Abstract Residential heritage in rapidly urbanising secondary cities remains poorly integrated into adaptive reuse frameworks, largely because ordinary residential buildings seldom receive the institutional recognition afforded to monuments. This study examines five residential heritage sites in Pabna Municipality, Bangladesh, to investigate how spatial configuration, physical condition, ownership, and governance shape the feasibility of reuse. Using a field survey, typological mapping, temporal satellite analysis, AutoCAD-based documentation, and SCOT evaluation, the paper compares three residential typologies: palatial zamindari compounds, semi-palatial merchant residences, and compact urban houses. The findings show that architectural adaptability alone does not secure reuse potential. Buildings with strong courtyard organisation and structural legibility may remain underused where tenure is unclear. In contrast, modest urban houses are more vulnerable to fragmented proprietorship, restricted access, deterioration, and development pressure. By linking type-based assessment to institutional arrangements and site-specific reuse conditions, the study provides a diagnostic approach to evaluating non-monumental residential heritage in secondary cities, where adaptive reuse is often constrained by institutional fragmentation.
Abstract The settlements of the high Himalayas are subject to extreme weather conditions and earthquakes. The buildings have been adapted to local circumstances with respect to material availability, local culture, seismic activity and the harsh climate. This paper introduces the vernacular architecture of Upper Dolpo, with examples from the villages of Tsho, Saldang and Bijer and the monasteries of Thasung Tsholing, Shey and Samling, all of which are located at altitudes between 3,600 and 4,400 m. The communities of these villages are still largely intact; however, there is a growing threat of migration. There are still vernacular buildings that are possibly more than two hundred years old, as mentioned by the elderly local community members. Many are not being used and are being replaced with new buildings. The vernacular buildings have been documented, and possible reutilisation has been discussed. This paper also examines traditional building craftspeople and their knowledge. With the loss of traditional craftspeople, builders from the surrounding districts are hired to build new buildings, although the knowledge of maintaining the vernacular buildings is slowly disappearing. This paper concludes with recommendations for reviving traditional building crafts, developing a means of restoring the vernacular buildings and developing sustainable functions for local communities or by conversion to tourist accommodations.
Abstract This article critically examines the role of cultural heritage in Istanbul’s contemporary planning framework by analysing the interaction between Law No. 5225 on the Promotion of Cultural Investments and Initiatives (2004) and Istanbul’s Vision 2050 strategy through a document-based and case-informed policy analysis. As a historic metropolis shaped by recurrent shocks such as earthquakes, fires and epidemics, Istanbul provides a compelling context for exploring transformative resilience, path dependency, and multi-scalar governance in cultural heritage management. The study first outlines the significance and vulnerabilities of Istanbul’s World Heritage Sites but shifts beyond descriptive accounts to evaluate how current governance models mediate tensions between economic pragmatism and social-ecological objectives. Findings reveal that while Law 5225 offers instrumental financial incentives for restoration and adaptive reuse, Vision 2050 provides a normative framework aligned with Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) 11.4 that prioritises public value, social justice and ecological sustainability. However, the lack of binding integration mechanisms between these policy logics creates risks of implementation gaps, commodification, and gentrification-driven displacement. The article argues that Istanbul’s ability to transition from reactive to ‘bounce forward’ resilience depends on establishing governance arrangements that condition economic incentives on measurable social and cultural outcomes. By synthesising policy frameworks and examining micro case dynamics, the article contributes to scholarly debates on urban heritage governance and proposes avenues for building an adaptive and socially equitable model for the city’s future.
