Recognised as a subcategory of industrial heritage, railway heritage encompasses interconnected structures, landscapes, technologies, and cultural practices that require holistic conservation approaches. With technological advancements leading many railway elements to become obsolete, these assets increasingly face the risk of abandonment or demolition. However, much existing research concentrates on individual structures rather than the broader railway system shaped through comprehensive planning. This study develops a multi-scalar framework for analysing railway heritage conservation across three levels: technical equipment, site, and line. Case studies from the United Kingdom illustrate how different conservation and adaptive reuse models directly or indirectly contribute to maintaining railway identity. All cases are informed by in-situ field visits and document analysis. The study explores conservation approaches through a comparative analysis of these models, focusing on how adaptive reuse practices reinforce or weaken railway identity across different scales, and assessing their implications for holistic conservation. As the birthplace of railways and a pioneer in railway heritage conservation, the UK offers diverse examples that demonstrate the varying outcomes of conservation practices across different contexts. By emphasising the interrelationship between tangible and intangible components, the study highlights the need for a holistic approach in the conservation of railway heritage.
'The law is the law', or so it seems. In practice, laws must be interpreted, and heritage laws are a prime example. Lawmakers (i.e. politicians and lawyers, hopefully working in consultation with enforcement agencies and heritage practitioners) may have general and specific views on how laws operate in practice and how that vision may be realised; after all, new laws are generally designed to change the status quo or (at least) protect it. It is also possible that the practical implementation of certain heritage law (largely the responsibility of law enforcement agencies) might evolve from this. This can be attributed to cultural or societal issues and/or (most likely) due to resource allocation. In this paper, we take the example of processing treasure finds in parts of the United Kingdom, specifically in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, which are covered by the Treasure Act 1996, and (secondly) ways of dealing with avocational metal-detecting, in Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, where most archaeological works, including metal-detecting, are licenced. These examples will show that the law is open to interpretation that this is often due to resourcing (or lack thereof), and that practices will vary from one territory/jurisdiction to another.
Following the UK's 2024 ratification of UNESCO's Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage, heritage organisations face challenges in considering how intangible cultural heritage (ICH) relates to existing frameworks. This article presents the first empirical study of how Historic England (HE) conceptualises the relevance of ICH within its statutory and advisory functions. Results from staff focus groups are organised across four areas: strategic recognition and statutory scope; internal capacity and institutional barriers; practical challenges; and co-creation and participation. Participants considered ICH interdependent with material heritage, yet noted constraints in remit, resourcing, workflows and skills. Five priority actions are proposed: 1) define ICH and community in operational terms; 2) clarify HE's interpretive role; 3) strengthen conservation frameworks to emphasise tangible-intangible relationships; 4) provide targeted training; and 5) develop co-creation models calibrated to institutional realities. The article argues that 'making the intangible visible' can clarify how practices, stories and lived meanings inform significance within the historic environment remit. Whilst not an official HE position, the study offers historic environment organisations insight into how ICH may inform interpretation and management of historic places within materially focused heritage systems.
New building design in historic environments has been a significant topic in the conservation discipline. Although international charters, documents, and literature have guided design in historic environments with widely accepted principles, the increasing use of AI brings new uncertainties. As a key tool in design and visualisation, AI raises questions about its ability to follow established preservation principles in historic settings. This study aims to explore AI's role in designing new buildings in historic settings, focusing on its ability to align with preservation principles. It also examines its potential to support the decision-making process and its integration into local policies and practices. In this context, the study focuses on an infill site in the Alsancak conservation area, in Izmir, T & uuml;rkiye. The results show that while AI can analyse physical aspects, it struggles to integrate the historical, cultural, and intangible values. It also produces outcome-focused results, overlooking the design process. Therefore, local policies should include clear provisions defining the scope and limits of AI use. In parallel with these policy provisions, a standardised practice-oriented workflow is needed to govern how AI is used, documented, and evaluated throughout the design and approval process in historic environments.
