Urban built heritage protection and realistic dilemmas:the development process,protection system,and critical thinking of historic districts in Dalian

In China,the northeastern region has preserved many valuable modern built heritage buildings,which are undergoing difficult exploratory protection during the industrial and urbanisation process.Taking Dalian city as a case study,this article retraces the history of Dalian’s opening up and colonial management from the perspective of urban planning and historic district protection and management systems.This article sorts out the influence of national and local institutional policies on Dalian’s urban construction and development to analyse the past evolution,current problems and internal causes of the renovation and protection of Dalian’s typical historic districts.This influence is mainly reflected in the lack of protection and damage done to unofficial heritage,the disconnection between historic districts and the surrounding environments and urban textures,and the Chinese-style transformation and economic decline of exotic areas.This paper calls for attention to and the rapid clarification of the built heritage list,the improvement of planning and protection systems and related supporting policies,and a focus on the protection of the authenticity of colonial heritage.This paper provides strategic guidance for improving the protection of historic districts in Dalian in Northeast China and hopes to serve as a reference for the protection of built heritage in other nonfamous historic and cultural cities.

Historical imaginaries, historic urban branding, and the local state in China: rejuvenation discourse, manufactured heritage and simulacrascapes

This intervention examines the extant literature on historical imaginaries and historic urban branding in China.It suggests that while research in this field has increasingly moved away from an economic(or an implicit neo-Marxist)model,there is still a lack of research on the role of broader cultural and state led discourses of nationalism in the construction of historic urban imaginaries and historic urban branding within Chinese cities.In unpacking one nationalistic discourse a-narrative of rejuvenation-this article argues that more needs to be done to examine the role of these themes in the construction of historical imaginaries at the level of the local state(including related state networks of developers,retailers,tourist officials,town planners,architects,and designers).It is suggested that an analysis of these discourses and imaginaries is important if we are:1)to appreciate the role of these themes in the construction and/or the reconfiguration of existing or emerging historic brands within Chinese cities;2)to comprehend the construction of'authorised heritage discourses,(AHDs)practices and materialities at the level of the local state;3)to understand the politics of the past(including the uses of history,memory,nostalgia,and heritage)at the level of the local state;4)to be aware of the way in which these themes inform the preservation,conservation,and/or the demolition of heritage space at the level of the local state;5)to recognise the manufacture of'heritage'or simulacrascapes within Chinese cities.

Physical features and analysis of traditional mosques:the case of Quzzat quarter of Herat Old City,Afghanistan

This study examines the physical features of traditional mosques in the Quzzat(Bardrani)quarter of Herat Old City,Afghanistan.Traditional mosques are constructed with locally available materials and are planned based on cultural and climatic conditions.Mosques are categorised as modern or traditional.Traditional mosques are divided into three subcategories:preserved,damaged(defaced),and transformed.Transformed mosques are formerly traditional mosques reconstructed with modern or industrial materials(concrete and reinforcement).This study explores the distribution of mosques and analyses their plan typology.Mosques are categorised into five plan types,and three relative case studies are described in detail to provide a better understanding and an in-depth analysis of mosque typology.

Circularity-based decision-making framework for the integrated conservation of built heritage:the case of the Medina of Tunis

Several factors overlap in making urban heritage conservation vulnerable in terms of long-term sustainability.The purpose of this study is to offer insights into the dynamic role that heritage governance plays in the current sustainability debate.This purpose is achieved by investigating the shift from a‘governing for culture’approach to a‘governing through culture’approach in heritage conservation.Subsequently,a case is built for a circularity-based conservation strategy applicable to the governance of historic cities.Different indicators of the circular governance approach are considered,and useful data are collected in comparative form.The cross-matching relationship between the factors is then evaluated by employing the analytic hierarchy process(AHP)on the collected data.As a test case,the conservation strategy of the Medina of Tunis is presented.For a more general conservation model,case-specific data are acquired.Finally,the same framework is applied to compare the case-dependent and case-independent data to define an integrated conservation framework.The obtained results show that the knowledge and data exchange factor,carries the highest significance.This result translates into heritage-led urban regeneration through knowledge sharing and the effective redistribution of cultural activities in historic city centres.