Abstract This article examines urban conservation in Lithuania during the transformative 1980s and 1990s, a period characterised by significant socio-political changes preceding and following the restoration of Lithuania's independence. Initially regarded as a key achievement of Soviet-era heritage protection, the urban conservation system faced increasing criticism by the mid-1980s. It emerged because of ineffective implementation but was later attributed to inappropriate methodological principles, e.g., sanation, undermining the distinctiveness of historic urban areas. In 1987, the second Vilnius Old Town Regeneration Project was initiated, which coincided with Lithuania’s declaration of independence in 1990. This case study encompasses the interplay between Soviet-era heritage conservation approaches, emerging civic rights, limited regulation on newly re-established private property, and romantic reconstruction ideas. The oxymoron ‘recreation of authenticity’ captures the high symbolic meaning of cultural heritage as a symbol of national society, representing the period during which replicas were promoted as adhering to international heritage doctrines. Although centralised conservation practices collapsed following the state’s withdrawal of support, some principles, such as reconstruction, were redefined. A pivotal goal was the inscription of the Vilnius Historic Centre onto the World Heritage List, achieved on the second attempt in 1994. This event symbolised the international recognition of the value of the urban heritage of the Lithuanian capital, of the re-established independent state and, paradoxically for critics, of previous urban conservation practices. By exploring these links, this article contributes to a deeper and more nuanced understanding of the role of heritage and conservation practices in the context of a post-Soviet landscape.
Abstract The adaptive reuse poses both challenges and opportunities for industrial heritage sites. Cultural event programming has emerged as a key catalyst in this transformation process. This study uses Parco Dora, Turin, Italy as an empirical case and investigates how ephemeral but periodic cultural events, like the Kappa Futur Festival (KFF), a major European techno festival held annually in Parco Dora, can effectively activate such spaces. Adopting mixed methods combined with multi-stakeholder analysis, including interviews, on-site observations, spatial mapping, and sentiment analysis, this study explores both top-down planning strategies and bottom-up experiential responses, aiming to understand the coordinated transformation of Parco Dora and to evaluate its social and cultural impact from the perspectives of visitors. The findings reveal that KFF has played a significant role in both the physical revitalisation and the symbolic repositioning of Parco Dora. 1) Tangibly, the festival has spurred infrastructural upgrades, enhancing the park’s function as a daily public space. 2) Intangibly, the annual event reinforces the site’s cultural identity and visibility, transforming it into a vibrant urban landmark. Visitors’ perceptions further emphasise the site’s unique historical and spatial character. This study offers a reference for the adaptive reuse of industrial heritage through cultural event programming, which demonstrates how periodical cultural events can generate sustained socio-economic and cultural value, providing strategic insights for planners, cultural producers, and policymakers aiming to revitalise post-industrial urban spaces.
Mining fields and their operations should have heritage and tourism significance and should be considered components of Ethiopia’s economic activities. Hence, this study aims to situate mining heritage and mining tourism within the conventional understanding of Ethiopia’s heritage and tourism industry while exploring strategies to transform mining heritage into a tourism economy. To investigate these issues, the study relies on the collection and analysis of relevant data from numerous sources, including proclamations issued on Ethiopia’s heritage protection and conservation, legislation on mining operations, and oral sources. Policy documents related to the country’s tourism industry, as well as documents from the United Nations (UN) and the World Bank, were also collected and analysed. To analyse these data, a qualitative approach to data investigation, i.e., document and empirical analyses, was used. The article’s findings suggest that Ethiopian mining heritage requires recognition, registration, and protection to enhance its significance as a national heritage asset and serve as supplementary authentic sources for the Ethiopian tourism industry in their efforts to appropriately identify and study the cultural and historical values of the mining and tourism industry. Finally, the article concludes that existing proclamations and legislation on heritage protection and conservation, as well as policy documents on Ethiopia’s tourism industry, have focused on conventional cultural and natural heritage and the benefits these heritages bring to the tourism sector. However, there are opportunities to integrate mining heritage into these legal and policy documents and thereby transform mining heritage into new tourism assets by overcoming key challenges.
Abstract This paper identifies how the cultural significance attributed to nature–culture relations evolves over time and among institutions, using the White City of Tel Aviv as a case study. It compares how nature–culture relations, conceptualised as valued attributes in Patrick Geddes' 1925 Town-Planning Report, were subsequently recognised or reframed in ICOMOS (the International Council on Monuments and Sites) evaluation and the UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation) decision text that led to the property's inscription on the World Heritage List in 2003. The research employs a comparative content analysis of these three documents, adapting an established framework for heritage attributes to code natural, built, and relational attributes as well as their interconnections systematically. The coded data were analysed through code counting, a general co-occurrence analysis, and a targeted nature–culture co-occurrence analysis using Atlas.ti. The results reveal a progressive shift in how cultural significance is articulated across the three documents. Geddes' plan articulated a multiscalar, integrated vision in which built and natural attributes were equally prominent and functionally interdependent. The ICOMOS evaluation and UNESCO decision text foregrounded architectural concepts and built form, whereas natural attributes were articulated at a broader, more generic level than architectural attributes were. This shift is likely shaped both by the inclusion of a second group of heritage attributes in the inscription, the International Style architecture built within Geddes' framework from the 1930s onwards, and by the evaluative scope of the inscription process. The analytical approach is transferable beyond this case and beyond World Heritage properties to any governance level to identify how cultural significance is attributed to nature–culture relations. These findings have implications for how heritage management understands the cultural significance of nature–culture relations in planned urban landscapes and for how World Heritage management is further related to urban-planning policies.
