Historic urban landscapes : an assessment framework, part I

Current theory defines conservation as ‘managing thoughtful change’ and recommends a landscape-based approach towards heritage management. The recent UNESCO (2011) recommendation on the Historic Urban Landscape (HUL) provides guidance on such a landscape-based approach at international level. Yet, it is now up to the national and local governments to implement it. The research aims to develop an assessment framework to reveal the differences and resemblances between existing local policy and management practices and those recommended by the HUL approach, defined for four variables: attributes (what), values (why), stakeholders (who) and strategies (how). The part of the framework presented in this paper is to reveal how the attributes of cultural significance are addressed in current policy.