Historic Cities and Urban Settlements
Buildings and Sites Department
Photo: Scott S. Warren
The conservation of historic cities and urban settlements is one of the greatest challenges the heritage conservation field is currently facing. The rapid urban growth of existing cities and deurbanization of rural settlements are both examples of the complex challenges that result from continual evolution of urban areas and place enormous pressures on historic cities and settlements, threatening their integrity, authenticity, and heritage values.
Solutions cannot focus on individual buildings and their settings but must seek a holistic approach to conservation that appropriately manages change, growth, and development. Since the early 1990s, the Buildings and Sites department has conducted research and carried out a number of projects related to the conservation of the historic urban environment.
Recent work includes the examination of UNESCO’s Historic Landscape Approach (HUL) as potential tool and its operationalization and integration into our training work.
Our work with the City of Los Angeles on African American Heritage Places seeks to examine barriers to equitable conservation to improve recognition of marginalized heritage. This involves developing and embedding participatory and community-based processes, such as cultural mapping, and further advancing understanding of social value into contemporary practice.
Our work on inventories, surveys, and the development of platforms for managing heritage data seeks to advance the most fundamental aspects of urban heritage work.