Abstract Socio-ecological resilience has become central to climate adaptation discourse in heritage contexts, yet its application to pre-modern deltaic urban systems remains insufficiently explored. This study examines the Historic Mosque City of Bagerhat (15th-century Bengal) as an integrated hydro-architectural urban system embedded within a flood-prone estuarine landscape. Drawing on socio-ecological systems (SES) theory and adaptive governance scholarship, the research introduces the Hydro-Cultural Socio-Ecological System (HC-SES) framework to interpret resilience in deltaic heritage settlements. The framework is operationalised through a dual-index evaluation model, comprising an Environmental Impact Index (EII) and a Sustainability Index (SI), designed to assess adaptation strategies embedded within historic urban morphology. Empirical analysis combines GIS-based measurement of reservoir networks, morphometric assessment of architectural parameters—including plinth elevation, masonry thickness, and cornice articulation—and typology-based classification of 54 documented urban elements. Indicator weighting was conducted through a two-round Delphi–Analytic Hierarchy Process involving thirty experts (CR = 0.09). Results indicate that Bagerhat’s resilience emerged through the coordinated interaction of three subsystems: hierarchical reservoir infrastructure that moderated hydrological variability, climatically calibrated architectural forms that facilitated passive environmental regulation, and governance structures that sustained long-term infrastructural maintenance. The findings demonstrate that climatic adaptation was structurally embedded within the urban landscape rather than implemented through reactive engineering. By extending socio-ecological systems analysis into the domain of heritage urbanism, the HC-SES framework provides a structured method for evaluating adaptive capacity in historic cities and offers insights for climate-resilient heritage management in contemporary deltaic environments .
Abstract In the late 1970s, the Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic was widely recognised across the socialist world as a leader in urban heritage conservation. Its capital city, Tbilisi, became a showcase of what Chief Architect Shota Kavlashvili defined as a new formula for historic district revival: ‘reconstruction-plus-regeneration-plus-adaptation’, an approach that broke from the modernist orthodoxy of the Venice Charter in its prioritisation of aesthetic coherence over material authenticity. This article traces the continuities of Kavlashvili’s method through the turbulent 1990s, an era that necessarily broke from Soviet precedents in the wake of the Civil War, but also built upon and transformed them during the reconstruction process. While much attention has been paid to the dramatic architectural interventions and wholesale historic district restorations initiated by President Mikheil Saakashvili in the early 2010s, the 1990s remain an overlooked Dark Age in a city where reconstruction-plus-regeneration-plus-adaptation continues to dominate urban conservation projects. In comparing Kavlashvili’s pilot project at Baratashvili Street to the post-conflict reconstruction of Rustaveli Avenue and the ‘New Life for Old Tbilisi’ program inaugurated under President Mikhail Saakashvili, this article demonstrates that Soviet urban conservation approaches continue to exert a profound legacy on postsocialist Tbilisi, even as those same approaches are used to erase Soviet contributions to its historic landscape.
Abstract Value integrity is a critical dimension in heritage practice, yet the conflicting nature of values may result in the categorisation of positive and negative values, with the latter being neglected or even erased. Shanghai’s old concessions have carried complex and conflicting historical backgrounds, while, through processes of preservation and management, they have become relatively positive urban spaces. This study examines public perception through a social media approach in this conflicted context. A total of 25,588 social media comments were categorised using a BERT-driven machine learning method, with further analysis considering the spatial, content and sentiment characteristics of different perceived value types. Key findings include: 1) Compared with well-perceived positive values, negative values are less perceived and often excluded from preservation efforts; 2) Positive values focus on historical context, design quality, and contemporary functions, while negative values relate to painful historical events and physical decay; 3) Negative heritage values evoke strong negative emotions, particularly in terms of social value; 4) Positive and negative values in some cases can reinforce each other. The paper calls for inclusive heritage discourse, offering a safe space for expressing negative values and emotions. We argue for preservation and regeneration strategies that recognise both positive and negative values, thereby contributing to a more complete understanding of heritage value integrity.
