The Historic Urban Landscape: Managing Heritage in an Urban Century

Much of the current debate on how we should preserve our cultural heritage revolves around urban sites – historic monuments in urban settings, historic districts, or complete historic towns.

The growing complexity of urban heritage conservation makes reaching a consensus on how to manage urban heritage difficult. Additionally, the sharp increase in the world's population now living in urban areas, combined with a lack of policies to facilitate a sustainable use of heritage assets means the pressure on historic sites is set to rise. Unless new and innovative ways of managing these sites can be agreed on, there is a real danger that historic cities as we know them today will not survive the first decades of the 21^st century.

The Historic Urban Landscape: managing heritage in an urban century offers a comprehensive overview of the intellectual developments in urban conservation. The book examines its modern interpretations and critiques, and the way in which the classical approach has been challenged by the evolution of the conceptual and operational context of urban management. Analyses are provided of how World Heritage sites are managed - with associated debates and decisions – to inform the development of local urban conservation policies and practices.

The authors offer unique insights from UNESCO's World Heritage Centre and the book is richly illustrated with colour photographs. Examples are drawn from urban heritage sites worldwide – from Timbuktu to Liverpool – to demonstrate key issues and best practice in urban conservation today.

The book offers an invaluable resource for architects, planners, surveyors and engineers worldwide working in heritage conservation, as well as for local authority conservation officers and managers of heritage sites.

Francesco Bandarinis the Assistant Director-General for Culture of UNESCO, formerly the Director of the UNESCO World Heritage Centre and the Secretary of the World Heritage Committee. He is trained as an Architect (Venice 1975) and Urban Planner (UC Berkeley 1977) and has pursued an academic career as Professor of Urban Planning at the University of Venice (IUAV) and a professional career as consultant for international organizations in the field of urban conservation and development. He has been actively involved in the Venice Safeguarding Project and in the preparation of Rome for the year 2000 Jubilee. As Director of the World Heritage Centre he has promoted the revision of the UNESCO recommendation on historic cities and has contributed to development of the debate on the role of contemporary architecture in historic cities, on the management of their social and physical changes and on the role of communities in the conservation of historic values.

Ron van Oersis Vice Director, World Heritage Institute of Training and Research for Asia and the Pacific (WHITRAP). He was formerly Programme Specialist for Culture at the UNESCO World Heritage Centre, coordinating the World Heritage Cities Programme and the international effort to develop new guidelines for urban conservation, which were adopted as the 2011 Recommendation on the Historic Urban Landscape. He is trained as an Urban Planner (Delft 1993) and received his doctorate (PhD, Delft 2000) on a research into the principles of Dutch colonial town planning (published as book). He is the Founding Editor (together with Dr. Ana Pereira-Roders) of the Journal of Cultural Heritage Management and Sustainable Development (JCHMSD), published by Emerald Group Publishing (UK) and a Member of the Editorial Advisory Board of Change Over Time: International Journal of Conservation and the Built Environment, published by Penn Press, University of Pennsylvania’s School of Design (USA).