Search results

Even if there is a wealth of research highlighting the key role of values and cultural significance for heritage management and, defining specific interventions on built heritage, seldom the relation to their leading values and values hierarchy have been researched. How do values and interventions relate? What values trigger most and least interventions on heritage? How do these values relate and characterize interventions? And what are the values hierarchy that make the interventions on built heritage differ?

This paper conducts a systematic content analysis of 69 international doctrinal documents – mainly adopted by Council of Europe, UNESCO, and ICOMOS, during 1877 and 2021. The main aim is to reveal and compare the intervention concepts and their definitions, in relation to values. The intensity of the relationship between intervention concepts and values is determined based on the frequency of mentioned values per intervention.

There were three key findings. First, historic, social, and aesthetical values were the most referenced values in international doctrinal documents. Second, while intervention concepts revealed similar definitions and shared common leading values, their secondary values and values hierarchy, e.g. aesthetical or social values, are the ones influencing the variation on their definitions. Third, certain values show contradictory roles in the same intervention concepts from different documents, e.g. political and age values.

This paper explores a novel comparison between different interventions concepts and definitions, and the role of values. The results can contribute to support further research and practice on clarifying the identified differences.

The main aim of this paper is to determine how well the UNESCO 2011 Recommendation on Historic Urban Landscape (hereafter, the HUL approach) is understood by the academic community today. It will review relevant research, highlight shortcomings regarding the HUL concept and approach and explore how well the six proposed steps are being considered when implementing the HUL approach.

This paper presents and discusses the results of a systematic review of 140 peer-reviewed publications, published in international academic journals between 2008 and 2019 and available in databases such as WoS and Scopus, such as journal articles, book chapters and books. More specifically, this research takes the six-step process as its theoretical framework in order to understand if the six steps are being followed in the case studies where the HUL approach has been implemented. Following this, it assesses gaps in the HUL concept and approach. The paper explores the HUL implementation management process, investigating what is being done, how it is being done and who is involved.

The concept ‘Historic Urban Landscape’ has been used in research since 2008. However, the first case studies implementing the HUL approach were not published until 2013. While there is an abundance of theoretical research in relation to the HUL concept and approach from different perspectives and to varying degrees of depth, the case studies which practically demonstrate the HUL approach and its six steps are scarce. This paper will also show how feasible the steps are and which are used the most.

This research demonstrates if the HUL approach is being understood in the academic field and if the implementation of the six steps is being reflected in the literature. This approach will reveal how these steps are being implemented and if this is having an effect on the heritage planning process.

Attributes conveying cultural significance play a key role in heritage management, as well as in differentiating interventions in built heritage. However, seldom the relation between interventions and attributes, either tangible or intangible, has been researched systematically. How do both tangible and intangible attributes and interventions relate? What attributes make interventions on built heritage differ?

This paper conducts a systematic content analysis of forty-one international doctrinal documents—mainly adopted by the Council of Europe, UNESCO and ICOMOS, between 1877 and 2021. The main aim is to reveal and compare the selected eight intervention concepts, namely—restoration (C1), preservation (C2), conservation (C3), adaptation (C4), rehabilitation (C5), relocation (C6), reconstruction (C7) and renewal (C8)—and their definitions, in relation to attributes, both tangible and intangible. The intensity of the relationship between intervention concepts and attributes is determined based on the frequency of the mentioned attributes per intervention.

There were three key findings. First, although the attention to intangible attributes has increased in the last decades, the relationship between interventions and tangible attributes remains stronger. The highest frequency of referencing the tangible attributes was identified in “relocation” and “preservation,” while the lowest was in “rehabilitation.” Second, certain attributes play contradictory roles, e.g. “material,” “use” and “process,” which creates inconsistent definitions between documents. Third, as attributes often include one another in building layers, they trigger the intervention concepts in hierarchical patterns.

This paper explores and discusses the results of a novel comparative analysis between different intervention concepts and definitions, with a particular focus on the attributes. The results can support further research and practice, clarifying the identified differences and similarities.

