An agile literature review on the urban heritage topic in City Image Analysis

 

Working paper: jh-2021-03-30-a (https://josephho33.blogspot.com/2021/03/an-agile-literature-review-on-urban.html)

 

An agile literature review on the urban heritage topic in City Image Analysis

 JOSEPH KIM-KEUNG HO

Independent Trainer

Hong Kong, China

Dated: March 30, 2021

 

 

Abstract: Literature review, done in an agile way, is helpful to part-time undergraduate students as it is more in sync with their busy pace of life. Mastery of the agile literature review skill enables part-time students to perform better in doing course assignments and final-year dissertation projects. This article presents an account on performing an agile literature review exercise on urban heritage for city image analysis (in the subject of Geographical Imagination). It is thus a useful reading to learners of literature review, intellectual learning and urban heritage.

Key words: agile literature review, intellectual learning, literature review, urban heritage.

 

Introduction

Literature review is an important academic topic in Research Methods. For Degree programme students, e.g. in Housing Studies and Business Management, literature review skill is required for doing course assignments and final year dissertation projects. The writer’s interest in the literature review topic arises from his teaching and research activities. In particular, the writer has been developing literature review methods that possess agility. In this article, the writer presents an account of the agile literature review exercise on urban heritage (for city image analysis in the subject of Geographical Imagination). The reason for choosing this topic is that the writer is a lecturer on Geographical Imagination for part-time undergraduate students in Housing Studies in Hong Kong. The next section is to present the agile literature review exercise findings; it is then followed by a brief section of “concluding remarks”.

An agile literature review on urban heritage

This agile literature review exercise adopts a nimble and responsive mode to study the academic literature on urban heritage found via Google Scholar and two UK university e-libraries. The overall aim is to gather and learn academic ideas on urban heritage for city image analysis in the subject of Geographical Imagination. The literature search was carried out by the writer from March 28-29, 2021. A set of academic ideas were gathered and grouped into three categories, as shown in Table 1.

 

Table 1:  A set of gathered academic ideas related to urban heritage, grouped in three categories

