people care for and use the things history leaves them.

The Routledge Handbook on Historic Urban Landscapes in the Asia-Pacific sheds light onto the balancing act of urban heritage management, focusing specifically on the Asia-Pacific regions in which this challenge is imminent and in need of effective solutions. Urban heritage, while being threatened amid myriad forces of global and ecological change, provides a vital social, cultural, and economic asset for regeneration and sustenance of liveability of inhabited urban areas worldwide. This six-part volume takes a critical look at the concept of Historic Urban Landscapes, the approach that UNESCO promotes to achieve holistic management of urban heritage, through the lens of issues, prospects, and experiences of urban regeneration of the selected geo-cultural context. It further discusses the difficult task that heritage managers encounter in conceptualizing, mapping, curating, and sustaining the plurality, poetics, and politics of urban heritage of the regions in question. The connective thesis that weaves the chapters in this volume together reinforces for readers that the management of urban heritage considers cities as dynamic entities, palimpsests of historical memories, collages of social diversity, territories of contested identities, and sites for sustainable liveability. Throughout this edited collection, chapters argue for recognizing the totality of the eco-cultural urban fabric, embracing change, building social cohesion, and initiating strategic socio-economic progress in the conservation of Historic Urban Landscapes. Containing thirty-seven contributions written by leading regional experts, and illustrated with over 200 black and white images and tables, this volume provides a much-needed resource on Historic Urban Landscapes for students, scholars, and researchers.