Reconstruction of the lost colonial architecture in the context of heritage tourism:Dutch Trading Post in Taiwan,China

To strengthen brand identity,enrich tourist experiences,and promote heritage education,Taijiang National Park proposed to reconstruct Taiwan,China’s Dutch Trading Post in a different location from where it was initially erected in the 17th century.This paper is a case study of the reconstruction proposal for a lost colonial architectural complex in the context of heritage tourism.It discusses the practical and academic issues of rebuilding long-lost colonial heritage sites.The author provided a first-hand account of the technical and practical reasoning for reconstructing a bygone complex erected by Dutch settlers.Historical development phases of the Dutch Trading Post of Taiwan,China were first introduced,and then a reconstruction strategy was proposed to resolve conflicts with legal constraints.Additionally,a site selection process using GIS,a conceptually driven plan for reconstruction,and a 3D simulation were provided.Three specific issues in heritage rebuilding were further discussed,including the decision to reconstruct a heritage building(complex),the authenticity of the reconstructed building if done in a different location from where it was initially situated,and the need to discover more archaeological facts.

Attempting to document and rehabilitate Aleppo between 1994 and 2011: the ramifications of pre-conflict built heritage mismanagement and the effects of the scarcity of documentation on options available for post-conflict conservation

This paper examines several aspects of the attempt at rehabilitating Aleppo and the data available about the city prior to the start of the Syrian conflict in 2011.It discusses documentation,rehabilitation and conservation practices in Aleppo,focusing on the operations between 1994 and 2011 that were coordinated by several institutions managed primarily by the Directorate of the Old City of Aleppo(DOCA)and the Gesellschaft fur Technische Zusammenarbeit(GTZ).The analysis considers not only the old city,which is inscribed on the World Heritage List,but also other historic and culturally significant areas in Aleppo.This research primarily uses notes from other scholarly resources,statements by various relevant experts,and the reports and documents produced by the DOCA,the GTZ,and UNESCO to argue that some of the practices during that period were in part responsible for overlooking important aspects and places of the city's built heritage.The paper then explains the ramification of these approaches,which are still perceptible today,on the prospects for any future efforts to safeguard the city's built heritage.

Scope and limitations of heritage-based resilience:some refections from Nepal

Recent risk preparedness and recovery frameworks have focused in particular on the themes of heritage and resilience.It is generally agreed among heritage professionals that heritage can play an important role in postdisaster recovery and resilience.However,heritage(monuments or sites or even intangible heritage)in general is perceived as a fragile resource that needs to be saved instead of as a source of resilience.This raises a question on what resilience means for the conceptualisation of heritage–is it about‘building back’the same heritage there was before,or is it also about making heritage relevant to the changed situation(due to disaster etc.)?Is resilience an inherent quality of heritage,or can it also be a process for reconsidering heritage in the postdisaster period?Instead of pursuing heritage as a passive recipient of any response and resilience building process,we can ask(i)how heritage provides refuge in times of crisis,(ii)how heritage can be an agent of distress in some situations,and(iii)what heritage and resilience mean together.Scholars have begun to raise questions about the meaning of heritage for building resilience and the meaning of resilience in relation to heritage.Taking built heritage as an example,while many aspects of built heritage,such as construction techniques,open spaces or resilient materials,may contribute to resilience and recovery,there are also situations where narrow streets and dense built fabric add to disaster risks.Similar dilemmas may be observed in the case of intangible heritage associated with urban areas and everyday life.Thus,this paper challenges the romanticisation of heritage values and explores rationales and critical perspectives that will enable us to conceptualise heritage as a potential source of resilience and recovery.By examining these critical issues,the paper hopes to help enhance the notion of heritage-based urban resilience and recovery rather than loosely promoting it.In doing so,references are made to global frameworks as well as local realities related to the 2015 earthquakes in Nepal.

