scholarly journals Valuing Heritage in Macau: On Contexts and Processes of Urban Conservation

2009 ◽  
Vol 38 (1) ◽  
pp. 129-160 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Chung

This paper examines the evolving values of urban heritage in Macau in terms of the various conservation approaches and mechanisms employed, and the shifting emphases on heritage and development within the context of continuity and change in Macau. Accumulated over four centuries of cultural interchange, the richly layered Historic Centre of the former Portuguese-administered outpost attained World Heritage status in 2005. After situating the problem pertaining to the multifaceted nature of heritage valorisation, the city's trajectory of urban conservation leading up to the 1999 retrocession will be traced, and germane issues concerning heritage management vis-à-vis effects of post-handover urban developments assessed. As the latest culmination of value imbalances and conflicts arising from urban change, the Guia Lighthouse controversy will be critically appraised to speculate on a timely re-evaluation of Macau's heritage conservation process.

2022 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 607
Author(s):  
Ahmed Mohamed Shehata

Traditional conservation efforts did not improve the conditions in most historic urban centers of Arab cities. The internationally adopted shift in historic urban conservation grants better urban vitality and sustainability for these areas. This study investigates the existing trends and forthcoming changes in urban conservation and their implication on historical centers. Urban Heritage Conservation UHC trends were reviewed, conservation parameters were defined, and quality aspects of successful historic urban conservation were identified, and an assessment framework was developed to evaluate the resulting conserved urban heritage. Two case studies of Arab cities, Jeddah and Aman, were analyzed. The findings highlight the most common urban issues such as reusing historic buildings, traffic congestion, and lack of funds. The impact of urban management on historic areas’ quality was revealed. Moreover, the paper ends with recommendations for conservation authorities. These include engaging residents in the conservation efforts, adopting more innovative traffic solutions to ease congestions, turning the historic area into a pedestrian-friendly space, attracting visitors through arranging cultural events, creating new job opportunities through heritage, and improving the image of the areas through urban regulations. The paper’s findings would contribute to the knowledge related to Urban Heritage Conservation (UHC), and its recommendations would help practitioners and decision-makers.


Author(s):  
Ahmed Mohamed Shehata

As Arab countries are beginning to recover from the socioeconomic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, conservation programs are restarting. Noticeably, traditional conservation efforts have not helped improve the poor living conditions in most historic urban centers of Arab cities due to many reasons such as a lack of funds, urban management policies, and the narrow scope of conservation projects. In 2016, the UN urban agenda recognized tangible and intangible heritage as the basis for sustainable, vibrant, urban economies. These efforts reflect the new shift in conservation activities to tangible and intangible heritage and consider urban heritage a tourist product rather than antiquity. This approach grants urban vitality and sustainability for heritage areas. Thus, this study investigates the existing trends and forthcoming changes in conservation and their implication for the deteriorated historic urban city centers of the Arab world. International urban heritage conservation trends were highlighted, objectives and bases of successful urban conservation trends were reviewed, and an assessment framework was developed. Two case studies of historic centers in two Arab cities, Jeddah, and Aman, were empirically assessed using the developed framework. The findings highlight the most common urban problems of the historic centers in terms of urban management policies and trends. In addition, the impact of urban management policies on historic urban areas' sustainability, vitality, and quality was revealed. The paper ends with recommendations for conservation authorities to define a proposed framework to embed the conservation within the urban development plans for deteriorated historic urban centers. The paper's findings and recommendations can contribute to the required knowledge related to urban heritage conservation for practitioners and decision-makers.


Author(s):  
Naif Adel Haddad ◽  
Leen Adeeb Fakhoury

Tal (mount) Irbid in Irbid city, Jordan, with its continuous human occupation from the Bronze Age until the present, demonstrates the main landmark that has guided the spread of the urban growth of the city. The outcome of studies carried out at Irbid’s historic core, in relation to assessing the loss and degradation of the core’s cultural heritage, shall be analyzed, investigated, and discussed, as also concerns, obstacles, and issues of sustainability to this urban heritage conservation and tourism planning. The paper starts by defining the urban heritage for the historic core, which tends to be set aside, in the city’s rapid development. Actually, the remaining historic buildings can also provide the necessary inter-relationships between the historic core areas and the wider urban context to achieve a sustainable and integrated tourism and conservation action plan for the three heritage neighborhoods around the Tal, while building on tourism opportunities and taking into consideration the needs and the vital role of the local community. The paper concludes that urban heritage conservation and protection of the integrity and identity of the historic core city fabric can assist in its branding, promotion, and management in ways that could enhance the local community belonging, quality of everyday lifestyle, and visitors' experience. 


