IN-PERSON: Prague – Section B

Abstract

Cultural heritage is increasingly regarded as a strategic tool in urban planning, changing the mode of preservation to one of development. Despite sympathetic reservations from taking normative stances within heritage research, there is a pressing demand for practitioners to make decisions of great practical importance and consequence when caretaking for cultural and architectural heritage. The theoretical and practical challenges embedded in such decisions are prominent, particularly when developing cultural environments. These are defined by a valued cultural-historical narrative visible in the environment’s assemblage of physical characteristics, which may not be considered preservation-worthy in their own right but as part of the whole, thus challenging authoritative preservation decisions. Likewise, the intangible heritage, the sense of place and the atmosphere are hard to grasp with the available planning and designation tools. Through the study of Godsbanearealet, Aarhus, Denmark, the paper investigates how the cultural heritage of the former freight train area is employed as a resource when transforming the area into an urban neighbourhood. The focus is how manifold heritage understandings surface during the development, e.g., new inhabitants describing themselves as an essential part of the cultural environment and the sense of the area being “ever-changing” as a normative quality. The discussion concerns the complexity and needs to constructively engage various understandings of heritage and justifications for preservation when utilizing heritage as a resource in development by drawing on established approaches to designate cultural environments and on research within architectural heritage preservation, New Heritage, and sociology.