Reframing China’s heritage conservation discourse. Learning by testing civic engagement tools in a historic rural village

Urban heritage conservation in China has been subject to severe criticism, although there is now a sense of paradigm shift. Charters, declarations and agendas had the merit of filtering down the international discourse on heritage, while more innovative approaches were arising. The UNESCO Historic Urban Landscape recommendation, offers a new angle from which to observe this process of change. The underlying argument of this article is that HUL can provide a platform to achieve greater sustainability in transforming historic sites in China, particularly in rural areas, overcoming, at the same time, the easy shortcut of the East–West discourse of difference in respect to heritage conservation. This is primarily due to the shifting focus from the materiality of heritage to its role in sustainable development with increasing attention on the role played by local communities. By presenting the proposal for the protection of the historic rural village of Shuang Wan in the Jiangsu Province, this paper aims to reflect on this shift showing its advantages but also some of the risks. These are inherent in a discourse of heritage in danger of legitimising mere pro-growth development approaches, if not accompanied by participatory practices considerate of the specific social reality of China

Principles into Policy : Assessing the Impact of Conservation Principles in Local Planning Policy

The arc of policy change in heritage conservation in England - from the 1967 Civic Amenities Act to the National Planning Policy Framework 2018 - spans significant shifts in the underpinning principles supporting conservation policies. While national policies can be interpreted as inflections of changing policy frameworks enacted in international and European arenas, the interplay is complex and causal relationships may be impossible to demonstrate conclusively. This paper takes the instance of English Heritage (now Historic England)’s Conservation Principles, Policies and Guidance for the sustainable management of the historic environment (2008) and considers its international hinterland and its legacy. While it has no formal status in the heritage protection or planning system in England, this research examines its sustained presence in local heritage planning policy. An examination of local heritage strategy documents shows that Conservation Principles, and the body of early 21st-century European and international thought that it reflects, are embedded in current practice in local authority policy-making. This impact is notable, in the context of an English statutory planning and heritage protection system unchanged for 30 years, and attests to the agency of innovative international conservation principles despite the inertia of national heritage reform

Conflict in common: Heritage-making in Cape York

The outstanding natural and cultural values of Cape York have been acknowledged for decades, but those decades have been characterised by deep conflict. Non-government organisation intervention in local politics has seen a forceful push for nominating some or all of the Cape York Peninsula as a World Heritage Site. We illuminate the authorised heritage discourse at work in heritage-making, and highlight contested issues of ownership, governance, authenticity, and value. These themes contribute to the possibility of marginalising the voices of local people who wish to contribute to heritage-making in Cape York. Politics infuses all aspects of heritage-making in Cape York, and the specific experiences on Cape York reflect larger political processes occurring in World Heritage discourse. The paper draws on interviews undertaken in May and June 2012