Tourist taxes have been used at heritage sites to maintain the symbiotic relationship between tourism and heritage. However, local authorities in the UK do not have the power to directly implement tourist taxes, leading to political debate. Bath is one of the UK cities interested in the use of tourist taxes for conservation and improving its public realm, and the research seeks to present a systematic overview of the problem situation and stakeholder analysis, mapped in a power-interest matrix. From this work, it was found the relationship between the Bath local authority and lobbying parties, businesses, tourists, and residents already has a strong basis for continued collaboration. However, the one-sided relationship between the government and local authorities means that lobbying for tourist taxes will need to continue, or alternative methods to implement tourist taxes will be needed. Despite the challenges, Bath demonstrates examples of beneficial stakeholder collaboration that should be continued and built on.
Helene, which made landfall in the U.S. Southeast as a Category 4 hurricane, caused the worst natural disaster in North Carolina's history, sweeping through the Southern Appalachian Mountains along the western side of the state in September 2024. In its wake, local NGOs, non-profits and mutual aid organisations helped people survive, take stock and eventually start to rebuild their communities. One of these organisations was the Preservation Society of Asheville and Buncombe County (PSABC), a non-profit whose mission is to conserve Asheville and Buncombe County's heritage and sense of place through preservation and promotion of the region's historic resources. Following Helene, PSABC was able to quickly provide assistance to individual historic home and commercial property owners and to the broader community by authorising emergency funds to buy generators and dehumidifiers, making small but impactful changes to their grant process, relying on their existing network of experts to provide technical support, bringing in outside assistance when needed and surging volunteers when it was safe to do so. This article serves as a case study of what a small, local preservation society can do in the wake of a natural disaster to help protect and preserve their community's heritage.
The Historic Urban Landscape (HUL) approach expands urban heritage management beyond the protection of individual buildings to consider the broader urban context and the diversity of heritage values embedded in the city. This perspective challenges conventional practices based on static inventories focused mainly on architectural and historical significance, promoting instead context-sensitive strategies that acknowledge the evolving nature of urban heritage. This paper proposes a methodology based on historical landscape analysis to map urban heritage as a spatial system shaped by elements that define the city's configuration, identity, and transformation over time. Using historical cartography, archival documents, and scholarly sources integrated in a Historical Geographic Information System (HGIS), heritage is identified as a set of entities whose significance is interpreted according to their role within the urban landscape. Conceived as a practical tool for planners and heritage managers, the methodology supports adaptive and integrated heritage management aligned with HUL principles and helps bridge the gap between heritage assessment and planning practice. The approach is demonstrated through a case study in Seville.
Significant progress is being made to integrate the UK's environmental improvement goals, including nature recovery, in the management and conservation of the historic environment. To date, most attention has been given to the over-arching vision and guiding principles, whilst finer scales of practice and delivery are less considered. This includes balancing management decisions and priorities for individual assets with landscape-scale environmental strategy, which may not always align or appear compatible. By reflecting on our experiences working in close partnership with national and local heritage organisations, we highlight three key challenges faced when trying to manage and enhance nature on and around built heritage assets: (1) Conflicts and trade-offs between conservation priorities, (2) uncertainty arising from a lack of knowledge and evidence, and (3) resistance to change. Underpinning these challenges in the UK is the complex diversity of built heritage assets, settings and responsible authorities, which precludes generalised approaches and solutions. In these contexts, we highlight a potential disconnect between 'top-down' (landscape-scale) and 'bottom-up' (asset-scale) decision-making. We finish with some broad suggestions for navigating these challenges in support of including built assets in the push for connected, culturally rich and biodiverse historic landscapes.
