Poster Session (Asynchronous) Heriland Project: Cultural Heritage and the Planning of European Landscapes
This is the poster session for the Heriland Project.
Future-making in Post-industrial Landscapes: Possibilities of Sustainable Place-making through Heritage and Landscape Practice View Digital Media
Poster Session Anna Tonk
Heritage is becoming more embedded in sustainable development agendas across Europe. Together with the concept of landscape, heritage can offer a way to manage change in a precarious world. From a critical heritage perspective this poster explores the connections between landscape, heritage, and sustainability by juxtaposing current conceptualisation of cultural landscapes and sustainability to on-the-ground trials of heritage organisations in the North of England. These organisations approach their rapidly changing post-industrial environments in different landscape-oriented ways, but each address different values related to their environment and come across several challenges in ‘making’ the future landscape. Through participant observation, interviews and using literature analysis as complementary approach I strive to understand how sustainability values and narratives are being used in these current heritage developments and practices working with and through landscape. In addition to exploring the connection between the concept of cultural landscapes and sustainability, challenges and decisions arising during the management and transformation process of the historical environment are analysed. How the organisations interact with the different pillars of sustainability (economic, environmental, social, and cultural) is then considered. How is sustainability ‘used’ to change the landscape’s use and meaning and how is it used in context of managing the historic post-productive landscape? Can landscape-oriented heritage practices aid in a more sustainable relationship with our environment in a Western post-industrial context?
Stories from Islands: Energy Infrastructures and the Makings of Future Heritage View Digital Media
Poster Session Marilena Mela
Islands are unique heritage landscapes, shaped through the ongoing interaction of humans, non-humans, and territories. They have historically been hubs of resilience and autarky, as populations needed to adapt to the constant alterations between isolation and connectivity. Today, islands in Europe are often in the fringe of their national territories, facing challenges of over tourism and peripherality. The ambitions for the transition to renewable energy bring changes for the landscapes of islands:the abstract global discussion is being locally expressed in urgent and material ways. This paper discusses the cases of three archipelagos: the Wadden islands in the Netherlands, the Cyclades in Greece, and the Orkney islands in Scotland. There, big scale infrastructure projects involving the islandic elements of sun, sea, and wind, are being variously contested. The parallelization of the three projects illustrates how the change of valuable landscapes relates to different interactions between local actors, the market, and the national state. Renewable energy infrastructure seemingly concerns the contested concept of common good. However, the same technology can be seen as a welcome addition to place heritage and identity, or as a major threat, depending on the different planning frameworks, geopolitical interests, and local conditions. Using a combination of discourse analysis and empirical methods, this paper draws parallels between the three local cases, and maps the opposing or aligned meanings of heritage and sustainability.
Disappearing Landscapes of Apulia: Towards Participatory Models of Conservation and Transformation of Cultural Landscapes View Digital Media
Poster Session Marta Ducci
This research is a case study that investigates the concept of cultural landscape, which is seen as a strategic resource for sustainable territorial development and its integration in the planning practice by testing the use of participatory co-design methods. In Apulia Region (Southern Italy), the study area is characterised by a widespread cultural landscape, which is experiencing a period of major socio-economic, environmental and cultural changes due to natural and human- influenced factors. The challenge that emerges is to identify how to adapt to these changes in a sustainable and resilient way - and what role heritage management can have in that. In the last decades, both heritage and planning disciplines have pursued a democratisation process of values attribution and decision-making processes. Accordingly, it becomes essential to learn people’s perceptions, definitions, needs, and design ideas in the cultural landscape planning practice. Hence, this research aims to test the integration of participatory co-design methods to plan a local cultural landscape, favouring adaptation and resilience to contextual changes. For this purpose, a map-based questionnaire (through Maptionnaire) and co-design tool (using ArcGIS online) are used to investigate these concepts with the local population and stakeholders, and co-create a strategic plan for the area’s future.