Impact of legislative precision in the managgement of the Casbah

The historic centre of Algiers(Casbah)presents a state of severe decay.Laws and legislative measures have been promulgated in the past three decades to provide an adequate framework for the conservation of the old city.This paper investigates the law and subsequent legal instruments used in heritage management and the impact of legislative provisions on the management of the living historic centre of the Casbah of Algiers.Before the issuance of Algerian Law n'98-04 relating to the protection of cultural heritage,the role of the various entities managing the Casbah was rather unclear.This law provides more details about the structure of urban heritage management.Additionally,a new heritage protection tool came into existence(the PPSMvsS,i.e.,the Permanent Plan for Safeguarding and Enhancement of the Safeguarded Sector).Difficulties encountered in the field concerning the application of legislative tools caused considerable delays in preservation actions on the ground.This paper provides an analysis of the contradictions between text enforcement and conservation plans to understand the main reasons that led to the degradation of the historic area.Accordingly,the paper proposes a number of solutions to be implemented by the Algerian authorities.

Analysis of the systematic conservation of China’s petroleum industrial heritage:a case study and analysis of the petroleum industrial heritage in Daqing

After a century of development,China’s petroleum industry has introduced numerous and various petroleum industrial heritage elements,which collectively embody the value and signifcance of China’s petroleum industrial heritage.Currently,all levels of government departments are trying to protect petroleum industrial heritage,but only limited heritage types and elements of the petroleum industry are included in ofcial conservation lists,which is not conducive to the systematic conservation of China’s petroleum industrial heritage.To achieve the systematic conservation of China’s petroleum industrial heritage,this study introduced a global petroleumscape research method,taking the petroleum industrial heritage of China’s Daqing Oil Field as the research object,and conducted a typological and spatiotemporal historical analysis of all the heritage elements in this oilfeld.The results revealed that the current conservation of China’s petroleum industrial heritage focuses on the industrial remains formed by the fow of petroleum materials but rarely on the remains formed by the fow of petroleum capital.Additionally,some common characteristics were observed in the overall spatiotemporal pattern of the petroleum industrial heritage,and these characteristics are closely related to the spatial distribution of petroleum resources,oilfeld development strategy,dimension of urban areas,and urban development mode.Finally,this paper highlights several future research topics on the subsequent systematic conservation of China’s petroleum industrial heritage and provides some reference value for the future systematic conservation of China’s petroleum industrial heritage.

A metamodel for heritage-based urban recovery

Purpose:The purpose of this paper is to discuss the potential transfer of a metamodel for heritage-based urban development(HBUD)in a postcrisis urban recovery scenario.Design/methodology/approach:After an introduction to the feld of cultural heritage as a resource for urban development,the research question is elaborated,and the current understanding of urban heritage is explored.The use of the metamodel in a postcrisis urban recovery setting is described as a potential solution.The proposed metamodel is introduced along with the grounded theory and design research methodology through which it was developed.The specifc qualities of metamodels and how they can contribute to the proposed use are highlighted.The scenario is then developed further,and specifc ways in which the metamodel could contribute are elaborated.Finally,the metamodel is compared to other methods,such as the historic urban landscape(HUL)approach,and the limitations are discussed.Findings:The metamodel can potentially be used in a postcrisis urban recovery scenario.The metamodel cannot be used directly,owing to the nature of metamodels;however,it can be transferred to a specifc context and help to structure successful heritage-based urban recovery(HBUR)processes.Practical limitations/implications:One limitation is that it can be difcult to understand the diferences between models and metamodels.Only with a comprehensive understanding of the nature of metamodels can this metamodel be applied,for example,to select appropriate models for HBUR.The metamodel can help to ensure that all relevant‘elements’are part of the processes designed for HBUR and emphasise the need for thorough planning,or scoping,of such processes.Originality/value:Metamodelling has not previously been used for HBUD or HBUR.

Developing an identities-based approach to support more robust resilience and recovery in heritage planning and management

Resilience has become an increasingly important concept in the cultural heritage feld,particularly in the aftermath of the unprecedented challenges the COVID-19 global pandemic brought.However,on a conceptual and practical level,resilience remains closely linked to the technical conservation of built heritage,and there remains a need to develop broader approaches inclusive of cultural and socioeconomic components.This article investigates the potential applicability of theoretical concepts linked to identity and identities in heritage planning to help fll these gaps and develop approaches that consider resilience and are better able to address a range of unanticipated disasters.We frst review the literature and policy documents to defne and identify the potential for identities-based approaches.We then examine the case of Matera,an extremely fragile world heritage site in southern Italy that has been continuously inhabited for more than 8000 years and provides a relevant example of resilience.We explore the trends and efects of globalised tourism development before the pandemic and the post pandemic emergence of more local/regional and slow tourism patterns,largely based on cultural solutions to local development challenges and knowledge exchange.Through this comparison,we analyse the potential and limitations of introducing identities-based concepts into heritage planning as a more robust way to enhance resilience and prepare cities for unexpected future crises.