Categories	Academic ideas of urban heritage
Category 1: nature of urban heritage (idea 1.1)	“The long evolution of cultural heritage till today’s wide meaning is intimately linked to France, where this concept born in the 19th century, during the Revolution, the Empire and the Restoration. It originates from its recognition as an expression of national identity and progresses through a sequence of legislative acts: initially linked to the preservation of individual monuments, later of the sites and protected areas, and then of the historic centres. This has been done by gradually increasing the reasons for such interest, initially founded on urban décor concerns and finally on the awareness that heritage would be a powerful contributor to social stability and sustainable economic development” (Versaci, 2016).
Category 1: nature of urban heritage (idea 1.2)	“The concept of heritage can be perceived as a process rather than a static phenomenon; it is constantly redefined in the predominant social and cultural context. It signifies an interpretation or a reconstruction of the past to fulfil the needs of the contemporary society and the institutionalisation of a collective memory. Lowenthal describes heritage as a practise that ‘clarifies pasts so as to infuse them with present purposes’ (1997, p. XV)” (Hökerberg, 2013).
Category 1: nature of urban heritage (idea 1.3)	“Urban heritage, previously regarded as concerned only with safeguarding selected physical components of the built environment for attributed cultural values — essentially artistic, architectural, and historical — today aspires to address cities more holistically as inhabited and used places, but in the absence of essential collaborative working relationships with complementary disciplines. Whereas heritage is articulated as both tangible and intangible, and the communities that inhabit historic cities are increasingly acknowledged as its primary stakeholders and custodians, they are neither engaged nor empowered as such” (Ripp and Rodwell, 2015).
Category 2: ingredient concepts of urban heritage (idea 2.1)	“As argued by Gibson (2009), community consultation and participation is the premise of ‘representative heritage’. The idea that ‘people have rights over their history and heritage’ promotes the scholarly appeal of community participation and ‘shared authority’ in decision-making (Nitzky, 2013) and cultivates the perspective that heritage conservation is an integral part of civil society. It is suggested that community heritage efforts should serve as a cultural process and platform for dialogue, whereby dissonant perspectives on cultural expression and objectives could be articulated and negotiated (Pendlebury, Townshend, & Gilroy, 2004; Smith, 2009; Waterton, 2005; Waterton & Watson, 2011)” (Wang and Aoki, 2019).
Category 2: ingredient concepts of urban heritage (idea 2.2)	“New forms of heritage are increasingly finding their way to museums and archives, with examples being the cultural heritage of popular culture (Hoebink, Reijnders, and Waysdorf 2014) and the objects and stories associated with digital cultures (De Lusenet 2007). As a result, new publics and stakeholders are entering the field of cultural heritage. In the case of popular music heritage, for instance, collectors, fans and non-professional archivists participate in the ‘heritagisation’ of this cultural form (van der Hoeven and Brandellero 2015; Cohen 2013)” (van der Hoeven, 2019).
Category 2: ingredient concepts of urban heritage (idea 2.3)	“The focus of heritage discourse has been gradually shifting from the extraordinary and unique to the typical, inspired by the reorientation in landscape heritage discourse where the ordinary landscape – natural areas – are now subject to conservation interests. The everyday landscape is acknowledged as an important part of the quality of life in the European Landscape Convention. As well as areas of ‘outstanding beauty’, it contributes to the formation of local cultures and it is considered an essential component of the European natural and cultural heritage (European Landscape Convention 2000)” (Hökerberg, 2013).
Category 2: ingredient concepts of urban heritage (idea 2.4)	“During the last decade, a shift has been noticed in the UK regarding the focus of heritage-led regeneration. Initially, the renovation and restoration of historic buildings was purely approached from a conservation point of view when conservation-led regeneration began to gain popularity from the 1980s with the first UK scheme launched in 1994.11 Over the years, this type of work has been linked with local economic and social development...  Derelict and obsolete buildings are increasingly conserved and adaptively reused with the ultimate goal to boost the local economy, local pride and social cohesion” (Fouseki and Nicolau, 2018).
Category 2: ingredient concepts of urban heritage (idea 2.5)	“The discipline of geography and the management of urban heritage have increasing potential to be interconnected. Techniques of mapping are shared and both implicate the environment, economy, society, and culture. Moreover, following staunch resistance by the preservationist lobby, there is increasing recognition within the conservation community that towns and cities are characterised by continuous processes of change, and need to be managed as such to safeguard and enhance their individual identities and competitiveness in today’s global marketplace. This advanced comprehension of urban heritage incorporates the users of heritage and functional interdependencies, and the role of heritage in supporting essential systems such as housing policy and needs” (Ripp and Rodwell, 2015).
Category 2: ingredient concepts of urban heritage (idea 2.6)	“Whereas urban heritage is subject to the parallel operation of a multitude of processes and parameters, interventions within it are routinely focused only on a small part of this system, to the result that they may not be the most efficient or sustainable ones. To understand the relationships between the singular elements and their evolution over time is a demanding challenge, necessitating a thorough scoping in order to define appropriate objectives, coupled with the management structures to implement coordinated action. The concept of ‘scoping’ anticipates engagement with an overarching definition of the ‘players’ (community breakdown, target groups and others), the ‘field’ (relevant themes, topics, issues, timing and milestones) and sound governance (including coordinated human resources), before any planning processes are started” (Ripp and Rodwell, 2016).
Category 2: ingredient concepts of urban heritage (idea 2.7)	“Globalising forces inherent in the shift from production to consumption are influencing changes in the built environment and in their local cultures. This is most acute in places of heritage value where the local culture with its built heritage is being transformed into a product for tourist consumption” (Nasser, 2003).
