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Jafarpour Nasser S, Esfanjary Kenari E, Tabibian M. The Historic Urban Landscape and Change Management: An Analytical Critique of the Values-based Management Models. CIAUJ 2022; 7 (1) :37-54
URL: http://ciauj-tabriziau.ir/article-1-333-en.html

The focus on cities as living heritage and on community-led endeavors challenges urban planning and development systems, and poses increasing complexity around decisions on what attributes and values to protect for future generations in a constantly changing environment. In 2011, UNESCO adopted the Historic Urban Landscape (HUL) recommendation and called for the application of a landscape approach to ensure the integration of cultural heritage policies and management concerns in the wider goals of sustainable urban development. Although many scholars have cited the HUL as a tool to manage change and reinterpret the values of urban heritage, over the past decade, heritage management tools and practices have faced with limitations in achieving the goals of the HUL approach. These limitations point to a gap between the internal purpose of the HUL approach at the conceptual level and its external reality at the operational level. This paper attempts to address this gap by providing an analytical critique of the values-based decision-making tools, and their guidelines and outcomes. The aim is to determine whether change management tools, particularly the Heritage Impact Assessment (HIA), share a common heritage discourse with the action plan of the HUL approach. The methodology applied in this study focuses on the research purpose through a qualitative approach, and uses critical discourse analysis (CDA) with inductive strategy to advance the research process. Critical discourse analysis is a qualitative analytical approach for critically describing, interpreting, and explaining the ways in which discourses construct, maintain, and legitimize social inequalities. CDA is an application of discourse analysis, it stems from a critical theory of language which sees the use of language as a form of social practice. CDA is a useful approach for heritage researchers who explore connections between management practices and social contexts. Results show that while the HUL approach refer to the heterodox heritage discourse at the conceptual level, the tools used at the operational level follow the orthodox heritage discourse. This has led to a practice that preferably focuses on the tangible qualities of fabric and historical facts independently of how people perceive and value about their heritage. Results also show that while the HUL action plan for assessing and manageing urban heritage resources emphasizes a more democratic and participatory approach, a values-based approach, though supposedly placing people at the core of management (through the concept of stakeholder groups), actually tends to promote community involvement within legitimating norms and enforcement of expert rule. We argue that the implicit assumptions in the HIA guidelines derive from the hegemonic discourses in heritage management, rather than from the critical or heterodox discourses. Heterodox heritage studies represent the move away from understanding heritage as an assemblage of artefacts, monuments, sites and manifestations, disconnected from social and political contexts, and towards a contextual understanding of heritage as a discourse. In order to overcome the limitations of conventional change management tools, this study recommends the application of human-centered and context-based approach in values-based decision-making tools. This could make HUL a more effective heritage management tool as a holistic, integrated, and values-based approach.