Evaluating Adaptive Reuse of Urban Heritage to Foster Cultural Resilience in Societies with Contested Identities: The Case Study of Acre, Israel View Digital Media
Poster Session Ana Jayone Yarza Pérez
The world is facing global challenges that are dramatically changing the social and physical environments, resulting in cultural confrontation and conflict. Rapidurban growth, displacement, and gentrification increase urban pressure while jeopardizing social cohesion, multicultural values and local economies. In addition, environmental factors associated with climate change challenge the way cities respond and adapt, as their assets have to be re-designed to meet the current andfuture generation needs and demands. One response to these challenges is adaptive reuse, which is the transformation of the function of an underused structure into a new use. This process turns the cities’ elements in decline into development catalysers, Pereira Roders and van Oers, “Editorial”. The result of the adaptive reuse process reflects the concerns of the society that adapted it, serving as the custodians of heritage for the community “The Nara Document of Authenticity.”, acting as a past-present-future continuum. The adaptation to these changes is often a source of conflict, as urban policies lack citizen engagement in the redefinition of public space, resulting in more disagreement and inefficient use of resources. This issue is particularly acute when addressing multicultural communities, as their continuous evolution and emergence directly influence the adaptation of cultural heritage, being under constant threat and need for repair, Berlin and Hardy, The Proper Study of Mankind. The objective of the research is to develop an integrative methodology to evaluate urban scenario alternatives of adaptive reuse in societies with contested identities, focusing on the critical role of resilience in the evaluation of change.
Understanding Cultural Heritage Attributes through Artificial Intelligence: A Case Study Using Social Media Images View Digital Media
Poster Session Nan Bai, Ana Roders, Pirouz Nourian
Social inclusion has become an important issue for cultural heritage planning in the past decade. Whereas the Recommendation of Historic Urban Landscape (HUL) called for tools for civic engagement and knowledge documents, social media already function as a platform for online communities to actively involve themselves in heritage-related activities. The aim of this research is to understand and explain the heritage attributes revealed in Flickr social media posts in a worldheritage city using artificial intelligence (AI) tools, as continuation to a previous study. Using IBM Watson Visual Recognition API, a computer vision model on classifying heritage attributes is trained with a total of 914 images. The model is evaluated on the test set with machine learning metrics such as precision, recall, and F1. A macro-average F1 of 0.76 is reached using the model, proving that it is feasible and reliable for further applications. Error analysis implies that the applied category of heritage attribute needs to be further clarified, since some classes are not mutually exclusive, making the model hard to perform well in those specific classes. This research shows that AI tools are helpful to automate the heritage attribute identification process on social media posts. Such tools can potentially help heritage researchers and practitioners to understand the opinions of general public, which can stimulate social inclusion in the heritage planning and management.
Governing Memorial Desire: A Case Study in the Netherlands View Digital Media
Poster Session Alana Castro de Azevedo
Despite appeals in the literature and practice for more participation, there is still little insight on what participation does and how participatory techniques affect the people involved. In this research, I address this gap by examining a recent initiative to establish a memorial in the public sphere. Particularly, I present a reading of a controversial case, the National Holocaust Memorial of Names in Amsterdam. This initiative triggered a passionate dispute at the local level, which ultimately led to a legal battle to block the siting of the memorial in Amsterdam’s Plantage neighborhood. The National Holocaust Memorial of Names is a case in point. On the one hand, this controversy reflected the discourse and practice of the participation process itself. On the other hand, it reflected the nature of the issue around which discussion was focused. Aligned with critical approaches to analyzing democracy, emotional participation, and processes of memorialization, I seek to highlight the typical participation traps (Howlett and Ramesh 2016) and antagonisms (Mouffe 1988, 2005, 2013) that characterized the case of Amsterdam. Although the project originated in a private initiative, the main responsibility of involving citizens in planning, lied with the local government.
How Does Heritage Shape the Future City?: Reflections on Heritage Planning in the West Link Infrastructure Project, Gothenburg View Digital Media
Poster Session Maitri Dore
Major urban infrastructure projects in old cities often encounter material historical features during planning or execution, presenting several challenges for local heritage management. Using the case of the West Link project in Gothenburg, Sweden, this research aims to understand how the two goals of heritage conservation and new development may be negotiated in practice. The West Link is a railway line currently under construction in Gothenburg. It burrows through the city’s seventeenth century fortifications, ancient agricultural properties, and historical parks – all of which are ‘national interests’ with architectural historical value. Since the project is deemed to be a threat to the cultural heritage, the Swedish Transport Administration (STA) – responsible for the project – and the City of Gothenburg are in talks on how best to deal with the heritage. Their proposals for working with it are informed by their individual ideas about its values and qualities – the STA seeks to minimise heritage damage, while the City additionally proposes to ‘strengthen’ its value through new urban design programmes and increased accessibility to hidden sites.
