IN-PERSON: Prague – Section A

Abstract

The legal framework and guidance for heritage conservation have become more problematic when it comes to the interplay between images and ideologies across and between local, regional, national and international communities. This problem has become evident in the world heritage sites that are added to the endangered list or removed. This article unpacks the conflict between Liverpool’s urban regeneration and its World Heritage status (WHS). This conflict is broken down into the different parallel ideologies that were running together to achieve the city’s urban regeneration and recovery from a long history of deterioration. The ideologies review the power dynamics between different actors and how they impacted the decision-making process. Despite the WHS being used as a catalyst for Liverpool’s development, it was perceived as an obstacle. Policy review and semi-structured interviews are used to explore how the vision for development and regeneration are not matching the reality and the choices made for Liverpool’s current situation. I argue that managing expectations for development in the heritage conservation process, more specifically with post-industrial cities, require different measures and procedures than other types of World Heritage sites due to the sensitivity of the context, available resources and a thorough assessment of the current situation. There is difficulty in achieving the global image through the WHS within a local deteriorated situation which can’t be achieved similarly to any other case of WHS.