2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 101
Author(s):  
Natthakit Phetsuriya ◽  
Tim Heath

Distinctiveness is a fundamental part of defining place identity. This paper aims to define the identity of place through the distinctiveness of the urban heritage of Chiang Mai Old City, Thailand. Chiang Mai Old City has unprecedented levels of diversity and a cultural dynamics related to its intangible and tangible urban heritage. Moreover, the city is in the important stage of being nominated as a new World Heritage Site of UNESCO, with the city’s distinctiveness being significant in supporting further heritage management strategies. The research presented in this paper mainly focuses on how local people interpret and understand the urban heritage identity of Chiang Mai Old City. This has been achieved through surveys of four hundred participants who live in the Old City and a two-way focus group with five participants in each group. The results provide seven aspects to describe the distinctiveness of Chiang Mai Old City. Moreover, the results can also be used to develop an assessment indicator for defining the distinctiveness of other cities through the engagement of local people.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 1449
Author(s):  
Clio Kenterelidou ◽  
Fani Galatsopoulou

The paper addresses sustainability, heritage, management, and communication from UNESCO’s Marine World Heritage (MWH) perspective, analyzing its digital narrative footprint through social media. It aims to understand how MWH is conceptualized, managed, and communicated and whether it is framed with sustainability and biocultural values facilitating interactivity, engagement, and multimodal knowledge. Hence, a content analysis of the Instagram accounts of the MWH of Outstanding Universal Value (OUV) sites and protected areas has been conducted. The study included evidence from their Instagram profile, posts, features, and reactions. The findings indicated the dearth of a management and communication strategy being shared among and across UNESCO’s MWH of OUV sites and protected areas, capturing the “lifeworld” and the “voice” of the marine heritage as unified. They also revealed that nature and human, and biological and socio-ecological ecosystems of MWH of OUV sites and protected areas are not interlinked in marine heritage management and communication featuring the whole and the entirety of the marine heritage site ecosystem. The lack of this expansion of meaning and engagement does not facilitate the shift of the route in the marine-scape, from discovery and being listed as World Heritage to human-nature interaction, diversity, dynamicity, and ocean literacy. The study contributes to setting the ground rules for strengthening marine heritage management and communication in light of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the Ocean Literacy Decade (2021–2030).


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (13) ◽  
pp. 7144
Author(s):  
Hanbyeol Jang ◽  
Jeremy Mennis

UNESCO’s world heritage program aims to protect sites of cultural and natural heritage worldwide. Issues of local communities and well-being have been given increasing attention by heritage conservation scholars, but a systemic review of UNESCO guidelines has not been performed. Here, we examine the evolution of the ‘Operational Guidelines for the Implementation of the World Heritage Convention’, documents representing the heritage conservation policies of UNESCO over the period 1994–2019. Using keyword analysis and document analysis, the findings show evidence of an increasing emphasis on local communities, growing primarily since 2005. However, the theme of well-being only first emerged in the operational guidelines in 2019. Political, economic, and environmental challenges idiosyncratic to specific places often complicate the role of local communities and well-being in heritage conservation priorities. Future research should investigate the potential implementation and implications of these changes for the guidelines at specific UNESCO world heritage sites.


2020 ◽  
pp. 80-84
Author(s):  
Pongkwan Lassus

The Makkasan Train Factory, opened 110 years ago, is the first industrial estate in Thailand and used to be the biggest hub for train production in Southeast Asia. Nowadays, this huge land of 80 hectares, with direct access from the Savarnabhumi airport rail link, is considered a golden land right in the business center of Bangkok, that attracts real estate investors. A third of the land set aside at the end of last year for the development of a mixed use commercial project as a part of the High Speed Train project. As this land is the last big area of public land in the capital, civic groups for urban heritage conservation and the environment tried to point out its tangible and intangible heritage value hoping that there would be a proper master plan to preserve these values for future generations.


Geoheritage ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Patrizia Santi ◽  
Mario Tramontana ◽  
Gianluigi Tonelli ◽  
Alberto Renzulli ◽  
Francesco Veneri

AbstractThe local and extra-regional (national and transnational) stones mainly used as building and ornamental materials in the historic centre of Urbino (UNESCO World Heritage List) were unravelled through a detailed geological and petrographic study. The types of building stones used in the past for the development of an urban centre were mostly affected by the availability of suitable geomaterials in the surrounding areas. For this reason, the stones found in the historical buildings of Urbino generally come from the local sedimentary formations (mostly limestones) belonging to the Umbria–Marche–Romagna Succession Auct., which crops out in the Northern Marche Apennines. Only some ornamental highly prized stones used for monuments and decorations come from both extra-regional Italian areas (Alps, other sectors of the Northern Apennines) and foreign countries (France, Egypt). A brief description of the Northern Marche geology was also reported to exactly match the local provenance of the stones, so highlighting the relationship between the territory and the architecture of Urbino. Because of obvious conservation reasons, no samples were collected from buildings or monuments and only autoptic observations, together with a detailed historical and bibliographic research, were carried out to identify the different materials and the provenance areas. Besides the availability of the local sedimentary rocks, we emphasised how the choice of the building and ornamental stones could have been also influenced by the historic period and artistic style, aesthetic features, economic and social importance of the building and/or monument and the relationship to some distinguished personality (e.g., Pope Clemente XI). An open-air stone itinerary across significant places (10 stops and additional sites and monuments in the urban area) is finally proposed for the best fruition of the geological and cultural heritage of Urbino, also aimed at geotourism development.


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