Landscape and Heritage: Making Trans-sectoral Connections in Governance and Legislative Frameworks View Digital Media
Poster Session Rusudan Mirzikashvili
The research explores the potential and conditions of “landscape as heritage” concept to become a driver and a connecting platform for trans-sectoral participatory governance. With this aim the research considers heritage and landscape discourses in light of the broader sociocultural, economic, and political transformations; explores governance concepts and regulations on the relationship between people and their living environment in different socio-economic and political contexts; investigates conditions and mechanisms for a landscape and heritage-based, participatory, cross-sectoral governance. The research uses a case study approach, focusing on heritage and landscape administration and governance in England as the main case. The developments of the past decades make England particularly interesting to study the national government-led localist policies, new public management, and small government strategies in action, and the outcomes in view of democratic, integrated, and sustainable governance. Studying these factors from the perspective of heritage landscapes, promises to unveil the contradictions and challenges, to be highlighted in order to aid more sustainable and inclusive governance strategies for the future.
A Transdisciplinary Perspective on Sustainable Place Development View Digital Media
Poster Session Rebecca Staats
This project combines insights from planning, place branding and heritage studies to examine opportunities and barriers for sustainable place development. In the face of widespread structural change, place development initiatives are increasingly employed to drive social and economic regeneration at regional and local scales. However, to be successful and sustainable in the longer term, place development initiatives should involve local participation and reflect the multi-vocal needs of diverse communities. Despite widespread recognition of the need for bottom-up practice, there remains a gap between theory and practice.
Eclectic Atlases as a Method to Inform Prescriptive Design Process for Spatially Heterogenous Historic Cities View Digital Media
Poster Session Komal Potdar
Contemporary planning practices are often characterized by phenomenon of modernization bringing about drastic transformations in urban fabrics. As per the Vienna Memorandum 2005, contemporary developments pose a challenge for the historic urban landscapes for continuity of historic identities along with the creation of new contemporary futures. These design interventions of alterations, adaptive reuses, conversions, and new development may introduce spatial heterogeneity leading to deviation of historic landscape characteristics and its spatial order, which have sustained over time due to the socio-spatial dynamics and configurations. However, the cognizance of this socio-spatial order is often under-represented in the management and planning of urban environments. This research aims to explore and map a comprehensive list of attributes with respect to the Historic Urban Landscape approach (UNESCO) through the study of archival maps and images to capture and document the memory of the landscape through eidetic datascape methods. These data scapes are different from the quantitative maps which are used in conventional planning practice but represent qualitative data as well as construct an eidetic argument documenting the cognitive boundaries beyond the protected areas. Such datascape will be instantiated in this research by documenting and defining attributes and determinants to represent various data sets to highlight the invisible forces of socio-spatial configurations, spatial segregation, and practice of heritage design.
Economic and Cultural Values and Their Cross-impact in the Touristified Urban Environment in Historic Cities View Digital Media
Poster Session Tinatin Meparishvili
In the 1980s when consumption of cultural goods became easier, traveling was brought within the reach of many. This process facilitated successful maintenance, interpretation, and safeguarding of heritage. Historic preservation changed its character by focusing on destination revitalization, job creation, cultural stewardship, housing, tourism, etc. With the accessibility of destinations cultural, historic, and human quality to heritage has become more vulnerable. For many traveling destinations, tourism growth has challenged places to meet sustainability goals and minimize negative effects on the environment. In many cases, adverse impacts on host communities, on their lifestyle and longstanding traditions have been unavoidable. Cultural influence has been expressed in the overuse of heritage sites and outspend of its capacity. Europe, where cultural tourism has predominantly occurred in historic cities, has been massively influenced by the progress of the travel industry. The gradual transformation of urban areas strongly altered the sense of place and caused the loss of human scale. Assessing the data of urban features and the economic aspects of the tourism industry provides an opportunity to conduct a cost-benefit analysis. Using economic and cultural valuation methods to identify the urban heritage value transformation and interrelation, the research aims to create a model that will be able to suggest how economic and socio-cultural values of heritage are influenced by mass tourism. Having found a parity pattern and the factor value of the two variables, the future, more sustainable scenarios of tourism management can be proposed in a historic city context.