Urban heritage in an Indian context is largely influenced by the interaction between its built environments and living cultural practices. While there is a growing recognition of holistic conservation approaches at global level, the policy instruments working with a top-down approach is evident. These regulations operate on a monument-centric model that marginalises intangible heritage and community participation. This study examines how heritage is conceptualised and represented across International, National, and local policy frameworks. A thematic content analysis of 24 regulatory documents and charters is conducted with five analytical themes identified through literature review analysis are: Tangible Heritage, Intangible Heritage, Community Participation, Heritage Tourism, and Integration of Values. Descriptive statistics, weighted medians, and thematic heatmap is applied to identify patterns across governance levels. Case studies of four cities, Ahmedabad, Mumbai, Jaipur, and Puducherry assess the representation of these themes at the local level. The results of the study show a strong emphasis on physical conservation and urban aesthetics, with limited integration of intangible heritage or mechanisms for community engagement. The city-level study further shows a focus on tourism-led strategies rather than on community-led heritage governance. The study affirms the need for a participatory heritage governance framework that is inclusive and context-sensitive.
The adoption of the historic urban landscape (HUL) approach to bridging cultural heritage and urban management practice has been facilitated by the dissemination of implementation experiences in scientific and grey literature. While the Swiss legal framework for historic sites resonates with the HUL approach, the extent to which practice reflects its six steps, a set of strategies designed to inform local action, remains unclear. This study examines interventions in sites listed in the Federal Inventory of Heritage Sites (ISOS) to identify evidence of practices aligned with these steps, with particular attention to Steps 2 (participation), 4 (integration into planning frameworks), and 6 (partnerships), which remain underrepresented in existing literature. The analysis of 10 case reports suggests prevalence of HUL-aligned practices, particularly in the early integration of heritage values into planning processes, the adaptation of design solutions to contextual constraints, and the involvement of multiple stakeholders in project development. This work recognises the importance of Swiss institutional conditions, including the legal status of ISOS, established planning cultures, and participatory mechanisms, in shaping these outcomes. Rather than offering a universally applicable model, this study provides insights into how HUL-aligned practices may emerge within specific governance contexts and identifies conditions for their transferability.
Historic mountain roads, such as those in the Indo-Tibetan borderlands, hold cultural significance, facilitating centuries of human movement, trade, and spiritual exchange. Despite their importance, these roads remain underrepresented in global heritage frameworks due to the absence of monumental markers and limited documentation. This study addresses this research gap by exploring the cultural assets of the historic mountain roads in the Indo-Tibetan borderland. Employing an interpretivist methodology, the study integrates ethnographic and phenomenological approaches, utilising memory mapping, phenomenological walks, quasi-participant observation, photo elicitation, interviews, and conversations with community members as co-researchers. Key findings highlight the significance of choice points - strategic pause locations - as cultural nodes where tangible and intangible heritage assets converge or emerge. By identifying five types of choice points, the study decodes the characteristics of tangible heritage and the robustness of intangible heritage linked to these roads. Deeply connected to the Rung Shauka community, these roads exemplify a unique interplay of transhumance, trade, and pilgrimage, underscoring their spiritual, and cultural significance. This research not only highlights the importance of these roads as facilitators of cultural continuity but also introduces a framework for decoding their associated heritage, advocating for their inclusion in broader conservation narratives and development initiatives.
Heritagization processes are presently unfolding at the White House. Specifically, processes of de-heritagization and re-heritagization are being undertaken to this iconic building's East Wing. Under President Donald J. Trump's orders, the East Wing is being reimagined and reconstructed through the destructive process of de-heritagization, in terms of demolishment, and productive process of re-heritagization, in terms of eventual resurrection as a grand ballroom. These de-/re-heritagization processes, happening in parallel, represent a massive remaking of the East Wing in terms of its gravity of materiality, that is, its substance, scale, and style. An anocratic aesthetic is emerging with/through this de/re-heritagization project, thereby contributing a novel architectural style previously unseen at the White House. There now exists the juxtaposed East Wing (former) era of the First Lady and now the grand ballroom era of Trump. This de-/re-heritagization of the East Wing may very well come to mark pre-Trump, peri-Trump, and post-Trump aesthetic, cultural, and political periods, and perceptions, of the White House itself.