Although residential neighbourhoods are the largest and most resilient share of a city and the process of urban conservation and renewal is ongoing, methods to assess their values are limited. This paper presents the results of a systematic literature review, revealing the state of the art and its knowledge gaps with regard to methods for assessing values of architecture in residential neighbourhoods.

The systematic literature review is based on studies selected by a research protocol, using a digital database of peer-reviewed literature. A metanarrative approach is used to synthesise the qualitative data from reviewed articles. This review has two stages: (1) giving an overview of the field and (2) categorising research methods and disciplines.

The review revealed a wide variety of studies from different disciplines and deduced its key trends, titled as “storylines”, concerning the methods to assess significance, integrating a broader scope of values and different perspectives. In particular, the “storylines” outside traditional heritage disciplines offer methods to include more stakeholders, link value assessment to policy development or highlight heritage potential. Results reveal the diversity in concepts and strengthen the need for an interdisciplinary vocabulary on values and methods, enabling planners and policymakers to compare their results and help to create more attractive and resilient cities.

By reviewing and comparing the selected studies from a wider range of disciplines and research fields, this paper shares insights into the complementary characteristics of the different types of value research, outlining the added value of the different perspectives.

This article aims to introduce the special issue of the journal Facilities on “World Heritage cities management”, together with the respective articles.

This introduction addresses the topic of world Heritage cities management and its relevance to science and society. In so doing, it indirectly points to the emerging field of cultural heritage management within facilities management.

Even though the management of cultural heritage assets is nothing new for facilities managers, cultural heritage management as a field of research can be considered at a younger stage of development than other related studies, such as the discipline of architectural conservation, which originated in the nineteenth century with the advent of modernity. The application of management practices to immovable cultural heritage assets emerged as recently as the 1990s. At a time in which the role of culture and heritage in processes of sustainable development is gaining more ground, this special issue can be seen as the first of more contributions to come, which aim to enhance the conservation and management of cultural heritage assets for the benefit of present and future generations.

This paper aims to make a contribution to the growing field of cultural heritage management and is of use to facilities managers, scholars and consultants who have responsibilities but limited knowledge in this field.

This research presents the development of a Building Passport for Sustainable Conservation (BPSC) as a questionnaire with a set of 23 core indicators, for a baseline assessment of heritage buildings. The aim of this tool is to identify priorities for future interventions, by recognising the contributions of heritage buildings to sustainability that should be preserved and the fragilities that need to be improved.

The BPSC uses a selection of core indicators for sustainability observable on heritage buildings. It was applied to four different case studies of modern heritage in the Netherlands, to verify its applicability and limitations.

The results suggest that this tool has the potential to contribute to an expedite assessment, reaching consensual evaluations of priorities for sustainable conservation, while reducing the time and cost of the process, contributing to support informed redesign decisions.

Recently, existing building sustainability assessment (BSA) tools have been adapted and new BSA tools developed for heritage buildings. Some tools target existing buildings, but seldom cover cultural significance and heritage values. Others target the after-redesign situations – aiming at assessing how sustainable the redesign is. Often BSA tools are complex and time-consuming, with extensive indicators and data requirements. The BPSC developed in this research covers the main aspects of sustainability and related heritage values, in a simpler tool for a baseline assessment.

Obsolescence is a decline or loss of utility of an object, building or product. Different types of building obsolescence decrease buildings’ utility and shorten their service life. The purpose of this paper is identification of building obsolescence types and the relevant factors that affect buildings to become obsolete. It is also intended to categorise building obsolescence types to provide a contribution towards increasing building service life and delivering sustainability.

A systematic literature review is applied to conduct this research. It follows five steps: (1) formulating the research question; (2) locating studies; (3) selecting and evaluating relevant studies; (4) analysing the findings; (5) reporting and making use of the results.

Via this study, it is revealed that there are 33 types of building obsolescence. They are clustered in 10 categories regarding their conceptual and causing aspects and are presented based on their recurrence in the literature. According to the findings, economic obsolescence (including economic, financial and market obsolescence types) and functional obsolescence (including functional, use and utility obsolescence types) are the most remarkable categories.