Category 2: ingredient concepts of urban heritage (idea 2.8)	“Within the context of planning in historic environments, a dichotomy exists between preserving the past for its intrinsic value and the need for development in response to changing societal values. This conflict arises from the new sense of historicity and a romantic nostalgia for the past, which according to Lowenthal (1985), stems from a psychological need to know the past as a reference point, although how we “know” the past varies from personal experience through fallible memory to learned history” (Nasser, 2003).
Category 3: application considerations of urban heritage (idea 3.1)	“Threats to heritage in contemporary society involve not only physical destruction but also destruction of the social body that considers memories, practices, or the place its inheritance (Harrison, 2015). Hence, international heritage agencies focus on the involvement of local communities in heritage conservation. Their discourses on community inclusion can be traced back to the Nairobi Recommendation (UNESCO, 1976), Burra Charter (Australia ICOMOS, 1979), and the Washington Charter (ICOMOS, 1987). Further, the Valletta Principles (ICOMOS, 2011) emphasized the protection of indigenous populations, which involved the maintenance of their traditional practices, social environment, and distinctive ways of life. Heritage conservation has been integrated into the sustainable development framework of cities, highlighting not only the urban landscape but also the enhancement of the quality of life, social cohesion of local people, and intangible dimensions of heritage pertaining to diversity and identity (UNESCO, 2011). This mentality reflects the humanistic thinking on heritage that shifts its focus from object-based to social values” (Wang and Aoki, 2019).
Category 3: application considerations of urban heritage (idea 3.2)	“Processes of democratisation are first manifested in the digitisation of cultural heritage, which has significant consequences for the public role of heritage organisations and their employees (Giaccardi 2012; Pruulmann-Vengerfeldt and Runnel 2011). Digital media such as social networking sites facilitate new forms of dialogue and collaboration with the public. Writing about the growing attention paid to questions of participation, Livingstone (2013, 26) notes that ‘public, private, and third-sector institutions have all responded with vigor, reorienting themselves to a newly visible public, developing consumer-facing strategies and social media platforms’. These developments enable communities to increasingly participate in the construction of heritage narratives, while heritage institutions attempt to actively involve people in order to enhance their legitimacy and role as a public body (Reijnders 2010)” (van der Hoeven, 2019).
Category 3: application considerations of urban heritage (idea 3.3)	“There is currently a growing interest in modern urban peripheries, which includes their existing and potential heritage. Such qualities have often been ignored in urban planning because of a hierarchic perspective where the periphery is subordinated to the city centre, symbolically and functionally. This perspective has lost its relevance today as the centres represent a continuously decreasing area of the urban landscape, and as the majority of inhabitants live in the outskirts of the cities” (Hökerberg, 2013).
Category 3: application considerations of urban heritage (idea 3.4)	“When walking down the streets of Rome, it is impossible to miss the past. Indeed, ‘fragments of the past are everywhere’ (Herzfeld 2009, 1). In Rome, the past is part of the everyday, seeped in the fabric of the contemporary city and embedded within its identity. One could conclude that the city is stuck in the past, but John Agnew sees Rome as a dynamic place, where the past is jumbled with the present, where people live amid a variegated landscape that is always changing. This is neither an austere not a ruined city. It is a city of layers. (Agnew 1995, 2–3)” (Bartolini, 2014).
Category 3: application considerations of urban heritage (idea 3.5)	“Despite the intensity of heritage-led regeneration programmes (e.g. THI, Heritage Action Zone to name just a few), there is extremely limited empirical evidence on the degree to which heritage in this type of schemes contributes to the social and economic development of a city.25There is though some evidence showing that ‘heritage-led regeneration’ initiatives driven by the conservation of deteriorated and neglected buildings in a constrained geographical area usually lead to ‘pockets of unequal geographies, with wealth concentrated in the city centre’” (Fouseki and Nicolau, 2018).
Category 3: application considerations of urban heritage (idea 3.6)	“… urban heritage is arguably under greater threat today than hitherto, in major part, the result of a failure to comprehend its multiple connections and relationships. These include: a mind-set that is still working to early post-Second World War models that only predicated the survival of highly selected designated heritage; a lack of association with the positive aspects of migration and demographic change; an absence of assimilation with today’s global agendas of sustainable development and climate change; and a failure to embrace the correspondence between conservation and new construction as two complementary forms of development” (Ripp and Rodwell, 2016).
Category 3: application considerations of urban heritage (idea 3.7)	“Heritage tourism is a significant sector within the global tourism economy (Timothy and Nyaupane 2009) and is what some scholars refer to as a “new market niche” of tourism (Jansen-Verbeke and McKercher 2010). ….. Heritage tourism encompasses both the tangible and intangible aspects of both culture and heritage (Southall and Robinson 2011). According to Timothy and Nyaupane (2009, p. 3–4) heritage tourism is defined as that which “relies on living and built elements of culture and folkways of today, for they too are inheritances from the past; other immaterial heritage elements, such as music, dance, language, religion, foodways and cuisine, artistic traditions, and festivals; and material vestiges of the built and cultural environment, including monuments, historic public buildings and homes, farms, castles and cathedrals, museums, and archaeological ruins and relics”. Other scholars broadly capture heritage tourism as “a subgroup of tourism, in which the main motivation for visiting a site is based on the place’s heritage characteristics according to the tourist’s perceptions of their own heritage” (Poria et al. 2001, p. 1,048)” (van der Merwe, 2013).
Category 3: application considerations of urban heritage (idea 3.8)	“As of 2010, more people now live in cities than in rural areas. According to UN-Habitat, one in five people live in squats, slums, or on land that does not legally belong to them. In South Africa, this number is estimated as one in four and potentially one in three by 2050 (UN Human Settlements Programme, 2006). These numbers illustrate that the relationship between informal communities and urban heritage is one of increasing important to consider” (Weiss, 2014).