Material Cultural Heritage (MCH) is gaining increasing relevance due to its impact on tourism, education, and local economies. This growing significance highlights the need for statistical tools that enable a systematic measurement of the MCH sector. This article presents a methodology developed for establishing Satellite Accounts for Material Cultural Heritage (HERMES SA) within the European context. This methodology was developed under the auspices of ESPON, an institution committed to the analysis and promotion of cultural heritage. It draws on previous research concerning the conceptualisation and measurement of the MCH sector, as well as on conceptual frameworks associated with the cultural and creative industries. The article outlines the objectives and core features of HERMES SA, including the delineation of the sector's scope and the identification of variables and indicators that best capture its economic dimension. Ultimately, the proposal seeks to support evidence-based policymaking and foster a value-driven approach to heritage, moving beyond a purely conservation-led perspective.
Urban archaeology is one of the most fragile and non-renewable components of the historic urban landscape. In multi-layered cities such as Istanbul, where successive strata coexist within a dense and dynamic fabric, archaeological heritage is still largely addressed through rescue archaeology - a reactive intervention triggered only when construction exposes remains. This has often led to the isolation, inaccessibility, or reburial of significant sites, with little integration into the living city. This study focuses on eight cases in Istanbul's Historical Peninsula - a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1985-to assess post-discovery conservation and presentation practices, identifying systemic barriers to effective integration. Based on site observations, archival and regulatory documents, and typological categorisation, it analyses legal, administrative, architectural, and educational dimensions, revealing weaknesses including fragmented legislation, institutional incoherence, inadequate spatial integration, and limited public presentation. Framing these findings within international conventions, including Valletta and Faro, the paper proposes policy insights for shifting from reactive rescue practices towards preventive and interpretive conservation. A multi-level, policy-oriented framework is proposed to integrate urban archaeological heritage into urban planning, ensuring both its material preservation and its ongoing role as a living component of Istanbul's cultural identity.
As a typical form of social movement, workers' movements seek political power and social rights through collective action, thereby advancing social policy and institutional transformation. During China's industrialisation and social transition, the working class, under the leadership of the Communist Party of China, gradually evolved from spontaneous resistance to organised consciousness in response to systemic oppression. The Anyuan miners' and railway workers' strike, a landmark event in the early Chinese labour movement, improved the conditions of industrial workers while laying ideological and organisational foundations for subsequent revolutionary movements. Today, the Anyuan coal mine heritage integrates revolutionary cultural assets, industrial sites, and ecological landscapes into a distinctive regional heritage landscape. From an international labour history perspective, this paper adopts architectural and heritage research methods, combining participatory observation with spatial analysis to examine the historical evolution of the Anyuan workers' movement and the processes of its heritagization and value construction. Against the backdrop of resource-based urban transformation and the rise of red cultural tourism, the study explores how the Anyuan Coal Mine has constructed a heritage system integrating industrial memory, revolutionary narratives, and regional development. As a key node in China's labour movement, Anyuan offers insights into the preservation, interpretation, and policy practice of labour heritage.
The concepts of 'transboundary heritage' and 'serial heritage', introduced by UNESCO, aim to protect cultural heritage that spans the borders of more than one country. The Tao-Klarjeti region, the focus of this study, extends across the north-eastern border of T & uuml;rkiye and south-western border of Georgia, and it is home to numerous monasteries that were significant centres of Georgian Orthodox culture in the Middle Ages. They now form part of a fragmented cultural landscape divided by national borders. Although these monuments are protected individually, their interrelationships are essential in achieving comprehensive and holistic conservation. This study examines the challenges and opportunities of recognising the Tao-Klarjeti monasteries as transboundary cultural heritage. It offers a comparative evaluation of heritage policies, restoration protocols, conservation practices, tourism strategies, and international collaborations between T & uuml;rkiye and Georgia. Furthermore, it discusses joint management models, the potential for World Heritage List designation, and opportunities for cultural diplomacy. Cultural heritage should not be viewed solely as the preservation of historical monuments, but also as an opportunity for cross-border cultural dialogue and cooperation. Tao-Klarjeti demonstrates that cultural heritage can serve as a unifying force that transcends geopolitical boundaries, providing a model for transnational conservation efforts.
