The ‘Ideal State Method’: tackling data absence in World Heritage monitoring

Abstract eng:
One of the tasks of World Heritage management is to periodically survey and report the state-of-conservation of the designated properties. Edinburgh has chosen to control change through the building application process. An absence of data on the state-ofconservation per building disables a comparative analysis over time and there is no overview of minor and incremental changes. This led to the development of a new methodology for analyzing the state-of-conservation of designated areas. An ‘ideal state’ (of conservation) is taken as baseline, derived from local policies, literature and interviews with stakeholders. Comparative analysis between the ‘ideal state’ and ‘current state’ exposes changes. This methodology was applied to Edinburgh, but may also be useful to other cities facing similar challenges. It makes a contribution to current theory and practice, especially to the debate around the definition of conservation as ‘managing thoughtful change’. 1 INTRODUCTION The World Heritage (WH) city of Edinburgh was studied as case study within the scope of the research program ‘ OUV, WH cities and Sustainability’, joining Eindhoven University of Technology (Eindhoven, The Netherlands) and UNESCO World Heritage Centre (Paris, France) in collaboration. The aim of the research program is to survey the relationship between assessment of Outstanding Universal Value (OUV) and the sustainable development of World Heritage cities (Pereira Roders & van Oers, 2010). A WH city is a city that has area(s) designated as WH within its urban boundaries (Pereira Roders, 2010). As any other city, WH cities need to develop to meet the needs of their citizens. They also opted to designate part of their cities as heritage and preserve them for future generations. To fulfil these sometimes contrasting needs good governance can be crucial. Development is defined as sustainable when it does not adversely impact the limited valuable resources (WCED, 1987). Cultural heritage is such a resource. Monitoring of cultural heritage can help assessing changes over time on their impact, but needs data as input (Pereira Roders & van Oers, 2013). The recently adopted Recommendation on the Historic Urban Landscape (HUL approach) advocates conservation as the management of ‘thoughtful change’ and provides guidance on the implementation of a landscape-based approach (UNESCO, 2011), including the wider urban context and socio-economic structures of cities with heritage (Veldpaus et al., 2013; Bandarin & van Oers, 2012). Guidance on the implementation of the HUL approach recommends, amongst others, the use of surveys to map the cities resources, and the use of stakeholder consultations to assess their cultural significance. The notion of Limits of Acceptable Change (LAC) aims to establish the boundaries between what needs to be protected and what can be transformed (Pereira Roders, 2013). The LAC framework was originally developed in the 1980’s, to assist managers in the preservation of wilderness along recreation opportunities (Stankey et al., 1985; Cole & Stankey in McCool et al., 1997). Over time the

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