Speaker
Description
The paradigms of built cultural heritage have undergone significant transformations over the past two decades. A critical element of this shift is the valorisation of urban landscapes as bearers of unique cultural value rather than mere collections of individual assets. This perspective inspired the development of the Historic Urban Landscape (HUL) approach. Formulated by UNESCO in 2011, the HUL approach advocates leveraging the cultural values of urban landscapes as contributors to high-quality urban development. Although the HUL approach encompasses considerations beyond urban morphology, it warns that uncontrolled development (e.g., excessive urban densification) may erode the sense of place and undermine the identity of communities.
Balancing development and preservation in HULs often creates tensions among divergent economic, political, and social interests. These conflicts are frequently mentioned in specialised academic literature, particularly within cultural heritage. However, the interplay between HUL values and urban regulations governing changes in urban morphology remains underexplored in research. A significant knowledge gap persists regarding what characteristics of the HUL challenge their incorporation into urban regulations.
This study narrows the broad development-versus-preservation conflict, focusing on a specific aspect of urban form—density—to analyse the contribution of HULs to planned urban development. It examines Switzerland’s Federal Inventory of Heritage Sites (ISOS), a nationwide inventory of culturally significant landscapes. ISOS aims to support high-quality and sustainable urban densification by identifying unique local landscape characteristics of cultural value and providing recommendations towards their preservation and perpetuation. Cantons and municipalities are legally required to consider ISOS when formulating their urban plans, thus promoting incorporating HUL values into the form and function regulations. The scope of ISOS and its role in planning make it an adequate case study for better understanding the connections between HULs values and urban regulations.
While the ISOS must, by law, inform binding regulations, its effectiveness can be compromised by conflicts and negotiations among stakeholders—such as governments, property owners, and communities—arising from competing interests. As a result, the extent to which ISOS recommendations are reflected in binding regulations remains uncertain. This study seeks to identify the most frequent recommendations issued by ISOS and assess the extent to which binding regulations align with them, namely on density-related aspects such as building volume and height.
Selected settlements were analysed to extract explicit recommendations from their ISOS dossiers, which were then compared with corresponding regulations outlined in urban planning documents. This comparison facilitated categorising regulations as either enablers or barriers to the transference of ISOS recommendations as binding rules. For instance, if ISOS recommends maintaining the existing built volume while regulations allow for its increase, this would represent a barrier to the ISOS recommendation. These evaluations were synthesized into a compliance indicator, offering a measurable framework to assess how effectively ISOS values are translated into enforceable rules.
The analysis highlights which cultural heritage considerations are more effectively integrated into urban planning regulations. Identifying the preservation measures that stakeholders are more reluctant to adopt also sheds light on the challenges of integrating the HUL approach into binding urban planning regulations. Although this study focuses on the Swiss inventory and planning system, its findings have broader relevance, as the HUL approach advocates the creation of similar inventories worldwide. This methodology has proven effective for evaluating the contribution of HULs to urban development and opens avenues for studying other aspects of urban form and function.
| Keywords | Historic Urban Landscape; Urban Densification; Planning Regulations; ISOS |
|---|---|
| Best Congress Paper Award | Yes |