 

Referring to Table 1, the three categories of academic ideas are (1) the “nature of urban heritage”, (2) the “ingredient concepts of urban heritage, (3) “the application considerations of urban heritage”. A concise description of the ideas is provided as follows:

On  the “nature of urban heritage”, the topic is an evolving and expanding one with prime attention to (i) the preservation of monuments, historic sites and centres as well as (ii) the contribution of (i) to social stability and sustainable economic development.

On the “ingredient concepts of urban heritage”, the topic makes use of concepts such as: (i) representative heritage, (ii) community heritage efforts, (iii) new heritage forms, (iv) heritage discourse, (v) heritage-led regeneration, (vi) the interconnection of geography and urban heritage management, (vii) scoping, (viii) globalising forces, (ix) tourist consumption, and (x) dichotomy between preservation of the past (for its intrinsic value) and the development need in response to societal values.

On “the application considerations of urban heritage”, the topic examines the concerns of (i) community inclusion, (ii) sustainable development framework of cities, (iii) democratisation processes, (iv) new forms of dialogue/ collaboration with the public, (v) the hierarchical urban perspective, (vi) the contemporary city fabric, and (vii) heritage-led regeneration programme.

All in all, the urban heritage literature (as revealed by Table 1) offers a rich source of academic ideas for a city image analysis on “heritage city” in the subject of Geographical Imagination. The agile literature review exercise is at the same time facilitates intellectual learning engagement to the learner.

 

Concluding remarks

The agile literature review exercise is straightforward; to gain a useful intellectual learning experience, the learner has to possess intellectual curiosity and a self-driven learning mindset. The agility of the literature review exercise is helpful to part-time undergraduate degree students for it is more in sync with their busy rhythm of life. The topic of literature review, such as the agile literature review, is important to students doing course assignments and final dissertation projects in their academic degree study. The urban heritage topic for city image analysis (in the subject of Geographical Imagination) has been taught by the writer to the part-time Undergraduate Degree students in Housing Studies in Hong Kong. Thus, the literature review findings (re: Table 1) should be helpful to the Geographical Imagination learners.

 

References

Bartolini, N. 2014. “Critical urban heritage: from palimpsest to brecciation” International Journal of Heritage Studies 20(5): 519-533, DOI: 10.1080/13527258.2013.794855.

Fouseki, K. and Nicolau, M. 2018. “Urban Heritage Dynamics in ‘Heritage-Led Regeneration’: Towards a Sustainable Lifestyles Approach” The Historic Environment: Policy & Practice 9(3-4): 229-248, DOI: 10.1080/17567505.2018.1539554.

Hökerberg, H. 2013. “Contextualising the periphery. New conceptions of urban heritage in Rome” International Journal of Heritage Studies 19(3): 243-258, DOI: 10.1080/13527258.2011.651739.

Nasser, N. 2003. “Planning for Urban Heritage Places: Reconciling Conservation, Tourism, and Sustainable Development” Journal of Planning Literature 17(4) May: 467-479. DOI: 10.1177/0885412203251149.

Ripp, M. and Rodwell, D. 2015. “The Geography of Urban Heritage” The Historic Environment: Policy & Practice 6(3): 240-276, DOI: 10.1080/17567505.2015.1100362.

Ripp, M. and Rodwell, R. 2016. “The governance of urban heritage” The Historic Environment: Policy & Practice 7(1): 81-108, DOI: 10.1080/17567505.2016.1142699.

Van der Hoeven, A. 2019. “Networked practices of intangible urban heritage: the changing public role of Dutch heritage professionals” International Journal of Cultural Policy 25(2): 232-245, DOI: 10.1080/10286632.2016.1253686.

Van der Merwe, C.D. 2013. “The Limits of Urban Heritage Tourism in South Africa: The Case of Constitution Hill, Johannesburg” Urban Forum 24: 573–588.

Versaci, A. .2016. “The Evolution of Urban Heritage Concept in France, Between Conservation and Rehabilitation Programs” Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 225: 3–14.

Wang, X. and Aoki, N. 2019. “Paradox between neoliberal urban redevelopment, heritage conservation, and community needs: Case study of a historic neighbourhood in Tianjin, China” Cities 85: 156–169.

Weiss, L.M. 2014. “Informal settlements and urban heritage landscapes in South Africa” Journal of Social Archaeology 14(1): 3–25.