This study integrates the Disaster Risk Management (DRM) framework with the Cultural Property Risk Assessment Model (CPRAM) for the Ali Qapu Palace—a UNESCO World Heritage property in Isfahan, Iran. While fire is recognised as a critical threat to historic buildings, few studies quantify the impact of protective measures. To address this gap, the research systematically identifies 354 specific risks across ten agents of deterioration and quantifies their magnitudes through expert-informed scoring. Fire emerges as the dominant hazard, with Fire,3 (localised ignition) and Fire,2 (compartmental spread) collectively driving approximately 80
In contemporary urban environments, historic buildings serve as a living expression of cultural heritage over time and form an integral part of a place’s identity. This article focuses on a specific heritage building, namely, khans (inns), which reflect the socioeconomic and commercial conditions of a given place and period. This study examines the diachronic development of khans and their integration into the urban fabric of historic centres while identifying both their intangible and tangible values. This research considers the khans within the walled city of Nicosia in the capital of Cyprus and examines their typological, morphological and structural characteristics. It aims to identify common patterns of architectural design and spatial hierarchies and relate these to social and economic activities across different historical periods. This study is based on bibliographical documentation (including old plans and photographs), fieldwork and the compilation of datasheets for a selected number of khans. This process reveals their key typological characteristics, such as the presence of central courtyards and the strategic locations of khans across the island, which were often along main trade routes, and they served as hubs for commercial exchange and cultural interaction. This work highlights the significance of these buildings and their vital socioeconomic and commercial role in a city. It also underscores the importance of preserving their symbolic and intangible values while adapting their reuse to changing socioeconomic conditions that have led to shifts in the function of the buildings.
Abstract How does the theory of self-management translate into mechanisms for heritage protection? How can heritage become a social resource safeguarded not only by professionals and legislation, but also through collective care? This study traces the Yugoslav journey of conceptualising heritage protection within the broader context of self-managed socialism. It outlines key milestones in the institutionalisation of heritage protection and highlights processes unfolding after 1974, when the adoption of the final constitution of SFR Yugoslavia reinforced decentralisation, resulting in the development of distinct legal and institutional frameworks across the republics and autonomous provinces. That same year, Yugoslavia’s ratification of the UNESCO Convention Concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage (1972) signalled its growing engagement with international heritage norms. Focussing on legal and institutional mechanisms of heritage protection as well as their scholarly and practical dimensions, this study shows how the internal restructuring of the heritage protection system unfolded alongside an increasingly pronounced cultural internationalism, expanding heritage protection beyond individual monuments and moving toward a holistic view of the environment that included both natural and human-made values. Central to this analysis is the concept of socialisation of heritage protection (podruštvljavanje zaštite), which redefined protection as a shared societal responsibility. This idea culminated in the notion of active protection (aktivna zaštita), which promoted revitalisation, social participation, and the integration of heritage into everyday life. While the implementation of these ideas faced challenges, the Yugoslav model nonetheless offers valuable lessons for rethinking heritage values across political systems.
Abstract The formation of the concept of the Historic Urban Landscape (HUL) not only applied the landscape approach to heritage studies but also shifted attention towards the layered social and cultural values of heritage. However, conventional heritage research remains largely confined to a single spatial scale, neither adequately revealing the variation in perceptions across different levels nor resonating with the expanding connotations of the HUL approach. This limits the identification of heritage values because HUL conservation requires understanding how people experience and value places in different spatial settings. In the context of new data environments, converting unstructured digital footprints into structured numerable data helps in the layered interpretation of complex information anchored in HUL. Therefore, this study attempts to establish a new research paradigm using digital footprints to systematically explore multilevel heritage perception in historic urban areas at the macro, meso and micro levels. This study integrates multilevel perception analysis under the HUL framework with the spatiotemporal information and interactive features of various types of digital footprints. The results demonstrate that a landscape approach to heritage perception research can effectively identify personalised recreational needs and historically shaped aesthetic preferences, thereby supporting more human-centred heritage conservation.