Modelling the Role of Conservation Areas in Human Settlement Development View Digital Media
Poster Session Maria Valese
This project analyzes the relationship between conservation areas and the development trends of connected human settlements. The objective of this research is to bring together heritage, planning, geographical, and urban development aspects to build evidence of the urban dynamics generated by world heritage. A starting point will be the classification of cities according to their heritage zoning not only in the terms of their protection system (Turner 2014) but according to the nature of the relation of Outstanding Universal Value (OUV) and its surrounding urban areas (Pereira, 2010). A OUV property is a cultural and/or natural significance which is so exceptional as to transcend national boundaries and to be of common importance for present and future generations of all humanity. This classification will be compared to the built environment maps to define how the found trends in the city developments can be related to the properties. To make the WH Dataset not only an archive but also an effective tool to monitor, compare, and analyse the status of conservation areas in terms of their dynamics and relations the research will apply different methods, integrating the qualitative classification based on the morphologies of urban settlements and the above-defined classification of WH properties (Pereira, 2010) to traditional or innovative quantitative parameters provided by U — TEP platform and derived Land Use — Land Cover (LULC) maps, along with an empirical approach to the existing material in terms of the dataset, maps, digital documentation.
Uncovering the Hidden Values of Mundane Urban Landscapes through Gamified Data Collection View Digital Media
Poster Session Maciej Swiderski
This research revolves around the question of finding adequate ways to integrate the bottom-up knowledge within the planning processes by using methods grounded in the theories typical for spatial heritage studies (i.e. landscape biography). The project relies on eliciting memories and emotions in order to create a memory map (or mnemonic value catalog) that would serve as a point of reference, facilitating the dialogue between the professionals and local communities in the future planning processes. In the subsequent part of the project, the map will be amplified with a game-based component in order to assess the value of a gamified approach in reaching different audiences and yielding more variegated results. As the subject of my study, I chose to focus on modernist housing estates in Eastern Europe, more specifically in Poland. The reasons behind this selection are manifold. From a theoretical perspective, one can identify a growing urgency to readjust the academic discourses on the late modernist landscape and reject the overused conceptualizations developed in Western Europe and North America, in favor of establishing new narratives fitted to the post-socialist context. On a more practical level, the project aims to create a methodological framework that would generate local pride and a sense of collectiveness which in turn could inform heritage and planning professionals on the specificity of the cultural landscape at stake.
The Cultural Aspect of Mobility and Its Effects on Urban Space Case Study: Rome’s Street Networks View Digital Media
Poster Session Sophia Arbara
Cultural heritage and mobility are strongly related in two aspects; cultural spaces have been generators of movement in urban areas, attracting large flows of people; movement on a larger scale and across time, if crystallized, can form part of both an intangible and tangible urban heritage. The spatial element selected to frame this study is the critical container of mobility and heritage sites; the space of the street. The element of the street is not limited to a mere functional element of cities; being a public space, a networked space, a space to project the image of the city, it performs multiple roles within the city. How do the characteristics of the street space affect the valorization of cultural sites and cultural movement? Can the street, carrier of intangible (movement) and tangible (space) become a cultural artifact per se? This project tackles these questions through the territory of Rome, a palimpsest with rich anatomy. Its thousand years of urbanization, the vast and conflicting heritage of the city, the variety of representational regimes, and its geographical features make it the most appropriate ground to explore the hypothesis from a multiplicity of angles, time periods, and methods. Within the city’s broad chronological division, we use methodologies applied in the fields of urban design and the study of cities to read three main episodes aiming to understand, test, and project upon possible alternatives for the future city of Rome; a core aspect of which is the reinterpretation of its relationship between movement and culture.
