Track: Special Theme A

Cultural Heritage and Sustainability

Track Chairs:

Kristal Buckley and Steven Cooke, Cultural Heritage Centre for Asia and the Pacific, Deakin University, Australia

Goals and Objectives

Urban environments and their complex economic, social, cultural and physical settings have proven a challenging context for heritage work and for ideas of sustainability. These environments must be dynamic to prosper, and are intensive locations for flows of people, ideas, capital, physical resources and environmental services. Cities and regional settlements are engaged in local, regional and international competitive relationships that favour a myriad of orientations and characteristics, including local definitions of cultural heritage. Cultural heritage is often positioned as antagonistic to change, and in opposition to development processes and needs.

Globally, the major debates and advances in developing and applying social and political processes of cultural heritage conservation find their greatest challenges and innovations in cities and towns where many of the most contested heritage cases concern the limits of acceptable change to the physical fabric, and intersections with issues of rights, gender, religion and poverty alleviation. Advocates of design professions such as architecture, urban design and planning, often position ‘heritage' as an obstacle to the betterment of their cities, blocking the creativity and dynamism that characterize attractive, socially nurturing and economically powerful cities and towns. Urban renewal can cause significant dislocation for local communities as familiar landmarks and landscapes undergo change, and local communities often struggle to find the right mix between safeguarding the tangible expressions of their identity and history alongside the need to advance the well-being of residents, citizens and visitors.

UNESCO has promoted the idea that ‘culture' should be a ‘4th pillar' of sustainability, or at least a cross-cutting factor that binds together the existing pillars of environment, economy and society. While the literature emerging from both practice and academia poses many useful case studies of successes and tensions, the search for the ‘tipping point' and the possible futures that it could enable requires other forms of dialogue and planning.

Questions and Topics
Participation from many disciplines is invited to address the following (and related) questions:

  • What would it look like to reach a tipping point that can create alternative futures for heritage and sustainable development? What are the enabling factors that will allow this point to be reached?
  • Where are the connects and disconnects between the discourses and practices of cultural heritage and development?
  • In what ways have recent theoretical developments in the critical heritage discourse moved the focus of heritage ‘work' to address important social questions that will serve the needs of sustainable development at global and local scales of activity?
  • How can ideas of resilience and sustainability be better incorporated into cultural and natural heritage practices?
  • In what ways can researchers, practitioners and governments, and NGOs work together to transform cultural heritage practices?
  • What new methodologies might be needed so that the voices and aspirations of communities can be understood and incorporated into the conversations around heritage and development priorities?


Please contact:
Kristal Buckley AM, Deakin University: kristal.buckley@deakin.edu.au
Dr Steven Cooke, Deakin University: steven.cooke@deakin.edu.au

You may submit your abstract by visiting the Ex Ordo abstract submission system (you will be required to setup an account first): http://isdrs2015.exordo.com/

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10th - 12th July
2015
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