Abstract Between 1855 and 1957, the British, who constituted the colonial administration, proposed strategies to consolidate colonial power on the Gold Coast (Ghana). In Accra, they produced architecture that forced and coerced residents to conform. Such architecture remains unexplored and is confronted with forces of vulnerability such as teardowns and neglect. This study sought to spatially identify such architectural monuments and discuss their contemporary significance. The study adopted a survey research design, which allowed various data collection methods, such as mapping, semi-structured interviews and personal field observations, to be used to collect empirical data. Fourteen heritage items categorised under four colonial typologies (fortifications, judicial buildings, military installations and cemeteries) were mapped. These typologies included activities and employed architectural features that contributed to making Accra a ‘deathworld’ through factors including evoking fear and anxiety; keeping surveillance and gathering knowledge about locals; serving as disciplinary spaces; sidelining residents; and granting the colonial administration unlimited powers. One of the major achievements of this research is the production of a colonial architectural monuments of force and coercion map of Accra, which is very much needed to inform subsequent interventions.
Abstract This article examines the fate of Minsk’s historic wooden suburbs during the late Soviet and early post-Soviet periods, highlighting how these vernacular urban neighbourhoods, once central to the city’s working-class identity, have been increasingly marginalised in planning, policy, and public discourse. Drawing on archival research, policy analysis, and expert interviews, the study explores how shifting urban ideologies, institutional restructuring, and the rise of market-driven renewal shaped the treatment of wooden architecture in Minsk from the 1980s through the 1990s. While international discourses increasingly valorise wooden architecture as sustainable and culturally significant, Belarusian approaches have remained largely top-down, economically motivated, and exclusionary. The article identifies a brief moment of institutional consensus around preservation in the early 1990s, but shows how this was ultimately undermined by economic instability, political centralisation, and limited public engagement. Focusing on the unique case of Paŭnočny Lane, the only wooden district to receive protected status, the article interrogates the mechanisms through which heritage is either preserved or erased. By situating the Belarusian experience within broader Central and Eastern European urban transformations, the article contributes to post-socialist urban studies and heritage scholarship.
Abstract In this article, we examine the complex sociopolitical and cultural issues that are entangled and intertwined with the notions of ‘remembered’ and ‘forgotten’ pasts using a case study of precolonial monumental stone-built places in Hwange district, northwestern Zimbabwe. These stone-built places are archaeologically and historically associated with the establishment and development of the precolonial Nambya state, a complex precolonial sociopolitical formation that flourished in this region until its demise during the early part of the 20th century AD. Our recent archaeological surveys revealed that, in addition to the three previously known and widely reported major sites of Bumbusi, Shangano, and Matowa, 14 similar stone buildings of various sizes in the area have since been confirmed and documented. Of these many sites, however, only the three above-cited places have been ‘inherited’, feature prominently in oral historical narratives, and are revered and celebrated by the descendants of the precolonial Nambya state. While their presence within the landscape is acknowledged, the other similar places do not feature in oral narratives or are used for ritual functions, representing what other heritage scholars have termed ‘uninherited’ pasts. Here, we investigate local communities’ perceptions and attitudes towards what constitutes important heritage places and situate our research findings within the global discourse on heritagisation and the practices of remembrance and forgetting.