The impact of increased flooding caused by climate change on heritage in England and North Wales, and possible preventative measures: what could/should be done?

Despite 30 years of discussion,adaptation work is not routinely being carried out at heritage sites to minimise future impacts of climate change,particularly increased flooding risks.To understand barriers to essential work being carried out,interviews were carried out with six heritage sites that have already experienced river flooding to understand levels of preparation both before and after the flooding occurred.The results prove that despite funding,or lack of,being an important contributor,it is not the sole barrier to adaptation.Previously flooded sites still do not have a flood plan in place,outside agencies are preventing work being carried out,measures which have been put in place through listing status are prohibiting necessary work and delays in decision making about what is acceptable are all delaying adaptation while allowing more damage to be caused from weather impacts.While responsibility for adaptation lies locally this situation will not improve;responsibility needs to lie more centrally.While the principle of replacing like for like is a sound one with the best of intentions behind it,this is also contributing to losses in heritage and must be reconsidered when big decisions are finally made about what will be acceptable if impacts to heritage from future climate change are to be minimised.

Public policies and conservation plans of historic urban landscapes under the sustainable heritage tourism milieu: discussions on the equilibrium model on Kulangsu Island, UNESCO World Heritage site

Purpose The tensions and threats in historic urban landscapes brought about by heritage tourism are still regional,global,general,and dynamic issues.For Kulangsu,there is an obvious problem in the connection between the current conservation plan and public policy.To a large extent,public policy cannot effectively,specifically,and flexibly respond to the dynamic problems in the implementation of the conservation plan,which seems insufficient concerning the effect of these conservation plans and public policies on promoting the adaptive reuse and sustainable tourism of the historic urban in Kulangsu heritage sites.Thus,giving more consideration to the combination of public policies and conservation plans of historic urban landscapes under the heritage tourism milieu,ensuring a balanced,sustainable,and integrated development pattern still calls for new discussions in achieving good performance of sustainable heritage tourism.This study conceptually discusses the equilibrium model of historic urban landscapes with a range of strategies under a sustainable heritage tourism background and responds to the synthetic contradiction of the imbalances among public policy,conservation plans,and development practices.Design/methodology/approach The study is based on a range of prepared desktop studies(public policy studies,conservation plans),field surveys,participant observations,and randomised interviews to respond to the insufficiency of the current heritagepractices.Findings This study discusses the equilibrium model of sustainable heritage tourism at heritage sites.It takes Kulangsu Island,a UNESCO World Heritage site in Southeast China,as an example to discuss the equilibrium model,which encompasses a convergent parallel framework and three dimensions concerning heritage management and policymaking.The equilibrium model of historic urban landscapes is a dynamic framework that integrates social,economic,environmental,and cultural concerns into a holistic collaborative framework under a sustainable heritage tourism background.Originality/value In line with the requirements of the Historic Urban Landscape(HUL)approach and general principles in support of sustainable urban heritage management promoted by UNESCO and ICOMOS,the study points out the peculiarities and potential of the equilibrium mode in solving the current challenges of historic urban landscapes for sustainable heritage tourism.Finding ways of linking policymaking,conservation,development,heritage tourism,and different interest groups to a holistic framework can stimulate effective means and management mechanisms for the complicated and changeable issues of sustainable heritage tourism.

