Heritagescaping and the aesthetics of refuge: challenges to urban sustainability

The year 2012 marked the fortieth anniversary of UNESCO’s Convention Concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage, or World Heritage
Convention. Regarded by many as a hugely successful project, World Heritage has
provided a framework for safeguarding a wide array of historic built environments.
The choice of “sustainable development and the role of communities” as the theme of
the fortieth anniversary was, however, recognition of the significant problems and
challenges this arena of cultural and spatial governance has created for those living in
and around listed sites. Cities have proved particularly challenging, and resistant to
prescriptive modeling at the level of international policy. Evictions, punitive
legislation, rising living costs, and loss of community are the now familiar by‐products of worldheritage that continue to go undocumented and ignored.
Against this backdrop, this chapter traces recent developments and trends surrounding urban heritage conservation, highlighting recent turns towards community‐driven approaches and discourses of sustainability. It then raises the issue of gentrification, with a particular focus on where such problems take on critical importance: small‐scale urban environments. Focusing on Galle in Sri Lanka, the final part of the chapter explores the emergence of a form of “heritagescaping” oriented by an aesthetics of solitude, tran-quility, and quiet comfort. In offering a contribution towards debates around urban sustainability and the role of heritage therein, it is argued that such processes present significant obstacles to the development of more community‐based, culturally sustainable forms of heritage conservation.