IN-PERSON London Heritages. Section A

Abstract

A new understanding of cultural heritage is now more often called a new heritage approach and takes up the notion that heritage goes significantly beyond physical objects and intangible practices. It can rather be understood as a complex system and process, which consists of objects, people, processes, values and other relevant entities. This modern and holistic understanding enables cultural heritage to better integrated into sustainable urban development, resilience, modern practices of heritage interpretation and other paradigms which are responding to current challenges of humanity. Rather than focusing on selected phenomena and analyze them for “intervention”, this systemic understanding requires complex system-thinking capacities, a tolerance for ambiguity and uncertainty, and the willingness to leave one’s own reference frames and comfort zones. Taking into account that many of the most pressing issues of today’s time, which are also threatening the “traditional” narrative of heritage conservation and safeguarding, are of systemic nature this contemporary concept seems promising. This contribution will outline a systemic understanding of cultural heritage using a metamodel which was developed based on there case-models from European context. Specific use-scenarios will be presented together with a demonstration of the metamodel using the UNESCO World Heritage Site Old Town of Regensburg with Stadtamhof. A special focus will be, how this systemic understanding can be connected, integrated, and operationalized with concepts like sustainability, resilience and circular economy to address especially issues of urban transformation.