Reimagining local worlds:Wen village conservation and regeneration by Amateur Architecture Studio

This article theorises the local world as a conceptual scaffold for future conservation and regeneration.It aims to catalyse a theoretical dialogue across the East and West to understand how ordinary places and lifeworlds are preserved,reproduced,and possibly reimagined.The local worlds discussed herein are conceptualised as the worlds of many,the worlds of relating,the worlds of structuring and the worlds of becoming.These four cardinal points present a source of open-endedness and futurity for contemporary architectural reinterpretation.The current article examines the characterisation of the Wen village conservation and regeneration project,led by the Amateur Architecture Studio in Zhejiang Province of China(2012–2016),as an architectural reimagination of local worlds,with a strong sensitivity to the ordinary places and lifeworlds of rural China and juxtapositions of new local worlds within old worlds.By piecing together the flows and fragments of the architectural process,this article shows how locally situated designs and dynamics have shaped the project in both its formation and afterlife,both ethically and contemporarily.Using close readings of popular and oral accounts from both architect’s and users’perspectives,this article extends the case study by broadening theoretical conversations about contemporary architecture’s capacity to reimagine local worlds.

Identifying disappeared historic buildings of port of Callao using georeferencing

The port of Callao is important for its varied historical and archaeological heritage,which includes several military buildings that were the main actors and witnesses of the colonial era of Peru(from the 16th century to the country’s independence from Spain early in the 19th century).Despite the studies that have been carried out on the basis of documents and some eventual archaeological excavations,the port’s main monument,namely,the Real Felipe Fortress,continues to hide very important information that could be used to understand the role that the fortress played in numerous historical events throughout the centuries.The main contribution of this study is the use of photogrammetry software and a Geographic Information System(GIS)to examine the Real Felipe Fortress.In this way,the nature of the atypical construction within the fortress is determined.As a result,it is possible to accurately establish the location of the defensive wall that surrounded the ancient city of Callao,as well as its first churches,whose records were lost after being destroyed by the 1746 earthquake and tsunami in Lima,the worst cataclysm registered in the history of Peru and South America.As a result,this study demonstrates that technology can be successfully used to establish and validate with great precision the existence of the location of churches that have been built in the port of Callao since the founding of Lima in the 16th century.Such identification allows architects,engineers and students who are interested in the history of monuments to discover hidden structures and buildings and carry out the necessary restoration and archaeological works,with the aim of recovering the history of the colonial architecture of Callao and other similar cities and ports worldwide.

Modernist heritage and memory politics in Spain:shifting values for the adaptive reuse of Seville’s former police headquarters

The political significance of modernist heritage architecture continues to be an unsolved question,particularly its identification and conservation.In Spain,the chronology of modernism stretches through the whole of the Spanish Civil War and Franco’s dictatorship.The passing of legislation on memory politics in Spain(i.e.the 2007 Law of Historical Memory and the 2022 Law of Democratic Memory)offers a unique opportunity to address this unsolved question by discussing two uncharted heritage debates:namely,the motivations for the heritagisation of modernist architecture in Spain and the challenges in the adaptive reuse of modernist buildings with controversial histories.The former police headquarters in Seville exemplifies the complexities of both debates and to what extent conflicting views about heritage architecture may determine debates about its reuse.Through a documentary review of the heritagisation of Seville’s former police headquarters,a discourse analysis of intervention proposals and press articles and interviews with relevant stakeholders,this study explored how the rise of memory politics in Spain has changed the interpretation of the former police headquarters’significance in the last two decades and influenced the choices for its adaptive reuse.

The museum method of reusing Shanghai waterfront industrial heritage:continuation and reconstruction of urban memory

In the context of transforming traditional labour-intensive industries into the service economy in China,the reuse of industrial heritage as museums has become a trend,for example,along Shanghai waterfronts,gradually fuelling the continuation of urban memory,reshaping urban cultural identity and promoting the development of the waterfront economy.Additionally,the connotation of a museum is continually being expanded from an institution to a method,and the major function is gradually shifting from collection to display.Previous studies on Shanghai waterfront industrial heritage have mostly referred to cultural factors,but these factors are still mainly included in macroscale large waterfront projects or microscale single practical project analyses.Mesoscale typology discussions between the two are rare.Therefore,this paper examines eleven industrial heritage sites that have been repurposed as museums along Shanghai waterfronts to analyse the urban memory elements of industrial heritage and summarise three classes of memory interpretation strategies:translating memory information,renovating memory carriers,and relating memory clues.Finally,the advantages and disadvantages of the study cases are discussed separately,and the following corresponding recommendations are made:1)further enrich and balance memory interpretation strategies;2)enhance the rationality,service,and tolerance of the“exhibition+”mode;and 3)improve local laws and regulations related to the protection and utilisation of industrial heritage to provide references for similar reuse designs.