Abstract The Toraja cultural landscape represents a living system that unites people, land, and ancestors within an ecological and spiritual continuum transmitted across generations. Tongkonan Sa’pang, one of the traditional settlements within Tondok Lepongan Bulan Tana Matarik Allo, exemplifies this unity through a spatial order grounded in kinship, cosmology, and customary ecological management. In recent decades, however, modernisation, economic pressures, land-use changes, heritage codification, and tourism have begun to disrupt this balance, threatening the continuity of both physical structures and intangible cultural meanings. This condition reflects a broader global trend of heritage commodification, where living traditions risk being reframed as performative heritage products. These challenges highlight the need for preservation strategies that protect not only material integrity but also the symbolic and spiritual values sustaining indigenous life systems. To address this need, the study applies a modified Landscape Character Assessment (LCA) framework designed to capture both tangible and intangible dimensions of the Toraja landscape. This modification is essential because conventional LCA methods, developed within European contexts, focus mainly on visual and morphological aspects, often failing to represent ritual symbolism, kinship-based spatial logic, and cosmological order that underpin indigenous landscapes. The research demonstrates how the LCA method can be reinterpreted and locally adapted to support preservation strategies that respond to ongoing socio-ecological change. The study integrates physical and symbolic data through GIS-based spatial mapping, ethnographic fieldwork, and participatory validation with customary leaders. The findings identify seven landscape character units (LCU(s)) structured into three main zones, reflecting the interconnection between ecological, spiritual, and social systems in the Toraja cultural landscape. The research advances a decolonial perspective that redefines LCA from a technocratic tool into an interpretative framework grounded in indigenous knowledge. Its main contribution lies in developing a community-based, value-driven preservation model that can be contextually applied to other indigenous territories across Southeast Asia.
Abstract This study explores how technological value is conceptualised in international doctrinal documents in response to a gap in evolving understandings of built heritage: despite technology’s growing relevance in conservation practice, its value remains conceptually fragmented, implicitly articulated, and inconsistently integrated across existing value frameworks. Drawing on 84 documents issued by leading institutional bodies engaged in cultural heritage policy and guidance between 1931 and 2024, the research employs a qualitative methodology grounded in thematic content analysis. Through an inductive coding process, five key thematic categories are identified to structure the discourse on technological value: Technological Authenticity and Integrity; Heritage as a Repository of Technological Knowledge; Layered Change and Technological Impact of Interventions; Symbolic and Cultural Significance of Technology; and Performance, Sustainability, and Adaptive Resilience. These themes demonstrate that technological value is a multidimensional and relational construct, intersecting both tangible and intangible aspects of heritage, and exhibiting substantive associations with historical, scientific, and cultural values through notions of continuity, embedded knowledge, and context-specific meaning. The findings further reveal differentiated levels of emphasis across these dimensions. By synthesising dispersed positions within international doctrinal documents, the study proposes a structured conceptual foundation for identifying and framing technological value, enhancing clarity and coherence, and contributing to technically responsive interpretations within heritage contexts.
Abstract Late Soviet-era architecture, especially in rural areas, often remains overlooked in heritage discourse—often dismissed due to its deteriorated condition, peripheral location, or ideological associations. However, among these neglected structures are architecturally and historically significant buildings that deserve attention and preservation. This article examines one such case, the Kmytiv Museum of Fine Arts in central Ukraine, where a striking example of late Soviet modernism is inseparably intertwined with a complex institutional and political history. The museum’s architecture and trajectory—from a model ideological project to a stigmatised and neglected institution—underscores the need to preserve not only the physical structure itself but also its multilayered cultural legacy. Founded by WWII veteran Yosyp Bukhanchuk, the Kmytiv Museum was conceived as a cultural institution that would bring art to rural audiences in line with the Soviet ideal of ‘art for the people’. Bukhanchuk’s vision shaped both the museum’s collection and its architectural form. In response to this concept and the rural context, architect Mykhailo Severov designed a dedicated structure that merged late Soviet modernism with references to the local vernacular. Opened in 1985, the building’s ten exhibition halls, natural lighting, and distinctive silhouette made it a landmark and a cultural focal point for the village. Following the collapse of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) and Bukhanchuk’s death, the museum experienced an institutional and physical decline. In the wake of Ukraine’s 2015 decommunisation laws, it became politically uncomfortable—too ideologically charged for rehabilitation yet too architecturally significant to ignore. Despite efforts by cultural initiatives such as DE NE DE and artist-curator Nikita Kadan to reframe its meaning and restore its visibility, the museum’s deteriorating condition remains unresolved. This article argues that the preservation of architecturally significant buildings such as the Kmytiv Museum can be obstructed not by technical limitations but by a lack of political will and institutional recognition. Restoration requires not only material intervention but also a conceptual relegitimisation of the heritage itself. Ultimately, recognising Ukraine’s Soviet-era legacy in its full complexity and tragedy is essential for enabling the preservation of its material remains.
