Urban heritage, development and sustainability: international frameworks, national and local governance

More than half of the world’s population now live in urban areas, and cities provide the setting for contemporary challenges such as population growth, mass tourism and unequal access to socio-economic opportunities. Urban Heritage, Development and Sustainability examines the impact of these issues on urban heritage, considering innovative approaches to managing developmental pressures and focusing on how taking an ethical, inclusive and holistic approach to urban planning and heritage conservation may create a stronger basis for the sustainable growth of cities in the future.This volume is a timely analysis of current theories and practises in urban heritage, with particular reference to the conflict between, and potential reconciliation of, conservation and development goals. A global range of case studies detail a number of distinct practical approaches to heritage on international, national and local scales. Chapters reveal the disjunctions between international frameworks and national implementation and assess how internationally agreed concepts can be misused to justify unsustainable practices or to further economic globalisation and political nationalism. The exclusion of many local communities from development policies, and the subsequent erosion of their cultural heritage, is also discussed, with the collection emphasising the importance of ‘grass roots’ heritage and exploring more inclusive and culturally responsive conservation strategies. Contributions from an international group of authors, including practitioners as well as leading academics, deliver a broad and balanced coverage of this topic. Addressing the interests of both urban planners and heritage specialists, Urban Heritage, Development and Sustainability is an important addition to the field that will encourage further discourse.

Climate change and our heritage of low carbon comfort

This paper examines the viability of maintaining a heritage of low carbon comfort as an alternative to the energy intensive comfort regime of mechanical air conditioning. In many parts of the world, the carbon footprint of buildings is increasing significantly due to the widespread adoption of air conditioning. Current trends around indoor comfort are unsustainable, and alternative, less energy intensive comfort regimes need to be maintained or cultivated. To date, studies on this topic in heritage and preservation studies have focused on the architectural designs of 'passive cooling'. This paper seeks to expand this conceptualisation of 'cool living heritage' to incorporate other forms of material culture and comfort practice.

Locating the intangible: integrating a sense of place into cost estimations of natural disasters

The field of disaster loss assessment attempts to provide comprehensive estimates of the cost of disasters. Assessment of intangibles remains a major weakness. Existing costing frameworks have acknowledged losses to cultural – as distinct from economic, social, human or environmental – capital. However, theinclusion of cultural line items has usually been conducted in an ad hoc and under-theorised way, withlittle empirical evidence. This paper presents the possibility of using cultural capital itself as an overarchingcategory for specifically cultural losses. It further focuses on the specific concept of sense of place asone area that has been neglected even in frameworks that consider other kinds of intangibles, and argues,on both theoretical and pragmatic grounds, that a collective or shared sense of place can be subsumedwithin cultural capital loss estimates. Christchurch provides an illustration of the idea as relevant andcomparable empirical material is available from before and since the 2011 earthquake.

Sydney Opera House on eBay: enabling technologies, community and social value

Digital forms of participation with significant places, such the Sydney Opera House, are increasing. What can they reveal about communities of this World Heritage site? How do contingent forms of participation evidence the interconnectedness of tangible, intangible and digital forms of cultural heritage? Critical heritage scholars assert that social value is a central issue in cultural heritage. In an Australian context, ‘social value’ is used to denote the significance that communities have for places of cultural heritage. Unlike other forms of place-significance such as scientific, historic or aesthetic values, the assessment of social value is complex and difficult to evidence. This theoretical paper explores participation in place through two digital instances, buying a real tile on eBay and a virtual one on Own Our House a crowdfunding venture by the Opera House Trust. The paper seeks to reveal the way in which such online artefacts demonstrate how cultural significance is entangled in the everyday and the individual experience. It argues that these seemingly insignificant moments of participation are implicated in the personal and the emotional by connecting work within critical heritage studies with the work of media scholar Jose van Dijck. Then the paper reflects on the way in which these everyday forms of participation through digital technologies disrupts and complicates established ideas about communities upon which local, state, national and international heritage systems are based.

Evolution and significance of the regeneration reserve heritage landscape of Broken Hill: history, values and significance

In 1991, the National Trust of NSW classified the Regeneration Reserves surrounding the City of Broken Hill as an essential cultural heritage asset of the City of Broken Hill, and in 2015 the City of Broken Hill, including the reserves, were elevated to the National Heritage List under the Commonwealth's Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999. This tract of land, and its proponents, Albert and Margaret Morris, are recognised as pioneers of arid zone revegetation science in Australia; a point noted in the National Heritage List citation. They created at Broken Hill a unique revegetation ‘greenbelt’ of national ecological, landscape architectural and town planning significance. The Morris’ led the advancement of arid zone botanical investigation and taxonomic inquiry, propagation innovation, and revegetation sciencein the 1920s-40s in Australia and applied this spatially. Their research and practical applications, in crafting the regeneration reserves around Broken Hill, demonstrated the need for landscape harmonisation to occur to reduce erosion and dust damage to human and mining activities alike. This pioneering research and practice informs and underpins much arid zone mine reclamation and revegetation work in Australia today. This paper reviews the historical evolution of this cultural landscape, its integral importance to the cultural heritage and mining history of the City of Broken Hill, and its inclusion as part of the Broken Hill National Heritage List citation.

Heritage diplomacy: entangled materialities of international relations

The paper explores the concept of heritage diplomacy in order to critically examine the links between conservation, cultural aid and hard power, and the dance between nationalism and internationalism. Three themes - venues, cooperation, and borders - orient the discussion, opening lines of enquiry previously ignored by scholars in a variety of fields concerning the entanglements between the past and the enterprise of preserving its material culture, and our unfolding histories of globalization and international affairs.

Coastal Heritage

The South Carolina Sea Grant Consortium publishes Coastal Heritage, a quarterly publication that covers environmental policy, science, history, and culture.

Coastal Heritage

The South Carolina Sea Grant Consortium publishes Coastal Heritage, a quarterly publication that covers environmental policy, science, history, and culture.

Coastal Heritage

The South Carolina Sea Grant Consortium publishes Coastal Heritage, a quarterly publication that covers environmental policy, science, history, and culture.

Coastal Heritage

The South Carolina Sea Grant Consortium publishes Coastal Heritage, a quarterly publication that covers environmental policy, science, history, and culture.

Coastal Heritage

The South Carolina Sea Grant Consortium publishes Coastal Heritage, a quarterly publication that covers environmental policy, science, history, and culture.

Coastal Heritage

The South Carolina Sea Grant Consortium publishes Coastal Heritage, a quarterly publication that covers environmental policy, science, history, and culture.

Coastal Heritage

The South Carolina Sea Grant Consortium publishes Coastal Heritage, a quarterly publication that covers environmental policy, science, history, and culture.