The place of the Great Mosque of Tlemcen:the paradox between patrimonialisation and appropriation

The Great Mosque of Tlemcen is a unique case,as it is one of the few mosques dating back to the Almoravid period that is almost intact.It has evolved in a constantly changing space and now has a conjoined public square,following an occidental configuration,which is quite rare.The size of this square suggests that it could be put to use as an additional vector for the valorisation of the mosque,but the current situation is different.This added space,introduced by occidental culture,creates a dual architectural language with several other buildings that mark all the layers of evolution in the urban fabric.Apart from its religious function,this mosque used to play the role of a covered public square,a role that has eroded over time.The aim of this research is to analyse the relationship between the building and its surroundings,as well as the population’s perception of this relationship.Additionally,the research is intended to highlight changes in the perception of the Great Mosque of Tlemcen’s public square over time,depending on historical,political,and social contexts.This research relies on an approach that combines different methods,including a thorough analysis of historical,cartographic,and legislative documents.Through this approach,we were able to conduct a comparative analysis with other similar cases.Finally,field research allowed us to understand the relationship between space and society.Despite the legal recognition of the surroundings as a historical monument,this status is not widely perceived and integrated into the population’s sense of heritage space.This is reflected in private and even public actions,despite the instrumentalisation of this heritage status,with appropriations of protected space that occur outside of regulations and become part of the landscape expression of the building in its environment.

Petrographic and geochemical analyses to characterise the source of built historical natural stones—a case study of the volcanic stones from historical quarries and Baoguosi Temple in the city of Ningbo,China

Characterising and sourcing natural stones are essential for not only understanding the historical information carried by heritage buildings and cultural heritage sites,but also providing necessary data for restoration and conservations.Petrographic analyses by polarised microscopy,along with the integrated chemical data acquired by inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry(ICP-MS)and X-ray difraction(XRD)analysis,allowed us to ascertain the compositions of stone materials.In this paper it is applied on samples collected from quarries of“three famous stones(Meiyuanshi-,Xiaoxishi-,and Dayinshi-stone)”in Ningbo and from the Sumeru platform in the main hall of Baoguosi Temple(Ningbo,Zhejiang,China).Comparison of petrographic features,major and trace elements of the stones studied indicated that they are all tufs but of diferent characteristics and origin.Moreover,we were able to confrm that the Sumeru platform in Baoguosi is made of Meiyuanshi-stone.The results have demonstrated the suitability of the approach and present a practicable solution for other stone buildings.

Exploring visitors’visual perception along the spatial sequence in temple heritage spaces by quantitative GIS methods:a case study of the Daming Temple,Yangzhou City,China

The Daming Temple,built during 457–464 C.E.,is one of the developing ancient temple heritage spaces located in Yangzhou city,P.R.China.Over the past 60 years,variation in visitors’spatial perception along the tour routes in the temple has occurred.This research attempts to reveal the changes in visitors’visual perception along the spatial sequences at 3 different times(i.e.,1962,1973 and 2022).A quantitative GIS-based method,which includes analysing the distribution of visitors’spatial preferences and spatial configuration,is proposed.Digital landscape tools and quantitative estimation methods are used,including mapping within Rhinoceros software,the kernel density estimation(KDE)method within ArcGIS software and spatial syntax analysis within DepthMap software.Extracted geodata from 500 photographs of the heritage space taken by volunteer visitors are analysed within the GIS environment.Values of the mean depth(MD)at both levels of visibility and accessibility are calculated within the visibility graph analysis(VGA)model.Comparisons between the visual preferences of the visitors and the spatial configuration along the spatial sequence are conducted.The results indicate that the spatial sequence has a significant impact on visitors’visual preferences and tour routes.The phenomenon of spatial sequence among dynamic temporal variations and the effects of narrative spaces along the spatial sequence are highlighted and explained,which reveal the relationship between visitors’geospatial preference and the spatial configuration of the temple.Some suggestions are put forwards for further studies on the revitalisation and management of East Asian ancient temple heritage spaces.