Investigating the literature makes it clear that building obsolescence types have been studied intermittently with infrequent profound exploration of the relationship between them. This paper presents a comprehensive identification of building obsolescence types and introduces obsolescence categories that classify connected obsolescence types. It is a new framework for further studies on building obsolescence to find more effective prevention strategies to mitigate social, economic and environmental consequences of building obsolescence.

This paper is an editorial to JCHMSD's Volume 4, Issue 1 and its selection of papers. The purpose of this paper is to reflect upon the first three years of editorship, reporting a critical self-assessment on the progress achieved today in relation to JCHMSD's initial aims and objectives, embedded in the state-of-the-art.

The paper builds upon editorship observations exchanged among the editorial team over the last three years and a literature review on the 42 papers published in JCHMSD. The literature review focuses primarily on: purposes and design/methodology/approaches. The ways forward sets a research agenda, challenging those contributing to the unexplored questions with their research and/or practices, to join the JCHMSD community and enable a broader audience to, at least, learn from them.

JCHMSD's three aims have been achieved. The journal is publishing innovative research and practices, relating cultural heritage management and sustainable development, developing both skills and knowledge, with contributions from authors worldwide. A global aim being targeted by a rich variety of disciplines and approaches, from factual economy to critical anthropology. Approaches so far have been primarily qualitative, exploring pilot projects or case studies. Unfortunately, some conclusions of the papers lacked self-reflection, contextualizing findings to the explored case study, methods and sources.

More than providing answers or secret recipes, this paper aims to raise questions and draft a research agenda of relevance for JCHMSD's readership, reflecting on the state-of-the-art and selected papers in relation to their purposes and design/methodology/approaches. It also positions 2011 UNESCO Recommendation on the Historic Urban Landscape in this challenging discussion.

This paper is an editorial to JCHMSD's Volume 4 Issue 2 and its selection of papers.

The paper presents some of the ongoing discussions at the international level on the establishment of new United Nations global objectives for development, known as the Sustainable Development Goals, which should guide progress in the world for the next 15 years. Two agendas for wise heritage management are discussed, one for the protection of nature and the other for better use of culture, which taken together could make a significant difference in stewarding the world's precious resources.

While the previous Millennium Development Goals, established in 2000 as a set of eight goals with 19 targets, have been criticised as too broad, the current proposed Sustainable Development Goals, containing 17 goals and 169 targets to measure progress, are perhaps too many and too detailed and thereby risk failure of implementation. It also illustrates the ambition and the challenges of a pluralistic world with widely divergent priorities, reinforcing the idea of context-specificity of heritage conservation and resources management.

This editorial further extends on the discussion that was started in the inaugural Editorial, of 2011, which stated that “the international debate is expected to intensify as regards a re-orientation of the concept of sustainability and to re-emphasise its meaning in clear and unambiguous terms” (JCHMSD, 1.1:9).

The purpose of this paper is to survey the sustainability of management practices followed by local authorities, and their impact on the preservation of World Heritage cities, taking the Old City of Salamanca as a case study.

After a brief introduction to the difficult role of World Heritage properties in the sustainable development of cities, the main concerns of their management practices are presented. The paper then surveys the Old City of Salamanca: before, during and after nomination, using the Auditorium project as an illustration of the threat of new development to the outstanding universal value and the difficulty in regulating it. Finally, the paper discusses the risks of inefficient management practices of such properties.

This survey revealed the inexistence of any management practices uniformly followed by local authorities for the preservation of the Old City of Salamanca. As a result, new urban developments risk destroying the property's outstanding universal value.

This paper discusses the evidence that can help local authorities of the Old City of Salamanca to understand the impact of poor management practices on their World Heritage property. This should also be informative and helpful to local authorities from other World Heritage sites which are dealing with similar situations.

This survey contributes to the expert area of sustainable development and urban heritage preservation that is demanding attention from both academia and practice.