Sense of the Place Mandate: Towards Enhancing the Living Heritage Site

Culture and heritage are a means of conserving the inherited past, enabling it to inform the present and develop a future vision. This is achieved through tangible and intangible transmitted cultural heritage expressions and the community.(Baram, 2014; Misiura, 2006; Santoro, 2016) Heritage cities serve to transmit cultural identity while accounting for the community’s contemporary needs and promoting creativity. (Smith, 2015; Smith, 2006) According to the Hangzhou Declaration: Placing Culture at the Heart of Sustainable Development Policies (2013), from a socioeconomic perspective, heritage supported by urban planning also encourages sustainability, cultural diversity and inclusion. Furthermore, as ‘nodes of economic activities for the creative industries’ (Hosagrahar et al., 2016), they play a significant role in providing employment opportunities and generating local revenue. (UNESCO, 2016)

In the UNESCO Recognition of Cultural Landscape (2013), certain authentic values valorise an interactive context between the human being and the surrounding cultural assets, both material and immaterial, to preserve ‘traditional techniques of [sustainable] land use and maintaining [cultural] diversity’. (Cranshaw et al., 2014) These processes of interaction within urban spaces create emotional connections with cultural meaning, continually reviving the lifelong learning memory of the community. Thus, cultural identity contributes to the city’s public image, which highlights the transmitted living heritage by creating ‘a mental map’ of the city’s memorable spaces and experiences. This offers a means of ‘allowing the city’s public image to emerge through social curation’. (Caballero, 2017; Lynch, 1960; Smith, 2006)

As stated in a 2015 UNESCO Policy Document for the Integration of a Sustainable Development Perspective into the Processes of the World Heritage Convention, ‘a living heritage site is a measure to evaluate the depth of communication or interaction between cultural properties and the populations […] or what motivates the population to co-operate in achieving their common future visions’. In defining the characteristics of a living heritage site, it is necessary to consider the heritage context to identify the modifications in the community-based cultural heritage fabric over time, including ‘changes in the function, the space, and the community’s presence, in response to the changing circumstances in society’.

The significant role of the community in preserving living heritage was aptly summarized in 2003, at the first ICCROM meeting of the Living Heritage Program:

Heritage does not belong to experts, or to governments […] which leave the public out of the process of defining their heritage and the most appropriate means to care for that heritage risk failure. Heritage belongs to the members of society whose values are reflected in the definition of heritage. (ICCROM, 2003; Miura, 2005)

Considering reflections on living heritage, Dr. Rhiannon Mason, a senior lecturer in museum, gallery and heritage studies at the International Centre for Cultural and Heritage Studies at Newcastle University, connects the cultural heritage and the cultural identity of local communities with the expression ‘sense of the place’, denoting an emotional rapport between the urban heritage space and the local community. (Mason, 2014) This rapport can be observed in local efforts to preserve the authentic value of heritage sites and ensure their integrity via a triangle of communities - communities of place, communities of interest and communities of practice. (Court & Wijesuriya, 2015)

Thus, a living heritage is mainly an engine for the continuity of the local community which preserves it and sustains its values. (Poulios, 2014) [1] The rapport between the community and its ‘tangible and intangible’ heritage should be enhanced by all key stakeholders, as should the community’s motivation and desire to preserve and safeguard expressions of heritage. This will generate new added value, mitigating human-induced impacts such as the effects of tourism, development projects, and new facilities and amenities. As a people-centred conservative management approach, it aims to sustain the main function of heritage buildings and the urban fabric by creating a link between the cultural identity and tangible forms of heritage space and empowering the local communities to participate in heritage conservation progress actively. This link strengthens the sense of ownership or custodianship that drives the local community to conserve its heritage. (Poulios, 2014)

In sum, using cultural mapping as a heritage interpretation method to sustain a living heritage context, key stakeholders should collaborate to generate a range of creative cultural tourism activities, investments and entrepreneurial projects, rehabilitating and adaptively reusing the market as an engine for socioeconomic development. This joint effort can interact with transmitted values, lessening the rapid modifications of cultural assets and preserving their significance.

Footnote:

[1] "Emphasis is on the present, since 'the past is in the present'. The present is seen as the continuation of the past into the future, and thus past and present-future are unified into an ongoing present (continuity)." (Poulios, 2014)

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