Heritage and Conservation in Changing Environments

The cities of Kathmandu, Nepal, Yogyakarta, Indonesia and Recife, Brazil were analyzed based up on their urban development, drivers of change, urban and heritage policies, as well as the phases of urban regeneration. In all three cities the urban outline is changing, induced by rapid urban change. The centres, however, still comprise of heritage buildings and places, often attached to intangible values still appreciated by the urban population. The comparative analysis of the case studies reveals major impact clusters influencing on the urban centre. Common problems of conservation legal frameworks are overlaps or contradictions between documents issued on different administrative levels or by different authorities and outdated contents. In addition, the execution of the legal framework in force is often poor and hardly reflecting interlinkages of tangible and intangible heritage. The attachment to the historic urban core is still strong in all cases. The centres are of importance, the same applies to distinct places of remembrance and particularly to different forms of intangible heritage. However, the overall awareness and recognition of intangible values seems comparably fuzzier than in the case of tangible heritage and may result in potential losses. To develop suitable strategies for regenerating the historic centres the triggers of urban change as well as their interlinkages have to be taken into account.