This book explores cultural sustainability and its relationships to heritage from a wide interdisciplinary perspective. By examining the interactions between people and communities in the places where they live it exemplifies the diverse ways in which a people-centred heritage builds identities and supports individual and collective memories. It encourages a view of heritage as a process that contributes through cultural sustainability to human well-being and socially- and culturally-sensitive policy. With theoretically-informed case studies from leading researchers, the book addresses both concepts and practice, in a range of places and contexts including landscape, townscape, museums, industrial sites, every day heritage, ‘ordinary’ places and the local scene, and even UNESCO-designated sites. The contributors, most of whom, like the editors, were members of the COST Action ‘Investigating Cultural Sustainability’, demonstrate in a cohesive way how the cultural values that people attach to place are enmeshed with issues of memory, identity and aspiration and how they therefore stand at the centre of sustainability discourse and practice. The cases are drawn from many parts of Europe, but notably from the Baltic, and central and south-eastern Europe, regions with distinctive recent histories and cultural approaches and heritage discourses that offer less well-known but transferable insights. They all illustrate the contribution that dealing with the inheritance of the past can make to a full cultural engagement with sustainable development. The book provides an introductory framework to guide readers, and a concluding section that draws on the case studies to emphasise their transferability and specificity, and to outline the potential contribution of the examples to future research, practice and policy in cultural sustainability. This is a unique offering for postgraduate students, researchers and professionals interested in heritage management, governance and community participation and cultural sustainability.

Meeting the aims of sustainability is becoming increasingly difficult; at the same time, the call for culture is becoming more powerful. This book explores the relationships between culture, sustainability and regional change through the concept of ‘territorialisation’. This new concept describes the dynamics and processes in the context of regional development, driven by collective human agency that stretches beyond localities and marked-off regional boundaries. This book launches the concept of ‘territorialisation’ by exploring how the natural environment and culture are constitutive of each other. This concept allows us to study the characterisation of the natural assets of a place, the means by which the natural environment and culture interact, and how communities assign meaning to local assets, add functions and ascribe rules of how to use space. By highlighting the time-space dimension in the use and consumption of resources, territorialisation helps to frame the concept and grasp the meaning of sustainable regional development. Drawing on an international range of case studies, the book addresses both conceptual issues and practical applications of ‘territorialisation’ in a range of contexts, forms, and scales. The book will be of great interest to researchers and postgraduates in sustainable development, environmental studies, and regional development and planning.

This book provides a systemic understanding of how intangible cultural heritage (ICH) can promote sustainable development. It offers new insights on the identity-building potential of heritage practices as ‘enabler’ of development and their capacity to generate social and economic profits as ‘driver’ of development. Based on Pierre Bourdieu’s ‘Theory of Practice’, a model for the valorisation of ICH is presented, which may serve as a tool to stimulate the developmental potentials of heritage on a practical level. The functioning of the valorisation model is exemplified with a case study on a German choral tradition, which has not been officially nominated as ICH. Therewith, it is shown how the model can be applied to utilise the developmental potentials of ICH - as promoted in the Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage (2003) – even beyond UNESCO’s scope. This book is of interest to cultural heritage scholars.

This handbook presents cutting-edge and global insights on sustainable heritage, engaging with ideas such as data science in heritage, climate change and environmental challenges, indigenous heritage, contested heritage and resilience. It does so across a diverse range of global heritage sites. Organized into six themed parts, the handbook offers cross-disciplinary perspectives on the latest theory, research and practice. Thirty-five chapters offer insights from leading scholars and practitioners in the field as well as early career researchers. This book fills a lacuna in the literature by offering scientific approaches to sustainable heritage, as well as multicultural perspectives by exploring sustainable heritage in a range of different geographical contexts and scales. The themes covered revolve around heritage values and heritage risk; participatory approaches to heritage; dissonant heritage; socio-environmental challenges to heritage; sustainable heritage-led transformation and new cross-disciplinary methods for heritage research. This book will be an invaluable resource for students and scholars in heritage studies, archaeology, museum studies, cultural studies, architecture, landscape, urban design, planning, geography and tourism.

This book incorporates UK and international case studies and essays to identify the overlaps in the interests of energy and building conservation. The relevance and adjustments of qualitative and quantitative frames of reference are introduced, alongside the various expertise of the contributors: architects, designers, conservation consultants and academics. The second part of the book showcases sustainable domestic and non-domestic heritage projects, translating the preceding research into information that practitioners can use in their everyday work. The book will appeal to architecture students, newly qualified professionals and conservation architects and will enhance readers’ ambitions, so that they feel equipped and inspired to work with old buildings sensitively, creatively and sustainably.

This book considers cultural heritage and the sustainable development of tourism from an African perspective, with Botswana as the main point of reference. Within the African context, Botswana is renowned for its abundance of cultural heritage and appeal to tourists. The collection reconciles the growing demand to commodify cultural heritages, the quest for cultural heritage preservation and management, and the focus on sustainable tourism development in Botswana. As such, the book is an appraisal of, and meditation on, the business-side of cultural heritage management and the value that cultural heritage resources have at a personal, local and national level. It is an exploration of the nature of Botswana’s cultural heritage, the politics and policies that underpin that heritage, the development of cultural heritage tourism as a sustainable business, the country’s cultural heritage experiences and products, and a confrontation of the hard questions about cultural heritage and the future. As an introductory text, the book gives tourists, tourism students and academics, as well as tourism entrepreneurs, policymakers, and practitioners a basis on which to make decisions.

For a long time, resource conservationists have viewed environmental conservation as synonymous with wilderness and wildlife resources only, oblivious to the contributions made by cultural and heritage resources. However, cultural heritage resources in many parts of the developing world are gradually becoming key in social (e.g. communities’ identities and museums), economic (heritage tourism and eco-tourism), educational (curriculum development), civic (intergenerational awareness), and international resources management (e.g. UNESCO). In universities, African cultural heritage resources are facing a challenge of being brought into various academic discourses and syllabi in a rather reactive and/or haphazard approach, resulting in failure to fully address and research these resources’ conservation needs to ensure that their use in multiple platforms and by various stakeholders is sustainable. This book seeks to place African cultural heritage studies and conservation practices within an international and modern world discourse of conservation by presenting its varied themes and topics that are important for the development of the wider field of cultural heritage studies and management.